Send aways

[Janice]

Has anyone any tips on teaching send aways? Dale will go but he's reluctant. If there's a target it's fine. He thinks we playing with the clicker and goes to touch it no problem but just going straight ahead seems harder.
Its the same with jumping. I've only begun to introduce very low jumps and he'll follow me quite well but sending him ahead is a different story. Yesterday he stood touching the pole and looked at me. Eventually I threw a treat over and he went for that but then immediately turned back to me instead of going on to the second jump.
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Janice and Dale

[kirsty]

Sorry Janice, cant help you here, I am very impressed that you even do agility work with Dale. I am still trying to get my two to come back to me when they see another dog.

[Janice]

Kirsty don't be too impressed. We're only messing about in the garden. Dale gets bored if you ask him to repeat things too much and he gets worse instead of better So i keep mixing in different things along with what we do in class. That way he seems to enjoy it. i still can't get him walk to heel. Well he can but only when he feels like it
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Janice and Dale

[Nicola]

Janice,

When I was teaching Molly the sendaway, I put her blanket on the floor, put treats on it and showed her me doing this. I had her on lead at this point.

Then, we walked a bit away from the blanket, I took off Molly's lead and told her to "go to bed", then when she got to the blanket and as she was eating the treats, I put her in a down, and told her to stay (I had already taugh her a distance "down" stay and distance "sit" stay by then). After a minute or 2 on the blanket, I called her to me and "finished".

I repeated this a few times and she got the hang of it very quickly. We still do the sendaway now.

It may be worth teaching Dale a distance "down" command first.....Put him in a sit stay, walk away, halt and tell him to come, but half way between you and him, try and put him in a down. Obviously this does take time (and a loud, firm voice! ). You could use "stop!' first, then put him in a down, whatever works for him.

What I did was put Molly in a sit stay, put her lead half way between myself and Molly - the lead was the pretend road and if she passed that she was a dead dog, so to speak! This took time, and I eventually removed the lead and did the same routine. We stil do this also.

Good luck!

[Janice]

Nicola ,That was interesting.

I can get him to go to his mat with no bother but I've only asked him to do that in the house if we're eating or something. I never thought of that being the same sort of thing.
Am I right in thinking that in agility he'll have to go ahead and then follow voice or hand signals to go round a course? There's no way I'd be fast enough to run round ahead of Dale He's good at following directions if he's searching for something. He knows to go the way I'm pointing and not just look at my finger. He'll be a year at the beginning of November so he's still young enough for proper agility IMHO but I thought it wouldn't do any harm to start giving him the idea. Dale's brother's been at it for months already
You'll be glad to hear we'repracticingg the sleepy game these nights.
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Janice and Dale

[Lorna]

Janice, Go round with him rather than ahead of him. You can begin by making up your own individual tasks as similar to things he already does to help him learn the individual items on an agility course.
When the beagles were younger we (John and I - not the dogs) constructed an agility course along the back of the garden. It was great fun for them and they even used it when we weren't there.

Are the club considering agility classes?
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Regards,
Lorna, Basil & Poppy
Great Danes are not substitute children. They are much more important than that!

[Nicola]

[Janice]

Thanks for all the advice. I'm only playing at agility really. I found a collapsible tunnel for under a tenner and that started me off. Dale loves playing with it so we're just carrying on and seeing what we can do. Its good fun but I'll have to get fitter
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Janice and Dale

[Janice]

The sleepy time game is easier than I thought it would be. If I just gently push him away and ignore him he settles down. Mind you the minute he thinks something might be happening he's ready to go
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Janice and Dale

[Nicola]

[carol]

Hi Janice,
Having read your thread away sendaways over jumps.

When working my collies / parson TerrierI use both distance and close work control, mainly because Im not a great runner, so I have to send my dogs out to obstacles.

Anyway, my advice would be to practice recalls, to teach your dog how to negotiate the jumps without you causing any distraction. Of course you also have to be working on a "stay" at the start of the equipment. Once you can successfully recall over one jump add two and so on until you can master a few jumps. You could at this point add in your tunnel. say jump, tunnel, jump. Keep the jumps low until your dog has mastered the bits "in between" the jumps. Keeping the jumps low to begin with speeds up the learning process and keeps your dog motivated.

Once you have mastered the recalls, start with a send away over one jump then, two etc. For this to be successful your dog needs a good reason to leave you and go forward over the jump. Ideally, you dog would love a ball/toy and you can throw the ball over the jump let it land and the send the dog to get the ball. If your dog doesnt like a toy, you could either teach it to play or use a food box (small plastic container with couple of pieces of food on the top of lid) as a target. You need to keep the target at the end of the sequence you are doing until the dog understands your send away(verbal) command, the food box or the ball is the reward for getting the sendaway correct. Don't rush things along only go onto two/three jumps when you know the dog understand sendaway over one jump. Keep things simple for your dog to understand.

Also, carrying food in you hand may mean the dog is focusing on the food and there not paying attention to what is doing therefore not learning as quickly as he could.

Ive tried to put a video on here, but its not something im very good at but i think if you click on it it will take you to video on photottp://s141.photobucket.com/albums/r57/clearrunagility/?action=view&current=jillyjumpingvideo.flvbucket
or click on this link


[video width="448" height="361"]file URL [ URL=http://s141.photobucket.com/albums/r57/clearrunagility/?action=view&current=jillyjumpingvideo.flv][/URL]

[carol]

http://s141.photobucket.com/albums/r57/clearrunagility/?action=view&current=jillyjumpingvideo.flv


Try this link for send away video

[Janice]

Carol Thanks for the advice. He'll go ahead no trouble for a ball, he'll do almost anything for a ball So I'll keep trying with that. He seems to be enjoying it anyway just gets a bit excited and forgets to listen.
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Janice and Dale