Ttouch
Just wanted to share with you something I'm trying with my kerry, Jessie, lately that seems to be working. Jessie has always had slow drops (both signals and DOR). Close up he's better, but as I move farther away he seems agitated and slows his drop way down. He does it -- he has his CD and one UD leg, but it is nerve racking to watch and sometimes looses points. What I noticed was he was wagging his tail really hard as my hand went up to signal, then he'd tentatively bring his front down, then his rear, all the time the tail going a million miles an hour. I don't think he is happy -- I think the tail wag is like a nervous tick.

I've been reading the Tellington Touch book lately and using some of the methods in there to relax Jessie and my other dogs. Well, I got to the part about the rope -- it's just that, a rope you put around the dog, cross it over the back and around the butt (croup area). Nothing fancy. What it's supposed to do is make the dog aware of it's whole body and by doing so make the dog more confident and less aggressive. I thought, wow, that could help my drops!

So I got to practice, and just took my 6 foot lead and draped it around the dog as indicated. Heeled him, stood him, walked away pretty far and dropped him. Perfect drop! Cool thing is that now I can reward him for doing it right, something I could never do from any distance before. I find if I do a bunch of them, both the signal and the DOR, with the rope, after I take it off the effect lasts for the rest of the training session.

Anyone try anything like this? If so, did it work? I like it so much better then using head taps or butt taps or dropping a chain or anything like that. It seems to make him feel confident rather than even more nervous. Do you think I'm just fooling myself that this is working?