With mornings being a hectic time for most people, few ever think to include a training session with their dog into their breakfast routine. I do a training session everyday with Kobi before breakfast. If I have time it can be up to 10 minutes when teaching him a new trick, or just a few seconds if there is no time. I like to do training before breakfast so that Kobi is working for his food and he knows he must do work to get his food. The other benefit is that you can use their kibble for training treats. Morning training games can be as simple as learning to eat food from your hand politely, working on making eye contact, teaching basic obedience or tricks. This week we've started working on the Breakfast Scatter game. This is simply where I take a small handful of his kibble, say "Kobi Look" then drop them on the floor and let him eat them. The purpose of this game is to learn the command "Kobi Look" when I try to scatter treats on the floor for him. When Kobi becomes excited he tends to focus on the source of his excitement like most border collies do. However, if he is getting riled up or starts barking, I need to break his attention to calm him back down. This has proven to be intensely difficult. We've tried sticking treats right in his face to lure him away, nothing, so our training recommended tossing treats on the ground to make him look down. Great idea, didn't work. Now that we've found that he responds to liver treats we're having more success in breaking his focus, but still not much luck at tossing treats on the ground, he just doesn't pay attention to it. So our training suggested training him and giving him a command for simply, LOOK! There is free treats on the ground! Eat them!! So we've added it into our morning training. Just a few tosses at every meal.
With mornings being a hectic time for most people, few ever think to include a training session with their dog into their breakfast routine. I do a training session everyday with Kobi before breakfast. If I have time it can be up to 10 minutes when teaching him a new trick, or just a few seconds if there is no time. I like to do training before breakfast so that Kobi is working for his food and he knows he must do work to get his food. The other benefit is that you can use their kibble for training treats. Morning training games can be as simple as learning to eat food from your hand politely, working on making eye contact, teaching basic obedience or tricks. This week we've started working on the Breakfast Scatter game. This is simply where I take a small handful of his kibble, say "Kobi Look" then drop them on the floor and let him eat them. The purpose of this game is to learn the command "Kobi Look" when I try to scatter treats on the floor for him. When Kobi becomes excited he tends to focus on the source of his excitement like most border collies do. However, if he is getting riled up or starts barking, I need to break his attention to calm him back down. This has proven to be intensely difficult. We've tried sticking treats right in his face to lure him away, nothing, so our training recommended tossing treats on the ground to make him look down. Great idea, didn't work. Now that we've found that he responds to liver treats we're having more success in breaking his focus, but still not much luck at tossing treats on the ground, he just doesn't pay attention to it. So our training suggested training him and giving him a command for simply, LOOK! There is free treats on the ground! Eat them!! So we've added it into our morning training. Just a few tosses at every meal.
That is a great idea! Incorporating bits of training into a daily routine is truly a good way to do it. I too often forget, but when I remember, those few moments make a huge difference in behavior.
ReplyDeleteI love weaving training throughout the day. I found that doing them during meal prep is perfect for getting everyone's attention. :)
ReplyDeleteGreat job with Kobi!