The number one thing that drives your dog.
Find it and you have the key to unlock the door to a well behaved dog.
It is one of the first things I ask owners and they often say food.
Now, it's not that I don't believe them, it's just I want to see if the dog feels the same way.
so I often experiment with other things, like chase and tug.
Sometimes dogs do love food but it isn't always exciting enough, especially when there are distractions.
A perfect example is Atticus a Standard Poodle I worked with yesterday.
At home he llllluuuurrrrvvveeedddd food!
He would happily work for some tasty liver cake and we had a great session.
Yesterday we met down the park for some focus and recall training.
Atticus has a history of running off to other dogs.
We did some focus work using food and he responded well.
But when it came to recall food just wasn't good enough.
So I grabbed a toy from my car and we started working with that.
Atticus ADORED it and came flying back to dad when called each and every time.
I showed his dad how to use the toy to interact with Atticus and we also worked on getting Atticus to give the toy up nicely.
Motivation was key to success in this session, just like every session!
If we had tried to persevere with the food our success would have been limited.
At my recall workshop on Saturday we will work on motivating the dogs to want to come back.
Finding out when makes them tick and using lots of games to motivate our dog to want to stay with us.
Want to find the key to your well behaved dog??
There are still a few places left on my recall workshop so grab one now or give me a call today to organise a one to one.
See you later
Tamsin
