Quote: Connie Sutherland

The fix might be a longer chain, or intermediate bridges needed

Sharon;
IB, Intermediate Bridge, is one marker I didn't see you mention.
Mine is "good", vs "yes" as the reward marker. Have you tried an IB before your reward marker?

Simple example; I tell my dog to "au pied" (heel) and she gets in position. She is then expected to make eye contact without a command. As soon as she looks at my eyes, I mark "good" (for the entire behavior), and she continues to look at me until I mark "yes", reward and release. Eventually I added duration with more "good"s in between.

I originally added duration to the eye contact by digging treats out with my opposite (right) hand. If she glanced at the bait bag, I said "uh uh", "look", then when she looked back at me, "yes" (or "good" if I felt she needed/was ready to hold it longer}. We still practice this everytime we work on heeling.

I also use bait bag watching to my advantage. Once we started getting good duration on exercises such as down with distance, I noticed that Sadie would start looking around at distractions. I found that by pretending to dig out a treat, I can get her to refocus on me.

I never used the IB with my older GSD Thunder. He's always been solid as a rock.
I couldn't do without it with my younger GSD Trooper. He's a ADHD, totally reactive clown and couldn't sit still to save his life without a calm, quiet "gooood" IB. That's been huge in his training.

I don't use IB very often. My marker word is "good". My pups have been pretty quick to learn so I have not used my ib marker word, "nice" very much.

TOday when I was training Bindi I had her wait longer for her reward after giving her the marker "good". I also made sure she was giving me eye contact for longer periods of time. she did very little leaning. So that was good.
She did well considering our next door neighbors dog was going crazy at the fence and there was my other neighbor raking along our fence line.
sharon

She did VERY well with all that going on!

When she's done well consistently then you have to wean yourself off of direct eye contact. That's a points looser on the trial field or OB ring.
I always try to look on the ground about 10-15 steps ahead of me and use my perifferal (sp)vision to keep an eye on the dog. Carrying the direct eye contact to long with heeling and the dog may start to crowd or walk in front of you because it still wants to make eye contact.
I heeling in a trial or ob ring you should be looking straight ahead while your dog is looking at the side of your face.
Not trying to get to far ahead. Just saying!

yea that is something I have to think about working on. I do look at her and encourage her as we go along. But I know that is coming soon. Thanks for the info.sharon