Do you train/Have you trained your dog?

If so - what have you taught him/her to do?

Would you like to train them other things?

Do you train purely for obedience and to keep the dog safe or do you do fun stuff with your dog too?

(remember there are some of us who can't even get their dog to play fetch so if you've had to teach him fetch - that's something. As is agility - even fun stuff is training!)

Training is an ongoing battle/game at Strixton Manor :thumbsup:

I'd like to be able to teach Brude some more off lead obedience in a safe environment round other dogs - but you know how difficult it is to find the right environment!

Ooooh yes! I know how difficult that is! Especially when you have a dog who is bred to follow his nose! :lol:

We taught ours the essentials(IMO) walk on and off a lead correctly,stop on command,sit(doesn't always work) and recall.

I wouldn't say we taught fetch - the latest recruit chases but doesn't always return it, but she wants to chase and fetch. None of my other dogs were remotely interested in playing at all.
That could be the difference between a sight dog and a scent hound.

Willman, my eldest is completely disinterested in toys but my youngest loves to chase, and then take it further away and not let me have it :rolleyes:

I've spent three years trying to teach her to bring it back so that I can take a ball out on a walk as a reward but have decided a tuggy toy would be far more appropriate :lol:

She will, however, retrieve her basketball so she can put it through the hoop... funny animal.

I have for both reasons in the past. Takes patience, but a dog will do a lot for you for the sake of a treat, and they enjoy the interaction with you. It's so rewarding, and you get better at it.

I agree metaphoria,

I try not to train mine if I'm in a bad mood because I need patience and I need to enjoy it for them to enjoy it. We do a lot of training just for the hell of it and for some fun and my dogs love it - the only trouble is - they don't like me to stop the training session :lol:

We train both for fun and obedience, however the 2 rescues take a bit of convincing!

Barney however goes to agility classes and is now on the advanced level. His commands include stay,come,sit,flat,paw,roll over, heel, leave it, away,close, and then agility-away,close, hup, tunnel, see-saw, over, A frame and dog walk!

The other 2 can just about manage to sit when it suits them!!

Someone must have trained my dog before I got him otherwise he picks things up quickly!

He can do the following: sit, paw, other paw, recall (though we rarely get to practise this), lie down, walk to heel on and off lead, go to bed, go outside, go away, stay (over 1 min now, I can't go out of sight but I can walk away about 10m) I've also taught him to jump and climb along fallen trees following my hands. The last couple of days we have been training how to run alongside my bike right next to my left leg which he's got really quickly we got lots of admiring glances today on the transpenine trail:)

This all goes out the window though if we see a dog, and sometimes he can be a bit stubborn with the sitting if I've made him do it at every road:lol: STILL not managed the fetch, he collects the item then chews it, if I call him he drops it and comes to me , without it.

I know he would absolutely love to do agility but the problem is that it social and he isn't :lol: I do worry that he never looks very 'neat' in his actions and sometimes he gets them mix up (a lie instead of a paw) but thats probably my fault as I've said it in the wrong voice!

Aw bless him Evei!

He can still do agility, often aggressive dogs are transformed when they do agility so have a way to expend that energy, it just means he can't do it offlead :)

Getting cues mixed up is a lack of 'stimulus control' which is basically acheived by only rewarding the right response to the right cue. It's very easy when your dog gives you the wrong response so enthusiastically and looks so cute doing it that you say 'aww ok' and reward even if you don't realise it - you might be saying 'never mind' and giving him a pet - it's still reinforcement.

If you want the right response on the right cue you have to 'ard! :lol:

Getting cues mixed up is a lack of 'stimulus control' which is basically acheived by only rewarding the right response to the right cue. It's very easy when your dog gives you the wrong response so enthusiastically and looks so cute doing it that you say 'aww ok' and reward even if you don't realise it - you might be saying 'never mind' and giving him a pet - it's still reinforcement.

:lol:, I think I do reinforce the wrong actions sometimes as I'm constantly talking to him... I can't help myself, I rarely train with treats just with a fuss. he's too clever to be bribed for long, but loves to please people.

I ignore him when he comes for a stroke as he's learnt that I don't tolerate being nudged so he now comes up to me and sits wagging his tail, doing the dog eyes...:love:, it's so hard to resist. Your right, I do need to be tougher with him. He's sprawled out fast asleep at the moment and his legs are going ten to the dozen.

I'd love to do agility but I do think he'd cause chaos and I would never be invited back! I'll have to see if they would let me have a go when no dogs are around.

I took my dog to puppy training classes. However, he's very travel sick so consequently he'd throw up in the car on the way there, and as the training was all food reward based, he wasn't interested as he felt sick. Therefore, I've never had the confidence to let him off the lead as I'm not sure he'd come back, (I'm sure he is the most un-intelligent GSD on the plant) and i've found nowhere thats secure enough to try it.

When we first got Kizzy I thought we would never be able to train her as she never seemed to listen!

But now we've almost had her a year and she seems to be learning a bit better now! :)
I've taught her to shake one hand, then the other one, and then both(so she's standing/sitting on her back legs) she even does that without treats now! :D
Also she seems to understand what no means now, which is good. And when I tell her to come here she actually comes! When before she'd just look a bit puzzled!
Oh and yesterday she shook both hands without me even saying anything! All I did was put my hand in front of her arms and she did it!

She doesn't quite understand the word fetch, but she always drops things when we tell her, which is good when I drop things accidently and she quickly gets them and runs off!
And she does it even when she has treats too! Coz sometimes she can be chewing for ages and we don't know what she's got so we tell her to drop and she drops it!

I wouldn't drop chocolate if someone told me to, haha! Especially if it was really yummy and I was really enjoying it!



My husbands parents dog is death now from old age or something, so she has to understand lots of hand signals and stuff.
I might try and teach that to Kizzy now, so just incase something happens to her hearing, she'll still be able to understand things!


It would be nice to teach her to tell us when she needs the toilet! Because currently she does nothing to let us know! We just take her out first thing when we wake up, after each time she eats, before bed, and another random time throughout the day, and if she needs to go she does something.

Whereas my parents dog barks when she wants to go out, and my husbands parents dog jingles the keys in the door when she wants to go out!

How could you teach a dog something like that though?


(Why are my forum posts always so long?)

OOh! I'd be interested in the answer to that too! D has only had 2 accidents the first week we had him (not bad for being in kennels for 4 months) and one day when he just decided he was goinng there and then, luckily i caught him and did the naughty noise so he stopped and finished outside. But he does not have a signal just i notice he walks around a bit.

Lisa, have you thought about letting him off in tennis courts and working on his recall? I've got a border collie staying at the moment and she has no recall so we've been going to the tennis courts and working on it - great plan unless someone's actually playing tennis! Then it's a lead walk :lol:

local tennis courts were removed and graves park is always busy. I know he is probably train-able, he will sit, lie down and speak, and if we call to him in the house, he comes - unless its the parrot shouting at him, then he ignores him, huffs, and goes back to sleep :hihi: He's a the daftest, softest dog you could wish for, but i have a morbid fear of him being off-lead and attacking some small furry creature. It's not his fault, it's my past experience. Or my other big fear is that he would chase something and just keep on runnin til he met a bus or such like

Brude didn't used to ask to go out

when he started looking for a likely spot, we'd take him to the door and use appropriate words for him to associate with the act, let him out and tell him again

when he'd got the hang of it he chose to bark at us, whereby we could then rattle off a list of things he might want, and when we get to the right one, he barks

And some of you thought Takara was strange :rolleyes:

If you can't find an enclosed space to train recall, you can use a washing line trailing free

If your dog bolts you can stamp on it, and you can use it to reel them in if necessary

And some of you thought Takara was strange :rolleyes:

ERM!! Who did??

Takara? Strange?? :lol:

Molly can do:

Sit, heel on and off lead, down, stay (not perfect, but we're getting there), sit from down, paw, other paw, high five, other high five, 'hug' (back paws on the floor, front legs round my body and the top of her head on my belly), roll over (only half way at the moment), upstairs, downstairs, inside, outside, leave, fetch, find it (including taking directions on where she needs to go- away and forward), give, bring it- and we're working on stand, stand from sit, beg, 'in my hand' as an extra 'give' command and 'round' at the moment.

She also knows which bed to go to when you send her to bed (she has one in the bedroom and one in the living room, so she knows the difference between 'living room' and 'bedroom' too).

EDIT- we do at least one training session most days. I strongly suspect that I'm going to run out of 'standard' things to teach her at some point, then I suppose I'll have to start looking at freestyle clicker training or similar. I wish that some of her training could make her less scared of other dogs.

I wish that some of her training could make her less scared of other dogs.

It can :huh:

It just depends what training you do to combat that particular fear. :D

I try not to train mine if I'm in a bad mood because I need patience and I need to enjoy it for them to enjoy it. We do a lot of training just for the hell of it and for some fun and my dogs love it - the only trouble is - they don't like me to stop the training session :lol:

Quite right. I find losing your temper with a dog is futile, as they seem to respond to rewards and praise more. I only use a firm voice with such commands such as; 'No', 'leave', and 'off', and then again reward when she does. Well, not all the time with food-or she'd be massive. :hihi:

She's a babe. :love:

:lol: Somehow both of mine are quite skinny! Despite the huge amount of training treats they get and big dinners! :lol:

Takara did get a little tubby but even though I've recently decreased her exercise a bit due to my own physical limitations, she's lost the weight again!

I find life rewards work better anyway but it takes more effort to work out what it is your dog wants at that moment... unless she's staring at a squirrel or is desperate to sniff at the ground :lol:

:lol: Somehow both of mine are quite skinny! Despite the huge amount of training treats they get and big dinners! :lol:

Takara did get a little tubby but even though I've recently decreased her exercise a bit due to my own physical limitations, she's lost the weight again!

I find life rewards work better anyway but it takes more effort to work out what it is your dog wants at that moment... unless she's staring at a squirrel or is desperate to sniff at the ground :lol:

They are very food orientated. :hihi:

When intensive (for want of a better word) training-I used high quality treats, then alternated between high and low when she'd grasped the commands. Now I flit from the two, or sometimes just say 'good-girl'. She never knows when I'm going to suprise her.

Sorry I meant to say work better sometimes (note to self, stop doing several things at once and concentrate on one!).

Mine are also incredibly food orientated and like you I alter the value of the treats depending on what we're training.

Best way to do it! I wouldn't work for less than adequate wages!

Quite a few of my friends tell me Oz is very obedient and well trained but we haven't really ever taught him much on purpose so I don't know where it's come from. He knows how to ask for things and understands yes and no, sit, stand, fetch (just did that though), tug of war, go to bed, stop begging, in and out (fields and stables) up (jumping up on sofa or bed, or car). He is good though because he doesn't do up and things without asking. He is very well behaved in the house and visiting friends. He is fairly good with recall, but he does have his moments!

He can however be a little ..... with other dogs. Not always, but he can be awful. I wish he could be trained out of that, I've trained him to accept certain dogs but it can take a while. He needs to grow out of his little man JRT complex me thinks!