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May 17, 2011

Now that we've progressed in training, my dog seems to have too much drive and can't focus when working on obedience. Should I be working on capping his drive?

Full Question:

Hi Cindy,

Love what you guys are doing over there, new videos are great.

Here's my question, I have an 11 month old GSD, and we started doing our protection work about 1 month ago and having a lot of fun with it, but when we try to work obedience now it seems I have to get him worn down before I can even start to get him to focus. It seems his prey drive is almost taking over all the obedience training I've done with him.

I just watched a video from Michael Ellis about capping is that what I need to start working on?

Thanks for your time.

Joe

Ed's Answer:

I think you have skipped a few crucial steps in getting this dog engaged. He’s pretty young and I would recommend going back to basics and teaching him engagement and then how to play with you as outlined in:

The Power of Training Dogs with Food
The Power of Playing Tug with your Dog

You can’t really work on capping if you can’t get the dog engaged with you.

I hope this helps.

Cindy Rhodes

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