Hi,
My dog is a border collie and is very aggressive to vacuums and robot vacuums. I've been able to train him to ignore them while they are off – but once on, he requires constant supervision and/or distraction (either via play, pats, treats, or commands to leave it or go to his mat) to leave them alone.
He listens well to commands and will stop and leave it when told, but only for a short period of time, then will return to attacking it. Ideally I would be able to run a automated clean without the need to constantly distract/supervise him.
I'm not sure how to get him to leave it in general without intervention. When being supervised and distracted, he will eat treats off the top of the robot vacuum while it's running (and leave it alone otherwise), and playing fetch around it will have him running back and forward past it (and even jumping over it). On a few occasions the robot vacuum has even bumped into him while playing fetch and he's just ignored it. However, no matter what training I try, he will only leave it alone when supervised – and I've had no luck with extending this to unsupervised (which is my main goal).
Does anyone have any tips on how to make this next step from supervised to unsupervised? I've done lots of desensitisation work with him (which led to him being willing to eat treats off the top while it's running), command training (ensuring he listens to what he is told even with it distracting him) and even tried association training (where I've been teaching him to go play with different toys and/or going to his mat and getting treats there). All of these have worked well for when I'm supervising him when I set it running, but the moment I try running it unsupervised, that all disappears – and I'm at a loss of what the next step for this would be. All advice is welcome and much appreciated!
submitted by /u/Ziazeke
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