The Flagman Stick-em Up bumper is a new product for an old training issue of how to teach lines and blinds. The Stick-em Up is a bumper with streamers that you stick in the ground which makes it highly visible to the dog. You will start at 10 yards and then continuously move out until you are 50 to 75 yards away while building confidence in the dog. Dog training is a step by step process and the dog builds images of what is expected. The blind and lining drills are no different.
Bella is a four year old yellow lab that is a great upland dog, but she was over pressured when she was learning lining and blinds. The program that she went through emphasized avoiding pressure and moving away from pressure to the point that the pressure put on her was too much and she shut down during this procedure when she was younger. Now that we have the Flagman Stick-em Ups, she is learning lining at a rapid pace with great confidence. We will continue to use these until we can transition her to the Flagman Success Flags and regular piles. It won’t be until after this transition that we will re-introduce overs. As a trainer, I am expecting this procedure to take a little more than a month training every other day. We will have to help her unlearn stress and then re-learn confidently.
I started this with Bella a little over two weeks ago and the video below will give you some understanding of what the Stick-em Up is all about. And to order the Flagman Stick-em up and other Flagman Mark-N-Bird Products, please visit http://www.marleydogsupplies.com/brands/Flagman-Bumpers.html
For the past three months, I have been training a two-year old Labrador Retriever named Goose. Goose has been kenneled for most of his life, and his owner has not had much time to spend with him. Thus, Goose had no manners and thought the world revolved around him. When I first met Goose and started training him, we would have a session where everything went great, and then another session where he was constantly trying to dominate me by peeing on my leg. Since he had been left alone for so long, he thought he was the alpha dog and that everything was subordinate to him. He tried the leg pee once too often and wound up on his back with me breathing down his neck. I only had to do this one more time and he was cured of trying to pee anywhere except where I gave him explicit permission. This trait and the fact that this dog did not seem happy made the initial obedience training difficult, and I thought this dog might be a lost cause. I couldn’t get any reaction that he was happy about working.