After every walk we arrive home in a similar state - today, because I'd been crouching on the floor of the wood trying to get The Perfect Bluebell picture (and failing) I won the grime prize:)
@maggiemae Sadly because of her age (13) she's deaf and as I wanted her picture I kept waving at her to get her to stay still and not keeping coming near me:)
She is beautiful and very happy with her state! Mine arrive home looking like that most days as well. As long as they haven't found something delicious to roll in I can cope!!
What a lovely girl - and she's watching you very carefully. How lucky that she is clever enough to understand hand signals. It would be so sad if a clever dog could no longer communicate with her owner. :)
@robz It must be so sad for her to have her world shrink like that. We've done a lot of clicker training in the past and I found it amazing, just like having a direct telephone line open between you and your dog:) So glad we did it, it's certainly paying dividends now!
@fbailey Hi FB - I'm sorry to be back again but I was very interested in your reply. So you don't use hand signals - or do they get combined with the clickers? I've never been involved in clicker training so I don't really have any idea how it works. I'm going to google it -our Zoe is very headstrong and anything that helps her get the idea that she has to do as she's told must be helpful! And, as you say - it must be a lifeline for them in old age.:)
@robz Clicker training is great. When your dog does an action you want, you click and treat. All done in tiny baby steps. It's the only way I think you could ever teach dog dancing for instance. If you want to teach directionality, you combine with hand signals - left arm out for go left etc, arms outstretched for come here. Our dog trainer set up a little 'course' one day and the idea was to get the dogs to go over the jump, turn left for a few steps, sit, go right to a mat and wait etc. My little girl loved it and sailed through but a lot of the other dogs wondered what on earth was going on. You can teach your dog to do for example figures of eight around two objects just because they want to please you and they're trying to guess what you want them to do. It's quite tiring for them mentally though. When you have a dog who is trying to read your mind and her whole attention is focussed solely on what it is you want, you develop an amazingly strong bond. It's the nearest I've ever come to "talking" to one of them with no language involved. Sorry for length of reply but it worked brilliantly for us and It's still working. PS Clickers are only used until hand signals are understood. Hope this helps!
@fbailey Thanks for the detailed explanation FB - it sounds like a very powerful tool. Now that you have explained it, it sounds a little like one of the techniques used by some "agility dog" trainers. Their dogs compete on circuits like you described and have to finish in the shortest time with no errors. Their handler directs them with hand signals. I took Zoe to a few sessions when she was young (no clickers though) - she was good at doing the circuits - until she saw another dog - everything else went out the window then!! She's actually pretty good with a lot of hand signals now - so I might get a clicker, do some reading on techniques and have a go at teaching her some more as she responds to them quite well. Many thanks for the info. And you must be so pleased that you trained your girl while she was still able to hear!! Tnaks again. Cheers Rob
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