Triangle Recalls (Help for Jumping) (Patreon)

Two notes:
First, apologies for my hair getting in the way of some of the video. I recently got meta glasses and hadn't yet figured out to put my hair back while wearing them.
Second, yes this video is out of order of what I've been sharing. Denver is 4.5 months old in the video. Processing video of our first month or two of training is getting tedious so I wanted to give you a more "up to date" video of Denver to help with my own dopamine :)

In this video, you'll see myself and two friends working with John Denver. I typically use this triangle game to train recalls within the family. It's a fun game that both burns energy and trains a really nice recall. However, the goal of this session is actually not recall (his recall is excellent at this point - we'll see what happens when we hit adolescence) but instead, approaching other people without jumping.

No question, Denver is a jumpy boy. His favorite thing is to climb on things, including people. Having some serious adventure time out here in Cali has definitely brought his jumping to my attention, as I hadn't really seen it too much with others before this trip, and have actually gotten a decent handle on it when interacting with me. But with new friends? He really wants to rocket up to their face.

So in this exercise I'm having my friends call him and then "catch" him with a treat, just like I was doing in our first week of training together. Catching him with a low treat can be transferred to targeting a low hand from a stranger and can be a great way to coach a new person to great your puppy using an outstretched low hand target.

When playing this game, it's important to start with your hand pre-loaded with a treat to "catch" the puppy with, and then you can eventually practice with just the hand touch. Be sure to make the pattern of who calls the puppy unpredictable.

If your puppy struggles to disconnect with the person who just fed them to go to the next recaller, the person who just fed can simply turn their back when they're done feeding while the next person calls, sending a clear disengagement signal to the puppy.

I typically only spend 1-2 minutes on this game to preserve the novelty and keep the puppy's recalls coming at full tilt.

Happy Training!