Pivoting For Heel

That's exactly it, Lies. She doesn't wanna be wrong, and it upsets her if she thinks she is. I never even thought of it, that way. She certainly lacks the drive to work through it. What appears to be drive in her working is just shaped "up" behavior. Head up, tail up, gait up, up, up, up, and BAM! Looks like a dog has drive to work, LOL. Try to teach her something new, and it takes twice as long or better than my friend's working lines Border Collie, and she isn't half as interested in her new behavior as she is playing at her OLD behaviors, that she KNOWS she can get right.

It's funny, even the dogs you would think are the most confident and "in drive" are often the ones with nerve issues that are really just showing hectic behaviors.  I'm talking about a lot of Schutzhund dogs (think GSDs and Malinois) that can be trained to do anything because they are so neurotically obsessed over a ball or some type of toy, but many great sport dogs actually lack nerve and a *balance* of drive.

Drive is not necessarily the focused, up-beat, prancy attitude, it is persistence.  What can do put in front of the dog, physically and mentally, and see the dog work through and come out ahead?  In obedience, Kenya shows more "happy" and more "prance" but Nikon by FAR shows more power and more drive.  Kenya is reactive in that she is happy and prancy because she is feeding of my body language and constant affirmation, but Nikon is proactive, he is the one pushing me to work and push push push.

spiritdogs

When you think about it, it's really not much different than the 101 things to do with a box game.  I start Sequoyah on that kind of thing by just putting the object down on the floor and letting her interact with it.  She gets C/T for whatever behavior I want her to repeat, and I don't worry a lot if she's wrong, because I know that if she doesn't get her click, she'll move on to another behavior to try to make me click.  I don't mind if a dog offers behaviors when she gets frustrated, because if I just ignore them and don't attach a cue - they go away;-) 

This is an area I've been confused about. Let's say my dog goes into a "bow" rather than a "crawl". I had already said to crawl, but he takes a bow. Should I click when he takes a bow? Even if I had already said "crawl"? When do you take this approach, and when don't you? What if it's in early training... I'm still luring him into a crawl and he bows? I imagine that would be okay since I haven't started the verbal cue yet, right? But then won't he think it's alright to stick his butt in the air when crawling?

Why would you reward something you didn't ask for? If I am shaping something, I don't put a cue to it, until the behavior is what I want. Right now, if I have a dumbell and clicker in my hand, my dog is going to start doing stuff to the dumbell. She'll lick it, bump it with her nose, rub her head on it, and paw it. I'll click the nose bump, which causes more nose bumps. Eventually, I click harder nose bumps only, then tooth touches only, and eventually, it'll be behind the canines, only. Now, though? This behavior has no name. If I called it, "Take it", and accidentally rewarded a lick, she might decide that, "Take it", means lick your dumbell wildly. Dogs are funny that way!