Does He Dislike Rally??

 You are not alone.  Sioux hated Rally - she kept looking at the agility obstacles in the next field.  To her, that was fun!  Rally bored her, I think.

My beagle used to find obedience quite boring, especially heel work.

The problem wasn't the sport but the way I was motivating her and the way I was making it boring. 

If you find the right way to motivate your dog, even simple things can be exciting. I use drive training so my training sessions started out very short (i.e. no more than 1-3 minutes) but super high energy and super exciting for the dog. It doesn't matter what we are doing now - heel work, practicing fronts, flip to heel, etc she LOVES to work.

You often see hour long obedience classes where people do what we call over here paddock bashing - walking up and down doing heel pattern after heel pattern and it's no wonder the dogs switch off. 

My suggestion would be to go back to basics and make your training sessions short, exciting, a game that the dog really enjoys playing. Don't push the dog too far too soon. I would rather have five minutes of 110% than half an hour or an hour of anything less than that.

 I agree with huski. My dogs don't like rally for the sake of rally. They like it because we're together, and I'm being so silly, it MUST be fun. Walking into the ring and getting a perfect score EXHAUSTS me, because there's as much energy coming out of me as my dog is putting put. Tail up, heads up heeling is WORK!

I work them in short bursts, and use tugs, treats, whatever. Sometimes, they're just rewarded with patting. Sometimes, I roll a round treat across the floor for them to chase. Sometimes, it's a game of wild tug. Sometimes, I release them to run free. Variety and YOUR energy are the big things, from what I've seen. It has to be unpredictable, and interesting.

If you find the right way to motivate your dog, even simple things can be exciting.

I agree with that, but only to a point.  More often than not, it's much harder to get an English Bulldog excited about retrieving than it is to get a Lab excited about it.  Some occupations are just intrinsically more rewarding to some dogs than others.   To Sioux, the actions she was performing in agility were just more exciting (herding dogs love to weave and gather, after all, so the tunnels and weaves and chutes mimic more of that activity than walking in a straight line and doing sits.  I'd rather ride horses than sky dive, and you could spend endless hours trying to offer me all kinds of goodies, and playing happy with me, but that would not change a thing - not going to jump from a plane.

huski

You often see hour long obedience classes where people do what we call over here paddock bashing - walking up and down doing heel pattern after heel pattern and it's no wonder the dogs switch off. 

YES!  In our last 2 rally classes the instructors seemed to be really encouraging doing run after run and "getting your moneys worth" out of the class.  Jack's first run is always sloppy as he starts to focus.  His second and sometimes thrid are the best it's gonna get for the night, and after that it's all downhill.....

He is also very easily distracted and we are still working on impulse control in a lot of circumstances, so a rally run is not JUST the exercises for him--it's all that PLUS focusing on me, resisting the urge to got to the other dogs, to visit with the instructor, to investigate random bits of fuzz on the floor, etc.  I wonder if all that for a hour gets wears him out and makes it "unfun," so now that's what he associates rally commands with?

The Schutzhund training I've done with Nikon has changed how I train all other types of sports and performance events.  For one, I feel that even for a mature adult dog with high drive, hour long classes are too long.  In SchH the dogs come out one or a few at a time and take turns that usually last no more than 10 minutes, and on a hot day like now more like 3-5 minutes.  If the dog is not working "freed up", motivated, and in drive, then it's not worth working the dog, IMO.  Even though rally is easy I refuse to do it half-@$$ed.  I took Nikon to rally class, we went to a beginner class but stayed for advanced/competitive.  Instead of being out with the dogs, I kept him tethered in a down in the corner and broke him out at the end, got him revved up quick, and did the course.  He did better than the dogs in the advanced class even though he has never seen real stations before (only what I've taught at home, without signs) and hasn't competed yet. Our current agility class is an hour long but between exercises/turns I have Nikon rest in a down and don't allow him to get over-hyped and fixated on the other dogs unless it's the dog right before his turn, and I actually need to keep him toned down a few notches for this class so the heat and length work in my favor. To me if the dog is easily bored and/or distracted, it's a problem with my training and motivation, not the activity.  Ideally the dog should be so motivated and happy to work with me that it doesn't matter what activity we are doing.  I spent months *just* learning what motivates Nikon and now train the same way whether it's tracking, Schutzhund obedience, agility, rally, or dock diving.  He doesn't know the difference between playing and training because one never happens without the other.  The trick is finding how to "reach" your dog and work at that level.  Nikon doesn't know the difference between rally, obedience, agility, and dock diving and doesn't prefer any one more than the other because I use the same motivators for everything (except protection, which is a completely different frame of mind). 

 I think so. It's hard work for them to do the exercises, not eat the fuzz, not worry about whether the jumps might bite them (that would be Bean LOL!) or whether the dog in  the other ring gets to chase the dumbbell (Emma!), AND watch their handler.

 Doing all that for a straight hour? Darn near impossible, if you ask me. It's supposed to be energetic, and the dog should be into it. It's REALLY hard to be into a rally course for a solid hour. They just get bored, and they learn that rally (obedience, flyball, tracking, whatever) is boring.

Ann, you wouldn't jump out of a plane if your best friend in the whole wide world told you it was OMGSOFUN and offered you a million bucks to go with them? I totally would, and I'm not a person that would naturally leap from a perfectly good airplane.

spiritdogs

If you find the right way to motivate your dog, even simple things can be exciting.

I agree with that, but only to a point.  More often than not, it's much harder to get an English Bulldog excited about retrieving than it is to get a Lab excited about it.  Some occupations are just intrinsically more rewarding to some dogs than others.   To Sioux, the actions she was performing in agility were just more exciting (herding dogs love to weave and gather, after all, so the tunnels and weaves and chutes mimic more of that activity than walking in a straight line and doing sits.  I'd rather ride horses than sky dive, and you could spend endless hours trying to offer me all kinds of goodies, and playing happy with me, but that would not change a thing - not going to jump from a plane.

sillysally

YES!  In our last 2 rally classes the instructors seemed to be really encouraging doing run after run and "getting your moneys worth" out of the class.  Jack's first run is always sloppy as he starts to focus.  His second and sometimes thrid are the best it's gonna get for the night, and after that it's all downhill.....

He is also very easily distracted and we are still working on impulse control in a lot of circumstances, so a rally run is not JUST the exercises for him--it's all that PLUS focusing on me, resisting the urge to got to the other dogs, to visit with the instructor, to investigate random bits of fuzz on the floor, etc.  I wonder if all that for a hour gets wears him out and makes it "unfun," so now that's what he associates rally commands with?

That's way too much IMO!

I rev my dog up and then we start training.... we do a ring run out, work on a certain exercise etc and then that's it. I can work her on and off for an hour now easily, but to start with I would do VERY short bursts of training for no more than 3 minutes. If she starts losing interest or switching off I put her away.

Like I said above training for us is not about the exercise - it is about training my dog to look to me for the Best Most Fun Thing Ever. It's not about x exercise being more fun than y exercise, because the exercise is only the path to the reward.

Heaps of people told me I would never get my beagle to work as well as other breeds, that she would never be consistent or reliable. Obedience was totally boring for her. Now she works better than some of the BCs, goldies etc that we have at club.

Here's an example - I revved her up a bit too much before we started and was using a super high value reward we rarely use. I should have done a couple of quick heel patterns before going into a full ring run out but oh well you live and learn LOL. If you check out my other videos you can see she normally has a much better response to commands and never usually misses down signals. But her attitude and keenness to work and focus was good so I can't be too unhappy with her :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_fZUpbiCC0

 (btw - I didn't have any reward on me)

spiritdogs

Sioux hated Rally - she kept looking at the agility obstacles in the next field. 

Isn't that more of a focus/proofing problem?  Regardless of what exercise I am doing, if my dog is switched on she is oblivious to the distractions around us. We regularly train next to an agility course (literally meters away) and she doesn't notice it. Granted we don't train agility, but we can work around dogs doing things she enjoys (i.e. scent discrim, dumbell work, hell even a dog just eating food LOL) and she doesn't notice them at all.

huski

It doesn't matter what we do, what I am training, her enjoyment and enthusiasm is the same because she is going to get The Best Reward Ever.

corvus

Erik is pretty bored by heeling regardless of how "in drive" he is or how big a reward I use for it. He finds it tedious even if I'm popping him treats every couple of steps. But, I find it a bit tedious as well.

If you find it tedious he could be picking up on your lack of energy too. If he was really in drive, how could he find it boring? Careful if you are popping treats frequently if he is bored, you don't want to reward for a lack of drive.

Anything that requires duration has been something I needed to build slowly with Daisy. I'd line her up, heel a step or two and then rush backwards and get her to chase me. I kept it spontaneous so that heel work never became predictable.

I don't think any amount of Best Rewards Ever would convince Kivi to run for more than 5 seconds.

LOL... no fast past heel work for Kivi then? Daisy sucks at it... unless she's in drive ;)