Staying Power

Abby's sit-stays are falling apart. She either pops up right away or goes directly into a down. . . I'm not entirely sure why this has happened in the past week, but I do have my suspicions.

The first thought is that we aren't training sit stays much.

The second thought is that Abby is uncomfortable doing sit-stays.

The third thought is that Abby is just being lazy.

Staying has always been difficult for Abby partly because of her phobias. She is either afraid of something that she hears or sees, or she is afraid I'm going too far away. Because of her natural issue with being away from me, I never really worked on having her stay too far or for too long. It seems to stress her out unnecessarily so I never really worked that hard on it. Plus, IGs, like many sight hounds, have funny sits and siting for long periods becomes uncomfortable. When we did actually work on stays, I would always put her into a down stay. Another problem is that our training areas are either concrete or are hard wood, so I trained Abby to stay on a mat. Now, whenever we work at home, she actually does stay on the mat. . . but that doesn't transfer to other places. . .

Class this past week was very frustrating because she simply wouldn't sit still. Most of the time she went into a down, and I'm wondering if it is her back and elbows that are bothering her. Once we get through the first half of the class, Abby's auto-sit also disappears too. . .But, I'm not an "enforcer" either when it comes to Abby and training so, when she doesn't do what I ask or when she does something else instead, I simply ask her again and wait until I get it. She doesn't have to do anything. She usually does what I ask because she wants my food. . . but being a little dog and filling up quickly, means that the food has less value the more we train. And while Abby does "work" Abby is anything but a working dog. Her drive isn't there so I have to keep working just as hard as she is in order to keep things moving.

So, for this week, we are going back to the basics. Duration, distance, distraction. We are going to work in that order too. If she can't even hold the sit with me sitting next to her, I'm going to put her on some NSAIDs for a few days and see if that helps. If she can do it, then I know that we just need to train it more.