Attention Signal

As I promised in december the story about our newly introduced cues will be continued.

It took a little while until Lisbeth understood the idea and the "cue" for her cuddling time. First of all I introduced her to the toy regularly and whenever she took it in her mouth she was petted. After some days I hade the feeling that Lisbeth understands what the toy means. But Lisbeth still didn't took it by her own initiative. I always showed her the toy when I had the feeling she wants to get in contact. And now after 2 months "training" she truely understands the meaning. She takes the toy and enjoys my attention for minutes.

Yesterday I didn't see her taking the toy but she dropped it on the floor close to me. I heard the noise and turned around, then she took the toy again and gor what she wanted. I love this cue and it helpped us a lot. The biting has decreased drastically and I need the interrupting signal only rarely. I truly can recommend this strategy for dogs who need a lot of attention!

Concentration

It's easy to motivate Lisbeth when we are at home. She sometimes is a little bit overstimulated and you have to make trainings sessions short but she reacts to my voice and my body signals. Outside it is a lot different. Most of the time she isn't able to react anyway. I do not want to force her to do anything but it would be a lot more relaxing and I could give her more freedom when it's possible to communicate with her. I try to be at places with only little distrections but beeing outside is already too much most of the time. I've read trough the internet what people are talking about thit topic but I did not like what I found. It's all about forcing your dog to listen to you (also without punishment) somehow but this is not what I would like to do. At the moment I do not know what is a solution but I hope to get a good idea soon.

Hunting

I really would love to know the experiences of others dealing with hunting behaviour.

Lisbeth is a hunter, but it's not to bad. In the past I have thought I should never ever let allow my dog to hunt. But I now think a little different. On our perfect walking place there are some wild animals - most of them are rabbits. Lisbeth loves to follow the tracks of this animals but allways stays in contact with me. It can happen that she finds a very new track and then she is away for some minutes but she allways returns back. We are working on a call back cue that also works to call her back from wild animals but thats a long way. And I have the experience that calling back from dog friends, mouse holes and wild animals only works when the dog is allowed to do those things regularly. So I try to find places where it's safe to "hunt" a little bit. I never allow Lisbeth to follow deer because this trigger is to much so walking off leash in a wood is normaly not possible.
But my experience is, that Lisbeth is more likely to listen to my call back cues when she is allowed to move freely and follow tracks as well. Last night we have been outside and I just let her go away for a while but it was easy to call her back afterwards. She was happy and satisfied and it feeled at is she wanted to share her experience with me.
I would love to hear your opinion about hunting, freedom and call back cues!