Training

I've decided that I've let dog training go a bit.

As soon as I got Henry I was determined that he would be better trained than Fergus. It wasn't a case of not bothering with Fergus, goodness knows I spent a small mortgage on trainers and training clubs, but Fergus was a completely different kettle of fish, or dog biscuits.

All I want is to be able to let Henry off the lead and to have control over him so he can run free like he is made to do.

So for the last couple of days every time I've let Henry into the garden I've given him a small treat whenever I've called him to come in. This took a couple of goes to work as obviously the animals and smells beyond the garden fence are much more appealing to Henry than my calling him indoors. But once the penny dropped in Hen's head he started responding really well.

A couple of times I forgot the treat and he's pestered me like mad and I've wondered what he wanted and then I've remembered. I guess this means that he is probably taking the training even more seriously than me.

Taking things slowly so as not to bombard Hen with too much to different too soon I decided to try the treat thing on our walk today. It worked brilliantly. Every time I said his name he bombed back to me, looking me in the eye and got a treat.

I even tried calling him back when he was going away from me directly after getting a treat and he still came back. Excellent.

I did this lots of times during the walk and he seems to be getting the idea. So lets hope that with lots of practice (on my part) we will get to the ultimate thing of letting Henry run.

Once thing that I did think about at the end of the walk was that I noticed that Henry looks me right and straight in the eyes when he comes back to me. I know it sounds daft but I've never noticed this before so I'm going to make a point of making sure he sees me looking back at him in the eye too and maybe a connection will be made, who knows, it's worth a try.

Now I must go and stop Badger from destroying the robot hoover which this week he has decided to take a big dislike to and if he breaks it that will cause me masses of hard work!