| I know very little....
hello... :)
I know very little, so I can't help much in actually telling you *what* to do, but I'll still chime in some things I have learned in my training.
1) definitely aim to make training FUN! I would take a step back-- because this dog must not understand what you want from it. SOOO... forget about corrections for a week. Get excited about training. Figure out a way to get the dog to sit-- probably without showing him a treat-- and definitely without luring him into position (except maybe once or twice to get him going...). And PRAISE like you have never praised before in your life. My dogs *favorite* time of the day is training time. She likes it better than her walks. I bet if you're doing forced eye-contact with your dog he can't think too highly of training time. So... take time to build the excitement again, I think this will help in everything you try to do from here on out. I believe dogs do better when they *want* to, over when they *have* to. Not to say there isn't room for corrections, but lay the foundations of *want* firmly first!!!
2) Seems like somehow the dog is waiting for the food lure. As you're going through step 1, and retraining the whole thing. Make sure you give the food as a reward and not as a lure. They say to get the best behavior you go 1) lure into position 2) reward every time 3) go to variable reward 4) start rewarding *only* the *best* examples of the behavior until you're back to step 2, then repeat (3, 4, 2, 3, 4, 2....).
3) also remember dogs are very situational. They always say the dog learns a behavior for a specific place. That is, they can sit perfect at home. But become a complete bonehead in the back yard. It's not because they're stupid or spiteful, it's just because dog generalize very poorly. It is the trainers responsibility to work the dog in a variety of locations, and each time build the behavior up appropriately. My guess is the dog was never allowed to do a "bad" sit at school-- so it only has one type of behavior ingrained for school-- but it has learned 3 or 4 behaviors for home, and some of them you don't like. I think the best way around this-- especially for a puppy is to reteach the whole thing from scratch with lots of excitement like I tried to describe in 1.
good luck...
chloe  |