Kenai is a 1-Year-Old Border Collie from Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Since his owner’s do not have a yard, they exercise him through daily walks, training, etc. He is being utilized as her service dog, but is only a year old and is slipping into problem behaviors that are typical for his age ( such as not listening as well as he used to, bolting out the door, pulling on-leash, etc. ). While his owner’s have had him since he was a puppy, and have been putting in a lot of work to get him to where he is currently at, they do struggle enforcing these commands.
Kenai was taught come, sit, down, place, let’s go ( as an informal heel/come command ), free, leave it, yes ( as a positive marker ), and no ( as a negative marker ). Kenai was taught these commands initially through verbal praise and food rewards. When he understood the criteria of the commands, I then began introducing corrections through a prong first. Once he understood that stay was implied, and that he had to wait for the release command before getting up, I worked on implementing the e-collar. He is quite soft in nature and was worked solely on levels 2 to 15 ( any higher and he would start showing avoidant behaviors ). He took to every command well, but did struggle the most with come as he strayed towards being independent from his handler.
Kenai made significant progress. He no longer pulls on-lead, comes when called, and is overall quicker to respond to commands than he was previously. He learned new concepts quickly so there were no issues for him when going through the program.