Well done everyone.

Well first day of whistle training with Louie - all breakfast was with held til he'd some 10 minutes. And he picked it up - except he's not good with a ball in his mouth - gotta work on that one. Even Benjie picked it up quickly and I only let him out to the toilet - he tends to ignore whatever me and Louie are doing even with food involved.

So two doggies - almost whistle recall trained - I say almost cos it'll take me weeks to perfect it - I keep making little mistakes.

Well done everyone I've been meaning to whistle train Cain's recall, I have the whistle but I haven't used it yet.

I just received Turid Rugaas "My dog pulls: what do I do" and read it through. As Cain doesn't get off lead every day unless I can get an empty park he tends to be a bit wound up and full of energy - it makes him so over excited that he struggles to not pull on the lead. I've used every method in the book but he will will still inch and inch forward and end up pulling. It makes walking him a misery. However tonight I first tried the method in this book and it worked wonders First I tried it in the house, then the garden, then as it was going so well I took him out on the street around the block. He hardly pulled at all I think partially he was just in a cooperative mood but I'm really pleased with him. I used to look at people with pully dogs and think "god, why don't you train them!"....then I got Cain who has proved incrediably difficult to train to walk nicely. It's literally been a year and we still haven't cracked it (although hrs loads better than he was), however I feel like we really got somewhere today. I hope it lasts

Wow congratulations to everyone. Amazing how you have brought your dogs on so well putting in lots of time and effort. Well done all.

Have to brag about Lana who had a habit of lunging and barking at people. At the start of the snow she was worse as so many people wore black coats and either had hats or their hoods up. We managed to overcome that but she was still lunging and barking at people when we were out in the dark.

Had her out last night and tonight and we passed lots of people, many with loaded carrier bags or carrying other things and she was fine with them all.

I am so pleased, now I am hoping I can stop her reacting to dogs. It would be great if she didn't react to cats but I think that would be asking for a miracle so I won't hold my breath on that one

Great to hear that everyone is doing so well I've been following this thread but never really had anything to chime in with until today!

We had our first session with a behaviourist last week, regarding Molly's aggression to strangers in the home and also her issues with guarding in the garden and the impact this has on my ability to call her back into the house. I haven't had any luck getting her inside on command since about mid July but today she came when called three times and each time she was focused enough to sit while I attached a lead, got her to do a trick, then unclipped it and let her go and play.

Admittedly the success was short lived as she spotted a person walking in the park next to our house and was then not interested but it's a start!

SLB - Have been very interested in following your whistle training as this is the next step our behaviourist is getting us to take with regards to Molly's recall So far we're still at the 'charging it up in the house' stage but fingers crossed she'll pick it up as quickly as your lot seem to have!

How are you stopping Molly guarding in the garden? Cain rockets around it in circles jumping up the fences, not good especially as summer is coming and our neighbours will be out more. I want to stop it but even if he sits and waits calmly before I open the door, as I release him he bombs out there like a bat out of hell! I'd be interested to know wgat your trying

A very early days step but Lilly went to her crate last night without any fuss and didn't hear a peep out of her all night. Night before last she kept me up till 4am.
lil step back, she pooped in her crate and had to have a bath before breakfast (shes still not speaking to me but gone off to suck up to my daughter instead for cuddles ).

Well Done all , have to add to today , Toms recall in the field even when he had his ball to play with was 100% I need to bite the bullet and trust him given he has managed this now for a number of months and to test him out and about in a controlled situation to start with , he comes back on one call and treats are now not used , he is happy to come back for a bit of fuss , do you think we are ready for the next stage ?

Well done to all the regulars and the newbies achieving their fantastic results, it's a joy to read!

Hi Amanda, I honestly don't think you can stop the charging outside bit, coz as my hubby always says to me when I tell mine off for doing it "they're only doing their job", and Cain probably stops after the initial blast at whoever, just like mine do. I would start doing an "oi" after a few seconds just to let him know, that's enough, or even say "that's enough" coz it usually stops mine, but they DO like to have that initial moment coz they really do think they're in charge!

We're still doing fine, we've met loads of dogs, sometimes I've put her onlead for awkward corners of the field coz somebody might pop out of the woods, and other times, dogs have approached us from behind, and sadly, I don't have eyes in the back of my head, but so far, so good, no punch ups have ensued! There was one collie that she was dying to have a pop at who came over to us snapping and snarling, but thankfully she was onlead, I told her to leave it, told her with me and she then ignored it whilst it ambled back to its owner. Yesterday, we had a huuuuge boxer appear from behind, and Georgie went up to it coz he was lagging behind and offlead, and Zena just ignored it coz she wanted me to throw the ball which she'd plonked in front of me, so actually, that was a really big achievement, she didn't chase it off coz it had invaded our space, and that was good enough for me coz she was offlead at the time I just didn't see it, and of course, the owner was NOwhere!!!!

Now, this morning on our walk, 6 joggers were coming down the track we were crossing over to, and I did wonder coz she has always ignored the odd jogger, but 6 of them we hadn't encountered before so I was on alert. What did she do? She stopped before the track, turned around to wait for me, hubby and Georgie, and totally, utterly ignored them! No big deal I know, but it was a first for us, but seeing as she has no objection to people entering our space I suppose it was to be expected that she'd just ignore them. Had it been 6 dogs, then that would have been another matter!!!

That's exactly what Molly does, I've never met anyone else whose dog does that! We're pretty much doing it how you would try to train a recall outside.

We keep her on a very thin, lightweight longline and started by letting her career around the garden as normal, but everytime she ran towards us, me and my mum got in front of her to create a little barrier so she couldn't run straight past, crouched down a bit so we looked interesting and gave her some Polish sausage when she got to us. Then whenever she got the sausage we paired it with a command.

Sadly this only really works if she's calm enough to pay attention to what we're doing. Unfortunately if there's anyone else walking past the house or she hears another dog, she goes back to guarding the garden and there's nothing we can do to get her back. To combat this, we're hoping to swap onto eventually using a whistle in the garden but so far we're still 'charging it up' in the house.

I can't really pin point why this method is working for us because we've tried similar things before and they've never worked. I think the trick to it was to have someone 'new' (the behaviourist) with us the first time we tried it because that meant Molly was already quite interested in what was going on and kept coming up to us to see the new person.

Congratz everyone! Some good progress going on

Well, still having the issues with our little 'set back' mentioned previously but I have a full week and a half off work as of Wednesday so going to put the ours in and try and sort it using the methods suggested by some clever Dogsey members

But I have to mention the major achievement we've had on the past few walks (when we've finally left the house... ) she seems to have stopped barking/lunging at people and is becoming a lot more trusting The last few people we've met on our walks she's either ignored completely or approached cautiously and accepted a bit of a fuss (followed by major fuss from me for being a good girly!)

Hopefully she'll continue on this path and I'll have a pup who likes meeting strangers one day!!!

xoxox