Looking for a positive way to “out” herding drive

[joann1967]

Just what the title says. I’m looking for a positive way to “out” herding/prey drive.

I’m getting into herding with my rescue cattle dog. As expected, her brain is all drive around livestock. I don’t get to visit the farm again for a couple of months (I’m in Quebec and the owner is a snowbird), so we’re practicing with squirrels in the park. She reacts to them about the same.

Right now, I’m doing a modified LAT with “look at that” replaced with “walk up” and just when she gets to the edge of her impulse control, I call her back with “that’ll do” and treat her.

There’s a delay in her recall with LAT and I think it’s because this is a more cognitive, thinking, approach than conditioning a behaviour chain like you’d get with engage-disengage. Do you think this is the right approach for a dog in “drive”? Would a conditioning approach be more appropriate since it requires less thinking?

Or do you think she’ll develop more impulse control with this technique and be able to recall from deeper and deeper into her herding drive?

Edit: I should add that she approaches the thing that is exciting her drive when I say “walk up”, so it’s kinda like BAT 2.0 in that way.

 

[fleetwood95]

@joann1967 I would never ever exercise herding on squirrels or other random animals.. find a nearby place where you can do herding with a good trainer would be my advice

 

[mypathmyquest]

@joann1967 In my opinion, you're doing great, she still comes back. If you keep this up, I feel like she'll get faster at coming back. Herding excites her so its gonna be hard for her to not keep on it. or her mind doesnt process your words right away, that would be reaction time, which is normal and can be improved.

Its like if someone told me to drop something, I was about to, and then they fastly tell me not to, I dont process it fast enough and end up dropping what they said to in the first place (this is a total example, but it covers the idea of my personal reaction time I think).

If you find yourself saying it fast, try slowing down each word to a normal pace. like if you say "okay" fast or whatever wording you use, it will not register or the dog doesnt understand it right away, this happened with my rottie when waiting for her food, she thought that any time I talk, that means she can go to her food but when I slowed down my "okay" or changed it to "okay, go ahead" but at a normal pace and not fast, she realized "oh, I can only go when she says that" especially if I block her when I say anything different like "how is your day?" You get what I mean right?

My border collie, when she was around, would herd my rottie away from us so she's get more attention which would lead into fights and her winning over the rottie (no blood drawn) but we had to show her that my rottie can be pet too and distract both from fighting

Keep up the good work!