Back to basics? in Springer training Forum

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Back to basics?

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nugget

Back to basics?

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Springaholic

Posts: 808

Aug 16 11 2:07 PM

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Nugget is going through another "Phase" and is about to drive me insane

At the moment when new people enter the house he tries humping them! If I try to take him by the collar he starts mouthing and running about trashing the house pulling up rugs etc.. (this one I need to go on a long line in the house i presume)

but when out walking his recall is selective

he will come back but wont stop, it more like a "just checking in" if there is a distraction, like a person walking a dog on a lead (I assume they are on a lead for a reason so want to calll nugget back) I call him and he comes within a metre of me and then turns to go to them, I then have to shout whats this and bribe him with a stick to catch him.

He is not very food orientated outside only toy but I dont want him to have a toy in his mouth all the time as, as soon as he sees someone coming he will run over to them and drop the ball at there feet and totally ignore me, I have tried walking off and hiding and been gone for 10 minutes and he does not care, I have 2 ladies that walk in the same place as me and they have tried ignoring him and walking away but he just follows them and constantly drops the ball at there feet. (lucky they like him but its not good when he does it to people and especially kids who are not dog friendly)

I used to be able to shout stop, sit and wait when he was about 10 metres away and he did, now he just ignores me and if I shout again he slows his pace and walks ahead looking back over his shoulder at me.

I am assuming that he is testing the boundaries but at the same time loosing respect for us oomans.

Please help

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Marrca

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Posts: 182

Aug 19 11 7:17 PM

The cause is same reasons as all the others as I have so often pointed out, anyway in short, not only is it not working, be keeping on doing/trying the same balls & treats etc, over & over again, ALL your doing is positivly reinforcing his 'ignoring you' behaviours, its rewarding for him to ignore you & when you give him a ball or treats etc thats ecxatly what your doing, just distracting him from you.

The answeres quite simple, you have to use a method which ends up with him paying attention to you not balls, treats etc they, to him, are more important than you. There is a solution, find yourself a working gundag trainer and try & get lessons from of them, you never hear of them using treats to get the dog to come & yet their dogs are there straight away with a whistle recall or whatever they want, if you don't then you will have to put up with this for the rest of his life.

Remember Casperdog? he spent endless months maybe years here doing the same old treat giving over & over & over again, not least because everyone was telling him to do just that, he finaly went to a gundog trainer & never came back here again.

There ya go, theres your answers, up to you now.

tracyd

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Springaholic

Posts: 571

Aug 19 11 7:55 PM

Yawn!!!!!! Same old non helpful response how old is nugget again? Its prob just a phase and I would prob go back to the long line for the time being so you are back in control of the situation until it passes

alfiesmummum

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Posts: 608

Aug 19 11 8:02 PM

on the more sensible side

a decent gundog trainer who understands spaniels will not need to use harsh methods to educate their dogs
every dog is motivated by different things and learn at different speeds
the gundog trainer we have used and is very experienced/qualified will use treats if approiately
i would long line for the humping and put nugget in time out
i have used pet corrector spray and my alfie hates squirty water bottle which is only used in severe behaviours eg grumpy with other dogs handbags at dawn stuff

recall i would go back to basics and it may take a long time , it may be worth getting a special super toy i have a rabbit skin on a bouncy rope that is only used for recall work starting in the house and building up

when i first got dexter his recall was better than my existing dog and he learnt to bog off ,it has taken 18 months to get there with his recall. he only fires on three cylinders is unable to scent trail and has a wonky inner sat nav I have never used harsh methods with him
faith.hope ,trust and a bucket of pixie dust/sausages

Conkersmum

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Extreme Springaholic

Posts: 3121

Aug 20 11 6:55 AM

QUOTE (Marrca @ August 19, 2011 07:17 pm)

There is a solution, find yourself a working gundag trainer and try & get lessons from of them, you never hear of them using treats to get the dog to come & yet their dogs are there straight away with a whistle recall or whatever they want, if you don't then you will have to put up with this for the rest of his life.

Disagree... I do know working gun dog trainers who use treats

And some of them trial as well. I also know of gun dog trainers who knock the crap out of their dogs as well

so gun dog training is not always the answer.

I have a working working cocker and he was trained with toys and treats and he is a fabulous working dog. He also had toys..shock horror!

Anyway, a point you make that I have to agree with, despite myself, is that the dog needs to be focussing on you and not other people and to do that you have to be far more interesting than them. To do that I would say that you can use treats and toys.

I am by no means an expert but you could try this:

When you get the dog to you within a metre..turn and run the other way..with the toy visible to the dog. THis worked for me when I had Ghillie bolting after other dogs. One day I ran nearly half a mile accross a field before he followed..but he did

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8211946

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Posts: 1650

Aug 20 11 8:30 AM

QUOTE (Conkersmum @ August 20, 2011 06:55 am)

QUOTE (Marrca @ August 19, 2011 07:17 pm)

There is a solution, find yourself a working gundag trainer and try & get lessons from of them, you never hear of them using treats to get the dog to come & yet their dogs are there straight away with a whistle recall or whatever they want, if you don't then you will have to put up with this for the rest of his life.

Disagree... I do know working gun dog trainers who use treats

And some of them trial as well. I also know of gun dog trainers who knock the crap out of their dogs as well

so gun dog training is not always the answer.

I have a working working cocker and he was trained with toys and treats and he is a fabulous working dog. He also had toys..shock horror!

Anyway, a point you make that I have to agree with, despite myself, is that the dog needs to be focussing on you and not other people and to do that you have to be far more interesting than them. To do that I would say that you can use treats and toys.

I am by no means an expert but you could try this:

When you get the dog to you within a metre..turn and run the other way..with the toy visible to the dog. THis worked for me when I had Ghillie bolting after other dogs. One day I ran nearly half a mile accross a field before he followed..but he did

The last workshop I did with a gundog trainer I used so many treats I could probably have got away with not feeding Vinnie for another week!

As well as using a line in the house, you may have to start using one when you're out so that you can remind Nugget what you really mean when you say come. Have you got somewhere you can walk where there are no distractions so that you can build behaviours back up before re-introducing distractions?

Beware the deadly donkey, falling slowly from the sky. You can choose the way you live my friend, but not the way you die. (Edward Monkton)

sandrab

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Posts: 95

Aug 20 11 12:59 PM

QUOTE (tracyd @ August 19, 2011 07:55 pm)

Yawn!!!!!! Same old non helpful response how old is nugget again? Its prob just a phase and I would prob go back to the long line for the time being so you are back in control of the situation until it passes

But the main point Marcca makes is absolutely right and saying it's probably just a phase is not very helpful at all, in my experience it's very rarely just a phase and if you've lost control of the situation the dog is not going to suddenly decide to stop having more fun elsewhere and obey every command.

Tbh whether treats are used or not is irrelevant. The poster has said the dog is not very food orientated when it's out.
Nugget - you're halfway to sorting the problem already as I think you understand what's going on and the answer is in the title of your post - going back to basics.

Gundog training does help - because we all own gundogs, whether they're working dogs, pet dogs or both. The important thing is to find a trainer who can put you on the right track using gundog skills in the correct way for your dog, because you do need to assess what the dog's up to first and then form a plan of campaign to re-focus it.

At the moment I am teaching several people with pet springers on a one-to-one basis who have completely lost their way with their dogs and we teach dozens more at group training sessions and every one has the same set of problems. The basic skills needed to rectify the situation are the same but each dog has these tweaked to suit their temperaments, drive etc.

If I had my way no-one would be allowed to own a working bred dog without compulsory gundog starter lessons but that's probably a bit OTT!

The situation is easily sorted if you can possibly find someone experienced to help you, even if it's just to assess the dog and put you back on the right track. Alternatively maybe do some reading on training a pet gundog breed. I can give you some titles which may be useful.

Where in the country are you? Someone in your area may have experience of a suitable trainer. Hope you get things sorted.

tracyd

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Springaholic

Posts: 571

Aug 20 11 1:18 PM

Edited due to grumpy post call out response

I never meant to suggest ignore it and it'll go away, but depending on age its possibly hormonal/ boundary testing and that the idea of back to basics was a good idea. I yawned as I could see which way the 1st reply was leading us a debate on positive training methods again. BTW training 1 on 1 with a trainer who understands spaniels always seems like a good idea

sandrab

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Posts: 95

Aug 20 11 2:03 PM

My point was that it isn't a phase that passes (with or without training) it's a behaviour that needs correcting.
I also think we need to realise that not all training has to be positive. Sometimes a dog needs to realise that not all training is positive and has to also react to negative training, but that's all part of building up a bond with the dog.
I appreciate what you mean tracy about training/trainers, that is the key - learning to read the dog and adapting the training to suit. So therefore forget blanket terms such as positive/negative training, treats/no treats etc.
An example I had this week. A lovely couple are having training sessions with me with their working bred springer (they have no idea of it's pedigree as that doesn't interest them but I bet it's from a strong working line). She's 10mths old and goes like a rocket but it's one of the worse behaved dogs I've seen. All the cajoling, bribing, treats in the world have no positive effect and ignoring her bad behaviour just gives her more reason to continue it!
With the owners permission I bellowed (and I mean bellowed) at the dog in my very scary growl and I immediately got the dog's attention (as she's never experienced a raised voice before) and we then continued the training in a very no nonsense style with very little praise (excessive praise winds the dog up and she sees it as the end of an exercise and permission to play about again) this approach worked and we now have a firm plan of action to continue with the dogs training (and the owners are over the moon with a tiny bit of progress after months of tears!) So no overly positive training but results.
Obviously you can't use this approach with every dog, that's why it's important to look at each problem individually rather than put forward a blanket method which may have worked for one particular type of dog.
That's why I think it's important to try and point people with real training problems to experienced people who can see the dog and help before the problems get worse. The first question I ask any owner is 'what do you want from your dog?' then we take it from there.That's the reason I very rarely post advice on training because it's easy to be blinkered about a certain training method - they all have their place.
I'm off my soapbox now! Sorry too if this has drifted off topic, I hope things work out with Nugget

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sandrab

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Posts: 95

Aug 20 11 2:05 PM

Sorry - I just posted the above before reading your edited post, tracy.

tracyd

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Springaholic

Posts: 571

Aug 20 11 2:31 PM

Still makes sense sandrab not sure my original post did

on motivation tho have you tried 2 balls I found the squeaky Kong ones best with honey to swop as the one I have is always more exciting than hers.

nugget

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Springaholic

Posts: 808

Aug 21 11 10:14 AM

Thanks guys, Nugget is 2 years and 3 months, but as stated before he was neutered early so is still very immature. I think I will try the running away

QUOTE

When you get the dog to you within a metre..turn and run the other way..with the toy visible to the dog. THis worked for me when I had Ghillie bolting after other dogs. One day I ran nearly half a mile accross a field before he followed..but he did

I think this may help as he will see it to be exciting.
If this fails then I will go back on a long lead for a while. I have previously been in touch with a gun dog trainer but I am petrified of them using methods that involve hitting the dog. I asked them what method they use and he said "what ever necassery, you dont dont hit the dog with a stick unless you need to, you try everything else first but it depends on how much you want a result from the training session"
There are a couple around here in South Wales, but does anyone know of one that they can recommend?

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KatieKoo

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Extreme Springaholic

Posts: 9438

Aug 21 11 10:40 AM

Housekeeper

Don't be afraid, just hit him back with the stick and get a refund...

I see exactly where you are coming from. I can't believe there aren't loads of gundogs trainers who use only positive methods, but you'll want a personal recommendation to be sure.

We're pretty useless with recall, the only dog we had to train really was Tess and that was a long time ago. She was terrible so we used a spray commander and a whistle as advised by a trainer, now she ALWAYS comes to a whistle but probably only because she was terrified of the Spray Commander, she was just the wrong type of dog for it and we were new to dog training. However, as a tool to interrupt a dog when he's 'in the zone', as long as it doesn't frighten them, I think it might have it's uses. I guess it's the similar principle to a bottle full of stones, it interrupts and unwanted behaviour i.e. chasing another dog.

Luckily for us, Henry's recall was great from the minute we fostered him and Bailey is fab too, we let her off when she was a little pup and never looked back.

spaceman

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Extreme Springaholic

Posts: 1839

Aug 26 11 8:35 PM

Sandrab has made some very good points.

Some gundog trainers are geared to field trials and will sneer at pet springer owners (I’ve been sneered at!!!)

Some gundog trainers won’t be interested if the springer isn’t being trained to work (I went to one a couple of years before I first worked my dogs!).

Some gundog trainers understand that owners don’t intend to do either and will tailor the training/advice to basic control of a pet springer (I think this is what Sandrab offers).

What training have you done with Nugget so far?

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8211455

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Posts: 2733

Aug 27 11 7:44 AM

It is a tired old phrase on this forum, I know, but it sounds to me like he is just not getting enough mental stimulation, and now getting disobdient to make his life more interesting.

I would be doing some clicker training.
You say he is not food orientated, but try very high value treats like little pieces of cooked liver, or corned beef. Make him do the thinking. "When I do this I get rewarded"
I have taught mine and foster dogs lots of "tricks" and in doing so have them much more focused on me.

I'd also get him off to agility or gundog training classes. Again, mine come home from these sessions more tired than if they have walked ten miles.
Walking you dog just makes them fitter, it doesn't work their brain in the same way as working does.