What do I do moment?

[Chris]

In my thread "Hint of Success' I mentioned how well Ty was doing when we went rabbit hunting down the paddocks. It's still going well and he's staying in group mode more and more.

What I do need advise on is now that spring is starting to arrive here in NZ we are getting a lot more rabbits about and we've had several times when we've spooked a rabbit that has run off and in a flash of a sec Ty has up and gone off after it. What is the best thing to do here, first I'm sure a long lead will be mentioned but I'm really worried about using a long line in this country as we are jumping down embankments through heavy scrub and lots of fallen tree branches and I fear he'd get hung up.

I was only 1/2 a second off grabbing him today when I saw he go into hunt mode but in the time it took me to move the very short distance towards him he was off. I said nothing and just called Zeke and we ran off the opposite way and within 1-2 mins he was back with us.

Any ideas how to jolt him out of this chasing and how to react when he comes back (man it's hard not to be mad but I know I must not be). Am I asking to much of him too soon and should I just put him back on a short lead for a while?

Thanks for any ideas guys.

[Russell]

I think the answer is here ...

http://naturaldogtraining.com/natura...be-the-ground/

Especially last section about rushing to a tree and finding the "sacred moose toy". I guess these you can buy on the internet somewhere...

Russell

[Lee Charles Kelley]

You have to first get the dog so crazy about pushing and playing tug that he's investing as much energy as possible into them. Then you need to set up a situation where you put the dog in conflict between obeying a simple command like heel, or stay, and following his prey drive. Kevin has a number of examples in his book.

One way to do this would be to put the dog in a down/stay, tease him with his favorite toy, and then throw it softly a few feet from where you're standing. Make him hold the stay, then release him to come kill the toy. Build the distance slowly over a few days, then when he's reached a certain level of skill with this, and is enjoying performing the behavior, build it to the point that he can hold the stay even when you throw the toy past him. Then you can release him to go after the toy.

Once he's reached that level, start back at square one. Put him in a down/stay and throw the toy a few feet to your side. Then take a step away from the toy, to the right or left, and a step toward the dog. Hold there a moment, then call him to come to you. Once he can learn to come to you instead of the toy, build him back up to where you where with throwing the toy past him, and releasing him from the stay with the words, "Okay, come!"

When he comes to you even after you've thrown the toy past him, produce another toy, and get him to chase you around and play tug, etc.

(This is a distilled description of what's in Kevin's book.)

Also, here's what Kevin says in a recent reply to the article that Russell posted the link to:

The more energy that goes through a feeling, the stronger the feeling grows and the more bonded a dog feels with its owner, if that is, the owner is “in” the same feeling. So if you’re dog is positively aware of you in an intense situation, then you are getting emotional credit for the resolution of that situation. This is what I mean by “be the ground.”

You can also think of it this way. A drop of water etches a tiny rivulet or circuit, through a bit of dust. If the succeeding drops of water are slowly administered, then that original track grows deeper and more able to handle an increasing volume of water. At some point the channel can be so deep that it can successfully handle a downpour. So the owner must position themself to become the ground, so that over the course of the relationship they become the ocean into which all their dogs’ rivers of emotion can flow. This is the point of pushing, hide ‘n seek games, push-of-war and so on.

What I would add is that there are a number of exercises in Kevin's book that use what he calls conflict training. Here are a few examples:

http://leecharleskelleysblog.blogspo...ining-101.html

I hope this helps,

LCK

[Chris]

Thank you so much Lee and yes it makes a lot of sense.

I do recall the part in the book talking about this and will re-read it again.

When play I'll do a stay, then throw the toy, get him to make eye contact with me then release him to go get the toy then we have a big tug but I see I need to change it about now to getting him to come to me and playing with another toy.

Again many thanks I'll work on that.