Head Shy

Evening

We have noticed that Otis seems to be a little head shy as whilst we were in class tonight we had to do a recall. The instructor tried to hold Otis by his collar until we were ready to call him and he wasn't having any of it wanted to pull away and really wasn't overly happy about staying with Chris for 2 minutes.

Any ideas on how to improve this as for the kennel club silver an external examiner will want to handle Otis (which is a long way off as we are only doing bronze) and we also want him to be happy with it in everyday life.

He is more than happy to go to people he knows and if someone comes in the office now he lets them make a fuss once he has finished telling us there is someone there

Cheers as always

I think you're just taking it a little too quickly for him. If he has to be held before you call him then he isn't ready yet!

Work on the sit stay, with just going one pace away & then calling him & then gradually increase the distance. If he fails at any time, just go back to the previous success stage & try again.

P.S. I don't think he's head shy, just a little anxious still about being left with somebody else.

Do you have any really good friends, people you know very well and can trust, who could help with training Otis, that way he will get used to different people handling him even if they just help with walking and putting his collar and lead on and off.

I've not the experience with the training side that others have, so in no way meant to be in opposition to what Caryll and Kathy have said ....

Chiquito is happy to go to/wait with anyone but does not like his collar being held, we are working on this with positive praise/treats while his collar/neck is being held/touched/played with. (I had never really thought about it before but previously the only time I had held his collar was to correct him and I think that he now associates that touch/hold with being stopped from doing something/restrained and so therefore moves to avoid it/pulls away)

Yes I think you are quite right Caryll about him being anxious with someone else, I think it must have been a little scary getting taken by the instructor. I will ask next time if we can try a sit stay as he will do it and it's something we practise on the field when we are playing with his frisbee. But I will take it slow and won't do it until he is ready.

It's something that they do with all the dogs in the class so I guess I just went along with it if you know what I mean, but I will pipe up next time and we will have a go.

Thanks Kathy I will give it a go and source out a friend I think what I would like is to make sure that when it does come to that time, which is a looonnnggg way off, he will be ready and calm with an examiner checking him over, like eyes, ears, mouth, body.

Thanks as always for the help

Holding the collar is a problem I've had with Daisy, it has been part of the problem with her recall because as soon as you reach out to be able to clip the lead on the collar she moves away, or turned her head away. Even when I offered her the treat she wasn't interested.

At the training classes I went to was advised to just hold her collar and give her a treat, lots of times without then expecting anything else from her. She is much better now, not 100% but much better Don't know if that helps but thought I'd share!