Clean Run - June 2017 - 14

Training Verbals
for Distance Work, Part 2
Connection Verbals

By Stacy Winkler, photos by author except where noted
BRONAGH DALY PHOTOGRAPHY

The first article in this series was in last month's Clean Run,
and I encourage you to read it before jumping into this one.
We discussed the importance of rewarding well and understanding how to create real value for behaviors along with
other training principles that will help accelerate the training
of your verbals as well as other behaviors.
We begin our verbals training with connection verbals the
first of which is your dog's name, a simple but often neglected part of training. Think about all the times you call
your dog and he ignores you. This cue needs to be strong,
not only from an agility perspective but also from a safety
one. At the same time we'll work on cues to call your dog to
either your right side or left side. This is one of my favorite
drills and incredibly handy for working on everything from
your dog's connection to you, understanding and valuing
body language, set up at the start line, proofing your sit-stay,
as well as being able to call your dog directly to your side as
you run on course.
Choose the names of your individual cues wisely. You can
use what I use or choose your own cues. Your choices should
be determined by whatever you feel is easy to say and
doesn't sound similar to any other cue you use. You don't
want any confusion.
Although I have a number of verbal cues, I do try to keep
things as simple as possible.

Your Dog's Name
We may think our dog's response to his name is awesome,
but we often make assumptions rather than taking a hard
look at what we really have.
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Let's take a look at what your dog understands. No judgment here, but you want to know your starting point to
know where you need to go with your training.
As soon as you use your dog's name does he:

❑
❑

Run back to you no matter the distraction.

❑

Turn his head in quick acknowledgment and then go
back to what he was doing.

❑

Ignore you completely until you either go get him
or call him three or four more times.

Come back to you after a pause but possibly not at all
if he is chasing something or playing with another dog.

My perfect picture for this behavior is that when I call my
dog's name he immediately leaves whatever he is doing, no
matter the distraction, and drives straight back to me. As
a caveat, I do use a shortened version of my dog's name to
mean something different on course. But if I use his full name
I expect him to come directly to me, do not pass go and so on.
It is basically my emergency call-off while I am on course.
Training Name Recalls in the House
If you have multiple dogs you may want to put them away
for your recall sessions; otherwise you are likely to have all
your dogs responding to your recall no matter whose name
you use (although if you have dogs that are safe together
you can use some healthy competition to enhance your
dog's value for coming back to you).
Here we go: grab some treats and then ignore your dog.
As soon as he turns away from you, call his name. When he
Clean Run | June 17

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - June 2017