Dog behaviour can be very subtle. Most of us will miss a lot of cues, including us trainers. Here's a breakdown of a session with Marley and myself. I've decided to start teaching Marley an indication on an object and to later start scent work training with him. This was the very first session we did with this. It's simple for us. Put your nose on the toy. But to a lot of dogs, this can be really hard. It's a bit like us trying to read a book with lots of words that we don't understand. It's mentally challenging and quite stressful if it's too hard. This session is just over 4 minutes long, and even that amount of time is too much for Marley at this stage. We'll keep practising and see how far we can get. The more we train our dogs and engaging their brainpower, the better they become at problem-solving and the less stressful it becomes. We just have to make sure we are picking up on their cues to tell us it's too much, especially in the initial stages.
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