a musing...

[E13]

One of our dogs is manic - full of energy, really excitable, goes crazy for visitors, yaps in excitement and spins on the spot at walk-time, you name it. He would be great at agility, he can leap from standing with four feet in the air, jump high, he is very agile! But he can't walk to heel, and knows what 'come' means but won't off-lead, he just wants to run and explore. He's just too excited by everything to listen, his ears go down and he's off.

My musing is - what mental activities could I try with him? He's very intelligent, with a good nose though he's not trained to use it. Also any insight on how to rectify the lead-pulling and lack of recall. He's a CKCS. And I do realise he probably needs more exercise (our other dog needs less, can get tired). I wish we could take him to agility classes, but he's not obedient enough!

ETA: he's seven this year (the sod still thinks he's a puppy)!

 

[CorvusCorax]

To get *anything* out of him, walking to heel and recall, you need focus and that will come through whatever motivates him, ball, toy, food, I use hand feeding and only produce toys when I get the behaviour I want.
You won't be able to do *any* discipline with him if he won't walk to heel or recall so start with the basics.

If he is used to whipping himself up in a frenzy and self reward, over many years, those will be hard habits to break.
So start with the basics, get him to calm down and look at you, no progress or forward movement or reward until he does that, and the rest should follow.

You could look into scentwork/discrimination/tracking if he seems to have a good nose. I wouldn't start doing high impact stuff like agility at his age, but that's just a personal thing x