Fallout

 Hi Richard
>
> It looks like your tactic of "walking over Fido" when he was not 
> behaving well on lead has backfired, even though it appeared to work 
> in the short term to improve his behaviour. It seems too much of a co-
> incidence not to be related to his curious flight behaviour from your 
> later training session. Maybe this is the right time to remind 
> ourselves why we use positive reinforcement. Punishment has a lot of 
> fallout, and this may be what you are experiencing in his unusual 
> behaviour. It's not that punishment doesn't work. Sometimes it works 
> too much. Maybe Fido has learnt that bad things happen when the lead 
> is around. You are lucky that he hasn't generalised to think that bad 
> things happen when Richard is around, or in training sessions in 
> general. I think you might have expected too much of Fido at 
> Daylesford. To hold his attention (which is the essential thing, and 
> the other side of the coin to correct position) in a new and exciting 
> environment, you would have to go back to high level treats given 
> every step, as you did to start him on the lead, and then gradually 
> increased the distance he could go in between treats. There is a 
> great danger in thinking "he knows this now" and forgetting how 
> challenging the distractions are. Also, I think your mentality was 
> "he should be doing this; how do I show him his behaviour is 
> unacceptable" rather than "how can I motivate him in such a 
> challenging environment?" It's easy to slip into punishment when you 
> think "he should be doing it". If you think he wouldn't have 
> responded to high level treats, then I would suggest stopping, 
> walking a couple of steps, then releasing him to the end of the lead 
> to have a sniff, then bringing him back to heel to walk a couple of 
> steps, followed by another release. The release gives him access to 
> what he likes most (at that time). It may not be much of a walk by 
> your standards, but meandering around sniffing is what it's all about 
> for him. It may be time to think about whether you really need him to 
> heel (by which I mean close position and high attentiveness) during a 
> walk around the lake. Perhaps it is time to define the informal level 
> of control for walking: not such close position, permission to 
> meander a bit and to stop and sniff, but not to pull on the lead. Call 
> it relaxed walking. Use cues such as "close", Let's go" and "off you 
> go" to communicate the changing of gears from formal to informal to 
> release to be a dog.
>
> As for how to overcome his fear of the lead, what you suggest is 
> sensible. The fallout of punishment is that one bad experience can 
> take lots of good experiences to overcome it.
>
> I hope this is helpful.
>
> regards
>
> Kaye
>