The young lady had been walking them individually in order to work on Cooper’s pulling and Wilson’s cat-chasing. The thing that sapped her confidence to the extent that she feels she can’t walk them at all now was that on her last walk with Cooper, Wilson suddenly appeared.
Instead of just crying as he watched Cooper and the lady walk off down the road from an upstairs window, he leapt out of it.
I remember reading a quote which said ‘Recalls are all about Relationship’. Most dogs that won’t come back fully understand what it is wanted of them but decide they have something better to do first. They hear their humans call, but don’t consider them sufficiently important, relevant, rewarding or fun to come running back to.
When they opened the door for me to go, Marley simply walked out and down the road, coming back home about fifteen minutes later.
We may have done some loose-lead walking but he didn’t consider that to be his morning walk, so he went by himself!
Does your dog ignore you when called, even though you know one day it could put them in real danger? If a dog won’t come to us from the other side of the room when called, he’s unlikely to do so when out and chasing off after another dog! They Read more
When a dog has learnt to be selective whether he comes or not when called, it can be good to start all over again with a whistle. Home work needs to be put in first – lots of it. After a thousand toots of the whistle over a couple of weeks, each time followed by a tiny piece of something tasty (it can be a great family game whistling a dog from room to room), we should be well on the way to creating a conditioned response.
Two beautiful Golden Labradors. Roxy nearly six months old and Lola is four. As a puppy, Lola was taken to puppy classes so is the better ‘trained’ of the two, but she is nervous. Roxy is a lot more confident and is already trying to dominate Lola. She can be Read more