• Did you take formal obedience classes or train yourself. How many classes did you take? Do you still continue to train when not in class?
I started OB training with Lexus nearly as soon as I got her, maybe about 3 months. By the time we started formal puppy OB classes at about 4 1/2 or so months, I had the only dog in the puppy class to heel without too many reminders, sit when supposed to during the heel, come front, sit, down, and stay while I walked away. (no lengthy stays, just to walk around her and a little ways away) We have since continued with classes, usually every six months, although I have been very off with my training the last few months, I am getting back into the swing of it, and when the weather is nice we work sometimes twice a day, other times a longer session at night after work. Right now the weather is terrible and wet, so I cleared a open space in my basement and am working nearly everyday just brushing up on routine stuff, and always try to throw some new stuff in to keep it fresh.
• How important/beneficial is obedience training to you for this breed?
Extremely
• Where do you train outside of classes? (backyard, walks, public places)
In the backyard, at a baseball park, walks around the block, in the basement when the weather is bad. Most importantly, we really train everyday. Even just waiting for her food, she must sit/stay, or down/stay, sometimes I put her food down and make her come to me, which makes her walk past her food, and do just a little work, before being released. OB can be all the time, not just specified times or places
• How much time do you spend in a training session? Do you think a doberman is easy to train compared to other breeds?
Varied times, a formal session in the yard may go as much as 20 minutes combined with jumps and retrievals. But generally no longer. If I'm working on a new command, I just break my sessions up to twice in that day. We ALWAYS end our sessions in play. Lexus has been the easiest and most willing to learn dog I have EVER owned! Her obvious intelligence and eager to please attitude astound me daily. Don't get me wrong, we've definitely had our setbacks and overall bad days. I just remind myself if she seems off, we just quit for the day. If I've had a bad day, we don't work, we just play. I have had "those" days now and then when things just aren't working and tried to "make" them work, when I just should have called it a day.
• What type of rewards do you use, if any? (food, toy, praise) Do you use any special training aids? (leashes, clickers, etc) What methods of training do you use?.
Food reward, we dabble with clickers, but not too too much. We strive to have the exact same responses on and off leash, and work both with and without. I use a prong, but only for walks or public places. In our OB work, The collar is useless to me, as I don't leash correct her, not because I'm against it, I just don't have a need for it, she's too eager to do exactly what I want without correcting her with a collar. I mean she wears it always during training, I just don't need to correct her with it. During walks however she can get a little ahead of herself. Still I don't correct, she does it herself with the collar.
• What have the rewards/accomplishments been since you started training your doberman?
CGC and TDI
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