# Nightly training/excersises.



## janz99 (Aug 23, 2010)

Hey guys, is there any specific training excersises that you do every night with your puppy? We have a six month old girl and id like to switch it up for her and start training a somthing new, or different for her to learn. 

Right now every night before she goes to bed, we go through the sit, lay down, stay, kennel, bed, shake a paw, high five, and just overal have some fun with the commands and treats. Id like to introduce the heal command, but im not really sure how to. She walks fairly well on a leash, with minimal pulling, but would like her to actually come to heal on command without me having to bring her there. 

Ryan


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## Chestersmum (Jun 21, 2010)

You could introduce clicker training and start building her 'tricks' up. I found some books really helpful as I ran out of ideas to teach my V! For example to get her brain working and you can do inside is teach her to tip something like a bin over (maybe think before you teach in case she starts doing it with your kitchen bin!). Place the bin in the middle of the floor and just sit back with the clicker. If she goes near it C&T, then again then again, then ask for more like a nudge of it C&T, eventually you can build her up until she works out to get the treat she needs to tip it over. I would probably take her a fair amount of time. I like these build up exercises as the dog needs to work it out for themselves with no actions from you apart from a C&T when they start to do what you would like. A 6 months she might get a bit bored after a while so short exercises at first. 

Not sure if you wanted to introduce some gundog training? It's a bit harder in the house but you could practice whistle commands, recall, stop etc. You could get a dummy and teach the retrieve but make sure she leaves the dummy until you tell her to set off on the retrieve. 

A close heel would be good to teach inside. I usually use a treat as incentive. Say the word 'heel' usually tap your side to get her attention then walk off. If you have her attention on the treat walk around changing direction then every so often break off and praise.


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## Ozkar (Jul 4, 2011)

Another old thread..... But it has been wet here the last three days. Really wet. Some may have seen on the news that pretty much the East Coast of Australia is flooding and the rain has not stopped yet, so it's going to get worse.

Hence, I have had to watch the radar and skies and pick my times to take the dogs out walking. So instead of the normal 3 or 4 hours, it's been 1-1.5 hours off lead. 

So, to balance things out, we have been doing lots of indoors training and playing of games. They will come to me to see if I will take them out for a walk. I will take them out into the back yard and they will agree and come back inside once they get a little rain on them. Then they will bring me a toy and we either play or do some training. 

"Find" tires them out the best. Just using little pieces of dry kibble. 20 minutes of that is almost as good as a walk. Just finished one then and both are sound asleep now.  

Thankfully, it is going to dry up for an hour or two this afternoon so I can give them a run/swim. The lake is flooded. The walkway is about 9 foot under water. Yesterday, there was just one strip of dry land around the top of the dam wall to walk on. The rest was water. Anyways, wet weather games are good fun and while not a walk, can keep a lid on A V for a day or two till the weather fines up somewhat. (BTW, we are not talking normal rain here, if you haven't seen the reports, we seriously are under water almost all across the east coast. It's been torrential rain. So many of the places we walk, are under water. So it's not me being slack. We don;t mind walking in the rain, when we don't have the worry of being swept away  )


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## redbirddog (Apr 23, 2010)

Ozkar,
I'm working with a gentleman in his mid 70's with a lab. We met up in the hills. Poor guy didn't have a clue what to do with this lab.

Here is a drill. 9-3 and 10-2.

Ginger spent much of the time behind the owner. He really didn't know where she was much of the time. He'd call her and she'd pop up. He had no control.

In three walks we practices 9-3 / 10-2. When Ginger would get at 9 or 3 on the clock, I told my "student" to whistle her forward. Never letting her get behind him. That required that he pay attention to where the dog was. Ideally, a hunting dog should be between 10-2 on the clock. That is where a hunting dog belongs.

You may already practice this but within the three "lessons" Ginger "got it" and stayed up front between 10 and 2 for the most part, and if she fell back to 9 and 3, he whistled her forward and encouraged her when she did.

Happy trails,
RBD


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## Ozkar (Jul 4, 2011)

Dogs are smart aren't they!!! ;D ;D


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## texasred (Jan 29, 2012)

Being she already knows Down, you could teach her to Roll Over or Crawl on command.


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## laurita (Jun 12, 2011)

Another fun one is tying a rope to a door and teaching your dog the "tug" command. Mine loves opening the door. At first, they'll close it accidentally and get frustrated, but it's so darn cute. 

I worked on the word "tug" first by having the rope in my hand and having mine put it in his mouth and pull, then I used the "word" to coin the command, then I tied it on the door knob and used the word to get it in his mouth, then I'd position myself outside the door while encouraging him to tug. Otherwise you can put a little piece of cheese on the other side to entice her.

Also, touching a target is a good one. Pick any item that will be your target and every time the dog touches it with her nose, she gets treated. She'll come back to you and try and figure out what she's supposed to do to get treated and you can point to the item and say "target" or whatever word and it's great to see it click that tapping it with their nose means a treat. I am using cones to try and teach my dog left and right so that when I say the word he has to touch the cone with his nose to get a treat. Right now I have to point to help him out because I don't do it as often as I should!


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## Hbomb (Jan 24, 2012)

you may have done this already but 'leave it' is quite a good one. Get her to sit/stay and put a treat down, then make her wait till you say 'ok' before she gets the treat. If she goes for it, lift the treat up and put her back where she was and starts again. 

We do this one with all of hercules' meals as well. It is quite funny as sometimes he will have a little 'standing tantrum' where he will jump backwards when we put the food/treat down. He doesn't get it till he's good though!


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## born36 (Jun 28, 2011)

An advanced exercise on the back of Hbomb's suggestion is to get the pup to sit and wait. While they are doing this walk around and hide treats or kibble and then when happy to release them say find it and them go around finding all the bits you have hidden. 
My pup loves this game. We started with one room and now he sits while I go all around the ground floor of our house hiding bits. It is great watching his focus as he goes all around sniffing for the rewards.


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