This week in Training Thursday, I wanted to talk about the importance of stepping out of your routine and challenging your dog’s comfort zone.
So you’ve been training your dog for a while, teaching them tricks or working on your obedience, and you are really happy with the results. The dog is performing really well, staying focused and listening to all your commands. But what happens if you change things up a bit? If you take them out of their comfort zone and still ask them to perform? The most common one is to change their surroundings. If you’ve been practicing at home, go into the backyard or to a park. If you’ve been practicing in the same park for a while, try a different one. This is quite challenging for our dogs and will show you how well they are really doing.
The past couple of weeks, I’ve been noticing that Rocco finds his training classes less of a challenge. Which is why we decided to take him to class on Monday. It is held in a different location and has different dogs in attendance. He did really well, however, I could tell it required more effort on his part to stay focused. For one of the next classes, I’m thinking of asking him to wear a backpack. There are many things you can try to give your dog that extra bit of a challenge.
I also wanted to show off our progress on the sit pretty exercise from last week 🙂 Have you guys been practicing?
He’s doing really well at that, you don’t often see a big dog balance in that way.
Thanks, Clowie! We’ve been working hard on those core muscles 🙂
I’ve tried to teach some tricks to my dog. Without success. (ain’t got time and space to pratice correctly). Worst yet, as soon as I show him a treat, he turns into berserk. He yaps and jumps all over. So, I’ve given up.
Anyway, congratulation. Rocco succeeds the sit pretty exercice very well now.
Rocco is so clever!