Up until now treacle has been trained in the same place to build confidence which will help her to become more outgoing in her ability.

Changing the ground and encountering new cover can sometimes put dogs back a little in their training but should quickly overcome it if the foundations of training have been done correctly.

Treacle now has to learn to use her marking ability, her ability to hunt and her memory all in new circumstances.

In training now I will start to test our ability together, I will do this by asking someone else to choose which dummy we are to collect.

This will show me how much treacle needs me to set the activity up in the same way and how I complete the activity normally. As much as we try to test her in training we are also creatures of habit so generally avert back to the same training methods and techniques.

Treacle is now running really well and understanding all commands, long may in continue!!

The nice thing is she stays really focused even when filming doesn’t always go to plan!

In this video you will see how much Treacle is so eager to please, she is really getting the hang of the commands now and wants to succeed so much.

This training session was so close to being perfect however when she doesn’t get is quite right look how responsive she is to stop when being told she’s got it wrong.

Training Treacle is a real joy at present I’m getting loads of eye contact, control, patience and eagerness to get the job done.

There are a few main things I would want people to remember watching this video.

1. Treacle has only just turned 6 months old.
2. Limited pressure applied to succeed
3. Always short and sweet training sessions
4. Lots of praise and contact reassuring Treacle she doing the right things.

In this video I’m starting to see if treacle can distinguish which dummy I’m asking her to collect when given the commands and handle signals for each dummy.

As time goes on and treacle becomes more confident I will start to place the dummies back from where she has collected them from for further distraction.

At this time we don’t want to add any further distraction as the activity is already hard enough.

Treacle’s direction training is starting to come together, however, you can see as she becomes more focused I have to pay more attention to her training and less to the video recording!

You will see at 4:06 on the video I’ve asked treacle to sit and stay whilst I retrieve a dummy. You will see that treacle comes to me instead of staying where I left her. Look at my body language, when I go to pick up the dummy my body language is moving away from Treacle moving downwards the same as I would if I were calling her to heal.

I repeat the exercise making my body language more clear leading to success.

So did treacle do something wrong or did my body language ask her to do something I didn’t want??

When we train we need to remember most dogs just aim to please us and if our dogs do something wrong we need to analyse it to make sure we gave all the right commands verbally and physically.

As you will see Treacle seems to be back on track and more fluent in her ability in this video.

Treacle looks more focused is this training session but I also have to be very aware of what she is doing and how she is feeling, my body language to Treacle is key for success.

Yesterday I took Treacle back out to the training field to see if the activity I had been doing with her food bowl to understand directions with my hands had transferred to when being asked to retrieve.

I had been activating treacle at feeding time but since the last video she has also had a lot of free time playing with older dogs.

As you will see in the video when treacle is under control on the lead she is willing but when she gets free she looks to play and explore.

This is normal behaviour for all young dogs but when training we need to utilise all there energy in the right direction.

Over the next 10 days I will take Treacle out every 2 -3 days to run through the same training activities trying to bring more focus to me making her understand we are a partnership and need each other!