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Keeping Obedience Fun -
OBEDIENCE IS JUST A SERIES OF TRICKS


So many people who train obedience today are either from the old school of "you will obey me and do what is told". There is a lot of jerking with prong collars and often even shock collars are used. Few trainers really understand "reinforcement-based training" and how used correctly and with understanding can produce a happy, motivated obedience dog. 

Petra Ford has often said in her classes, "obedience is just a series of tricks." When we consider how tricks are trained, highly reinforced, happy, lots of praise, we might better understand why this approach to training obedience can help build a happy and motivated obedience dog. Each exercise is trained with the same happy and highly reinforced  approach as when we train a trick

Dogs also like change... they like things to move along quickly and not to train the same task over and over endlessly. I like to add interest and variety to Beckett's training perhaps offering a number of things for him to do all built around skills he will need and use in obedience. 

On example is the pivot dish. Beckett was introduced to turning on a dish as a puppy. We grew this for teaching him correct heel position, hind end awareness, bending in both directions and later to heel off the pivot dish keeping correct heel position. Also on the pivot dish it is hard not for the dog to be focused on us. They are looking up and being rewarded for their efforts. All this builds happy work; work which the dogs always remembers as something they really like to do. I often use a pivot dish before they go into the ring to get focused on me, forget about the environment and help relax them with something familiar and happy. 

In these 2 videos below you will see a few ways I have found build fun, joy, motivation and focus into our obedience training. 
DOGS LOVE TO PIVOT.
DOGS LOVE THINGS CHANGING AND STAYING INTERESTING...That is why these training stations can help build in the joy of team work and MOTIVATION for obedience.
© cynde leshin