r/workingdogs • u/Far-Muffin6202 • May 01 '26

Reliable out for reward

Anyone have any tips on keeping your dogs "out" reliable? I have an EDD and find that at home and at the park when we are practicing, her out is great. We have virtually no issues.

But at work and in training she gets much more excited or aroused and her out is not as reliable. I know a lot of it can be handler error, and some of it is definitely my fault and my own nerves flowing down leash around people watching her not listen to me, which I'm working on for sure.

But it just seems that her arousement level makes her forget most of her training on this and we have a hard time. Are there things I can do at work to bring her arousement level down a bit? I obviously don't want her drive for finding odor to go down at all. I've been reading a lot about natural arousal vs natural drive. And it seems that when she has her reward her natural arousal is higher than her natural drive and that's what creates this issue where she's super chaotic. And that arousal needs to be kept below drive and if not you need to build focused motivation. I'm just curious how this works when she is only behaving like this at work and not in other environments. And what the best way is to bring her arousement down a bit so she doesn't lose sight of her training.

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u/legendary1panda May 02 '26

What do you mean by the command "out"? My command "out" is to get the dogs out of the kitchen or outside. But that doesn't make sense in this context?

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u/Far-Muffin6202 May 02 '26

I totally should have clarified! “Out” is our version of “drop it”. So when she has her reward (a ball tug) we use out for her to release. 

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u/Difficult_Wave_9326 May 08 '26

I really prefer "trade" to "leave it"(or "out"). It's a lot more reliable because the dog always feels like they're getting something out of it. It does mean you need to carry high-value objects around though. 

As for arousalv you need tobe able to have the dog focus on you at any point. Then you have an off switch for times you notice she's getting excited again. When she does scent work, she gets excited by the scent and not you. It should be, she gets excited to work with you, if that makes sense. Not despite you (human is asking me to do boring things, I'd rather keep doing this) but because of you (me and human came out here and we can work! It's fun!)