Gundog Training - Recall Practice 

I’m really glad you’re enjoying the channel and finding it useful! Unfortunately JR have paused their referral scheme at the moment so I don’t currently have a code available.

@@SpanielTrainingDiaries no problem. Just thought I'd ask. Just bought myself a clicker we're starting clicker training tonight in the garden. I'll use salmon skins as my high value reward until I get the jr pure pate. Thanks again!

Ivy's doing really great board work considering she's not done any for ages, my Millie is 7mths old so early days however Millie is ultra distracted by everything, how did you get ivy to concentrate on you as she does? Also how did you get ivy walking to heal? Have you any videos on heal work and do you PM looking forward to seeing your next training session 😀

Because rewarding with food is so easy I would probably try to see if different types of food rewards get more success when out and try delivering the food in different ways. A bit like us they will value some foods more than other, so for Ivy she’ll work for kibble in most scenarios but if our working or training in an environment with live game she’s needs a higher value reward, so we often use pate. If that didn’t work then I’d just use whatever the dog finds rewarding. When thinking about rewards I focus more on the rewarding the dog with the opportunity to demonstrate a behaviour that they find rewarding rather than the food or the toy itself. So behaviours that dogs will find intrinsically motivating are all things that form part of the predatory sequence so stalking, sniffing/hunting, chasing, catching, tugging, dissecting and eating. So finding a way to reward your dog with the chance to perform one or more of those behaviours, maybe chasing a ball, hiding a toy for them to hunt for, playing with a tug toy or you etc. there are lots of options (some easier to do that others depending on the environment you’re in) but you just need to work out what works for your dog and then utilise that. I hope that makes sense. 😊

Thanks Nick! So when training a completely new behaviour I’d start of by training it in an environment the dog finds less distracting, so often dogs find being at home or in the garden an easier environment to learn in. Then when you’re starting to increase the environmental distractions the things that initially come to mind that help get and keep focus are that I would make sure that you are giving the dog time to settle into the environment before starting the session. I would make sure that the criteria I set is appropriate for the dog to help them get lots of success as that will help them kept engaged, we always enjoy doing the things we’re good at. I’d make sure I was rewarding the dog in ways that they really enjoy. I’ve just replied to another comment on this video about reward behaviours, so check that out. And at that age it’s also particularly important to make sure you’re keeping the sessions short and giving them enough brain breaks. I do have some video on engagement games and heel work here are a couple of links that you might find interesting: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Zsk4HW28kJw.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-vlAmdwRXsJg.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6siu3RR0Fc0.html I hope that all makes sense. 😊

Hi many thanks for all your help, support and advice, how many training sessions do you train ivy and for how long for each session, do you incorporate training with walking and running about in fields/parks etc 😀

@@nickevans3190 I think the important thing to remember is that every interaction we have with our dogs it’s teaching them something. But when Ivy was a pup every outing tended to be more structured training whilst I was developing her foundations. Now she’s older and given my circumstance she we probably do 2-3 structured training sessions a week they can vary from 10/15 mins to an hour depending on what we’re doing and what she’s able to cope with, and the rest are more like what people think of as a traditional dog walk. But there are “rules” so that they don’t go completely rouge, and I’ll add in a few things into the walk some for example recalls, stops, heel work, the odd retrieve etc.