Articles about American Pit Bull Terrier
...to start reading this article from the beginning please click on here...d. then stand inside, a few feet away from here, say "here", and when he runs over to you, give him the treat. Do this 30 times. e. move to a new room with your dog, stand 5 feet away, repeat the above exercise f. then stand in another room, repeat 30 times g. then get a friend to hold your dog by the collar while you walk 15 feet away, then say "here", have your friend let go, and your dog should run over to you for his treat. Do this 30 times, then repeat a bunch of times in new environments. h. then continue, slowly increasing distance, doing LOTS of repetitions, never increasing distractions faster than you're certain your dog will run. You want your dog to learn an automatic association--the cue means TREAT (not--Mom is going to get all pissy at me and end all the fun, so who wants to go near her?) It sounds like this would take a lot of time, but it truly doesn't. It only takes five minutes to do 150 repetitions in the beginning. So if you do three sessions of five minutes each a day, you can get over 3000 repetitions in a week. In other words, in very little time you're talking about lots of reps. Step One: choose a consistent stimulus to use as your recall command. For most dogs, a sound is best because they can hear it even when they're not looking at you. For dogs that are deaf, there are two possibilities: a visual cue like a light flash or a touch cue like a remote controlled vibrating collar. The visual cue works well--but only if the dog sees it. The remote controlled vibrating collar is more difficult to acquire (basically, you have to make your own) but it's incredibly effective--even more effective, IME, than a shout or a whistle is for a dog with normal hearing. If you know that your dog is a unilateral deaf (deaf in one ear only), it may be more effective to use the vibrating collar. Being deaf in one ear means not being able to localize sounds very well and, especially at a distance, sounds seem to get bent somehow so that they don't sound the same. Most handlers who have dogs with normal hearing will probably choose a sound.
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