Your homework for this week is to continue to build the duration of the exercises and to start to add in some distance. For example, distance in your sits, distance between you and your dog during recall and distance from distractions with your loose lead walking and attention to name ‘check ins’. We’ve also introduced the Leave It exercise, which you will work on cementing the basics.

Settle Progression: Continue to build the settle at your own pace. In the home, see if you can build the settle when you have guests over and build from the basics in quiet public areas.

Attention to name: Continue to work on step 4 of this exercise outlined in Week 1 by building your dog’s response to you in different environments outside of the house. As you’ve been working is quieter areas, slowly build their responses to you around smaller distractions and more public areas. You can also use your family and friends to help you practice with slight more distractions in a controlled setting. You will continue to build this naturally with each exercise by always saying their name first as well as your loose lead walk check ins.

Sit Progression: Work through the sit progression with distance exercise outlined in this week’s guide. Your aim for the week is for your dog to be able to stay in the sit position as you move around them and can build 2+ steps. There are no expectations, but if you can build beyond this it will benefit you in the doorways exercise, we work on in week 4. You can also start to build their sit with duration when crossing the road or randomly on a walk during the loose lead walking exercise to build their sit progression in new environments.

Loose Lead Walking Progression: Continue to build your steps and reduce your treat ratio. This week you will start to progress your time walking in the quieter public spaces, such as outside your home, your street and quiet times on the park or quiet streets. This adds another level of distraction that is less controlled but at a big enough space to be able to move away if needed. Continue to start from step 1 in each new environment and build on your dog’s check ins, sits and little exercises during your walk to build the engagement. Use this week’s Loose Lead Walking Progression guide for key tips to help you build your lead walking, as well as the ‘Check ins’ exercise. You can also start to increase your loose lead walking training outdoors as you see fit. Remember to always end of a positive.

Drops and Swaps: Continue to work through your drops and swaps from week 2. Try teaching the drop by using two toys if they are unlikely to let go of a toy they love. This will make it worth their while to want to let go of a toy, if it means they get another to play with. This will help them to learn that letting go of a toy is beneficial, you can then pair the action of letting go of the toy with your chosen ‘drop’ word. As you are building the drop meaning, use the swap exercise with high value treats to ensure you don’t have too many fails with the drop.

Recall: Continue to work on steps 6 and 7 of the recall from your week 2 guide. Slowly work through the progression stages of duration and distance as you build the distance between you and your dog in quiet areas with limited to no distractions. Ideally your home, garden and quiet times in a large, but quiet field. Continue to work on your reward toolbox and most importantly, play with your dog! Whether you play within the home, on a walk or during your recall, enjoy building your relationship through play.

Leave it: Work through the basics of leave it outlined in this week’s guide. We are capturing the behaviour of our dog looking away from a potentially desirable item. Take it slowly when bringing the item towards the floor as we want them to succeed in looking away, so we don’t want it to be too tempting. The slower you take it, the further you will progress.

Remember, keep your training fun! Avoid becoming too frustrated, if it’s becoming too hard, it’s time to take a break. Always end of a high note, even if that means making it easier for a successful win.

Do not train every day, train little and often for 5-6 days of the week and make sure you all get a day off to rest. Training is work for our dogs, so make sure they get a day off too!

This week we are progressing the duration of our dogs staying in the sit position by adding movement and distance. Adding movement and distance to the sit, helps for building the doorways or visitor exercise and for impulse control on being able to remain seated when movement is happening around them.

As always, we start as easy as possible, then we build it as our dog is successful.

Ensure your dog has built the duration progression of the ‘sit’ exercise from week 2 first before progressing to this stage. They should be able to hold the sit for at least 5-10+ seconds to make this stage easier. Start in easy environments indoors, before progressing in outdoor environments.

The sit exercise means stay seated, until you say otherwise. In this case, we are teaching our dog that when we ask them to sit, we will return to reward and release them.

What you’ll need:

Treats or their daily food, marker word, your dog to understand a basic sit and sit for at least 5 seconds.

Sit with Distance Step by Step:

Step 1: Say your dog’s name, ask them to sit, then once they have sat, use your marker word and reward with a treat. Repeat, but this time to hold their sit for 5-10 seconds from week 2. This is their warmup.

If they find this difficult, move to a quieter and less distracting area, up the value of their treats or revisit the basics of the sit duration with 1-2 seconds or sit using the learning theory.

Step 2: Say your dog’s name and ask them to sit. Now take one small step with one foot backwards, then bring the foot back ensuring the step backwards only lasts 1-2 seconds, then say your marker word and reward with a treat. Repeat for 3 successful goes. Reset your dog into the sit each time. The added movement may be difficult for your dog, which is why we do not want to linger too long taking our step. If your dog can only hold a sit for 5 seconds, you’ve got 5 seconds from when their bum touches the floor to put in your step, come back and reward.

Step 3: Say your dog’s name, ask them to sit, now add take two steps backward, then come back to your dog. Say your marker word and reward with a treat.

TIP: Try to use your marker word and reward before your dog moves. As you build the distance away from your dog whilst they are in the sit, it will become more difficult for your dog, if you see they are getting distracted or restless, then mark and reward it before they move, even if you haven’t reached your distance. If your dog struggles, for example they move and stand up before you have returned, do not reward this, reset and go back to 1 step where they were successful. Do not push for more distance if they cannot cope with the smaller steps. You will get more success if you take it slow and only add 1 step at a time as you build the sit distance and movement.

Step 4: Add an extra step to each successful sit on the next go to slowly build distance without your dog becoming confused or frustrated.

Step 5: Repeat this exercise from step 2 but in different directions and build the distance until you can ask your dog to sit and you can walk around them, returning to in front of them without them moving.

Step 6: Build the distance until you can walk into another room and return with them staying seated.

The distance you are able to build this week will help with your doorways exercise next week and overall impulse control as we continue to build each exercise in class.

Remember:

• Only add one step each time to ensure they understand and to reduce frustration and failure.

• Reset the sit every go, therefore encourage them to stand or walk around after each go to be able to reset the sit.

• Train little and often to ensure it doesn’t become boring and they don’t lose focus.

This week we are building on our recall word as well as our reward toolbox to obtain the solid 100% recall as you continue to concentrate of step 6 and 7 of the recall guide in week 2. You will only use this recall when you are 100% sure your dog will come back to you at this time as you are still building the foundations and meaning of this recall. If you are unsure whether your dog will come back, then you will manage the situation, rather than damage your recall. The more times your dog doesn’t respond to you recall, you are damaging its meaning, therefore making it ineffective. This is why we build it in the home first and slowly build it outdoors. If you are practicing outdoors, ensure you have a long-line or some management in place so that they cannot fail and self-reward by going to what has distracted them.

The Three D’s: Duration, Distance, Distraction.

The three D’s are my go to rules when building any training exercise with your dog, but especially in recall.

Duration: This is the time your dog is able to stay focused in your exercise, how long can you keep them engaged with you for? Or how long do they spend staring at the distraction or trigger before the react? How long does it take for them to respond to you? Duration is all about time. Time and timing is very important in training as this is the link between success and failure in dog training.

Distance: This is progressed once your dog fully understands and exercise and can hold a certain amount of focus and duration. This can be the distance you can put between you and your dog, and they still remain focused on the task. It could the distance between your dog and the distraction, therefore what is the distance between your dog and a distraction or trigger before they can focus on your or become overwhelmed. With recall you can build the distance between you and your dog as you call them back, as well as the distance between you and distractions. Always start with a small distance between you and your dog around no distractions as you build it, then at large distance from distractions.

Distraction: This one speaks for itself. What are your dog’s biggest distractions, and how can you work around them in a controlled manner. Always start at a large distance from your distractions and ensure you have multiple exit routes when working in public spaces. Then you can build getting closer to distractions as you are successful. You can also ask family and friends to work with you as distractions to help build this area in a controlled way.

We’ve followed the same process within the course so far as we started with the absolute basics in week 1, then in week 2 we built the duration of our exercises, week 3 had a focus on distance between you and your distractions, them week 4 and 5 will be focusing around those distractions.

Recall Tips:

• Have a selection of toys that are for training and outdoor use only. This will help your rewards match the exciting outdoors. If they are rewarded with toys, they get all the time in the home, it will become less of an enticing reward because they get access to it when they don’t have to work for it in an easy environment. This works similar with the high value treats and why we only use the high value foods when the distractions and environments are difficult. A rotation of toys keeps engagement and interest.

• Choose your moments when to recall your dog. For example, if your dog is having a good sniff, don’t ruin your recall word if you know they will be invested in the sniff, wait until they have finished and then try calling them.

• Start from step 1 in each new location.

• When progressing the recall only focus on one progression stage at a time. Your three progression stages are Duration, Distance and Distraction For example, when practicing your recall focus on either the distance between you, or at a short distance around a distraction. If you’ve not built your distance with your recall, then don’t expect them to recall from a distance and around a big distraction. Pick one or the other and build either your engagement around a distraction, or the distance with no distractions. Then over time you combine the two of building your distance from yourselves and the distractions.

• Continue to mix up your rewards and do not become predictable and think about how you are presenting that reward after your dog has come back to you. Think about what they are recalling away from and make sure you cement that they have made the right choice to come back to you, this will make them want to repeat the behaviour of coming back to you.

• Remember your management, do not ruin your recall word with repeating it and too many failures, if they do not respond, manage the situation and reset by making it easier.

This week we were building step 4 and 5 of the Loose Lead Walking exercise written in the week 1 guide.

We are starting to phase out having treats in our hand and rewarding from our bag/pocket. You can still use the same hand movement if that is working for you to help your dog focus and check in by lifting your hand to your shoulder, but without a treat. We are really building on more steps, less treats now and using our verbal communication by talking to them and telling them they are doing a good job walking by your side and on a loose lead.

In class we started to build on the distractions with the loose lead. You can also do this at home as you progress to step 5 of the loose lead walking guide. Start to build your loose lead walking in new and different environments when on your walk, but still in quiet areas or at a large distance from others.

Remember in each new location or at a distance from distractions, start from step 1 of the loose lead walking guide and build it as you have done in the home, in the garden and on your street. Do not assume that because your dog can loose lead one 10 steps one treat at home or in class that they can do it on the dog field. The reason they are successful at home and in class is because you’ve built it from the basics up at their pace, so continue to build from step one upwards to ensure they succeed.

Loose Lead Progression:

• As you build your steps, start to build your ‘check ins’ and attention to name. Every 10 steps ask to say your dogs name and reward when they look at you. If you dog naturally looks at you without prompt or you asking them to, reward every time. We want this to be a rewarding behaviour that is repeated and encouraged. It is very easy to ignore our dog when they are doing the right behaviours and give them attention when they are doing behaviours we don’t want, which can teach them to repeat unwanted behaviours. So be sure to reward and give them attention when they are doing the right thing (this goes across all exercises).

• Phase out having the food, treats or toys on show and only bring them out for the reward.

• If your dog loves toys and play, bring this in. Ideally, we want loose lead walking to be a calm practice, but it doesn’t mean we can’t play with our dogs to help build motivation, as well as releasing any frustration they may feel when walking calmly for too long (especially with our more excitable dogs). So, after some loose lead walking practice or if they look at you at a distance from a distraction, surprise them with a toy and the best game ever to give them their energetic outlet with something that really drives them. You will see a much more focused and happier dog, whilst adding more value to yourself around bigger triggers and distractions.

• As well as building your check ins, add a sit into your walk when practicing every now and again. This again builds the engagement and focus to the walk and reduces boredom or frustration building as you build your steps. You can also use this time to work on your sit in different locations and start to add duration as you go.

This exercise may save your dogs life one day. The ‘leave it’ means look away, you can never get this item. This is when your dog may be interested in something that you don’t want them to have, therefore asking them to look/move away from that item. This could be a sock you’d dropped from your washing, Christmas tree, litter on the street or even a cat that’s run across the road (this may take some work). This exercise starts with teaching your dog to look away from a boring item, then introducing the word ‘leave it’ to pair with looking away. You can them progress to making the item more desirable and finally adding more desirable items to cement the leave it with leaving items alone.

What you will need:

Treats, balled up piece of paper, marker word, potential lead to stop your dog wandering off, but this is not essential when practicing in the home.

Leave It Exercise step by step:

Step 1: Start by using a boring item, such as rolled up piece of paper. Put the paper in one hand and close your hand into a fist.

Step 2: Have a treat in your other hand and put both hands behind your back.

Step 3: Present the hand with the paper inside in front of you at shoulder height.

Step 4: Wait for your dog to look away (this may even be a blink away).

Step 5: As soon as your dog’s eyes leave the hand with the paper say your marker word. Remain patient and just wait as long as it takes. If they get frustrated, raise your hand higher to make it easier.

Step 6: Remove your hand and place it behind your back.

Step 7: Bring out the hand with the treat and reward your dog with the treat.

Step 8: Repeat 3-5 times.

Step 9: When your dog is looking away consistently, it is time to add the verbal cue ‘leave it’. Say the word ‘leave it’ (or your chosen word) BEFORE the hand with the paper comes out.

Step 10: Say your dog’s name to get their attention. Say ‘leave it’ in a calm and clear voice. Then bring out the hand with the paper. Wait for your dog to look away. When they have looked away, mark it and move your hand with the paper in back behind back and then the hand with treat comes out. Reward your dog with the treat.

Step 11: Repeat 3-5 times.

Step 12: With each successful go, slowly start to bring the hand with the paper in lower each time. If it becomes too difficult, take your hand back higher where you were successful and proceed.

Step 13: Continue to lower your hand each go until you reach the floor.

Tip: When you start to lower your hand toward the ground in step 12, make sure each lowering stage is slow. Dogs are opportunists and we want them to learn that ‘leave it’ means they can never have it, so make sure they never can get it.