Okay, yesterday I left you with bit of  a cliff hanger.  Why not do your recall work dangling your dog’s favorite toy as you run.  Flyball trainers do it and their dogs run fast right? Two things about that, first of all, it is not good dog training but in flyball it doesn’t have as negative an effect because in that particular sport you can dangle your fuzzy bits during the actual competition all you like–there are no rules stating you can’t.  On some level that may be part of the attraction of flyball, the chance to dangle your fuzzy bits:).

Dangling the toy as you ran away is using a lure to get your dog to want to come to you. It is trying to pump up the attractiveness of you alone by dressing you up with a ball on a rope. You are creating the behaviour ofrun fast to me if you see something of value dangling beside me” rather than the behaviour of “ran as fast as you can to catch me anytime I call.” A better way to operate is to hide the toy in the opposite hand and only let the dog see it at the last moment when she gets close.  Doing it this way you are rewarding the dog for driving hard to get to your side, the toy is the unsuspected dog’s surprise. It builds value for the response the dog just gave you. The dog running fast now has nothing to do with the sight of the reward (as it was hidden) and the dog learns to just run hard to you regardless of what he does or doesn’t see (something that we all want in our agility dogs).

Stayed tuned on Monday, that is the date of the big ebook launch. Check your newsletters as details where sent out yesterday.

Newsletters. I posted this in the comments yesterday but it is worth another look.

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Today I am grateful for the break in this cold weather! Have a great weekend everyone.