Hi Diane...the fact that you and your husband are training with different signals is confusing to Dakota...he will learn, but it is much harder for him to do that...my husband is much more lax with his training than I am and we have had a hard time getting our dogs to mind...so I know what you mean.
Still Dakota is testing you too...
When my dogs go through that, I take her head in my hands and get right in her face and repeat the command, looking her in the eye until she looks away...she usually knows she had made a mistake and tries harder.
I strongly suggest that during training you use a prong collar and a pull tab, that way you can really enforce your commands and you should always enforce a command or else don't give it...otherwise he will learn that you won't follow through.
You might want to take some intermediate training classes...or get a good book and work on new things, maybe making games of the learning.
Good luck!
Still Dakota is testing you too...
When my dogs go through that, I take her head in my hands and get right in her face and repeat the command, looking her in the eye until she looks away...she usually knows she had made a mistake and tries harder.
I strongly suggest that during training you use a prong collar and a pull tab, that way you can really enforce your commands and you should always enforce a command or else don't give it...otherwise he will learn that you won't follow through.
You might want to take some intermediate training classes...or get a good book and work on new things, maybe making games of the learning.
Good luck!