[Chris]

I’ve been learning from some of Balabanov’s stuff recently, and the out is a core component of his work. If you’re looking to take this dog to compete I would at least look at the first of Balabanov’s Obedience Without Conflict series. He solves a good number of problems, such as this sort of posession, crabbing on a heel etc etc, with the way he communicates and values the tug as a reward.

In short, he works to devalue the object itself, making play the reward and the tug worthless outside of the context of play. This helps the dog out because the tug is not really worth having if it’s ‘dead’. This is the same as you can see in RC’s videos, but with a lot more depth (no offence to RC, he has to cover a lot of ground and doesn’t really have the luxury of super-focussing on one element like this).

You can access the first of the series on CTS for around 50 bucks. I thought it was worth it to sample Balabanov even for just pet training, the philosophy of reduction of ambiguity in communication was a big piece of the puzzle for me and made me realise where I could improve. It was also immediately applicable and my dog understood it quickly. The lessons RC has provided worked better once I realised my own ambiguity in communication using Balabanov’s insight.