Hi board member
I tried to teach my pup (GSD,5 month)to follow the command 'Sitz' in a distance. He understands the command and does it always in front of me.
He was about 10 feet away from me and I gave the command 'Sitz'. He came to me instead. The next time he did the same thing and I corrected him with a "No" and took him back to the place where I wanted him to sit. Make a long story short: Somehow he got confused about it ( I did use only verbal correction) and prefered to run into the house. I put him then on a lead and did the exercise again but closer and .. I know I'll get there. I just hadn't a dog yet by myself who did this.
I've seen this behavior before from a 2 year old mal. He was under a lot of pressure from his owner on the way to Sch3. He left the trainings field and it took the owner 20 minutes to get a hold of his dog again. It was then not pretty for this dog to get caught by his handler you can imagine. What does this behavior say about the dog?
Any similar experience from you?

 Quote:

Originally posted by SchHFan:
Hi board member
I tried to teach my pup (GSD,5 month)to follow the command 'Sitz' in a distance. He understands the command and does it always in front of me.

He was about 10 feet away from me and I gave the command 'Sitz'. He came to me instead.

Notice the italicized. There is your answer. Sounds like your dog has associated the "sit" with being near you. In your dogs head "sit" is: butt on the floor, very near, and facing my handler.

One way you can handle it is have the dog sit then feed, walk away a step - feed, walk away a couple of steps-feed, etc.. Not too many reps in one session and every once in a while feed when you're walking away at one or two steps so the dog doesnt think it's not going to get reinforced after so many steps.

Remember to provide a learning environment initially: no distractions meaning somwhere very familiar and dull to him. When you see him catching on move onto different places very gradually increasing distractions.

The best way IMO to probably approach it is using the clicker (read up on them and how to condition them, they are great TEACHING tools) or a word that has the same meaning to a clicker. Have the dog in the room with your clicker (or word) and food ready. Let the dog just hang out, as soon as the dog sits (don't give command yet) wherever he is click then treat. After a couple of repetitions he will figure out that this behavior is the one getting him his treats and he will start offering it more consistently, that's when you start moving in different areas of the room and make sure he's not sitting in front of you but in all kinds of different places so he can generalize. When you see he's offering the behavior predictably you can start saying the word "sit" before the behavior is about to happen. After a few sessions, over 50 or so repititions, he should associate the word 'sit" with having his butt on the floor anywhere.

SchHFan,

Two very different issues in your post. For your dog you started too far away. Try it with the dog about 2-3 feet away, and increase from there. As the distance gets longer go to the long line. Which would be the second problem. At this point your dog doesn't understand the command well enough to be doing it off lead. At this point don't give a command that you can not enforce.

The second issue is the Mal. I think the incident you describes says little about the dog. It speaks volumes to me about the handler. The biggest issue you pointed out is the dog was being pushed hard to complete a SchH III. It sounds like the dog is being pushed too hard. It is possible to over train with a dog. If the dog is pushed too far it will go in to avoidance, just as you could see with a protection exercise. The dog is afraid to work properly because if it makes a mistake the handler is over "correcting". If the situation is what I "imagine" we aren't talking about a correction that creates learning, but abuse the creates avoidance. Personally, I bet the situation could be cured by giving the handler some "corrections" of his own.