Hi Linda, just found this message board and was scrolling down and found your question about backwards healing and the object guard, it would take some explaining for the object guard, but backwards healing is easy. Get favorite toy of dog, tease him with it, when the dog is frothing to get it, start walking into the dog, don't let the dog bite it by keeping it in your hand so they can't (ie. a ball completely covered with your hand). When you walk into them say "goodbye" your future cue for the backwards healing. The dog won't sit if you keep walking into them, or they'll get bowled over, they may try but that won't get them the toy. When they stop bouncing and punching you and calm down and take some nice normal steps backwards reward with a quick bite. Repeat, repeat.... Once they do that easily, move the toy to your right side and extend your arm back as far as it will go. Now tell the dog the goodbye command and walk forewards, the dog will likely look like it is healing backwards with little error. You may need to do some minor guiding with a leash, but don't go crazy correcting to get perfection, it will happen fast enough through your dog figuring out how to get they toy in this position. I also don't really advocate trying to use guides like walls or anything, just let the dog figure it out, if it is bouncing all over it may not matter once the toy is handed off to someone else and you do have to correct it for incorrect positioning. Next have someone walk right behind you with your toy and have your dog on a leash and training collar. Pop as needed if they try to lunge at the toy since they will likely be more in drive with someone else having the toy, also pop them back into place if they start to drift from your side, body contact makes this easier, if they are taught to stay in contact, they aren't as likely to forget you are there in a trial and wander off with the decoy. This part can also be taught with a sleeve for schutzhund dogs if you need to keep your dog higher up in drive to handle the corrections. That is the easy basics of starting this, but to be ready to trial requires quite a bit more: )
As for the object guard, this is a year or 2 in the making to make it look good depending on the dog, but if you want the basics on how to start, I can give you those too.
Holly M.
Scoring disabled. You must be logged in to score posts.