The HOLD Part 2

The nitty gritty…

Yesterday I was training a client’s dog at the park and we were dealing with a small dog that would get so irate at other dogs walking by that she could hardly contain herself – the dog that is. We repeated some basic obedience exercises over and over for a period of 90 minutes and the dog eventually was able to accept the presence of the other dog(s).

The reason I bring this up is because no matter how often I tell people that training must be patiently repeated over and over until the dog understands, people usually give up.

Recently we started teaching Duane the HOLD. This process can easily be covered in one video and that would lead people to believe that it can be done in one session, one day or one week. Well that’s not the case. But, because I post a new lesson every week, I’m afraid that many of you will fall into that trap. There are enough lessons on this member section now to train your dog for 2 years, but how many will use the lessons that way?

I’m hoping you will. Because this will help you better understand dog training and what it really takes. Forget the 5-minute YouTube lessons… that crap doesn’t work. Everything has to be repeated until the habit is formed in the dog’s mind.

We’re going on 5 weeks with Duane’s HOLD and retrieve training. Sure, he could fetch a tug or ball, but did he bring it back to me 100% of the time and 100% reliably? NO! How can I fix that? WITH A LOT OF FOCUSSED WORK. Like what I’m teaching in this lesson.

Goofy will fetch and bring whatever I tell him. Doesn’t matter the material or object. He knows what it means, and he was taught exactly like I’m showing here. This is part 2 and I will post part 3 very soon, so be patient. We live in a society where we wanna get get get everything as fast as possible…. But dogs don’t work like that.

So, these lessons will teach you the finer points, the things that people on YouTube don’t have the patience to watch and follow. I hope you’ll gain that extra insight by being my members.

The complete HOLD lesson might be about 90 minutes of video, but it’s probably gonna be about 10-15 hours of practice… and that practice is just HOLDing. There is no retrieve games during this training period.

Are you serious enough to train your dog like this? If you are, you’ll succeed at teaching your dog most anything. If not, you can skim through the lessons here and just have fun. But remember, when it comes to solving a problem, the answer probably will be pretty simple – repeat and be patient. That will be the big take-away from this weeks lesson.