I often post about problems so thought I'd post to say that we've just had a brilliant healwork session. I took him for an offlead walk, then it was back onlead to walk home. He will heal for a few steps then his attention drifts and he forges ahead. Soooo, I thought that I could try jazzing it up a bit to keep him interested.
I got him to sit, sid "heal" and walked about three steps, then said "sit" and gave him a treat when he did a straight sit near to my left foot. (ie, not wherever he happened to plonk his bum, in whichever direction he was facing at the time!
) I repeated this a few times, till he got the idea of what I wanted, then I added in about turns, left and right turns. It was only about half a mile walk back but it took us twenty minutes. I varied how many steps I took between doing something different and he got the idea that he had to keep paying attention to me, otherwise he wouldn't get fed, wouldn't get to go anywhere and would just have to sit until I was ready to move off.
The walk home was even fun, rather than stressful for us both, and the effects lasted until we were in the house. We walked calmly, right up to my front door, and he waited like a nice dog whilst I put the key in the door, instead of pulling my arm off trying to get to the rabbits at the back. I was so proud of him because he really does have the attention span of a gnat. The only time it went to peices was when ther was a JRT just ahead of us. But we crossed over the road and hey presto! I'm proud of me too for finding a way to make it work
