This basically describes my dog Koda (Norwegian Elkhound). She is not motivated by toys or praise. She isn't eager to please at all. She is mildly food motivated even then if she is distracted I could stick her "highest value treat" under her nose and she will not move. Her biggest motivators are new people, dogs and the environment. Which does not make training easy. I struggled for many months trying to find something to keep her motivated. She knows the basics but it was a struggle. I even had two positive reinforcement trainers come and basically shrug their shoulders because by the third session she was ignoring them as well.
She still doesn't look the majority of the time I say her name. And almost everything is on her time, but it has gotten better. The biggest thing that has helped for me was training for several months in a zero distraction environment and we are just now at the stage where I am adding little distractions. Also clicker training has helped a lot. She has never been motivated by the tone of a voice so that has been extremely helpful. And for my sanity consistency, celebrating the tiniest of behavior changes and changing my expectations were the most helpful.
She has really improved in the last month, so it does get better and easier!
She still doesn't look the majority of the time I say her name. And almost everything is on her time, but it has gotten better. The biggest thing that has helped for me was training for several months in a zero distraction environment and we are just now at the stage where I am adding little distractions. Also clicker training has helped a lot. She has never been motivated by the tone of a voice so that has been extremely helpful. And for my sanity consistency, celebrating the tiniest of behavior changes and changing my expectations were the most helpful.
She has really improved in the last month, so it does get better and easier!
