With all the moving, Olympia, Christmas and then concentrating on the Wag and Tone eBook it suddenly dawned on me that he just lives with us. By that I mean he doesn't have a relationship with us. Well not the kind of relationship that we normally have with our dogs.
Our other dogs were brought up with a strong working relationship. We spent time developing a strong foundation built on great a positive reward based structure. This structure created the work ethic as it is known within all the Border Collies.
The work ethic of doing something right in order to earn a reward creates a life where we work on avoiding situations that involve any correction. This means simple basics like understanding go to your bed are actually taught and rewarded so although they may have preferred not to go they will as they had been rewarded enough. This paid huge dividends in helping them (and us) cope with living in other houses.
I have spent time re rewarding this behaviour in their new house where the beds are in a different place. I have also rewarded sitting in gate ways on the way to the field to help them calm down and not crash racing through gates.
Torro Devo and Rhyme waiting to be called through the gate
You'll notice Oddjob wasn't there. He would just not understand that behaviour and until he learns how to "work" he is almost entirely likely to fail any attempt I made to teach it.
Being small and calmer he is not likely to harm himself racing through gateways and he generally just hangs around so doesn't need to know the behaviour. But he does so much want to.
Oddjob trying to work out what to do
Without going right back to basics he will never be able to acheive exactly what I want. There is no way I easily explain it to him.
So I called in reinforcements our friends Greg and Laura Derrett International Instructors, Handlers and owners of UKA and UKI. Luckily they have also managed to make time to create Ultimate Agility. This gives access to their knowledge and help through online courses. Again luckily for me (and Oddjob) they have just started one on Reinforcement.
www.ultimateagility.com
How perfect is that.
I know I love the way Greg and Laura look at dog training - how important it is to them to use positive reinforcement over any other training and how well they put information across. It will be a lot of focus on Oddjob and myself and it will be uncomfortable for me at times facing up to the things I could do better.
It will also be the best thing we ever could have done together and I am very confident that Oddjob will come out as a dog many people envy and I will be a much better dog trainer.
If you are at a point when you notice you are spending more time saying no to your dog than praising it then I would thoroughly recommend spending the money on this great course.
