320/321 - attack of the spaniel + a new trainer

I’ve realised that Cybi has become a seriously reliable and almost totally neutral to other dogs when off lead which is quite a realisation and such a nice place to be as I never thought we’d get here. His absolute kryptonite used to be people kicking balls but on our walk yesterday, rugby-ball-kicking-man who I sometimes see on the pitch with his bag of 10 balls was there and he didn’t even look at him while he booted ball after ball over the posts. He LOVES being sent around rugby posts which is a really nice way of getting some energy out of him 😅 so we’ve been working on building the distance and also on where I stand to send him, I tried standing between him and the post and was quite surprised he did it really well. He then recalled to heel really nicely when I saw another dog and crossed into another field through quite a narrow bit.

We were messing around doing some send aways and emergency downs and I was trying to get a pic of him running full pelt when I noticed him visually lock onto something behind me and full send run past me, as I turned I saw an extremely rude spaniel approaching us - not sure if it was aggressive or just plain rude. Cue yelping and squealing as Cybi corrected and very efficiently sent it on its way, I’ll be honest I panicked and wasn’t sure he’d call off but the first time I recalled he span 180° and came straight back in front of me in a sit looking extremely pleased with himself. I put him in a down and clipped his lead back on while the owner attempted to get their dog back and then we walked off in the direction we had been going initially, I gave him his ball to carry as I thought it might help him to concentrate on something else for a bit and to reward him 😂

It was pretty crazy to see his switch off immediately afterwards. He didn’t stare out other dogs after, he went back off lead quickly afterwards and was still engaged and behaved totally normally afterwards, I was so proud of him.

I remember speaking to

@Nick Benger

during the early training days about Cybi not having dog friends, and I was worried he wouldn’t have social skills for these situations and we spoke quite a lot back then about neutral experiences being more important than risking bad ones. We’ve very much stuck to this tactic and have been building value in the handler, working on ignoring other dogs, etc. He has had one or two experiences with reactive dogs coming up to him but I really believe that working so hard on the things we’ve done - as well as some top quality puppy experiences at the stud and stability being in his genetics - we did the right thing. Really pleased with how fair his correction was, his call off, and his behaviour afterwards and it’s nice that it passed the real life test.

Today we’ve done some short training sessions on nothing in particular, but I booked in with an IGP tracking coach for February and I am SO excited to get started. His breeder said he showed the best promise as a small pup for tracking - he’s got a really nice natural indication style which he randomly shows when he finds something unusual in the garden sometimes, and he is very nose glued to the ground when he smells something on a walk so I think this will be fun to play with.

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