"Listen to your name" (part of a multi dog house hold necessary training)

I hope to be training some bite work and to lay a track for Elsa tomorrow. She is still not 100 % and still on anitbiotics. Planning to train carefully, short track and just a few fun bites in the puppy cusion, more for technique than anything else. Poor girl has so much energy, just wants to come out and do something fun.

By the way, I have written an article in coming Boxer Quarterly regarding "myths about bite work". That can be useful to read for them who has an aversion against Schutzhund/IPO/VPG. I can't say any more since the magazine is not out yet.

I have bought the harder pillow and the puppy sleeve. I hope it will arrive soon so we can continue the training on them.

Today, I did some "listen to your name" training in my kitchen with Elsa, Stoli, Ida, Simon and Bill. Bill, being only 4 months old, is not the best in the world on waiting for his turn and to listen to his name :-).

The exercise looks as follows:

Call all the dogs to the kitchen. Have them sitting in a half circle around you. Drop a yummie treat on the floor. Wait. Call one of the dogs names + OK.

Knowledge each individual dog need to have fairly well first: Sit on command, drop treat, wait and take it on "OK" or whatever word you use as a finish word.

I am quick to reward the untrained dog for sitting when another dogs name is called. Almost push them back with a treat when they want to go. In this case I really only needed to concentrate on Bill. In saying that Ida tried to cheet a few times :-), my cheeky little girl. Full of fun despite being in the middle of taking care of five babies. Bill got the waiting bit very quickly but he still thinks every time I call any dog I must of course always mean him. That does apply in all situations, not only in this excercise :-). Little wonderful baby boy. Half trimmed with a fluffy bum. Poor boy. Hopefully I will do the rest this evening:-).

I give all the sitting dogs treats for sitting still while another dogs name has been called.

I raise the criteria when the group is more stable in the exercise - I stand behind them, threw a treat, call one, treats to the ones that are sitting still. Other variations can be - call a dogs name, do not say OK, instead say Lay down (if they know what Lay down means) and then OK. Or just Lay down and a treat for that while calling another dogs name and give OK for the treat. There are a lot of variations.

Important to not raise the criteria too quickly so you loose control and the dogs are taking the treats and possibly even fall out over it. If you find yourself trying to catch or having to say "No" to dogs that are trying to get the treat you know you have raised the criteria too quickly. Rewind and make it easier so the whole group understand what you want from them. You need to stay in control, make it easy in the beginning, both for yourself and your dog pack. If you do it regurlarly and hurry slowly (can you say that in English? or is it only a Swedish expression...?) and you will find that your dogs love it!

Very efficient exercise for individual listening training which is necessary when living with a pack of dogs.