Mountaintop Natural Pets

Next time around I kept my mouth shut (so as not to confuse my dog) and just tried to keep going while using big hand/body movements…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh1Q3MJOKJc&hl=en]

The result of this experiment ended just as expected, I should just shut up & let you dog do what she knows! The reality is we “speak” much louder than we think we do when we move. Dogs are physical animals, they communicate through body language… so whether you can see it, understand it or believe it, it is….. and as Ive proven to myself above. When I try to get my brain to think as fast as we are moving, I’m much better off if I just speak to my dog through body language as the actual human speech part is where it gets lost in translation.

Over the years I think I have drawn towards training because I think I can easily spot what Ive screwed up after watching myself run. Not that it makes it any easier to not DO the same thing next my next run, but at least I can spot it and work on it. Last year I was doing a very random training session with Eli after months of no practice. She was having a good time, enjoying her time back out in the ring but wasn’t too interested in following me too closely.

We experimented with sounds vs silence and my dog once again proved to me that as usual, “it’s the handler’s fault. Not that I didn’t know that every spot I lost her was due to my brain lagging behind my dog…and even my own feet sometimes. On my first run we went as usual, I talked, moved, ran, etc…. and Eli went where she wanted to. I also managed to skip a cross that would have made that back row of jumps a lot easier but, once again blame the handler…

Here is what it looked like with sound….

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V6VSd5ws6w&hl=en]