Diary of a Sheepdog… Learning commands, comebye and away.
Another game I have introduced is using a chair and sending her round it from sitting at heal, whilst giving the appropriate command, ie come bye for clockwise and away for anti clock wise. On the returning side I would throw her ball for her to catch to encourage speed around the turn.
Once she was doing this reliably, I would start her at the oposite side of the chair and call her back to me on the correct command. The send her round the chair, and ‘lie down’ behind it, then return to me. Each time she returns to me I say ‘that’ll do’ to get her to come to heal, followed by ‘get ready’ which means come through my legs and sit and await command.
She is still looking at me, and relying on a small hand signal to follow the diection, which I am slowly fizzling out, so she doesn’t need to look at me and looks at the ball only, and of course later the sheep.
To encourage focus on the object rather than th handler, I then substtuted the chair for a ball, so she listened to the command rather than looked for it, just incase the ball ran away.