April 21, 2011
My dog is so distracted away from home that I can’t get him to perform with energy and drive, what can I do?
Full Question:
Cindy,I have written you several times about my GSD, and my distraction problem with him away from home, when we try to work and I am working on this. He will do some very low key obedience away from home but with none of the energy or drive he shows at home. We were doing a little obedience work this morning in a pet store and he was his usual distracted self. I tried something just to see how he would react, here's how it went. At home I have done a lot of scent work with him, not tracking,but scenting articles. Just to see if he would be distracted doing this work, like he does obedience, I had him sniff an article and then the store owner hide it. I told him to "find" and he went into overdrive scenting the store until he found it. He was not distracted at all, I was surprised and don't understand what the difference is?
At home he will go into strong drive doing obedience or agility BUT I can't get him in drive away from home, wonder why? How can I accomplish it?
There could be a whole DVD on working through the distraction phase, I certainly would buy it. Thanks for you help.
Cindy's Answer:
Since you know he CAN focus in a distracting environment, this means you aren’t using a valuable enough reward to hold his interest. It’s up to you to find out what kind of reward it takes. I can’t do that for you via email. Maybe you hide something for him, ask him for focus and when he complies send him to search as his reward. Extend the period of time you ask for attention before you send him. I had a dog years ago that I struggled with the retrieve. She loved to swim so I would throw her water toy out in the lake and let it float there, we would then work on retrieves and when she realized the way to get to the swimming was to retrieve then my training accelerated quickly. Being a dog trainer means being a problem solver too, if what you have been doing isn’t working then you need to try something else. There is no way we could possibly produce a dvd with all the possibilities. The difference between a good dog trainer and a great dog trainer is their ability to think outside the box.
Cindy
Cindy
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