training age??

[ollie]

Hello,
I have been doing some training with my 3 month old bitch, a hungarian whv. She seems to be picking things up really well(sit, recall, retrieve etc) even though shes still young and i am very inexperienced. indoors she is almost perfect and outdoors about half of that due to all the excitment and this is on the long lead. My questions is at what age sould i start traing seriously/properly?..

Also any advice with letting her off the lead for the first time?? been putting this off so far as i'm struggling to find a reasonably secure field and i'm generally a bit nervous

Thanks in advance
Ollie

[Gignesthai]

I would see how reliable she looks on the line outside, but our advice has always been given as the sooner the better to let them off as the younger they are the more reliant they are on you, so if you reward them well they then learn that coming back is fun, in time for when their reliance on you wains it is then a trained/rewarded behaviour. Can you go early to a local childrens park that is fenced in and try maybe somewhere like that for the first time, or even a friends garden, somewhere that they are not familiar with but is controllable. Remembering the tips to not chase after them, call and move backwards or, to turn your back/drop to the floor etc if you need to really attract them.

[Polmaise]

Also any advice with letting her off the lead for the first time?? been putting this off so far as i'm struggling to find a reasonably secure field and i'm generally a bit nervous

Thanks in advance
Ollie

Ok,I'll take this one on 'wullie', so you just sit back in your chair,and have another whisky
Hi Ollie,
I imagine you have had this bundle of 'joy', since it was a pup?(8 weeks old or so)?
Can I ask?,did you have a lead/or long lead on the wee pup then?.............probably not!..maybe because you felt that the wee pup was secure in the envoirenment of the house/garden,and you had its attention because it had nothing else to focuss on?..or it seen you as a source of 'fun and play and praise',?

If not!!!
we end here........................................................................................................................................................................................



If yes?..we agree?


So what has happened between that period and now?(other than the dog getting bigger,bolder,and more confident in the surroundings and your interaction in these surroundings?



Oh'?...I nearly forgot ...why the long lead?
And ...the next question is a 'bombshell'!.......................................








Off lead and time scale is often asked and always confused me ,when as every single owner of every singe puppy never put a lead on it at 8 weeks old and would never dream of it???
so is it not doing 'off lead work', then? ....its only when we put a lead '''on the dog''' that we (generally), use it as a restraint, rather than a training tool such as a steering wheel'

[trekmoor]

Glad you answered Robert

I rarely put a lead on a pup while it is very young unless I am walking it alongside a road or something similar. I walk pups through woodlands etc. with no lead on. My pups learn to expect to find me rather than me finding them. I've done this with GSP's , brittanies, labs and spaniels. My pups all think I'm a dozy sod who is forever getting lost. Since, at an early age, most pups like to have the security of their owners nearby or where they can easily get to them, the pups keep an eye on me in case I "get lost." While I am "lost" I make sure I can still see the pup. I hide behind trees or hedge ends and then recall the pup by voice and by whistle. Most pups come running in case they lose me.

A bit of care must be taken to begin with when doing this . To begin with pups are not easily called away from, what is to a pup, a strong distraction. Begin calling the pup when it is not being strongly distracted by some object, scent or other animal, including other people or other dogs. When the pup has the idea of recalling well then you can begin calling it in from longer distances and gradually increasing strengths of distraction.

If you have to travel a few miles by car to reach somewhere safe to let a pup off lead then do it. You should end up with a dog that is bold when " getting about the country" and yet still responds well to recall voice and whistle.

A few people I've known do things a bit differently. They attach 20 feet long (or longer) check-cords to a pups collar in order to have a degree of control when they need it. The owner does not hold the cord, the pup trails it along behind wherever it goes. This has never worked well for me but some trainers swear by this method. I can't tell you much more than that about this method since I haven't tried it for more than 40 years !

Hope some of this may help.

Wullie

[Judy]

I don't use the lead either except alongside the road, pups don't travel far away especially if you take them out before a meal and have lots of tasty bits in your pocket!

[cjaus]

My pups all think I'm a dozy sod who is forever getting lost.

We all think the same Wullie


My pup has rarely been on a lead. Like Wullie and Judy have said... The pup (and the other two) only go on a lead if we are near a road or similar risk.

How i see it is....
Ive found with dogs that are on a lead all the time......As soon as you take it off....FREEDOM!!!....They're off
Whereas a dog that is hardly on a lead will happily come to you to have its lead on, knowing its only a temporary measure.

As i said this is my opinion, and its how it works for my dogs

[stanyer21]

we never ever had our dogs on lead from day one (prob a little mistake as then when we did put them on they were bloody hard work) but i found that when they were small and still relied on us 100% they never left our side. i think if you leave them on lead to long then when you do eventually let them off they will just want to run wild since never been off. i would get her off lead asap.
we started basic training from day 1( my bitch was staying at 9 weeks, and recalls we never had a problem with,) but as for serious training (it depends what you really mean by serious) but i would say about 8 month.

[jimporter]

I let my lab pup (now nearly 5 months) of lead as soon as we went out after jabs but had already been training recall in garden. Then I took him to the deepest darkest woods and did a hansel and Gretel and he came back fine.

The big problem for me is as I live on the the fringe of Urban is everywhere we walk there are plenty of other dogs and puppies, which condensed even more when Swinley was on fire. With him being off lead all the time he took to wrestling with other dogs and pups (he has no fear, one pup colly he could wrestle with for the whole walk) and now thinks that all dosg are for playing with and that pushchairs are supplies of cheddar biscuits and sanwiches and that every person he sees wants licking and is a supply of dog treats.

I have now found somewhere which has fewer dogs and a good clear training area so am starting to reverse some of the problems of my own making. If I could start over I would have kept him on the lead a little more in overpopulated areas and leave the off lead walking for when we were on our own.

Having said all that he is now getting much better and for a 5 month old is pretty good.

[kron]

I let my lab pup (now nearly 5 months) of lead as soon as we went out after jabs but had already been training recall in garden. Then I took him to the deepest darkest woods and did a hansel and Gretel and he came back fine.

The big problem for me is as I live on the the fringe of Urban is everywhere we walk there are plenty of other dogs and puppies, which condensed even more when Swinley was on fire. With him being off lead all the time he took to wrestling with other dogs and pups (he has no fear, one pup colly he could wrestle with for the whole walk) and now thinks that all dosg are for playing with and that pushchairs are supplies of cheddar biscuits and sanwiches and that every person he sees wants licking and is a supply of dog treats.

I have now found somewhere which has fewer dogs and a good clear training area so am starting to reverse some of the problems of my own making. If I could start over I would have kept him on the lead a little more in overpopulated areas and leave the off lead walking for when we were on our own.

Having said all that he is now getting much better and for a 5 month old is pretty good.

I made exactly the same mistake. Had her off lead constantly (apart from near roads) from 8 weeks. Strokes from joggers and play with other dogs became the primary source of fun for her. Its still not fully cured at 16 months but I can stop her and call her back when she darts towards someone.

The way I dealt with it was by keeping her on the lead when there were others around and attending group training sessions where she gets to see that not every dog wants to play.

A time machine would be good to go back and deal with all those mistakes I made in the early days.

[Andrew]

3months old 12 weeks! whilst in agreement regarding use of the lead or lack of it, To me its as Robert stated use it as a training aid rather than a restraint. Given that at the earliest the dog is only just able to venture into the big wide world at this age due to its inniculations. I would have thought it highly unlikely that the dog would be doing much other than getting used to its name and the lead within the "garden enviroment"
I would be putting the lead on and taking it off at this stage, as the dog is young enough not to think lead off means freedom!
Finally you should find the dog is less confident away from the garden enviroment and you can use that to your advantage by continueing the commands you use in the same way as before, but away from any other distractions such as dogs and people