Day 316: Winner Winner Chicken Dinner! · Dog Training Community

Day 316: Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!

Putting into practise our reactivity training today - omg! Mega WinnyMcWinface. I am really pleased with a) my confidence in being able to interrupt the barking and 2) How quickly she has learned it's not appropriate! I bumped into the neighbour with his spaniel and Aster responded to me really well, even with the Spaniel getting very close. I was so laser focussed I felt borderline rude as he was talking away to me asking how my Christmas was and I was just training 😂🙈I did explain though, and I have asked if he will do some sessions using his dog which he agreed to so I have at least one not-remotely interested-in-dog-training person to bore to death with drills now. I was so excited I message Nick straight away 😂

I got the bug from there and continued my horrifically non-productive day at work by sneaking off to the park in Launceston in pursuit of dogs. It didn't disappoint, there was a nice handful there in the distance so we did some more drills and Aster was very good. She did have a good bark at one dog running after a ball but I interrupted much quicker and more clearly. She was just on her flat collar and a flexi! We still have a way to go with disengaging quicker and holding that focus on me more strongly. The insecurity gets to her and she has to stare at the other dog which will bring on the barking if it's too close or moving towards us so I am really breaking that off and having her come to me while I run backwards so we get some distance, back into middle and look at the dog (with no barking) followed by look at me. At one point a cockadoodledoo thing ran high speed for it's ball at distance from us but parallel to us - it was enough to surprise Aster and made her jump but rather than bark she looked straight at me <3 good girl. Another huge win was someone coming back to the car park past us with their spaniel - I moved onto the grass for some space and put Aster in a sit front and had her look at me the whole time. She didn't break once!

I notice she really struggles with focussed heeling in more novel areas as she is in high vigilance mode and cannot contact heel whilst walking forwards AT ALL. All good information for me to mend the holes in our training. Dinnertime was mixing up contact heeling with sit fronts and focussed heeling around the bowl as she has patterned a lot of the drills we've been doing over winter. She was really confused about the sit fronts to begin with!

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