My hungarian vizsla, seems to be bored when I take her to KC dog training. We are doing our silver award, but she seems to switch off as soon as we arrive. Things she was able to do in her bronze award, for example her stays, have gone out of the window for months!!! We do tend to follow a routine at training which I'm sure she is starting to anticipate, but I have no control over this. I do mix up the training at home, change rewards, keep up the enthusiastic voice etc, but training just seems to be going out of the window. I feel ready to give up, but my girl thrives on having a job to do. Maybe agility training is the way forward? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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Bored in training
- Thread starter Jampot
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Hi
I think in your position I'd add something else as well as the KC dog training, whether that's agility, scenting practice, interactive toys where she has to work out how to get the treat or obedience work to music- something that changes really frequently so she's constantly learning new skills. Have you thought about teaching her the sort of skills that assistance dogs learn? Things like carrying your bag for you, calling lifts, picking up things you drop, getting the laundry out of the washer, closing doors and the like are really good for challenging their minds and are done with freeform clicker training which asks them to think about what they're doing constantly.
If she's the sort of dog that needs a job to do then I'm sure that you can find things for her to do as soon as you can communicate those jobs to her, and once you do then the routine with the KC training will be a nice routine rather than an hour of boredom.
How old is she? It could also be that she's at 'one of those stages' in growing up where she finds it really hard to focus.
(You're also breaking one of our rules here you know. Cough up with the pictures
)
I think in your position I'd add something else as well as the KC dog training, whether that's agility, scenting practice, interactive toys where she has to work out how to get the treat or obedience work to music- something that changes really frequently so she's constantly learning new skills. Have you thought about teaching her the sort of skills that assistance dogs learn? Things like carrying your bag for you, calling lifts, picking up things you drop, getting the laundry out of the washer, closing doors and the like are really good for challenging their minds and are done with freeform clicker training which asks them to think about what they're doing constantly.
If she's the sort of dog that needs a job to do then I'm sure that you can find things for her to do as soon as you can communicate those jobs to her, and once you do then the routine with the KC training will be a nice routine rather than an hour of boredom.
How old is she? It could also be that she's at 'one of those stages' in growing up where she finds it really hard to focus.
(You're also breaking one of our rules here you know. Cough up with the pictures
)Thank you for the response. She's two today actually! I'll look into your suggestions. We have a list of criteria to pass in our silver award and work our way through the list each week. Then I come home and practice the same things with a few extra commands thrown in. Maybe I should work on different things with few of the KC exercises thrown in. Switch it around. We have had an opportunity to have a go with agility equipment. It was very much a 'try it' session without instruction, but I do think she would love it.
If I can figure out how, I'll post a pic. I'm useless at this stuff though
If I can figure out how, I'll post a pic. I'm useless at this stuff though
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At age 2 she's old enough to start agility work (the lower age limit is usually 18 months, to protect their joints) and will be pretty much at the peak of her energy for her whole life, so the boredom could be explained right there. All the more reason to alternate training with physically demanding things and things which require her concentration in other ways
To share an image, make sure that the image is available online, either on an image hosting site like Photobucket, flickr or Picasa or on a website (facebook works but the image has to be set to be viewed by public) and then either copy the link to that image, click the 'Image' tool in the band at the top of your post (the square one with the green in the middle in the grey band up ^ there) and paste it into that box, or attach IMG tags to the link and post that directly.
The photo below is my girl Molly with her really tiny last litter of foster kittens, who were 5 days old when they were orphaned. I have the syringe of milk and Mol does everything else, including all of the toileting She's fostered somewhere between 50 and 100 kittens- we've lost count now. I opened the image in Photobucket and copied the IMG link and pasted here without using the 'Image' tool above, which just adds IMG tags to a normal link.
To share an image, make sure that the image is available online, either on an image hosting site like Photobucket, flickr or Picasa or on a website (facebook works but the image has to be set to be viewed by public) and then either copy the link to that image, click the 'Image' tool in the band at the top of your post (the square one with the green in the middle in the grey band up ^ there) and paste it into that box, or attach IMG tags to the link and post that directly.
The photo below is my girl Molly with her really tiny last litter of foster kittens, who were 5 days old when they were orphaned. I have the syringe of milk and Mol does everything else, including all of the toileting
She's fostered somewhere between 50 and 100 kittens- we've lost count now. I opened the image in Photobucket and copied the IMG link and pasted here without using the 'Image' tool above, which just adds IMG tags to a normal link.
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Just a quick update. I haven't practised any of our Silver award commands this week. I've just worked on other things and lots of playing. Last night Sadie had the best training session in a long time. Yay!!!! As a lot of it is obedience work, I'm always told to calmly reward the dog with quiet praise. Last night I ignored this advice and was super enthusiastic and it seemed to work. Hopefully we've turned a corner.
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Fabulous! If you have a really good session training (when you do train) then you've got a wonderful excuse not to train so hard and to have fun on other days instead.
A genuine result that shows that productivity may be completely unrelated to the amount of time put in
A genuine result that shows that productivity may be completely unrelated to the amount of time put in
Sadie passed her Silver award! I was so pleased and relieved We have the new list of Gold award tasks now. Maybe something different to focus on will keep her focus and enthusiasm up. Thank you eingana for you help and responses on this thread.
We have the new list of Gold award tasks now. Maybe something different to focus on will keep her focus and enthusiasm up. Thank you eingana for you help and responses on this thread.
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Yay Sadie! Well done
You're the one who did all of the hard work with Sadie, so it's great to see it all working out for you and Sadie. I know that Molly would be able to do about 99% of the tasks set, but she's just too scared of other dogs for her to get the qualifications. We can't even take her out for a walk at the moment because she's got new kittens and won't leave them
You're the one who did all of the hard work with Sadie, so it's great to see it all working out for you and Sadie. I know that Molly would be able to do about 99% of the tasks set, but she's just too scared of other dogs for her to get the qualifications. We can't even take her out for a walk at the moment because she's got new kittens and won't leave them
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