Last week I mentioned how Maggie from Oh My Dog suggested I work Sampson and Delilah on the “Look” command to help us when we encounter dogs on our walks. By the way, her training book is called “Clicker Dog Training: The Better Path to a Well-Behaved Pup.” It’s available on iTunes.
Both my dogs have a decent response to “Look.” It’s more getting me to remember what I should be saying and doing
When Delilah and I were taking training classes, “Look” was our go to command, it kept Delilah focused on me and helped her to not focus on what other dogs were doing.
After I chatted with Maggie, I started incorporating “Look” a couple of times on each of our walks. I don’t reward as often as Maggie suggests, but I do reward.
With my dogs, and I’m fairly sure yours are the same, you can definitely tell when they see something of interest. The head snaps up, the ears stand up, their posture changes and they walk differently. It’s the perfect time for the “Look” command. It helps snap that focus.
Saturday on our early morning walk, we encountered a distraction.
Can you see them?
Thankfully, I kept my wits about me and said, “Look!” This distracted the dogs and diffused the situation.
We took a couple of steps closer, and the dogs started reacting again. Again I said, “Look,” and again they both stopped.
This was a huge flock of turkeys, I’d say there had to be close to 20 of them.
This particular house also has a dog, and the dog was barking, SO the owner opened the window and shoo’d the turkeys off. Once they had crossed the road, we were free to continue our walk.
This is the best shot I could get from the distance we were at.
I know for this to be my “go to” command, I have to use it more, but I can already see the benefit of using the command.
Saturday night, we encountered the same dog we encountered last week, (you remember, that was the one that didn’t end well.) This time we were a bit further away, which definitely helped, and I used “Look” which once again diffused the situation.
The dog was standing with it’s owners and they were talking to a couple of neighbors. (The woman did recognize me and said, hello, but I did not have a card to give her and didn’t want to get the dogs too close.) Sampson and I have stopped and chatted with one of these neighbors before and when I stopped to treat the dogs for the “Look” command, the neighbor started walking towards us. So while the dog and it’s owners were chatting with one neighbor, Sampson and Delilah were getting lovies from the other neighbor, while she and I chatted.
It made our walk a lot less tense.
What is your “go to” command, the one you use to redirect your dogs?
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