Brenda James 4 and Ember 20 months – United States

Hi and welcome! 🙂 The option for a second dog was so rarely used, I left it out. 🙂 You can just transfer additional 100E via Paypal (polona.bonac@gmail.com). Will be an interesting journey with both of them for sure!

I can see he is pretty intense yes :), and safety is for sure a concern when they are just throwing themselves at things.
He is familiar with the sniffing toys, but I would say it requires more practise for it to become something he can commit to, even when his emotions are not quite there. I think he would also benefit for more advance nose work training – I have some initial steps explained by the end of this class, but we will probably go at it sooner. I love more advanced nose work because it teaches dogs to self regulate as becoming hyper or searching frantically does not allow them to find whatever they are looking for. But for now – I would just make “go sniff” a very regular activity. If you feed him twice per day I would have him search for one meal one way or another. If you have a garden it is ok to just throw his food on the grass. I prefer bigger areas towards smaller ones so the dog can walk around while searching. Of course you can also use one or the other toy. I would give him time and not encourage him to go back to it if he disengages. Just ignore him if he comes to you and let him get bored and find it again.
And can you tell me a bit more about how food frustrates him when you try to work him for food?

Food throws – yeah, you have to be careful with those. You can try combining a long normal throw with a little toss just in front of you as he is coming back. It has to be at his height approximately so he doesn’t need to jump for it, just snatch it while running back. That would be a relatively safe way to do them.
As for food throws as such – I am assuming things get even worse when you run along?

“The food made him more thoughtful, but because the toy was out of the picture and he wanted it he got frustrated. if I use the stationary target behavior with food a few times too many witches say three or four times without a toy, he will bite the bar instead of jump.”
Yes, that is exactly why I don’t believe in calming the dog down – it usually generates a whole lot of frustration. Also – teaching the dog to function in a calmer state of mind doesn’t prepare him for functioning in a higher drive/arousal which causes panic and therefore mistakes. Mistakes increase frustration level and the dog falls into a loop of chaos.
This is why I try my best to not avoid any drive or emotion – in fact I do my best to be able to provoke and encourage them so I can eventually influence them. Dogs have different personalities so they all need some encouragement in directions they are not naturally good at to balance them out. That is why I suggested plenty of nose work for him – I don’t think it will change him completely and it is not a magical tool, but I can see him as being a dog that would rather close his eyes, throw himself at something and hope for the best, rather than take a step back, inhale and try again – taking previous experiences into consideration. Furiosity gets you absolutely nowhere in nose work and it is a lesson they have to learn on their own – you can’t do much to help that process, but this is exactly why it is more likely to stick.
Now apart from that there are couple of other things I would work on:
– Teaching him the “anticipation freeze” and eventually “active stay”. I start laying a foundation for that through food games and develop it further with toys. Check Wheen Sze and Moonbeam’s topic – we have been working on that for the entire week and you will be able to get a good visual of what I mean. Basically you are trying to provoke/catch moments where James is completely still and in anticipation of the next thing to happen (throw, poke,,..) I usually try to provoke it by doing a series of throws or pokes and than withholding the next treat for a bit, creating some anticipation of what is about to happen next with my voice. I mark and reward all moments of “compression” the dog shows.
I would also be encouraging every pushy behavior I can get through food tosses – barking, jumping… and learn how to provoke one and another and then at one point start to switch between them. Food games will increase the value of food as such and give you extra “tools” so you can build a “bridge” from very calm rewarding on the target to rewarding with toys.
– I would teach the dog different chains of rewards so you can keep him in a certain state of mind with a specific reward without him becoming frustrated as he will learn that even if something is not what he would love most in that situation, it is getting him there.
– I would also work a lot on games and variations with static toys (we will get there in the next lesson).

So for now, try to use food games to provoke anticipation freeze on one hand and pushy behaviors on the other. And show me how that goes so I can suggest upgrades and variations.

It sure helps! With more informations I can offer more personalised ideas and solutions. 🙂
You definitely have anticipation freeze already as well all the other skills – everything you showed on this video is something I would also use. BTW you have some trial videos of him perhaps? Ideally also showing some of your preparation before the run, but even if not,…
My next idea for trainings would be to switch between full on action (you both running) and exercises that require control more rapidly. I noticed that he got increasingly fired up when you were quick switching from one cue to another without rewarding him or asking for compression in between.
The key element is also to add your movement to all those games.
So here is a couple of ideas for games:
1. Start with anticipation freeze start line stay. But this time, don’t send him towards the static toy after a release (or at least not all of the time) and don’t be static. Instead start running away from him with the toy in your hand (as soon as you see he is in position and “fixed”) and release him while still running away so he is chasing after you and finally taking the toy from your hand. Use long toy so it is easy for him to catch it without biting you in the process – or if he is often going for the hand, you can let go of the toy the last second before he grabs it, so he catches it in the air. After he gets the toy, keep the party going, run after him and encourage him with happy words. At one point stop the action and immediately ask for some behaviours that require compression/control. Down with quick release to the static toy, nose touch/chin rest, target, jump + target,… Just one or several in a row… you can reward some of them passively. Then switch to some tricks that encourage more pushy state of mind – figure 8 between your legs, spins, jump, bark,… out of those tricks go straight into another repetition of a start line stay as described in the beginning of this paragraph. When you ask for those pushy behaviours you can switch between two variations – sometimes you just try to get him as “hyped” as possible and to achieve that, make it very obvious which behaviour you are asking for. Use verbal and non verbal signals, if he makes a mistake and does the “wrong” thing just quickly help him get the right one. We are basically wanting him to “loose his head” a little here, so he can practise switching from that into a more controlled state again.
On other occasions you can use this part of the “drill” to practise his responsiveness to verbal cues, so you basically do the thing you are already doing – giving him a verbal without additional support and rewarding or at least clearly marking the right decisions while also giving him a signal if he makes a mistake.
2. I would work on variations of the games I show in this video: