Sunday, September 21, 2014

Training the untrainable...


A few weeks ago I was challenged by Pets At Home to make a video of one of our dogs doing a short training routine. As regular readers will know, we have two dogs. An older Retriever Cross from Canada called Macy and a slightly crazy Beagle we rescued in Cyprus called Bella.

We took Bella in long after our first flush of enthusiasm for dog ownership and so unlike Macy she never attended puppy classes and to this day cannot even grasp the basics of sit.  So we thought our dog training challenge would mainly consist of the hilarious contrasting efforts of the well trained older dog versus the younger chaotic dog. We were wrong.

We had failed to take into account one crucial thing. Bella is highly food motivated.  Very quickly Macy got tired of our obstacle course and sloped off to a quiet spot in the garden, but Bella just kept on going and emerged as our unlikely star....

Watch the short video below to see what happened...


Many thanks to Pets At Home for providing us with the dog training equipment. Bella was utterly exhausted by the end of it all, but I think it's clear to all she had a great time.

Linking up with Jenny at Let's Talk Mommy...


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6 comments:

  1. Motivation - Callie is a 12 year rescue. She still looks great despite several serious bouts with pancreatitis. However, she knows sit, paw and hi five. Knowing she will get a treat she just anticipates the routine. Doggie daycare, trips to the kennel and two runs at puppy class gave her some self-esteem but she really doesn't like other dogs. Guess that comes from being brought up in a barn for the first 10 weeks as the runt of the litter with siblings who ate most of her food.

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  2. Motivation - Callie is a 12 year rescue. She still looks great despite several serious bouts with pancreatitis. However, she knows sit, paw and hi five. Knowing she will get a treat she just anticipates the routine. Doggie daycare, trips to the kennel and two runs at puppy class gave her some self-esteem but she really doesn't like other dogs. Guess that comes from being brought up in a barn for the first 10 weeks as the runt of the litter with siblings who ate most of her food.

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  3. Well done. Your dog is gorgeous. I wish we'd be able to do this with our dog, who is also a rescue, but he is allergic to lots of treats for dogs and doesn't really like a lot of the ones that he can have so isn't really motivated by food. Everything we try he turns into a game. We're taking him to a behaviourist so hopefully we'll be able to mimic some of your success eventually! Good luck to you and your dogs!

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  4. Well done! Your dog is gorgeous. I wish we'd be able to do something like this with our dog, who is also a rescue, but unfortunately he is allergic to a lot of the ingredients in the most common dog treats so isn't very motivated by the ones he can have. Everything we try ends up turning into a game. We're taking him to see a behaviourist so hopefully we'll be able to achieve some of your success in the end. Good luck to you and your dogs!

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  5. Bella is so gorgeous! What a great opportunity from pets at home! x

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  6. Well done little doggy! What a stunning dog too hunny. I wish we could have pets. Buba has allergies unfortunately. Training a dog is hard my brother used to do it. Thanks for linking up to Share With Me I hope to see you again for another great round. #sharewithme

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