Hi! It's Cinnamon.
Look at this video of Mint practising Recalls on a long lead in his puppy class this week. He doesn't look like a Beagle at all! He keeps following Mum around and doesn't let her call him from a distance. Actually there were five other puppies around although you can't see them in the video. If it had been me, I wouldn't have been able to ignore them!
* If you can't view the video here, try this.
From Cinnamon and Mint's Mum:
Honey, thank you very much for your advice on Mint's Recall training in your comment to this post. In fact I didn't think about the importance of keeping the Not-break-a-command rule when I was trying to make Mint sit and wait. All I was trying to do was to give some distance between Mint and me, because we couldn't practise recalls otherwise. But, after this video was filmed, our cameraman came in to help and called Mint to him so that I could call him back, which went successfully!
But, again, as Honey reminded me, I must keep it in mind not to let Mint break a command as much as possible, when we are doing any kind of training.
Aw...Mint looks like he's doing really well in training class! I think young puppies - of whatever breed - can all be taught good habits from the beginning and if you start out right with the training, then you can avoid many of the "problems" that other people have. I think what happens is that most people are not vigilant enough and let bad habits develop (and depending on the breed with different tendencies, diff types of bad habit develop) - and then it becomes a problem and then they just make an excuse and say it is a breed trait, like "Beagles never recall". Yes, that may be true - but it may also never have developed into a bad habit if it was trained properly in the beginning. It is so much easier to instil good habits in a blank-page puppy than to try to change bad habits in an older dog.
ReplyDeleteBut remember also that Mint is very young - a lot of dogs are very obedient and attentive to their humans while still a young puppy, coz they are insecure - but then when they hit canine adolescence and become more confident, they often start to seem ot "forget" all their previous training! That's when most dogs get given up to animal shelters. But they just need more training & consistency & repetition to get through that time.
Anyway, it's great that he is recalling well and wanting to stick to you - you should take advantage of that now and make it a habit as much as possible!
By the way, if you want to test his recall more, I wouldn't make him Sit & Wait - that is very formal and more for Obedience classes - but doesn't really apply to everyday pet training - which is more important to test him under distraction. So it would be better to just let him walk and when you see his attention engaged by something - distracted by something - THAT's when you should run backwards and call him. That is a much better test of his recall and teaches him to come away from distraction when called. Also, I noticed in the video that he was starting to run to you before you called him - which means that he was breaking his Sit & Wait commands...which is not a good habit to teach him. So IF you're going to use his Sit & Wait - you have to enforce that and make him sit there & wait until you call him - which is just giving you more things to worry about, when you are really just focusing on the Recall. That is why I think it's not really necessary to do it so formally at this stage - he won't be doing Obedience for a while yet! - and just focus on calling him when he is walking like normal.
Hsin-Yi
THis is a comment of this post and the "mint became a boy post" .
ReplyDeleteI must say Mint is very young to be cocking his leg...hehe! You did say that Cinnamon did it though...that'll be why - Cocking the leg when peeing is Generally a learnt behaviour, they normally see another dog doing it, then start to do it themselves.
Jasper hasn't started cocking his leg - he is 7months old now...but hasn't ever seen a dog cock their leg yet, hehe so that might change!
Mint is doing very well, so keep up the good work, make the most of him being in the sponge like stage, puppies soak up everything very quickly! :)
Lexi and Jasper have a very good recall, we also use the same method to teach some of our bit to confident dogs a reliable recall. But I'm definately not as good as Hsin-Yi at explaining things in writing, so I won't even try hehe. But if you ever want to meet up I'd love to meet Mint :)
Cheers,
Laura