I needed a little inspiration today, so I found a clip from a Dog Whisperer episode where a dog has an obsession with rocks. This dog’s rock obsession is very similar to Ace’s ball obsession.
Anyway, Ace and I are making slight progress. I’m not sure if anyone else would notice the difference, but I am starting to see some change so that makes it worth it to me. For example, Ace will play with a ball or other toy on his own indoors without obsessively bringing it to me, and when we are outside he is able to ignore the ball once I tell him to “leave it.” He also responds well to me snapping my fingers and saying, “Hey.” These sounds redirect his mind where “leave it” is a command like “drop.”
This week, I tried some new challenges for Ace. Out at the park (not a dog park), I had him heel on my left while I swung the ball on my right. I threw the ball 15 feet ahead and made him continue to heel as we walked forward. He strained at the leash the first time, but the second and third time he was much better.
Next I had him sit and stay while I threw the ball about 20 feet ahead. I took a few steps back and called Ace so he had to make the choice to come to me instead of the ball. He did really well with this so I made it a step harder and tried calling him once he was already running after the ball. This was a mistake on my part because I was challenging him too much. When I called him, he ran about 20 feet away from me to the ball, but left it there and came running back. Although I was happy he didn’t pick up the ball, this was not the result I was looking for, so the next time I made sure to be close enough to grab his leash and reinforce the recall.
The third exercise I did was put the ball on the ground and walk directly over it with Ace. He had no problem ignoring the ball. I’ve noticed that when I look straight ahead, he looks straight ahead. But if I look down at the ball, he looks down at it too. I’ll keep that in mind when we approach other dogs, runners or kids on our walks.
When doing exercises like these, it works best to loop the clip end of Ace’s leash through the handle end (like a slip lead) and loop it around the highest part of his neck not attached to a collar. Because his coat is so short and smooth, his training collars slip to the strongest part of his neck where they are less effective when I need to be able to correct him right away. The Gentle Leader is pretty worthless for these exercises. Although he can’t really pull with it on, I’m not able to pop the leash when I want to correct him. Popping the leash helps him “snap out of it.”
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September 20th, 2008 at 9:21 am
It sounds like you are making good progress.
I saw that episode that you are referring to. I never saw a dog that was obsessed with rocks before that. I just kept thinking that the doggie’s teeth were probably going to be damamged.
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September 21st, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Yeah, no kidding! I’ve seen dogs that like to lick rocks or carry them around, but I’ve never seen one that obsessed. Ha.
September 21st, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Jessie had a habit of fetching rocks when we first adopted her and it had already worn her canines down pretty well before she came to us. We just redirected her attention to more appropriate objects and she left off the rock fetching. But, she wasn’t really obsessesive about the rock itself, just having something in her mouth to carry around. I’d hate to see the teeth on a dog that’s obsessed with rocks.
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