Avril Munson's Blog

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I just noticed that one of my classes were a bit stuck on improving their dogs stays, if the whole class are stuck it has to be something I am doing! Luckily I thought to ask them, if when practising at home if they had their leads on their dogs, the answer was “no”! This means that as dogs learn the whole environment when training that it was like we were asking them to do two different exercises! We did the stays off lead and the improvement was amazing :). As a result I have managed to ask all the groups and it seems the off lead version is popular at home, the main reason is the dogs get too excited when they see the lead to concentrate, so my handlers are all avoiding this issue by training off lead! How much more useful it is to have a dog that doesn’t get silly at the sight of the lead, I deliberately work hard at making my dogs not have an excited response to the lead, it makes for more peaceful walks also!