| Re: what makes a dog stop working?
How old is this dog?
SOme times the dog does indeed need a break especially if you have been training him a lot. Always remember that the dog should work for very long (a few minutes is plenty) and not every day. Further you may need to up the motivation or look closer are your training making sure that the dog is and has been working harder and harder each time to get his motivation. Further to this it may also be time to put some compulsion to make sure he does it no matter what (depends on what you want, if you are happy with routine OB for trials then it is ok but if you want lifestyle OB as well then it is in all likelyhood time to change). You also speak of that he is working nice on the sleeve then maybe you should drop that into the OB. I train loads of dogs OB using the sleeve.
In the end the dog looses motivation because of what you are doing and working too long, not using high enough motivation, not making the dog work harder and harder on a upward sclae etc all can create this. In the end I would go back to resting the dog for a week or so then doing real short bursts of OB (I really only train my dogs for 3-4 minutes at a time) with good motivation that the dog will go harder and harder for.
Mick.  |