 Barked: Thu May 10, '07 7:10am PST | |
 | |  | | Hey there!!
I don't have pile of experience with this...but I'll share my advice anyways! 
I would start training this after the pup is already doing well with other kinds of obedience - whoa takes a LOT of self control, and until pup has some of that on his own already, I think you are fighting an uphill battle.
I like to teach whoa just like you'd teach a sit stay, as really a whoa is just a stand-stay with piles and piles of distraction. Start by simply rewarding the dog for standing nicely (from a stand still!), and then gradually increase the duration of the stand with all four feet stationary before rewarding...Ask for a one second stay, then two etc...
Once the dog understands the idea of the "stand-stay", add the cue "whoa" or "stop" or whatever you plan to use. Once you can say whoa and the dog just stands still nicely, start doing it from moving...you're just walking along and ask the dog to stop and stay, gradually increasing the duration of immobility required...
Then you start adding distractions - a good one to start with is the dog's food bowl...Then gradually, once the dog is doing well with mild distractions you can start to learn on pigeons etc...but keep the dog on a leash/line so that IF (when!) they break the whoa command you can restrain them, keep them off the birds, and re-position them!
When the hubby trained Siskin, he made the mistake of jumping forward through the steps way too fast, assuming that she really understood what whoa meant...He was wrong!! Because she didn't really understand the command, she ended up catching birds out of traps etc because he trusted her to understand and stay whoa- ed, and she sure didn't!
It set her training back quite a long way, as he kept fighting with her whoa over birds for quite a long time with no success - Finally, I had him go right back to the beginning with her, and retrain (using "stop" instead of "whoa", as she had already learned that whoa didn't really mean anything) using TINY increments so that she really understood...also, we were carefull to only test the stop on birds once it was solid elsewhere, and we highly reinforced the good performances in addition to mild corrections for incorrect performances...A lot of gun dog guys only use corrections, but you'll be surprised how quickly performance improves when the dog gets rewarded for doing something right instead of just punished for doing it wrong!!
Sorry this ended up being SO long!! Hopefully it helps!! |  |  | |  |
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