I was just wondering...how long did it take you to get Hector to LLW? I am not saying perfection and there is always things to work on...but how much time did you dedicate?
I wonder that myself. Linc is soon to be 8 mos old. We have had him for 3 mos and he is fantastic. Not perfect but pretty darn good. I see our progression almost daily but he still reacts to sudden noises and sometimes still tries to meet people/dogs/trees on his own doing.
A estimated time would be good to know. I walk Linc 2x a day and bring him to trails/parks as well for the distraction training
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We are still a work in progress. He was great at heeling in class at 8 months. As he got older, he developed excitement issues (my fault) and pulled hard, so we worked more on reinforcing the by my side behavior, turns, changes in directions, backward walking. We went back to basics and built on that depending how well he responded with different criteria. Next, he developed reactivity. First, he became overly excited by the sight of kids, so we used a combination of leash pressure to calm him and then practiced calm walking and used the Premack Principle. Now he has reactivity with skateboards and other dogs depending on how aroused he is. The more aroused he is (free to sniff and mark) the more reactive he gets, so we are working on calm on place mats before exiting and after exiting and then continue with structured walks. Sometimes he gets released from heel and sometimes he gets very brief breaks or none at all depending on how bratty he is. LLW and recall are the two most worked on behaviors and we practice every day even if it means a simple recall from the yard.
Dogs can be great on a leash for a period and then for whatever reason such as coming into temperament, bad experiences, new environments, prey drive, time restraints, mood of handler, goals for that particular walk, poor handling, frustration, lack of exercise, anxiety, excitement, over threshold state of minds that will cause the dog to become a pain in the ass on the end of the leash.
These videos are great because even if some of these exercises are not ideal for every dog, they are still good to build a dog's focus which is critical for a lot of things. You will find that these LLW exercises also help with building a reliable recall.
So to answer the question on time - it's an ongoing process because I like to try out different things and there are inconsistencies on my part.
