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Christmas has been manic, and little training has taken place.  Sadly we no longer attend training sessions with Dean as it’s near impossible to travel there every week.  It just costs us too much money to get there.  So it’s not just basic training with myself, Gregg and of course Samson.

Still need to work on the recall.  I’m looking online at the moment to buy a long leash so we can hopefully improve his recall and make it become a good thing.  I think it’s going to take a fair few chunks of hotdog and cheese!  On top of that I want to work on heel.  I’m contemplating giving clicker training a go.  I find with heel that Sam may see it as a punishment.  He pulls so hard now on lead, so I say heel, he ignores so I correct.  Then he heels for a couple of seconds, and as soon as I praise he thinks it’s a cue to pull again.  However, the other evening I took him out with just a couple of treats broken up and held them across my waist.  He continually looked up at me, heeling perfectly, so I praised a lot and gave him a treat.  I think a clicker may be a good way to praise, consistant and hopefully weans off food rewards?  I am unsure on this one as of yet.  I plan to take him out again this evening, armed with more treats than last time and give it another go first.  I know he can do so well, but sadly it is our lack of experience which makes it difficult.  I know we have made mistakes with recall, and heel is also another problem now.  We were advised to leave heel alone for the first year, but now it needsworking on.  He is just too strong to have him pulling you around.  We live in a city centre, so he needs to stick by rather than pull me over!

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