When my dog Tassla was about five months old she was like a sponge; she learned everything incredibly fast and it was very easy for her to understand what I wanted her to do. Already at that time Tassla had a solid ground to stand on as I had done a lot of basic training with her.
When I trained stop to flush with Tassla most of the time she stopped directly on the throw. As soon as she saw an object fall down from the air she stopped at once. Usually, I didn’t have to blow the whistle. It was great to see!
Once I took my Hyper Pet Flying Duck and went out on “our” field. When Tassla just turned around and was heading towards me I pushed away the toy. Tassla’s head shot up and then she stopped and stood still. It was the first time that I showed her this type of flying object that kind of flutters away and is a bit strange. Before she had only trained to stop when I threw dummies and balls.
It was a lot easier for Tassla to stop when something flew up in the air than if the object was dragged along the ground or if it run close to the ground. So then I decided that Tassla and me should do exercises that were kind of “rabbit-like” and I also wanted to train really cool games where objects fly up in different ways.
The next step was, of course, to do the same exercises in many different places. I noticed that Tassla was very confident at home in “our” field when she was that young, but it was very difficult for her to do the exercises in new places. In new and more difficult environments, I of course made the exercises easier in the beginning, so that she would succeed. In the training dogs need many successful repetitions in many different environments so that they can do the behavior in more and more difficult situations.
