The starting points of dogs in the videos

THE STARTING POINTS OF THE DOGS IN THE VIDEOS

In the videos you can see two dogs, bordercollie Nera and german shepherd Jade. The videos have been filmed in a real-life training situation. The dogs’ introductions are below. Nera is helping train Jade to disregard other dogs while passing them.

 

NERA

Nera is a one-year-old bordercollie. Since the beginning, she’s been trained to spontaneously disregard cars, people, dogs, etc. and this has become a way of life for her. She’s been trained consistently and the main thing on a leash has been to never greet other dogs so that she always knows what to expect and everything is clear for both her and her handler. In the videos it is very visible how strong this behaviour is for her because not even a barking dog can distract her from actively offering to look away from it.

 

JADE

Jade is a 4-year-old german shepherd. Unfortunately, it has happened a few times that dogs who weren’t leashed were able to attack her during a walks and for this reason passing other dogs has become difficult for her. With a greater distance the owner can often ensure success but this time our aim was to practice passing other dogs so that the owner would no longer need to switch to the other side of the street etc. Jade is also unconfident with new people and in one the videos there is a suspicious person as the object she has to disregard. The technique was completely new to Jade but she responded to it wonderfully.

At first we have chosen 12m as the distance, for Jade’s well-being. Jade already barks at other dogs from afar and sometimes when she gets excited as well so making noises is very typical for her to begin with. Jade’s owner has previous knowledge on dogs’ behaviour and knows her/his dog’s strenghts and weaknesses. Before this technique Jade has already managed to successfully pass some dogs from a greater distance by having her attention shifted to a toy.