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I was considering getting a kayak for the cooler months to exercise my dog in the water as it was suggested to help her recover from an injury, so please don't think that I'm being harsh with my next suggestion...its just an option/addition to the above suggestions that I thought may be helpful. If your staffy jumps off, keep going for a few mins....in most cases she will follow and the exercise won't do any harm, when she tires out a bit, she may be less likely to jump off. The jumping off is probably due to the movement in the surface under her feet...a new sensation that might spook her a bit. As an aside to the above and very OFF TOPIC (sorry ) 5mins swimming is the equivalent to 30 mins running in exercise benefit and the beauty about swimming if you have a gaiting problem from an old injury is that its very difficult for a dog to not use their limbs the way they should in water because they can't keep balance/turn effectively. So where you have had an injury that has resulted in muscle wastage its more likely that the dog will recover correct movement sooner. The other thing I learned from this experience is that a dog will may use its limbs incorrectly out of habit for a long time after an injury has healed because thats the way that they learned to avoid pain. Swimming teaches them that it is no longer painful to use their limbs correctly.

Good post Dogdude!

Hey Shoemonster, wanna book a flight to Qld?

Also don't forget that your dog is probably operating on foot cues ie when you come to a halt you finish by bringing your left foot up to your right. So if your dog is used to this foot cue to indicate a sit when you halt, he may be confused. Two different things we found helpful: 1. When your about to halt to give a stand signal, delay bringing your left foot up to halt until after you've given the stand signal. (If you intend trialling, you will have to work towards the hand signal and the left foot coming up at the same time though cuz in the ring the judge might see it as a double command and you'll lose points. or: 2. Swap the foot that you finish on if your about to do a halt for a stand ie, bring your right foot up to your left to halt instead. Also helps the dog understand if at the instant that his butt starts moving towards the ground you immediately take another step forward so that he moves forward with you instead of being able to complete the sit. If you use the belly strap be sure not to jerk it around....just use it to support the weight of his back end if it looks like his butt might be heading towards the ground. Another tip for some dogs....some are sensitive in the flank/belly area and don't take the touch there well under these circumstances. I've found that sometimes it helps if instead of touching the flank/belly to support the weight to prevent the sit you actually place your hand on the stifle joint and give a slight backwards pressure. This prevents the dog from bending its 'knee' in order to sit. Be careful to use only slight pressure though cuz sometimes you can get a reflex action where the dog kicks its leg out behind.

The issue I have with canine intelligence tests is that a lot of the exercises in the tests use food. I.e., find which cup the food is hidden under in a timed exercise. My ridgeback, who is a highly food motivated hoover hound would have that food before you started the stop watch, where as my friends Sibe, would look at you as if to say, 'Yeah, I know where it is, that doesn't necessarily mean I want it or that I'm going to put in any effort to go and get it.' So I figure that results of the test may not be entirely accurate if you are comparing a highly food motivated dog with one that isn't. One of the other exercises I've read about is putting a towel or blanket over your dogs head and timing how long it takes to find its way out or get the blanket off its head. My dog loves to be under blankets...there is a good chance she'd settle down for a snooze and it'd be a good hour before she got out from under there....I figure that results of this test would be influenced by how comfortable a dog felt about having its head covered. JMHO, but I don't think that either exercises really proves intelligence one way or another.

Some other reasons why rubbing noses in 'doggy donations' doesn't work: There are more ways to get a thing wrong than there are to get it right. If you get angry and rub pups nose in the donation he left on the floor in front of the couch, does that mean that the floor in front of the TV is OK? Are you going to wait until you have punished all of the different areas of the floor before he moves outside? Far quicker to teach where he should go and praise him for doing the right thing. Also, apart from the donation eating babies above, I have also heard of dogs that were punished for inappropriately placed donations who learned to hide them. The message their punishment training seemed to get across to them was that it was OK to go inside so long as the boss didn't find it..donations buried in laundry piles, in the bottom of wardrobes etc,. I have also had a number of pups who seemed to have a fear of the dark. During the course of their toilet training, when they seemed confident and happy to go outside by themselves in the day time, they were more likely to have inside accidents of an evening so may need you to be aware and accompany them for a while in the dark. Also, accidents might recur if you take newly trained pup to a friends house for example. A change in context will often mean starting the training from scratch.

Ok Aus, you got me, but I did say command, rather than correction (Now I'm being pedantic!) Edited to clarify: I was refering to the growl as the verbal correction....but perhaps I've misunderstood?

I'd like to ask a favour of everyone who has worked with K9: If you have doggy friends that live in South East Qld or Far North NSW that you think would like to come along to a Training in Drive workshop, we're holding one in Gympie 23rd & 24th Sept and would love some help to get the word out! Cheers,

Guys, I was wondering if any of you who have been to see Steve have friends in the doggy world that live in South East Queensland that may be interested in coming to a Training in Drive Workshop in Gympie? I'd love some help to get the info out about this workshop if you do! Cheers! ETA: Some from Northern NSW might also find the trip worthwhile too!

If you are luring with a treat, once you have the dog in the drop, if you move the treat from their nose kind of across their neck btn their ear and shoulder (maybe closer to the shoulder than the ear), they try to follow the treat with their nose and they can only turn their head so far before they start to roll. But as with any training progression, treat for the small behaviours and build on that to get the full movement.

Once had an experienced trialler with multiple titled dogs say to me that she never worked her dogs in a class situation. She only takes her dogs to dog club for the distractions it supplies and to help socialize them. When you're in the ring, you're in there by yourself, so why do you need to practice heeling with other dogs? The only thing you need to practice with other dogs is drop and sit stays. The beauty about practicing by yourself is that neither you nor your dog get distracted from the job at hand by other goings on in the class, you get to proof behaviours in a different location and have more control over the level of distraction, you can do what ever you like to reward your dog without worrying about distracting the rest of the class. This works out perfectly for me because, I like to reward with toys sometimes, and sometimes I want more frequent 'exercise completes' during our practice. It allows me to do a short work out or a longer one. I can just go into the ring and without doing anything else, just do a quick fast/slow/fast/slow and just reward my girl for her focus. Also we always have an obedience ring at our club set up to practice in, so that if you need a hand, you just grab another trialler to do a ring run out for you and ask for pointers. Its amazing the difference that this has made in my confidence in a trial situation (don't think I need the can of bourbon and coke before I go in now!)...the freedom to work on what we need at a given time without complying to a class directive. I believe that this will help prevent my girl getting ring sour...she never knows what to expect when we go into the ring!

Me too?

Whats even scarier is that she has nominated to become officer in charge of training at our club. Aside from her cronies, some other current committee members have decided that they will vote for her...their reasoning is that they'll let her run the club down and then try to get rid of her with a vote of no confidence. I'm gonna protest the nomination or find out if there is a way that we can not accept it. I figure that if I can protest the nomination with supported arguments then I may be able to swing some votes away from her? Biggest problem with this woman is that her ego is bigger than her love for her dogs and she also has no respect for any rule that stands in the way of what she wants to do.

Off Topic: In my girls first novice sweepstakes the dog next to her got up and started humping her in the sit stay...she held position for about three blinks with this 'OMG, get me outta here' look on her face before she broke to come to me. Judge restarted the exercise and made humpers handler stay with her dog. Didn't make much of a difference to us cuz we were already on a non qual score...our heeling was shyte! During the drop stay, same dog rolled over on to his back and was having a good old scratch and groaning cuz it felt so good. My girl had that same look on her face, but she held the stay! ETA: we do compete in tracking...so I'm wary of how I go about correcting sniffing cuz I don't want to kill her drive for it.

Well this might be considered "old school" but when I was training for the sit stay I would never stare at my dog, just look directly ahead just over the level of the head as if staring into the horizon. A direct stare is a challenge to a dog, some dogs will react badly to it. As for the reason for the dog dropping in the sit stay this could also be due to physical causes, perhaps the dog is injured in some way and it hurts to sit up for too long? I have seen people take their desire to succeed in the trial ring to excessive lengths and the dogs just shut down, to me if the dogs aren't enjoying it then it's not a fun activity for me either so why force the issue? I agree behaviour problems need to be addressed, I just don't class lack of drive as a behaviour issue. Regards, Corine No, not old school, Corine- I have heard that b4. Incidently, same woman feeds one of her dogs pain killers so he can compete in agility....so their could be something to the injury side of things too.

Latest news addition on this topic, lady in question has since been kicked out of an obedience ring for harsh handling....her dogs now go down into a drop during the sit-stay. I'm wondering if since she has forced them into subordinate positions as punishment, that they now put themselves into subordinate positions when she is staring at them during the sit stays from the other side of the ring? Wonder if the dog is thinking (using that term loosely!) 'Oh I'm in trouble, she's staring me down' and they drop? Problem is, they still get into trouble cuz they've dropped...which was what happened when she was kicked out of the ring. I feel sooo bad for these poor dogs, they must be so confused!

I may get screamed down for this...had a similar problem with my girl getting up to sniff in the stays....particularly the drop stays....I decided to go with it and make the place between her two front legs while she was down in the stay the most interesting place to be sniffing. I'm a good shot at throwing things which helped, but while I was close to her in the beginning, I'd drop a treat between her legs...where she could reach it without getting up. As distance increased, I tossed the treat and landed it in this position. Gradually stretched this out so that when I returned to her, I dropped the treat for the reward btn her front legs rather than handing to her. Now that she is more mature, I don't need to do the treat toss anymore and I have her full focus during the stays...cuz when mumma gets back a treat may appear btn my legs!

I don't mean any disrespect, Aus, but in the senario above, I wouldn't even use verbal corrections. But I can still show that I control the resources and get the dog to leave the food until I give the release by setting up the circumstances for the dog to win. All I do is ask for a sit while I'm still holding the bowl of food. Then I start to move as though I'm going to put the bowl down. If the dog looks as though he's even gonna move a whisker towards that bowl, I command 'leave' and at the same time stand up with the bowl again. The longer he holds position the closer the bowl gets to being put on the ground, but as soon as he looks like he's going to make a move towards the bowl I stand up with it again. The picture I'm giving is that if you move towards the bowl before I give the release, it moves out of your reach. Even with a numskull 8mo highly food motivated hoover hound I get what I want inside 10 reps without even a verbal correction.

Do you think we should get T-shirts and bumper stickers made? :D

I'm with the "waiting......waiting....." brigade!

Guess I'll just have to get out the roller skates and body armour until then ETA: My girl always showed excellent drive for tracking, but she seems to have lost this lately. I guess I understand one of the reasons why now!

So by this you mean when the dog actually gets the ball, the game stops until he gives up the ball? And do you actually retain hold on the ball when the dog has it, or do you let them romp off with it? I'm sooo looking forward to this workshop so I can tie all this info together! Also in respect to the above, where my girl is pulling me like a locomotive on lead, does it mean that I shouldn't discourage this cuz it seems to me that she is in drive, but by discouraging am I harming any TiD outcomes?

K9: not just that, things such as bite inhibition etc also play a big part.... K9: should be there befire the end of this year... K9 is gonna be in Gympie SEQ on 23rd and 24th of Sept 2006. Places are limited and you need to book with me. PM me if you would like to come!

I prefer to try and set up a training session so that the dog is guided to the correct behaviour, improves the likely hood of reward for correct behaviour and therefore reduces or negates the need for correction. One of the rules of correction that I like is: If you have the dogs focus but are not getting the behaviour you want, then do not correct, instead work on helping the dog to understand what you want. If you don't have the dogs focus, then you need to develop this first before you attempt training. A dog that is not focused is not learning from you and this will increase the likelyhood that you will need correction.