
I had up untill recently the best behaved dog on a walk I've ever had. Buster (Mastiff) is now 14 motns old, last week he was a nightmare on his walk, getting over-excited at everything (people & dogs) nearly pulling me over as he just wanted to play with everything and completely ingnoring me & the treats I was trying to use to distract him :(
The next day I took little cubes of cheese with me (his favorite), he saw a person, before he had chance to get excited I showed him I had cheese and told him to 'walk' (that means to him, walk on slack lead and ignore everything!!) - it worked, he walked perfectly but kept looking at me waiting for his cheese (so he had it). The next day he saw a person went to pull and I could see him restrain himself & look at me, I said 'good boy, walk', gave him his cheese and we carried on with him ignoring the person.
I don't let him off-lead due to his size (the look of him can frighten people half to death :( ), I keep him on a long-line and have been practicing his re-call with cheese, I have been fucusing on trying to call him back from interesting smells, reward him for coming back then letting him go & sniff again, he has been doing great to the point that 50% of the time now, when his finds a nice smell, he will automatically come back to me for cheese!!
He is back to being perfect when walking past kids, yesterday we walked along a path, there was several children riding thier bikes, jumping on & off of the pavement in front of us & riding all around us, (so close that we had to stop still at one point or we would have been hit!!), as soon as I saw the kids I told Buster to 'walk' and gave him several verbal rewards as we walked, once we had passed the kids I gave him cheese. Buster walked on a slack lead, head next to my leg, looking ahead only to turn & look at me when I said 'good boy' - bless he looked so proud of himself.
I am aiming for distraction & reward - Am I doing it right? I know I can get him to do anything if I have cheese with me - is it really this easy? I am I am taking the recent excitable behaviour as adolescence.