Please can I have some advice from you lovely AAD people?!

[alidegg]

Hello everyone, I'm a bit of a lurker on here but always read the threads in AAD with particular interest- you all seem so knowledgable!

As a family we have always had springers and have loved every one of them. Our current girl is great; affectionate, friendly and very loyal too! We love her to bits! However, she is extremely fussy about her food (the opposite to how her mother was!) and we find it really hard to find things she likes that don’t cost a bomb! We have also struggled to find a way of rewarding her when she is good and therefore she has been pretty trick to train- she is great at walking or cycling (!) to heel and we get lots of admiring comments about how well trained she is when we go out, but the reality is she is very hard to get to sit/ lay/ come back when asked. She does it after a while but it is far from instantaneous!
She is fantastic out shooting- we only go to local friendly shoots- but she just knows what to do and apparently does it bloody well! Until its time for her to come back to me; once she’s on "a trail" then thats her priority and what I want her to do is very far down her to-do list! She brings game back to Dad fine but if we're beating it’s another story! And because I have nothing that she wants I don’t know how I can praise her when she does come back- does anyone have any ideas?

We have tried so many things- cheese, sausage, chunks of beef even but she’s just not fussed! What she really loves is catching things, be it mice, rats, moor hen or even once a fox :O But she won’t consider chasing a ball, she just looks at it as if to say "do you think I'm totally stupid?"! She NEVER eats what she catches but just kills it and then gives it to me!

If any of you lovely folk have any suggestions about what I can encourage good behaviour with I would be extremely grateful! Thank you for reading, A x

 

[CorvusCorax]

For some dogs, praise, OTT praise, I mean, really, silly, rolling on the ground, high-pitched goofiness, is enough.

Have you actually tried training her to like the ball?
A lot of people give their dogs toys and then say 'he's not interested'. When nothing has been done to make the toy interesting. It's a lump of plastic.

Those balls-on-ropes are a godsend and I trained my dog to like it.
By constantly keeping it active, by teasing him with it, by appearing really interested in it myself, hiding it behind my back or putting it in a drawers when he seemed bored by it, then whipping it out and going 'ooooh? what's this?' for even ten minutes, a few times a day.
Now he goes mad for it.

Also, is she ever hungry when you are trying her with food?
I never train on a full stomach and I ask my dogs to work for their food.
You can hand feed, where you tip the morning or evening allowance into an old jacket pocket and feed by hand out of the pocket, so the dog identifies you as being the source of food rather than a bowl on the floor and all the good stuff comes from you and only when she exhibits the behaviour you want.

My male also works for the 'free' command...so come do a bit of heelwork, distance commands, track for an article, once that is done, freeeeeee! Of you go and play.
Then you come back, you do what I ask, then you get more free.

I wouldn't be too hard on yourself, she obviously has high drive and a good nose, she walks and cycles to heel, you've done pretty well so far.

 

[kirstyhen]

My male also works for the 'free' command...so come do a bit of heelwork, distance commands, track for an article, once that is done, freeeeeee! Of you go and play.
Then you come back, you do what I ask, then you get more free.

This is what works for my Springer. He lives for running around, so we do training in very very short, intensive bursts during our walks.
He has ten minutes of hooning around, then has to do what i want - stop, go left, stop, go right, come back, sit, stay, heel, etc. If we're working on something in particular I'll get him to do it 4 or 5 times in quick succession - then he gets to go for another hoon. If he doesn't do what he's told then he goes on the lead/walks at heel for a while.