Gaining respect

[fbkeays]

Fizbin has been blowing me off on a few things. In herding he isn't listening 100%. His stops are intermittent or slows down to a creep. His stays are not reliable. Except for those things he is a well behaved sweet boy. In the house he does what I say. If he is on the couch, just one word and one word only and he is off.
After a lot of though, I think that he doesn't have total and complete respect for me. He plays the good, well behaved dog most of the time. No dominance issues, except the above examples of not listening.
I am trying to find ways to get the respect back. So no couch time at all. He already has to heel and do a short stay for his dinner. He has to sit before coming in from outside. If we are going some where, he has to do a sit stay in the garage while I open up the van. I either have him do a recall or heel him to the van. Except for the couch time, I really don't know what else to do to show I am in charge. He needs to know when I say stay I mean stay no matter what, not when it is convient for him.
Ideas?

[Mick Trainer]

I do not see this as a dominance issue at all but more one of showing a hole somewhere in his training of these excercises. The fact that he did it once but does not anymore does not necessarily mean that he is does not have respect for you but more likely shows that he has desire to do the task alternate to what you are requesting of him and feels that he can get away with not doing it. This is not the same as dominance but is rather a sign that he is thinking his way around the training and has identified a hole.

As to what to do you have 2 options. The first is to try a quick fix and plug the hole with some training that will make it unpleasant for him to refuse to obey or alternativly (and usually better, with better long term results) go back and reteach these commands etc and then bring them into the scenario you are trying to get him to perform.

I don't see that altering the way you are handling him in the house etc will have any true bearing in the way he is behaving in this case.

Mick.

[Muckdogs]

If it were me, and I have encountered the same problems, I would go back and retrain the exercises motivaitonally. In my case, I would bring out the heavy guns, meaning that I would use his favorite object, and make him work for that until I achieved the desired results. As Mick said, you can patch the work using compulsion, but the picture will not be as good, nor will the results be as long lasting. Sometimes going back is a pain, but usually worth it.