Jo's Old Site

Last Sunday mum and I took Ilse to puppy class, and Donna from Dog Sense gave me notes that I missed because mum and I were unable to come. Anyway, these notes I read gave me detailed information or a training program that explains how to give dogs less tidbits; so all this week I have been training Ilse everyday.

I started off by getting Ilse to do ten sits and rewarding her for each one, and Ilse had a habit of getting up straight away so I also had to tell her stay for a while; the aim was to give her one hundred tidbits and we do this in lots of ten. When the dog has an accuracy in the high ninety’s, we then move on and also reduce the tidbits they get to fifty (thus rewarding our dog on every second sit they do). After that the tidbits get reduced to thirty as we then reward them for every third sit and then after that we reward them randomly.

Also this method is only so we can wean our dogs off from being rewarded for every sit, but we don’t wean our dog’s off it totally and while we do this we can also praise our dogs, and when we praise our dogs we should try doing so in a really happy tone as dogs really respond to that. Patting our dogs is another form of praise, and I just thought that after Ilse had done her ten sits I reward her again in another way and that is by having a game with her toys; or getting her to do tricks as she can roll over, and also sit up and beg, crawl, and shake hands.