Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Working on Spur's Magic Word

I signed up for another on line class with my idol, Sylvia Trkman. Her agility foundations class. Here is one of the pre-class homework assignments.......finding a special word that makes your dog run fast. I use "shhhhhhhhhhhh". It works for tunnels, for chasing birds, for playing chase me at the beach, for going faster in weaves, for any time he runs fast I say "shhhhhhhhhhhh" and it gets him pumped!!! I combine it here with his start line..."Read, READY? GO!"



I used to use it when he and Roscoe did the chase me game, but that's what resulted in the loss of Roscoe's front tooth. :( Now he won't chase Spur any more, can you blame him? Ouch. Can you blame him?

3 comments:

  1. Logan always used to wag her tail when we said "shhhhhh". We never figured out where it came from but it came in handy in a game of "My dog can do that"!

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  2. Wait...you taught to run a full speed ahead go out? (bows to you)

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  3. Hahahaha, it's a pretty popular sound/word. Many of my dog walk dogs will race around their yards with toys if I "goose" them and say "shhhhhhhhhh". It speeds them up and gets them doing zoomies. A total border collie thing that's like just part of them, LOL! Even my friend's shihtzu gets pretty excited by it because it means Spur might start racing and she loves to chase him. We use it on our farm walks with George the border terrier and it gets Stella the shihtzu all pumped up because there isn't much else more fun than chasing George to bite him in the butt, if you are Stella the Shihtzu!

    People/trainers often say don't chase your dog or you won't have a recall. Hah, I might not actually "chase" them but I sure go after them to goose them and get them doing zoomies!! I think it actually strengthens the recall because they learn that it's wicked fun to be goosed and then run zoomies and have me going "shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh", so they actually learn to recall to get goosed, LOL!!! Game over if you don't come get goosed. :D And if a toy is involved I pretend to grab the toy and then "shhhhhhhhhhh" to get them going again. Eventually, they come back to me for my pretend grab so they can then run again. Very useful!!! Fun game! Definitely makes go outs easy to train! What I NEED to do is get Spur to combine this game with a harness grab. Another of our homework assignments is a restrain "GO" and Spur really doesn't like the grabbing/restraining part. He's so sensitive and inhibited enough that he doesn't pull on a restrain naturally. It sort of shuts him down, so I haven't got THAT part of it, yet.

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