Summertime......

and the livin' is easy!
Roxy, as well as Lilly and Sophie are exhausted from a weekend at the beach. We live right near the beach and go fairly often but we just spent a long weekend on the west coast where the kids didn't have to be leashed at all...not even to get to the beach. So it play time all the time. YAY!

Of course we did have to do a few "work" sessions but working on "recall", for example, on the beach is much more fun than in our usual training sites. They get to chase sticks and coconuts into the water, have wild zoomies and jump up and down off the banks of sand formed by the waves. Every once in a while I call them back and make them sit, down or finish and that's a quick training session that's fun for everyone.
We all had a blast!!

Halti's

We've resurrected the Halti from the bottom drawer of my desk and I'm happy to say we're having some success. The Halti looks like a halter for a horse and is designed for the handler to be able to redirect the dogs head, hence reestablishing focus on the handler.
You can read about the Halti here:Halti info It's a UK site but gives an in depth explanation. You can purchase them in many pet shops.
Anyway, I bought it ages ago and never really worked much with it. She did actually get used to it by wearing it around the house for a few days. Acclimating the dog to the Halti is important, otherwise you'll spend the majority of your training session trying to stop the dog from rubbing it off. Roxy hated it at first!

We're dealing with some leash aggression and I'm always needing to get Roxy's attention when another dog is approaching. She tends to tune me out and either stand stock still scoping out the other dog OR wanting to haul me over there. NOT acceptable.
My inspiration came from watching some podcasts HERE I was directed to by a fellow Dane lover. Now these podcasts seem like a plug for the Gentle Leader to me, but overlook that and look at the method and how the handler redirects the dog.
I'm very excited by Roxy's progress. Of course we're going through treats like there's no tomorrow but we'll start phasing those out when the reaction is more consistent.