For those who don’t know, Frankie means the world to me. I know that probably sounds corny or whatever but it’s the truth, I would do anything for my boy. I believe that our bond is what allowed me to step away from my traditional beliefs regarding dog training, and to adopt new methods.
Frankie is not treat motivated at all. I could hold a hot dog or beef jerky in front of his face, and he could care less after the first bite. This surprised me at first because our other dog Lando would’ve jumped over a house if offered the same thing. But not Frankie, instead he merely sniffed it then looked the other way.
My question was, ‘how do you train a dog that doesn’t care about food?’. I remember getting so frustrated at Frankie for not caring about what I considered to be a high value dog treat while showing him. I soon figured out that he LOVED to play fetch, tug-of-war, or catch.
After some trial and error, I learned how to use tug-of-war to teach him to ‘come’, ‘stay’, and ‘heel’. The one thing that I learned early on was that if our bond wasn’t good or I micromanaged how he performed a trick; he would stop trying. I’m not saying that I don’t expect him to sit quickly when asked or to sit by my side when I ask him to, I’m just saying that I needed to not expect perfection at first. Once he got the concept of a trick and learned that performing it was fun, I could ask him to do it again until he showed some sign of improvement.
Frankie is now 3 years old and I’m just getting him back on track with his training. I used to think that when you get a puppy if you put a lot of work into training them then you’ll be home free once they were adults, as long as you trained them every now and then. But this was not the case with Frankie instead he seemed to be regressing.
Because Frankie is obeying me simply because he loves me and thinks that when I ask him to do something and he does it, it becomes a game. If I don’t maintain the trust and enthusiasm with him then he’ll stop obeying and move on to something more fun, like sniffing a bush or chasing a squirrel. Which is what he was starting to do since dog shows were cancelled and I started slacking on his training and playtime. He simply didn’t care that I was calling him or asking him to sit, he lost his signature bounce through the house and would mope in the bathroom (he loves sleeping in bathrooms for some reason:).
I knew I had to fix the problem when he rushed out the front door while we were visiting family, and he didn’t come back like he used to.
The day after we came home, I started working on his recall and heelwork and then took him for a walk. Some mornings when I wake up, I don’t feel very enthusiastic so instead of doing recall work I play fetch with him. Because I want to make sure that when we do recall work I’m engaged and making it fun for him.
At the end of the day you know your dog better than anyone, so take some time and figure out what drives your dog. Whether it be a certain treat, or toy, or that they just want to please you. Find out what works for you because what works for someone else’s dog might not work for yours. I know that if I tried to teach Frankie with just treats, he wouldn’t be giving me the amount of enthusiasm he does.
Basically, I wanted to teach Frankie with mostly reward based training because I want him to obey me not because he fears a consequence, but because he wants to. I know that it won’t work in every situation so I’m not totally against correction. I just want a correction to be more meaningful and to not nitpick every wrong thing he does. Frankie’s not perfect and I know that, but he’s pretty darn close (in my own eyes:). I love having a dog that dances beside me when he wants attention, who chooses to play with me instead of doing his own thing, to me that’s the joy of dog ownership.
Raising up Aussies 
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