If you’ve ever spent any time around dog trainers you’ll have heard them talking about ‘getting duration’ and how difficult it can be. Getting ‘duration’ on a behaviour seems to be the holy grail of dog training and some behaviours...
There you are, totally engaged with working your dog, when someone comes up to you to ask a question. What you do next will make a HUGE difference to how your dog views working with you and the quality of the focus he’ll give you in the future. When we have...
I have a young dog just starting his experiences of trial environments. He’s NOSY! He’s distracted! He has testicles that frequently override his brain cells! However, somehow despite all this, I have to teach him, nicely, that offering to work with me is...
If you’re a clicker trainer you know that having clear criteria is a must. However this is one area that I see causing grief time after time – even with experienced trainers! If the goal of clicker training is to provide clarity and clear feedback, we...
This is the second part of a two part series on teaching our dogs how to focus on us in interesting places. PART ONE examined the concept of ‘focus’ from a dog training perspective and looked at how to teach the foundation skill of reorienting to us from...
What is ‘Focus’? A very frequent comment I hear from dog handlers is that their dog can’t ‘focus’. Their dog is ‘distracted’ by the environment or specific things within it. So, I’d like to take a closer look at this very common problem. This is especially...
