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Photo taken by Cindy Rhodes at a recent French Ring Trial!

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A Michael Ellis School Student, Lindsey Sommer, Training her 12 Week Old Puppy

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This Week's Featured
Question & Answers
Our newsletter will always contain several featured customer Q&As from that week.

Have a question for Ed & Cindy? Try the Leerburg Search Engine. This search engine was written specifically for Leerburg by our in house IT manager. Our search engine is specific to Leerburg and only searches leerburg.com and the Leerburg web forum.

If you can't find the answer to your question by using our search engine,
you can email Cindy here at Leerburg at cindyr@leerburg.com
If you have your spam filter on, make sure you set it to receive our replies!!!

Question: How do I teach a stubborn sight hound to heel? I used markers and treats but have now removed those and am correcting her with the leash. She still pulls and is very distracted outside.

Hi Ed and Cindy,

First of all, thank you so much for your website. It is the best resource on dog training I have found, and I appreciate the range of information. It is sad that so many trainers seem to think treat training is the only way to go (especially with a stubborn breed).

I have a rescue dog - a purebred Basenji - 4 years old. She came to me basically untrained and out-of-control. I trained her initially with markers and treats to learn basic commands like sit, down, come, stay. I'm working on teaching her "rug" and "bed" as two places I would like her to learn to go. All of that is going well. I removed the treats and used her leash with the following correction style:

"Zoe, sit."
If she doesn't do it - "No. Sit."
If she still doesn't do it - jerk on her collar on the No and repeat the command.

That's working great.

What I haven't been able to do is to get her to consistently walk without pulling. Since Basenjis are both sight hounds AND scent hounds, they are extremely distracted outdoors. I am now using a prong collar and getting better results, but even with corrections, she goes right back to pulling in a few minutes.

She gets two or three 45-minute walks per day, so I think she definitely gets enough exercise.

Do you have any advice on how to teach a dog like this to heel (or at least not pull) or recommend one of your DVDs that has this instruction? I just ordered the electronic collar DVD thinking I might want to try that, but it hasn't arrived yet.

Thank you for your time.

Best,
Mariska

Answer:

Why did you remove the treats from training? Good dog training isn't about getting rid of treats and replacing them with corrections. If your dog isn't responding to your commands then she isn't trained. The method of correction you have described won't TEACH a dog anything, and will actually shut a dog down from continuing to try.

If you understand markers you will know that you use them for the life of the dog.

I'd recommend The Power of Training Dogs with Markers and The Power of Training Dogs with Food.

The food video shows correct use of markers and how to teach muscle memory heeling, which is how I would go about teaching your dog.

Don't get me wrong, I use corrections but not to teach and not when the dog is showing me they don't understand OR they aren't engaged with me. People love to label dogs as stubborn when in reality, your dog may just be more challenging to get engaged with you for training. This means you need to be more creative and fun, and make the dog WANT to interact and train. Using physical means to place a dog in positions teaches them nothing. If your dog isn't paying attention to you, it's not the dog's fault. You just aren't interesting enough.

You are putting a dog that doesn't fully understand what you want in a distracting environment too soon. Learning is impossible in this scenario. Back up the training, go back and use markers as outlined in the marker and food videos and then progress from there.

We have a ton of streaming video, I'd recommend you watch the Michael Ellis lecture (it's a multiple part series).

Learn to use the search function (located in the left hand corner of every page on our website). Simply type in your search terms or key words and you will be directed to articles, question & answers, free streaming videos and posts on our forum.

For more questions on this topic, see our Q&A on Obedience.

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Question: I’m getting a new puppy and it’s my first working dog, I have a lot of questions and I’m hoping you can give me a timeline on how to work with my pup.

We are getting a puppy next month and plan to eventually do protection work with him--this will be our first time.  We have watched the following DVDs: Your Puppy 8 weeks to 8 months, Basic Dog Obedience, Pack Structure for the family pet, Raising a working puppy, Building Drive & Focus, and the First Steps of Bite Training.  I have spent a lot of time on the website reading and trying to put it all together but I am still so confused!  For example, in one of the Q&As it says bite work can begin at 8 weeks, but in another Q&A you say to do the first steps of bite training when the puppy is a year.  I'm trying to kind of establish a general timeline or at least order of things in relation to the following (keeping in mind it all depends on the individual puppy) of when to begin the following things and how they might affect the others from 8 weeks to a year or so:

-Bite work
-Basic obedience work
-Corrections
-E-collar use
-Prong collar use

Also, if you start bite work at 8 weeks and do not actually start to do any defense work until the dog is much older, isn't there a good chance the dog will become "locked in prey" from working in prey for so long?

While I have found information on individual specific things on the website, as I mentioned before I have read different things at times and am still not sure how it all fits together in the bigger picture.  I really appreciate your time and I'm sorry to keep bugging you!  I just want to do it right the first time and have a complete understanding so I don't have to go back and correct mistakes later.

Shelly
Charlotte, NC

Answer:

Doing “bite work” with a puppy is only to teach the mechanical skills your dog will later need with a helper  You don’t want your dog working in anything other than prey with you, because that’s not beneficial to the relationship you want to have with your dog.  I wouldn’t worry about ‘being locked in prey’.  If the protection work foundation is done right AND you later work with the right decoy/helper AND your dog has the correct genetics and temperament this won’t be a problem.

Since you don’t even have your puppy yet, I might suggest you work on the relationship and a communication system FIRST.  This is best done using markers.

The Power of Training Dogs with Markers

We teach all the basic behaviors with food, and then switch to a tug when the pup is done teething.

The Power of Training Dogs with Food

The Power of Playing Tug with Your Dog

This is how I have raised my current dog, Rush.  Rush is now 2 years old and I’m very happy with how his training is coming along.   You can see him working in a lot of our streaming video.

A lot of dog training is taking bits and pieces of what you learn, evaluating how things are going with your dog and not being afraid to try what works for you and your dog.  There really is NO generic recipe for how to train every puppy and to worry too much about it before you even have the dog is not constructive.  It’s a journey that’s supposed to be fun for you and your dog.  You WILL make mistakes, we all do.  If you do correct work with your puppy those mistakes will be overcome quickly and will be part of the learning process.  I think once you get your puppy things will fall into place nicely.

I hope this helps.

Cindy

For more questions on this topic, see our Q&A on Working Pups.

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Question: I'm using your bottle feeding formula and I'm having a hard time getting the hole in the nipple the right size. Would one of those nipples with the Y slit in it (for feeding cereal) work?

I have a litter of Shepherd pups that need to be supplemented. I have used your formula in he past and was very happy with it. he pups are 4 days old & just haven't been gaining much weight. I fed half of them a bottle last night & they gained anywhere from 50g to 90g! compared to 0g to 15g for the pups I didn't give a bottle to! (pretty convincing for me to help he mom feed them all).

My question is about bottle nipples. I know that you use Playtex bottles & those are the ones I use, too. but, I am having a hard time getting the hole in the nipple he correct size. I saw that Playtex offers a silicone nipple specifically for cereal, a 'Y' slit in it, and wondered what you thought about using that one.

Thank You for your help!

Renee

Answer:

That nipple probably has too big of a hole in it. All you can do is try putting different size holes in the nipples until you get one right. I know it can be kind of frustrating. I've had good luck poking several small holes in one of the Playtex nurser nipples.

For more questions on this topic, see our Q&A on Bottle feeding.

 

*If you have a training question – write Cindy here at Leerburg at cindyr@leerburg.com

*If you have your spam filter on, make sure you set it to receive our replies!!!

*Our newsletter is a big success and we would like to send out a huge THANKS to our wonderful customers! Since beginning this newsletter our volume of email has greatly increased and you may have a longer than usual wait for a reply to your question.  We will answer; it just may take us a bit longer than you are accustomed to. In order to speed up this process, please condense your questions to a paragraph or two. This will make it MUCH easier for us to answer in a timely fashion. Your questions are important to us and we always appreciate receiving them. If you have a medical issue or emergency, please consult with a health care professional right away. We can’t diagnose or treat sick dogs via email. Also, try using the search function on our site - it now searches the site AND the web board. Thank you. Ed & Cindy

Testimonials

Well after one week or less with the the wonderful formula at Leerburg , and the right nipple this is what you get. A satisfied, happy little chunker. And I owe this success to my daughter who helped me take care of her, and of course most of the credit goes to Leerburg, Ed Frawley. Were just so excited that what started out to be a tragedy ended up being a miracle.

Best wishes,
Bonnie

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http://michaelellisschool.com

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