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Originally Posted by catz4m8z
Hannah has a habit of 'doing her own thing' sometimes and I just reward her the same!! She never goes far but if she is on a sniffing mission at the park I just wait with the other 2 and give her a few minutes before I call her back so Im not standing there like a loon calling and calling!!
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Have you thought of trying using the distraction of the sniffing which she loves, as the reward? So turn it round, rather than try and call her away from sniffing; call her to you, then say "go sniff" and make the trip to the sniffing spot real fun?
On the proofing & dog not listening, whilst it's true; It's probably got some good reasons for it, especially in "family" dogs, rather than those with expert highly motivated owners.
Mistakes I make when relaxed and having fun out & about, are unclear garbled cues; occasionally I even say the wrong cue, and where it's stupid, I can hardly blame the dog for a "come again?" puzzled look. At other times, he's figured out something new, by generalising a command to a new situation, so if you do this, shutting up and letting the dog work it out, might work, rather than babbling a "whoops!" and interrupting the canine problem solving.
At times to, someone else has affected the dog, so you need to make it easier; or you misjudged the distraction level.
We learn not when we are 100% successful, but when we are unafraid to makes some mistakes, but then respond by addressing the exposed weaknesses; this is an essential attitude for success in competitive technical sports. The variable reinforcement idea, becomes useful according to the experts at 80% success rate and speeds reliability, so avoiding failure too much would be another handler error.
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For eager & reliable recall, be fun for the dog to come back to! Then often send them off right away to do what they wanted!
DT&B - Glossary of acronyms & jargon terms.
Encouraging good behaviours, whilst consistently avoiding practise of bad alternatives leads to extinction of the bad. So if dog sits 6/10 times it doesn't sit 4/10 times, encouraging with the right rewards (positively-reinforcing) enough for 9/10 times means it now fails to sit only 1/10 times, sit 10/10 means...