Excitement V's Unmotivated

Rippler · Excitement V's Unmotivated

I have a 7 month old GSP bitch who gets so excited when retrieving her dummys etc that she will not sit still by my side, and will not shut up (whine) until I send her. I have beeen stood waiting for her to shut up for 20 mins before I could send her for her retrieve. I know that she is young but will she ever shut up!!!!

On the other hand my 4 yr old Weimeraner bitch clearly is unmotivated when it comes to retrieving dummies after a season of retrieving game. How can I get the sparkle back into her?
She also has a bad habit of dropping the dummy 5 yards short of me....Any ideas to overcome this?

It is like one extreme to another with my two, but find it easier with the motivated pup than the unmotivated Weimer, however fun I make it.

Any advice would be beneficial.

Mark

lagopuslagopus

Have you tried carrying visible dummies with you wherever you go so that it just becomes something normal rather than her knowing that when you have it there is going to be a retrieve?

windem bang

My honest opinion is that your g.sp. is unlikely to ever shut up. If this was an easy fault to cure a lot of labradors and other breeds which are rejected for trialling purposes because they are prone to whining would be running in trials and possibly winning. Very often it is the keenest dogs that whine in a retrieve situation.

Your weimy. is behaving in what is to many dogs a sensible manner. It has done the real thing ,it has retrieved the real thing. Why should it go back to doing boring puppy stuff?

I have seen several F.T. winner labs. that when sent for dummies would almost stroll out and yawn while doing it!!

Also watch out for your dog "blinking" dummies if it is not already doing so, this behaviour is common to this type of dog.

I would suggest keeping the weimy. on a leash for a couple of weeks. NO free running, NO hunting for these dissipate its energy. When it is "fit to bust" wanting to do something,ANYTHING !!! THEN give it a retrieve to do ! Make it an easy to find one but at fairly long range to try to give the dog real pleasure at being allowed to run and DO something again.

If all else fails , take it pigeon or rabbit shooting !

W.B.

munstyman

Mark,
I see where your coming from RE: not sending the GSP until she's quiet, but ironically you could be exacebating the `excitement/ anticipation' in the mind of the dog. What might be worth a try is to continually throw the dummy and retrieve it yourself. If you do it without fuss or ceremony and basically use the exercise as steadyness training, praising for this alone. ( do not reward with a retrieve when it remains quiet or you will be back to square one). When it can do this exercise several times without whining give the dog a retrieve mid way through the exercise and then return to picking it up yourself.
If you balance this with a few send back retrieves or blinds (depending on experience) when the dogs attention should be on Heal work and not focused on the retrieve when it is placed, and you should train/praise for the heal not the retrieve accordingly, where necessary doing the retrieve yourself here too.
With regard to the older dog I agree with W.B. Although that old chestnut of the dog retrieving preference game/dummies is more down to handler attitude than the dogs IMO. Wink

Peter

Rippler

Thanks for your replies.
I will try a few of these ideas out over the next coming weeks and get back to you. Fingers crossed!!!

Mark Wink

tashap

my weimaraner goes flat after the season and I tend not to do any retrieving with her at all for about a month after that I start to set her up to do searches rather than thrown retrieves and only the odd one here and there another couple of weeks I go back to setting her up for a proper retrieve on a thrown dummy, she normally gets the hang of things again.

The only thing I do know that I need to practise again is stop whistle at distance, during the season we don't bother stopping because she's good at what she does and there is no need to use it but competing again and we've forgotten all we've learnt

Rippler

That sounds like a good idea. My weimer is a fantastic hunter and really enjoys searching for the dummies. Its the bringing back that is the boring bit. I will try your method.

As for the STOP whistle, I also don't tend to use it much when working however, every walk that I go on, I will use the STOP whistle in order for her to stay tuned.

Mark