Moments of Brilliance!

I have been having a problem with Split on the agility field lately and I didn't really understand what was going on. At my new agility field he would rather chase horses and follow smells than play agility sometimes. I noticed the problem over at a friend's house as well. Also, Tip was misbehaving and wasn't able to stay when I was training Split. She had this down cold!!

Hum, with Split was it:

1. Tip stressing him out
2. The smells were just too overwhelming
3. Losing his drive for agility

I think I had a moment of brilliance last night on what the problem was. I was reading one of Susan Garrett's books in preparation for the Red Headed Puppy. The section I was reading was on building value in something. The dog does what he wants, and he does what you want because there is something of value in it for him. I had momentarily forgotten that I built value for Split in food, and I had been training lately (actually before the new field) with toys. (picture ah ha moment now).

The value of smell and chase were higher than the value of toys. When introducing the toy I did not build the value the same way I did with food!! Tip's high value is a toy, which Split was playing with now (her medium value is food, hence her ability to stay).

This morning we went out to the agility field and I got out the food. Split was off doing his thing with smells/horses. I ran across the field, Split chased me, I rewarded with food. Tip chased too, I rewarded with food. After about 10 minutes of this, Split was GLUED to my side and Tip was sitting patiently and watching the game. INTERESTING!!! I love these moments!

Split got trained with food this morning, and Tip with toys. My well-behaved, high drive dogs were back!!! :)