Week 1 Luring or Food Reward Exercises (1) Name/Attention, (2) Lured Sit, (3) Lured Down, (4) Send to Place, (5) Circle Place

EXERCISE 1  Their Name Meaning Attention to You in Distractions:

NOTE:  THE FIRST FOUR EXCERCISES CAN BE DONE IN A LURING SESSION BY ROTATING THEM.  IF YOU ARE HAVING TROUBLE WITH ONE, YOU CAN SEPERATE THAT OUT FOR ANOTHER SESSION LATER.

STEP 1:  Your puppy should be on their 6' lead and a collar.
STEP 2:   Be sure you are prepared with  kibble in your hand  BEFORE giving a command.
STEP 3:  Say your puppy's name.
STEP 4A:   Immediately upon your dog looking into your face (and not glancing immediately away), say your release word "yes" and deliver the food reward as you release them.
STEP 4B:   If they do not look to you, first try calling their name again.   Give them a few seconds in between so you aren't just rapidly firing off their name.   If they are just really enamored of something other than you, you could try to gently tug on their leash and see if they will turn.   You could also try to make a silly noise after you say their name.   Usually though, once they know what the deal is with the food reward, it does not take more than three times to get them to look at you.
STEP 5:   You can either repeat this exercise from STEP 1 or start doing a sit or down rep (as described below).

Repeat for approx 10-15 repetitions.   If it becomes too easy for them in a distraction, you can start putting toys around her ET to ensure they gets distracted.   The first week is usually very light on distractions around the puppy though.

EXERCISE 2  Lured Sit: (remember we don't say the command sit at this point until her bum hits the ground and her two front feet are also on the ground)

STEP 1:  Take the treat and hold it right up to their nose (do not snatch it away if they jump or keep it far from their nose).
STEP 2:  Then you move the treat past their head and over their rump area.    Make sure they follows your hand and that you do not move it too quickly.
STEP 3:   Once their bum is on the floor and their two front feet are also on the floor, give them the food reward and say "sit".

Repeat for approx 10-15 repetitions each session.

EXERCISE 3  Lured Down:

STEP 1:  Start your puppy off in the sit position.
STEP 2: Holding the treat in front of their nose, move your hand down to the floor (slowly make sure the nose is following, and then on the ground away from her).   If it does not work the first time, you can just set your puppy up and begin again.   Remember to move the treat slowly and near your puppy's nose.   You want your puppy's nose following your hand and the treat into position.   If  your puppy has a real hard time with this, you can warm her up or just do the luring under your bent leg on the floor for the down at first.
STEP 3:   Once the puppy is in a down position, give her the food reward as you say down.

Repeat for approx 10-15 repetitions each session.

EXERCISE 4 Send to Place :

THE VERY BEGINNING OF THE PLACE (STEP 1):

STEP 1:   Position your place equipment in the middle of the room.
STEP 2:  Start walking your dog around the room.
STEP 3:   Walk  with your dog over the place area.   When all four paws are in the place, say "place".
STEP 4:   Repeat step three from every angle of the place mat or bed (remember dogs can totally interpret something as "just from this direction", so help them to learn to generalize the command by doing this).
STEP 5:  After several (15 or so) repeats of this, stop short of the mat, and see if the dog is ready to step on themselves.  

SEND TO PLACE (STEP 2):

STEP 1:  You still have a leash and collar on your dog.   The place (board, mat, dog bed) item is in the middle of the room so you can walk around it, and use all sides to place your dog (so that they do not generalize).
STEP 2:   Now as you approach the place, from a couple of steps away from the boarder of the "place item", extend your arm and point as you say "place" before the dog walks onto the place (different than before as you were saying place as you walked over with your dog, and only when the four paws were on the mat).
STEP 3:  If your dog does not make it onto the place themselves, use the collar lead and your body language (IE nudge into the direction) to help your dog to the place mat.   Be sure once there, that all four of their paws are on it.   If paws are sticking out beyond the boarder, just place your feet near them.   If they try to walk off and you catch them early, you can normally just move towards them quickly, and they will walk back onto the place area. 

STEP 4:  I do this until I can get three sets of four sends in a row that don't need prompting or correction.   Once this has started, this usually takes 5-7 minutes.  Later I use it as a warm up for Circle Place.

EXERCISE 5 Circle Place: 

Add to above directions for send to place, but now you are concentrating on circle place.

STEP 5:  Once all four dog feet are on the place board, and your dog remains in whatever position he/she wants to, hold your six foot leash  (this is so your dog can't dart away and have a game of chase), and circle close to the boarders of the place item (mat, board, dog bed).   When a successful circle has been made, you can tell your dog "good place" and give them a scratch under the chin (or food reward) "yes" break and lead your dog off the place board.   You can tell him/her that this was very good.   You should only leave the place board once the performance has been good (IE you made circles around them very closely).

Goal is to build this up to at least a minute.  The biggest goal is to get four in a row of whatever time you have selected.   So if your puppy keeps breaking, then you need to probably reduce the time.



Homework Notes:  Basically with puppies it's a little less formal as far as reps go.   It is important that they do NOT go flat or get bored.   So if that happens, I usually take note at about how much time passed before that happen.   Then I shorten the next session.   With puppies, I generally do three to four 15 minute sessions spread during the day.   Often I do these at feeding times with the puppy, and use their breakfast or lunch as the lures.   

Also I will generally do about 10 to 15 reps of each exercise.   Also I usually use a fifteen minute interval to do no more than two commands, and one sometimes is plenty.