This session we didn’t learn any new commands, it was just housekeeping and practising.

English finish

Artemis’ English finish was ok.

The trainer suggested instead of transferring the treat from right hand to left hand to have a treat in both hands so that it’s not too clumsy transferring the treat. This way Artemis can walk around me clockwise more seamlessly.

We have been Googling what word or phrase to use for this command and ended up with “come by”, which is a term used to signal the dog to go clockwise around live-stock. Artemis is a hunting dog not a herding dog, so we’ll see if this takes.

Stay

Artemis did stay really really well, considering we haven’t practised this in a while.

Novice recall

Today I took the lead off Artemis. I got her to heel, asked her to wait, walked down the field, did an about turn, and then called her to come.

Artemis came running towards me and then she ended up on my left side in the heel position, even though the treat was in front of me.

I think Artemis was running at full speed and didn’t know where to go. Usually she comes towards me and ends in the heel position, she doesn’t usually come towards me sitting directly in front of me. So other than the end position, Artemis did novice recall really well!

Conclusion

I think Artemis is learning patience these days, because some of the other dogs didn’t wait for their owners to go to the other end of the field. A couple dogs followed their owners after waiting two seconds, whilst one dog did manage to wait and run towards their owner – but just at the last second decided to have a walkabout before finally going to the owner.

These dogs really do have their own personalities and I feel it really shows when I watch them do the novice recall.