Starting to Train with a Rescue

E

eshark83

Forums Novice
I have very briefly started working with Mavis with a clicker, mostly just loading the clicker for her and seeing what her overall attitude is towards training. It seems VERY foreign to her at this point, she kind of just melts a little, disengages, and gets a little shifty-eyed. She’s also not very food driven at all, but she will take the treat with each click. I feel like eventually she may like to have some sort of pets or affection as her reward marker honestly.


My reason for posting though is to find out some tips from those of you who have had rescue shelties. I feel like I need to give her a new association with training, I really want to make it fun for her. I’m aware that I’m going to have to move extremely slow with her because she still doesn’t have her footing all the way here. She is however very much coming out of her shell, she’s really attached herself to me and will readily cuddle and ask for pets, she’s not shy AT ALL about asking for pets.

What methods did those of you who have similar experiences use to teach your shelties training can be fun? She seems to want to learn and communicate but she’s had a rocky past, she “knew” ‘sit’ and ‘down’ but I don’t think the methods used to teach were at all appropriate because when I’ve said them to her she completely shuts down. It’s very sad to see :no:
 
Go higher value with the food rewards - beef heart, dehydrated liver, tuna fudge...there's a bunch of recipes in the forum. Find what works for her. Don't feed her for at least 3 hours before you train her. If you've gone to the highest value food reward, and she's still disengaged, back off the training until you develop more of a relationship. Instead use the treats to reward her for approaching you etc.

Good luck - she will come along - just give her time, patience, and high value rewards.
 
I had to use patience( A Lot) and wait for him to warm up to me before I even attempted to do any training. I would just sit on the floor and let him come up for some Momma love when he felt like it at first. Had I tried to force things any other way he would not have reciprocated. He still to this day does not like the clicker, It hurts his ears.

Luckily for me, Beau is exceptionally food motivated.
 
Thanks to both of you, I'll try to up the reward value. So far I've used hot dogs as well as cheese, both of which she will take but she doesn't go crazy for it. We had steak last night so I cut up one of the slightly fattier sections extremely small and offered her a piece, she took that pretty well but that would be quite an expensive training reward :lol: but even that she didn't go crazy for.

We are still working on our relationship, I think we're doing fantastic so far she approaches me readily and will solicit me for attention pretty often.

In fact the other day I was doing some work from home on the laptop and could hardly get a line typed for all the nose-under-the-hand moments with her. It's really nice to see her blossom like she is with us.

As far as the clicker, she's not noise sensitive, but she doesn't seem to particularly love the sound, she minds less if its inside my pocket.
 
actually how long have you had her? My experience with Fifi is: relationship comes first. It took quite a few months for him to engage in training. I didn't use clicker coz he was quite noise sensitive. Luckily food worked well. Keep it up with a lot of patience, be prepared to back off if necessary and start things all over again. It is just a norm for rescue dogs. :winkgrin:
 
You've received good advice, now just add a little patience. My rescue was young and eager and seemed to say, thank goodness you get me! :smile2:
 
Thanks for the advice.

I think you're right 2gooddogs, at this point I think she just needs time. She's really coming out of her shell more and more each day at a rate much faster than I expected. Just today as I got home she jumped onto my lap for snuggle time which is more than she's done the past few.

I'll put the advice to use once she's been here for a bit longer. :yes:
 
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