Petra
Hi everyone,
I wanted to give you a quick update because I finally found a solution to my start-line problem!
As you can see in the video, I now simply put my dog in a ‘down’ and just start running. Interestingly, I didn’t even train this behavior beforehand. I tried it quite spontaneously during a competition, and it worked right away! Since then, I’ve been doing it this way every time, and it has worked perfectly ever since.
He does sometimes change his position from a ‘down’ to a ‘stand’ while I’m moving away, but that doesn’t bother me at all. The most important thing is that he stays put and no longer breaks the start or chases after me. I am so happy with this progress! I wanted to share this here in case anyone else is struggling with a similar issue—maybe this approach could be a solution for others as well.
Regarding the other issue with his early and too high take-offs: I’m still working on that, but due to the current weather conditions, training is absolutely impossible at the moment.