Quote: Bob Scott

Do either of your two dogs respond to the other dog's movement, excitement, etc or are the pretty independent when in the yard.

Possible if one does then train the other with the e-collar for your attention. Then, hopefully the less attentive, to you, will respond with the one that does.

Just a thought.

This is exactly what we were doing up to now. One dog had the pager and the other dog followed him to me. But I had the voice backup for the second dog and now I don't. :-(

 Quote: ian bunbury

connie , can i add this observation ?

i make a distinction between a motion ( into a position/gesture ) , and the position itself .

i've noticed fellow handlers have difficulty , continually repeating wild body movements to get the dog to do what is being asked . this often leads to inconsistencies , non compliance , confusion on the dogs' part and consequently , frustration .

what i do is ( after the dog has learned the behaviour ) , i'll cue the command when the dog is not expecting it / not looking at me . when he does look , i am displaying the position / gesture . the idea is that the dog identifies that position with the behaviour , not my movement into the position .

hope that makes sense , and helps .

I think I'm following. The reason I wanted some movement in the cue was that neither one sees that well any more and I have seen both scan the yard for me and go right past me with their eyes until I moved my arms.


We are going out today to work on one that is sort of the opposite of the recall. That is, "don't come with me."

They usually tend to come with if we're outside, at least to the point of keeping me in view. (What if food appeared and they were out of sight!? )

I used to have "stay there" with my hand up in a policeman's "stop" gesture so I could go get the mail, etc., and they would stay where they were.

Now I need maybe both hands, but I'm going to see how just one works without the verbal "stay there/"

As they have been deafening and losing a little visual acuity, I've been going to each one and holding my palm up for "stay there" and then going out the gate. But I'm going to try to get it back to one gesture at the gate for both.

None of this is drop-dead critical .... they are both old enough and have been around here long enough to know the routine. But it would be better, and they do love marker work.