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IMPRINTING YOUR NEXT BREED AND OBEDIENCE PROSPECT Imprinting is a training tool to give early exposure to your young Golden Retriever puppy that will build skills making later training much easier. By exposing your puppy when it is very young to these skills, you will imprint behaviors that you will later refine into a perfect obedience performance. How young is too young? Most training experts now say that these skills should be introduced in the whelping box and carried through for the first several months of the dogs life. Like all of us, you too dream of that Champion – OTCH dog. If, however, you focus on just one type of competition, the other is likely to suffer and the goal will not be achieved. That’s where imprinting comes in as a wonderful tool. While the pup is still very young and not able to compete in the breed ring, you can utilize this time to introduce simple skills that you will build on later. Breaking down the obedience skills and using food as a motivator to have the pup follow your lure is an excellent way of teaching these skills. A very talented trainer, Barbara Weber has two short videos that you can view by clicking on the videos below. You will need Quick Time Player to view it, which can be downloaded to your computer for free if you don’t already have it. Go to http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/win.html In the video, you will see how Barb has taken her 7 week old puppy and taught her how to front and finish. In the second video, you will see the puppy introduced to the Figure 8 exercise. Notice as you watch the puppy working how she is learning all the skills of heeling, fronts, finishes and figure 8’s and yet in the puppy’s mind she is just having great fun! There is absolutely no force or pressure put on the puppy to work, and early imprinting will tell this pup that obedience is fun!! After you have introduced these skills, you can start working on stacking, gaiting and attention for the breed ring. When you have finished your dogs championship, it will be easy to go back and start working on obedience skills again. The dog will pick up on these quickly due to the early imprinting.
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