PSD
ALPHA
Feb 28, 2004, 12:19 AM
Post #45 of 49
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Yeah I meant sausages. I use them quite often in training....note the word in training it is not to be used as a staple food. Also whenever u use training treets, just make sure to reduce also the normal portion of the normal feed to compensate. The least we want is for the doggies to be over weight and cause loads of other health problems. Sausages are one of my fav cause it is long which is easy to hold during training, it can be cut into coin shapes for different training application and it is soft negating any need to chew at it. Liver blended into patty and baked then cut into strips works excellently too and very cheap to make.
If we want to chose any treets for training it must be soft and the dog can eat it in one gulp without chewing. Sadly to say, till today I cannot find any commercial treet any good to my liking. They are either too hard(jerky and such) or mouldy and too messy(cheese) plus they are so damn expensive.
To get a dog that you can "showoff" to people  , on how reliable or cleaver or cute n neat actions, we as the owners must be prepared to be firm n fair. This may mean control your heartache too as well as emotions. Of course I dont mean it to be barbaric, feudalistic nor dictatorship in your approach, but just a simple word of being fair. Reward when its positive, ignore when its negative. Remember that to a dog, whatever behaviour be it positive or negative will keep repeating itself if it was reinforced and the same can be said that a behaviour which is not reinforced (ignored) will dissapear. So in other words if your dog is excellent today, you must claim the prize for it for a job well done. However, if the dogs ended up as the hound from hell..................then the owners are the ones to shoot....
Back to the treets, dogs are better students when they are hungry. This means all training sessions should be before their meal. Dont waste any time to train after meal, it is not healthy to train after meal anyway. Very little percentage of dogs knows how to eat from the hand if conditioning is not done. If you want to train with treets then teach them how to eat from hands first until they willingly push your hands to get the treet in an enclosed palm. My doggies all want to eat my hands for the treets and this tells me it is time to start my 1st lesson with the dog.
Why food is the prefered mode for training is because, using food is motivational and fulfilling for the dog. If we could not train the dog with food, the other 2 option is to either use a toy or by force. Using toys although are great energiser....they are great energy sapper as well meaning u can only go very short session before the dog gets too tired for any more lesson. As for the force method means choke chains yanking and pushing which I dont want to touch more.
Feeding time can be great training time. To share with you rather than put the beef or lamb or chicken all into the bowl for the feeding time, I use those pieces one by one as a training session for excercises like send away, come, sit then food, down then food...as much as your imagination can take you. This way u dont waste time and meal time becomes your precious learning time. So why not?
When a dog is hungry they will eat whatever is handed out or in his bowl. Dont worry about that. If you are having the problem of him not eating from the bowl and assuming he is not having any health problem, then that just tells u he is not that hungry Maybe a day of fast is good for his detox anyway....lol
Ooops......I think I wrote too much already......
PSD
Quote
"Take this trouble for me:
Make sure my shepherd dog remains a working dog, for I have struggled all my life long for that aim ."
Rittmeister Capt. Max von Stephanitz (1864-1936)
(This post was edited by PSD on Feb 28, 2004, 12:26 AM)
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