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Elka and I have been working with the Control Unleashed training method for a long time now. I’m not super consistent about it because, well, Elka doesn’t really need it Much of her distracted-ness was puppy-hood, as she’s gotten older she’s gotten naturally more able to focus.
But I wanted to do the program in a classroom environment because some of the games can’t be played without other dogs.
Ultimately, while the classroom experience has been interesting, in some ways it’s also been a waste of time. Elka has excelled at the dog/dog games, even with the “dog in your face” game being no problem. I thought for sure that would send her into a wrestling match with the dog (play, not aggression, and we used another social but distractible dog for the exercise).
Today is the last class but between wind and rain I’m likely not going to take her. Tonight is the car crash game and I’m not even sure my brain can do that. I lose track of spatial relationships fairly easily. Plus, Elka now knows how to focus in that environment doing whatever I ask, including distance work from me without interacting with another dog. I was sending her around standards and to her mat from quite a distance in the last class.
I hope they do run a Control Unleashed 2 with more advanced games and higher criteria. Elka and I will do that one if it becomes available on a day that I can attend.
The work that Elka and I have always needed to do, and the CU class confirmed this, has been generalizing CU into the environment. On daily walks, going to the dog park, etc. I didn’t really need a class to tell me that but it did drive the point home. Elka is perfect in class. I could teach the class with her as a demo dog if I needed to - she’s that good. But she doesn’t have it generalized for side-walks and the dog park; she could not yet be off-leash in an un-fenced park, for instance.
So I’ve learned a lot from this experience, both about how to teach such a class, how to approach varying dogs with different issues, and what Elka’s level is. It was good for that, but i could have done that in 1-2 classes instead of 5-6. If they’d had individual evaluations before allowing access to the class I might have saved a good chunk of cash and time. Next time….
What I have been doing is watching for seminars run by the creator of the program: Leslie McDevitt - because to me, she’s a superhero and taking a class with Elka that was run by Leslie would be incredible.
I think I’ve stated in the past that any dog I have will go through Control Unleashed from day 1. I think that the program can easily avoid problems in the first place; I don’t know if it did with Elka - she does, after all, have a naturally incredible temperament. But both she and I enjoy the games and they’ve certainly helped in quite a variety of situations that I’ve put her in, even if she may not have needed those tools.
-Lisa, on November 10, 2009 at 1:41 pm