Meet Bentley! She is a 1.5 Year-Old German Shorthaired Pointer who came to us from Grass Valley, California for our 3-Week Advanced Off-Leash Obedience Training Camp.

Bentley had been in a couple of different homes during her short life and her owner’s wanted to invest the time to make sure she would succeed in their home.

During her 3-Week camp, Bentley was taught basic obedience commands. Her basic positions and commands were taught with food luring, fortified with positive reinforcement, and transitioned to an e-collar. Bentley was not alwasy motivated by food, in which cases we would utilize leash pressure to gain compliance with commands. We worked on consistency and duration in commands under distraction and stress. Skills learned and practiced while in camp were: formal heel on and off-leash, informal “let’s go” off-leash command, sit with built in stay, down with built in stay, place under high distraction, “wait” at doorwar and for treats/toys, “no” marker for undesirable behavior, and off-leash recall under distraction. These skills were taught and reinforced through repetition and reward while increasing duration and decreasing frequency of reward, as well as incremental increase of environmental distractions. E-collar was overlaid once clear expectations and understanding of skills developed.

Since Bentley’s family owns a mattress store, they wanted her to have a solid “place” command so that she could be in the store with patrons without issue. They also had concerns that she would jump on the mattresses, so they requested an “off” command and that she not be allowed on furniture. She was also taught a “no” command to stop undesirable behavior such as jumping on people or furniture. This was reinforced in the trainer’s home when given free time in the house. We also practiced a place command in many different settings with a wide variety of distraction in order to reinforce a solid “place” command.

When Bentley arrive at camp she was unsure about her surroundings, had very poor leash manners, and was a flight risk. By the end of camp she could be trusted to recall with any distraction and had great leash manners. She was willing to work to earn her off-leash freedoms so that she could adventure and enjoy the smells of the world around her.