“My dog can walk to heel for a long time as long as there are no distractions nearby” is something I hear often. And that’s right – when we train at home or walk longer distances, it usually doesn’t happen much, so the dog just tags along. But when something happens it obviously becomes so very exciting. Therefore, we must make sure to train with distractions as well.
I like to add distractions early on and I do it in all training: heelwork, delivery to hand, stop whistle training and so on. It also means that the dog learns to recognize the concept “if I control myself, I get something fun”.
Today’s exercise
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- Try at least three different distractions while walking to heel.
- Train heelwork at least once. (Note how many sessions and minutes of heelwork you do. Train what you and your dog need – it doesn’t have to be the training in the blog post of the day.)
- Feel free to tell us and others about your training by commenting on the posts on our website and/or Facebook page.
- If you haven’t participated in the challenge from the start, read here to find out how it works: Day 1: Heelwork challenge.
2 thoughts on “Day 8: Distraction training with food bowls”
This challenge has been really motivating. So far I have 98 mins in 7 days. The shorter sessions like less than 10 minutes go pretty good. The longer sessions go good until I run out of treats or the distraction is too strong. I’ve tried a couple of times off leash for like 2-5 mins and it went well. Puppy is 4 months old.
Thank you, we’re happy to hear that! Great job! Puppy is still just a baby so short sessions are perfect 🙂