Obedience training with Freya

Freya has been getting ready for her depute in obedience National Team competition. She will be doing a beginner class performance for our team. She still hasn't had heat yet so that could ruin our change to take a part. So one day at the time. We have done lots of basic work. I have wanted her to be driven when she does ob and that she has as good as possible attitude.

Distraction training

One big thing we have been working on is distraction. In the National Champion Ships there will be several ring going on at the same time. So the dog has to handle multiple commands, distractions from other competitors rewarding their dogs etc. I have had a plan to build up a distraction duration so that Freya will see it as a mark to sharp up her work and rise from it. We have done a lot of work with this. First we done was a order command work this a distraction that come from a Stuart in the ob trials. We did some heal work and every time she ignored the extra command I rewarded her. I didn't take any notice if did something while she heard the command from the Stuart. It took few times reward her and her drive just started get higher and higher.

I have done distraction training with corrections with my older dogs and this has show in their work. You can see from the dogs in high level ob are their trained with correction or rewards. Correction use left to dog tense and wanting to keep contact to avoid correction. This showed out in the dogs postures and also many of the dogs make stress signals in they are in high level stress. I wanted do this a different way. I wanted to make Freya work for me rather than looking or reacting to things out side. I wanted her to like even more training in distractions. This has worked out super well!!! I hope that every time you correct your dog from reacting to distractions think again. Are you interesting enough?? Does your dog know what is expected from him/her???

Scent discrimination

We have had a problem in the scent discrimination. Freya has always took one bar in her mouth before she starts use her nose. She brings the right bar but it's a fault to take one incorrect one her mouth. So we tried a new trick. We put treats on the ground before the bars. We had long line of bars she needed smell before she could find the right one. This really worked good! Nose went on right away and no retrieve mode. Freya did excellent job. I need to keep using treats for a while to get her nose working right away. I think soon we have full scent discrimination handled!! :D

That's all of Freya's ob at this point!!

MLPF