dogcrazyjen wrote:I cant correct him for not eyeing me in the heel becuase of my inconsistancies as a trainer. I KNOW that sometimes ill verbally praise him or reward him without him looking at me. And thats just beucase sometimes i reward too late, or im not paying complete attention to what im doing, and on top of that sometimes im just an idiot. I created that problem so i have to deal with it not the dog.
Don't be so hard on yourself- we all can miss things and screw up timing on occasion! I don't think you HAVE to correct for no eye contact-just reward well FOR eye contact, and you should eventually get it.
I did see a difference in how we train, which I found interesting. You put the dog in the middle of lots of distractions, and correct the mistakes. I would have put the distractions far enough away that I didn't have to correct, then work slowely towards the distractions. Both work, just different approaches.
Great explainations. I am really trying to get other people's ideas on how their dogs work in protection, few are able or willing to give good explainations as you did. Thank you.
I have done the same as you with attention during heel. It makes it a lot easier long term to not have to spit food at the dog and such if heeling simply means both position AND eye contact.
I always call myself an idiot. Yeah i agree that heel while looking at me is alot easier to train initally then trying to back up down the road and basically retrain what the heel command is.