Kalidor – On the Road to Santa Rosa, Learning with Michael Ellis

The journey to The Michael Ellis School for Dog Trainers was long and grueling but, the puppies were so well behaved in the car!  When we pulled in at 10 p.m. at night, I was so grateful Kalidor has the temperament to just settle in, eat his late dinner, then hop in his crate in this wildly new motel environment and just go to sleep. Wow!

Our week with Michael Ellis unfolded with every day bringing new experiences with all sorts of new people with all levels of experiences with dogs.  Every puppy got a chance multiple times to work with their owner as well as with Michael.  Michael’s engagement with each puppy encouraged both the owner/trainers, to experience a high level of success in every aspect of the training.  

What was incredibly interesting to me was that Kalidor was so excited to see all the new people and visit, that many times it was quite a struggle to keep his attention on the exercises!  Sound familiar?!  When he first walked into the training room and spied all the people there, his first instinct was to go visit! I would have thought he was a Labrador!  While he was the only dog in the room when it was his turn to work, he was more motivated by interaction with people than by food.  My job was to increase his focus on me by finding what his personal motivation was.  How was I going to get him to focus on ME, his handler, instead of meeting all the people?  The other participants were instructed ahead of time to ignore any puppy that visited so there was no positive reinforcement for not engaging with the handler.

What I found for Kalidor is that movement is critical to him.  As a herding breed (yes, German Shepherds are herding dogs!) movement is what incites his interest the most.  So, while he likes food, and people, movement is more important to him.  So, when I can incorporate movement into my training, Kalidor will leave other things that interest him to focus on me.  I also increased his food motivation and interest in me by feeding him his breakfast during training instead of in his bowl before training. I combined both movement and food as his reward for accomplishing the exercises.

What was fun for me were the comments people made during breaks. They could seek me out and tell me how adorable he was when he would run up to them when he was supposed to be working on the exercises! It took THEM great self control not to return the adoration!

The take-home point to this particular article is that finding what motivates YOUR dog is of critical importance so that you can make yourself more interesting than all those other things out there in the environment!  Teaching a puppy to engage with YOU through motivation should be primary focus for you and your puppy. What that motivation is, can be really different for each puppy!