by reader4 » Sat Jul 25, 2020 7:28 am
My less-experienced two cents... all of the above. He's still young so don't expect too much. I think once you have whoa with all four feet still you can work on generalizing. Also work on introducing whoa from verbal, whistle and hand signal commands. Lots of things to introduce at this stage. I'd say the fact that he stays with feet planted while distractions like bugs are flying around is a good sign. If he's not distracted by praise, a little gentle stroke on the chin, back and tail can encourage stillness (just don't expect it yet).
I don't have experience with a barrel, but something I did find useful even with my small pup was a slightly imbalanced place board. We had an archery target laying around. It's just rounded enough on the sides and the right size that the pup could easily jump up but had to work a little bit to maintain balance. That helped it "click" for him that whoa = whole body still. From there I could start adding simple distractions to encourage more stable head/eyes.
One other thing to ask is: does your dog make eye contact throughout training? If not, you might spend some time just encouraging that at the beginning of a session. Simply rewarding eye contact can make other training elements a little easier. If he's focused on you, he's less likely to be distracted by other things. A strategy I've found useful with several dogs is, after letting the dog run off some energy, to start training with a bit of eye contact reward, a few well-known obedience commands, a bit of heeling work. Same process if we are working on obedience, retrieving, field work, etc.