Hi! I’m Melanie McLeroy with Taurus Training for Expert Village, and today we’re going to talk about training dogs. We’re working with Gloria our husky on how to pay attention and learn her name. Now keep in mind that Gloria is an older husky. Unlike many other breeds that we’ve worked with here on Expert Village, this is the dog that I know very well. So she’s going to be lot more responsive to me. If you have a puppy a young husky or one that’s not paying attention to you, check out one of the other breed videos. Gloria the husky though is going to learn to make eye contact. Good girl, when I say her name. Now huskies have very expressive ears; that’s how you can tell that they’re paying attention, but may be not doing what you want them to. So I’ll wait for her to look away, what I’m going to do is say her name in a special way, and then when she looks at me, I’ll mark that and then reward it. Gloria, good, very nice, now I’ll get to the side, so you can see that a little better, wait for her to look away, Gloria, good. Now that time it took her a little while to actually make eye contact. Be patient with your husky. It may take them a little while to make eye contact, but if you mark it immediately and you give them the random treat reinforcement, then you will speed up that response. Gloria, good, and remember to wait until you get about a second of sustained eye contact. Now, technically within this particular exercise, you should be releasing the dog before you give her the treat. Gloria is doing so well, that I’m going to start doing that now to show you. Gloria, good, good okay, otherwise the dog looks away and decides to break the eye contact on her terms instead of yours, which is technically not good dog training. So Gloria, the husky is paying beautiful attention. Let’s go on and work on some of the other commands.
