Excited doggie while doing obedience

OK, i need some advice about my Golden.

When we practice his obedience and new tricks, he gets SO excited that he can't remember what hes doing and he starts just firing through all his tricks without me saying anything.. and if we were just practicing one trick it seems like he has trouble moving on to the next, and starts doing it without me giving the command.

I am wondering, does anyone have and advice about this? I use treats while training, little bits of treats or peices of cheerios to train him..

He also trys to get really close to me and is SO intense while we do it. Im glad hes paying such good attention but its TOO much lol.. he practially is on my feet staring at me, waiting for his treat.. augh!

I just taught him Play Dead, or Bang as I like to call it. He learned it in about 5 minutes, but when I tried to go back to practicing Down Stay he kept doing Bang, and was getting confused.. then he starts getting way to excited and can barely contain himself.

hmmmmm

Once I started adding more commands with Anya she started doing the same thing. I switched the order in which I was giving them so it wasn't so routine, but she just fires through them all now as if she's hoping she can guess the right one. We've gone back to just doing one or two per session and it seems to be helping. I'm sure some of the pros will have better tips for the two of us. Good luck.

I dont know if you are doing this... but dont do the commands in the same order every time try to mix them up so it wont be so much of a routine

The first thing is YOU have to be the leader in the training game.

Excitement is a GOOD thing. You only need to select what it is you want to reward. You can reinforce and reward many things in rapid fire succession if these are behaviors you want to encourage.

CLASS is very helpful for people to figure out how to properly lead a training session and learn to communicate with their dogs.

what i always do is during the week every week day *i take a break on sunday though * i'd teach yoshi a new trick. then on saturday instead of doing a new trick i'd give her a string of commands like... sit, jump, high five, down and if she'd get the string right i'd give her a treat. and i'd keep doing it changing the order of the tricks and the tricks themselves. it's helped a lot

Absolutely true

Often intelligent dogs who love interacting will offer you behaviours that you have taught, through excitement, or eagerness to please etc. Ruby used to do that - just walk up to me and sit, expecting a treat.

One way to forestall this is to mix up the tricks, as suggested, another way is to not treat unless you ask for the trick/behaviour first. In fact - don't even acknowledge anything offered that you haven't asked for.

For example, if your dog sits without you asking, pay no attention at all - even walk away, if he persists in holding the sit. As soon as he gets up, ask for something else; if he does it, then treat.

This will help teach your dog that pre-empting is not going to work, and he must wait for your command before giving you a behaviour.

Oh yes, the ever popular "anticipating the routine". Sometimes they are just too danged smart for themselves aren't they? We run into the same thing with obedience training. It's for that exact reason why we never train the "finish" together with a recall because they anticipate what is coming next and when they return they immediately go into the heel position which is a no-no in competitions. The dropping recall is another area that I have seen the same problem arise. In fact I am trying to figure out myself how to regain the speed that has been lost due to the anticipation of the down. I have gotten Farley to stop downing without a command but I can't get him to pick up his speed - my normal speed demon is now a slowpoke. And I was initially worried that when we started competing in CDX I'd have to forewarn the judge that his recall was so fast to insure the judge gave me enough time to get in a down command. Now the judge would have almost enough time to grab a cup of coffee.

My eldest dog, and the one prior, would do that...best thing to do is break routine. Mix up his commands.

Does he play fetch? I found that a 10-minute spirited game of fetch kind of wears on their stamina and makes it much easier to deal with...especialy a younger pup.

Makenzie, how do you train a dog to play fetch?

I've never really had to teach a dog to play fetch...I've always liked playing, but my dog for the last 7 years just doesn't like fetch...it's an endeavor I'll be pursuing with Buddy, though.

Ok.

So how would you teach it?

Is there a reason you pick people out and stalk them just because you do not agree with their way of thinking? This is a public forum, there are all types of training techniques. No one should come to a forum with 1,000 different opinions on training and just run with it. You have stated you do not agree with makenzie's way of training. What is your point here? Sorry, but after reading several of your very good informative posts, and then reading your weird posts, you come off like a crazy lady. Try and stick with good info instead of acting psycho. I am pretty sure people will take you more seriously then.

JMO

all she did was ask how someone would teach fetch.
now i think that your the one jumping down peoples throats

Yeah, shes real innocent, right? Read her posts starting about a month ago, first it was Mach1, then JennSLK, rottiegirl, now she has moved on to makenzie71. Do you notice a trend here? I sure do.

maybe but i personally am not gonna go through everyone of reds posts over a month,
i'm not that sad!
i just dont think that red meant anything by this particular post.

No offense, but if she meant nothing, then why did she repeat it after he already said he didnt teach it? And his dog for the last 7 years doesnt fetch. If he knew how to train it to fetch, then he would have.

And I completely agree with J's crew. All you have to do is go to profile and view lasts posts and its very clear.

Ok ok - maybe, maybe not. The point is, nobody has to respond who doesn't want to - its way too easy to take things the wrong way when written down on a forum. We don't know each other, we only know how we come across in our posts. And that is rarely, if ever, accurate.

There used to be a long-term member on this site who was pretty hard on people, and I haven't seen her around for a long time. Her hardness came out of her love of dogs, though, and some people are just more blunt than others. Her advice was often intelligent and insightful though, and she had many, many years of experience.

Let's remember, we're ALL here for our love of dogs, and in the hope that we can all help each other become better and more informed dog owners because of it. If someone writes something you don't like, ignore it. Mackenzie has ruffled plenty of feathers on his own since being here, I'm sure he can handle it.

But let's try to be nice to one another, and a little less judgemental; after all, we really don't know more than what's on the surface