Training Frieda has been the challenge of my life when it comes to dogs and training. Frieda lived in the wild for years and she was never formally trained. She worked as a guard dog, is fiercely protective of Maria, me and the farm. She has explosive prey drives, is easily distracted by any smell, is not used to making any eye contact with any human but Maria. She will chase anything that moves quickly – dogs, cats, people, trucks and cars. Last year, she caught a deer (didn’t hurt it).

She is a working dog, bright, but not really used to commands. She is so much better than she was when we began, she has a good ways to go.

One of my problems with training books and videos is that they don’t often show the mistakes and resets and changes of the trainer. So people look at them and feel incompetent. My videos will show my many screw-ups. I just think it’s important to be honest. We  all lose timing,  focus and patience sometimes. Nobody’s life or work is perfect, and I am no guru. I have had good luck training my dogs. Training a dog isn’t about always getting it right. It’s about getting it right as often as you can.

This week has seen a huge breakthrough in training for Frieda. After two years and thousands of repetitions, Frieda is beginning to sit reliably, to stay and come on command. Training her makes me a  bit nervous, because we have had so many heart-thumping moments when she chased deer, trucks, barn cats or the donkeys, who taunt and bray at her almost continuously.  I don’ t want her to get hurt, or anybody or anything else.

But I love working with her. She is a great dog, and training her has made me more patient, confident and knowledgeable. Her recall is excellent now – unless she sees something much better. In this video, the first of many I will put up showing the Training of Frieda, we are working on sit, stay and come. She has a very brief attention span, about three or four minutes and when I see she is wandering – sniffing, looking away, etc. – I stop the training.

So this is the beginning of a series of videos on our training Frieda. You can see how well she is doing, how much work there is to do. That is the nature of training. It never really ends.

I train her two or three times a day for very short and positive bursts. If it isn’t working, or I am impatient, or she is, I just stop. I always try to be positive, and I am about 75 per cent of the time.

I love working with Frieda. I will keep you posted.