It is nice when you can see all the hours of training pay off in real life situation.

 

Good boy, Mako!!

 

You dodged a bullet.

Not long ago, I think a forum member was playing with their dog in a park, and the dog ran in front of a car and she lost the dog, that fast. Horrible.

We should all work with our dogs, and teach them the life skills: recall, and an emergency down or drop. But at 10 months old, off lead without barriers to traffic, playing ball with two dogs -- 2 dogs listen less than one dog alone, well it is a risk.

The other thing you risk is your training. Give commands that they can ignore, and it gives them the realization that they can just ignore you when other things are more exciting. Recall is one that I don't give unless I can immediately enforce, not until that dog's obedience is rock solid. Whenever, I have needed it, it has been there, because I have never given a dog any reason to believe they did not have to comply with that one.

 

You dodged a bullet.

Not long ago, I think a forum member was playing with their dog in a park, and the dog ran in front of a car and she lost the dog, that fast. Horrible.

We should all work with our dogs, and teach them the life skills: recall, and an emergency down or drop. But at 10 months old, off lead without barriers to traffic, playing ball with two dogs -- 2 dogs listen less than one dog alone, well it is a risk.

The other thing you risk is your training. Give commands that they can ignore, and it gives them the realization that they can just ignore you when other things are more exciting. Recall is one that I don't give unless I can immediately enforce, not until that dog's obedience is rock solid. Whenever, I have needed it, it has been there, because I have never given a dog any reason to believe they did not have to comply with that one.

YES, absolutely on this!

Susan

 

Great story! You've got much to be proud of with your boy.

 

very good response especially at ten months. I'm sure it seemed safe and you quickly found out that it really wasn't It is so very good your pup dropped on command. How often did you work on that? Daily I'd imagine.

 

WOW! I am just astounded! That is some great training on your part. I am jealous!

 

10 months old, 70 yards away, in high drive mode. That is amazing. Well done Mako.

And glad all ended well.

 

Fantastic! I'm glad it worked out

 

You have an absolutely amazing pup!

 

Really impressive! I'm going to work on the platz command from a distance today. Good job!

 

Well Done Mako!!!

 

Mako you continue to be amazing!Some credit to your Mom too!

 

Impressive at that young age. Also good that you enforced it until you gave him the OK. It is so easy to be elated and celebrate your success while in the meantime you would have been undoing your hard work. Love stories like that.

 

Thank you everyone! We have been working on down for 8 months. We play the splat game daily.

The area we were off leash is generally fairly safe. In between the front yard and the actual road is a fair bit of thickly over grown pasture they would have needed to get through that does provide a buffer.

Over all though I just have to say. My dog is amazing. So happy to have him!!!

 

That's great but as one poster alluded,what if you didn't see it? My dogs are trained to come to sit at every road and driveway, without a command . They stop short when chasing a ball etc. Something to think about,things happen instantaneously. Time to take your excellent training and add the safer option.

 

Great job! You can also train the dog never to chase deer. It's pretty easy and so worth it. Deer can move really fast, if you have a fast dog, things can happen before you can yell platz. And deer are everywhere. I've seen quite a few notifications recently of LE K9s gone missing after deer. A bit of work, and that's a non-issue.

 

good job on the training!

This story reminded me of fenton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmpONxJ7JSw

 

Very nice. Mako was AOK in a new situation.

 

Awesome outcome, but I don't think calling the deer stupid is necessary. They get spooked and do what they think is best for their survival.

 

Quick question, what is the best way to train the platz from a distance? Brando does great with the command when he's close to me, we were practicing yesterday and I would call it from a distance and he runs to me and then platz. For some reason I'm struggling with how to fix this.

 

I'm working on this right now too! What I have done so far...I put a baby gate at the end of my hallway, me on one side, my boy on the other. He can't move forward, but I can move back. Start up close and cue, reward, take a few steps back etc. The hallway is about 20 ft or so.

Now we are working in the back yard. Let me see if I can explain this LOL. I have him on a long line, the line is run through the bottom of my fence. If I pull the line, it gives a downward pressure to help him in the down if he doesn't comply. It also keeps the dog in place so he can't move into me like he wants too.

We've only done the outside a couple of times yet but he seems to be getting it. I won't leave out the line until he complies without help most of the time. I don't want to rush any behaviors, I'm not in a hurry, just playing with my dog! Hope this helps!

 

good job

 

Thanks, that does help. I just don't want to confuse him with unclear commands, his recall is excellent so I didn't want to mess with that at all while trying to get a platz from a distance. Recall seems so much more important.

 

How did you teach this game?

 

I use clicker training a lot. Put the place mat on the living room floor. As soon as the pup showed interest/curiosity in the mat clicked and treated. Then when he stepped towards it. Then when he ran towards it. Once he was consistently running towards the mat he only got c&ted when he stood on it. Then I added the down command. Having him lay directly on the mat. More clicking and treating. Once I had him doing that consistantly i paired it with the "splatz" command. Then I added in a second mat. He would only get click and treated if he went to the one I pointed to (so he could practice paying attention to me) I kept adding more distance and more mats to challenge him. We are up to 5 mats and about 20 feet apart from one another.

Fun game. Good exercise.

It's a lot like training the place command.

Here is a video. I trained it basically the same way except of course i had my dog do a down instead of standing on the object.

https://youtu.be/4SjRRwWfzSc

 

thanks for the video!

 

Yes, thanks! That looks like so much fun, we are going to start this week!