My movement reactive, goes-like-a-bullet-from-a-gun, exploding brain dog recalled off 5 galloping horses today.
We were out in the paddocks practicing recalls and playing when one of the horses we're looking after for one of my mums friends decided it was time to go wait by the food gate ASAP from grazing in the bottom of the paddocks. I know Quinn is good with them all and they are all very used to dogs but I don't trust her with them doing anything exciting.
They all came tearing up the laneway about 20m away from us, as they got up to the houseyard above us, Quinn was only pulling on her collar in the direction the horses had come from, she hadn't really even reacted to them despite being held by the collar so I let her go trying to head away from the hoard and take her down the back to play, she ran off and then turned around and started heading off after the horses.
She didn't recall perfectly (I called her a couple of times then started making stupid excited noises) but she did quit what she was doing and come back to me which to me, is EPIC.
I didn't put in enough groundwork on her recall in the early days, combining that with her movment reactivity and I'm beaming with her over this (espeically considering yesterday at herding she called off sheep going flat chat more than once)
Gives me hope, if she can stick with me while there are 5 excited horses around surely we can ger her to the point of sticking with me while other dogs are running around.
Had to share - the 3 months of actual recall work are paying off. And just to prove it, heres a video I took today while we were out. I went right back and trained her recall with her a new cue and a more exact criteria ("here" = return to my side and wait for direction/release) and I'm loving the speed and enthusiasm I'm getting out of her.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk12me7AebQ&feature=youtube_gdata
We were out in the paddocks practicing recalls and playing when one of the horses we're looking after for one of my mums friends decided it was time to go wait by the food gate ASAP from grazing in the bottom of the paddocks. I know Quinn is good with them all and they are all very used to dogs but I don't trust her with them doing anything exciting.
They all came tearing up the laneway about 20m away from us, as they got up to the houseyard above us, Quinn was only pulling on her collar in the direction the horses had come from, she hadn't really even reacted to them despite being held by the collar so I let her go trying to head away from the hoard and take her down the back to play, she ran off and then turned around and started heading off after the horses.
She didn't recall perfectly (I called her a couple of times then started making stupid excited noises) but she did quit what she was doing and come back to me which to me, is EPIC.
I didn't put in enough groundwork on her recall in the early days, combining that with her movment reactivity and I'm beaming with her over this (espeically considering yesterday at herding she called off sheep going flat chat more than once)
Gives me hope, if she can stick with me while there are 5 excited horses around surely we can ger her to the point of sticking with me while other dogs are running around.
Had to share - the 3 months of actual recall work are paying off. And just to prove it, heres a video I took today while we were out. I went right back and trained her recall with her a new cue and a more exact criteria ("here" = return to my side and wait for direction/release) and I'm loving the speed and enthusiasm I'm getting out of her.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk12me7AebQ&feature=youtube_gdata