A Change of Scenery
How many times do we find ourselves going to the same spot in the backyard to train our dogs? After about a hundred fetches in the same spot the dog may associate the command with the place. How many stories have you heard where a friend exclaims "I don't know what's wrong with my dog, he retrieves perfectly at home"? Sometimes we need a reminder to change the scenery for our training sessions. It can be a vacant field or your neighbors horse pasture, it doesn't matter as long as your not glued to the same spot in the yard. This week we took the dogs out to a flat desert area where we could see for miles in all directions. The only landmark was this junked out old car that had been shot up during a life of thousands of target shooters. The dogs had a ball and it gave us a chance to work on basic commands in a different setting. Best of all, they got some real good exercise and were able to stretch their legs and flat out run.