Malinois Puppy Dog Catch 1st Session (Patreon)

Hey everyone!

I wanted to post this clip here today as a slightly longer form version of what I posted on Instagram so you can see the full beginning of how I trained the start of the dog catch in real life. Here is a few short clips of my first training session with my friend’s 5 month old malinois Pepper. Pepper will be doing French ring, but is also working on building confidence, so one of Liz’s goals is to have Pepper jump into her arms. It’s rare that I get to film a dog that has never ever done a trick before so I wanted to post this up for you. (Please ignore the background talk - it was social hour at work and a friend had just had her tooth pulled so there’s some strange chatter lol!)

We filmed these few clips over a 20 minute training session where we rotated Pepper and Chip into training in approximately 3 minute intervals. When they weren’t training they were crated. (Chip was working on hind end awareness/boxwork and I’ll be putting that fun training session together so you can see a brand new dog learning about how to free up their hind end so they can do fancy heel work/come-to-heel down the line. Look for that in January 2022!)

The mat I use in the video is a Blue-9 Pet Products Traction Mat. It serves two functions:

1. it creates a nonslip surface for the dog to jump onto which creates a greater feeling of security. Security = faster training progression. 
2. The dog already understands how to “go to place” so the mat provides consistency for a skill the dog already knows making the new skill easier. ie. The dog catch is just a “go to place” on my human's lap.

Below I’ve also posted the full video of how to train a dog catch step-by-step (https://youtu.be/1LCaivl0bmU). If you all are working on dog catches, feel free to share a clip of where your are in training below, or any questions you need help with. I’m here for ya!

I’m away for the holiday until next week, but I’m excited to have you all at the December 29th Q&A! Feel free to message me questions for that as well. Until then, happy holidays!

Best,
Laura