Hey everyone, I have a dog that at one time was pulling close to 5,000 Lbs. we pull 1 a week- the following week after the pull, my dog sorta gave up. Does anyone have any advice on what I should do. I mean, I know that my dog can pull, and pull well. what can I do to get back on track??

im no expert whatsoever but what i would think about doing is maybe going light on him for a bit and get his confidence back up, i think confidence is really important, im sure others on here can give you better advice but thats what i would do or call someone to help me lol.

robbie

sounds like you pushed him to hard and now he has a head problem. you need to start over slowly get his head straight and don,t worry about how much weight he can pull.build the weight back up slowly.Alot of people think you have to have a strong dog to compete but thats only half right.You can have the strogest dog in the world but if you don,t build his confidence a poodle with the right head could beat him.

I agree. Slow down, pay more attention to his body language and actions. If you "blow" his mind you will be left with a dog thats strong but only dances at the start and won't engage. JMO.

Thanks everybody for your advice and I will keep you posted!!!

Johnny always remember that a dog will become self defeating quickly an example of this related to weight pull would be: If he is unable to pull the cart and is allowed to struggle with it and it doesn't move. The equivilent of this would be putting a dog on a chain. After a bit he realizes that the chain is going to only allow him to go so far. Eventually he doesn't try to outrun the chain anymore. Same applies to the cart .... never allow him to fail!! Only a few failures and he will develop a self defeating mentality the same as he did with the chain example. Your going to train the dog in lil bitty chunks of information and time and eventually turn that into the whole process of pulling the cart.


work strictly on the "work" command and dont worry about weight at all. What you want is the dog to react to the work command just as he does the sit command or any other. Just start him out with a small amount of weight and get about 3 ft in front of him. Give him the work command in the same voice inflection each time (make it sharp and distinct think of the mothers growl sound when she is correcting the pups) and the very moment he lunges forward when given the work command immediately praise him up big time. Then go back and do it again ... keep repeating this over and over (all your working on is the work command) this repetition will teach the dog that when you say "work" it means immediately move forward (he doesn't have a clue how much weight is behind him and doesn't care). If he doesn't lunge forward when given the work command do not correct him in anyway. Simply turn walk away and come back and repeat (the reason for this is you want him to react to the command on his own if you drag him he will think the work command means he is about to be dragged and will probably start hunkering down on the work command). I cannot stress enough the importance of how quickly you have to give praise and reward for the correct action on command. This is critical to indicate to the dog exactly what you are trying to convey to him. His window to relate an action with a command is 2 seconds PERIOD. DONT WORK THE DOG FOR ANY LONGER THAN 15 MINUTES AT A TIME after 15 minutes take a break and go play with the dog and have fun then say to him "lets go work" and make it fun for him. Short bursts of intense training will yeild way better results than the Sgt Carter approach of "we are going to work on this till you get it or die one or the other"

When he is hip about what the work command means then begin to slowly make more distance between you and him before giving the command. At this time you can begin adding weight and making him work the distance of the track doing reps.

In a nutshell you dont even have to use weight to teach the work command. The work command means to lunge forward and thats it. Once he is accomplished and has mastered the work command you can then teach another command which will indicate to gut it out when the load gets heavy. If you need any help with that post up!

These are all sound training principles used for every kind of training. This is just tailored to the dog who's job it is to pull a weighted cart.

If you will follow this advice your dog will turn around quick


Brian
Marshland K-9
email me if you need some support or advice>> brian@bmfgraphics.com

ps There are a lot of good weight pull trainers here with a lot more weight pull training experience than I have. I am giving you examples of how to do it from previous experience of teaching dogs to do all kinds of tasks. It doesn't matter the task the training principles are always the same. Be creative get into the dogs head and see what he is seeing. Break every step down and analyze it the way the dog sees it.

you gotta crawl before you can walk....walk before you can run....run before you can fly!!