obedience training - retired dog????

[Elsie]

Hi everyone. Please, can someone help me. Nara, my border collie (3 yrs), has done well and has obtained her novice title. I have been training her for open work, and she now knows all the work. However, I now feel that she has almost 'retired' herself. She gives me the impression that although she will do the work, she is saying "I don't want to do this mum". I entered her in her first open trial two weeks ago, and although did all of the work, she lagged so much that I had to wait for her to catch up to give the signals. Naturally we failed BADLY. I have not trained her since (just played with a ball, but she doesn't seem interested in this now.) She has been trained so far with a clicker, but I have stopped it, as I feel she needs to lose some weight, so have cut out the treats. Please, please, can someone give me some advice, as soon as possible. She has always been such a wonderful, willing worker, but now, just doesn't seem interested. I do not know which way to turn.

 

[poodlesmom]

Both of my 2 have gotten their CD and really enjoyed training. When we got to the open work Farley was still excited and looked forward to our training time. Sure we hit some snags on a couple of things but he was still happy getting through them. Now Chloe was a completely different matter. While she did some of the exercises as well as she did in novice it was obvious she wasn't enjoying it as she did previously. She had lost her "sparkle" no matter what I tried.

I have always felt competing should be a fun activity for both the handler & the dog. I made the decision to pull Chloe out of the open classes. I wanted to still do something with her one-on-one so I decided to try her out in agility. The wag is back in her tail and a bounce in her step. She is loving it and while we'll never compete in agility (my physical limitations, not hers) we are having a blast. Come springtime I may see how she reacts to open training again. Sometimes I think they just need a little break.

Perhaps take a little break from the open work and try some agility or rally-o for a change of pace.

 

[BarkingM*d]

How long are your training sessions? When you are in the ring you are only asking the dog for 10 minutes attention, so when you're training keep things short and fun too. Also some dogs hate working in hot weather so now we're heading into summer that could be a factor too.

You say you have removed the treats because of weight gain, what have you replaced the reward with?? (assuming she's finds food a high value reward it needs to be something of equally high value). "If the reward does not sufficiently justify the task performed descent will shortly follow..." I would reduce the size of the treats (rather than the quantity given), and reduce the size of the meals to compensate for the weight gain.

It may well be that your BC is simply bored of doing the same exercises over and over... Having a go at another dog sport Agility, Fly ball, Herding etc. which are all self rewarding to the dog is a really good idea. I find that obedience training helps to keep control in agility, and agility training helps to keep the enthusiasm in obedience. I train the two together and will release the dog from formal obedience exercises to perform agility obstacles to try and liven things up.

 

[sam]

ITA with everything Barking Mad said.

Are you varying your reinforcers? (food, praise, pats, tugging, retrieving) Do you use tugging as a reward? That's very fun and motivating for most dogs. Doing OB work for food can be incredibly boring esp to a dog like a border collie. If you work in short bursts with equal time spent playing they start to associate the fun of playing with the work and the work becomes reinforcing ie 30 second spent on an OB exercise, followed by at LEAST 30 seconds playing tug or retrieving. This is used commonly in agility where you don't want to load your dog down with food and slow them down, you want to rev them up and build drive and enthusiasm.

If your dog needs to lose weight, and has his food cut back he should be MORE enthused about working for treats. I would not reduce the amount of food I used in training (or would do so with care), although I might use different treats ie homemade liver treats, salmon treats, low cal Charlee Bears, smaller sized treats etc
I find I have to be very careful when I am thinning out a reward sheduel with my border collie- if it happens too fast, he thinks he has done something wrong and will start to offer different behaviors thinking that it's HIS performance that is resulting in lesser reward.
Have you ruled out a physical problem? Has anything else changed in your home that might be affecting the dog?