MrsD

Not sure, I will find out for you. Did I meet you at the last K9Force seminar?

gsdog2, yep, there are a few spots left, send payment to the treasurer who's details are in the first post .

;) :D :D :) :D

That's a shame smisch! Three spots in the course were taken in the first 4 days, remember there are only a max of 12 participants allowed in the course so if you want to join up make sure you get in early!

FWIW, out of all the dogs I've ever owned my kelpie boy who was a rescue & that I got at 1 year old is by miles the most devoted & bonded to me. He would follow me to the ends of the earth & walk across hot coals if I asked him to, his loyalty & devotion knows no bounds but without being clingy or being anxious if he's separated from me. So it just proves that bonding with a dog doesn't have to occur when they are a young puppy .

I agree. I don't see depriving a dog of all other enjoyment as an acceptable price for more attention to me. It's the Stockholm Syndrome approach and its one I'm no fan of. That's interesting, I don't remember typing that I deprive my dogs of all other enjoyment, but hey ... My comment wasn't directed at you Mrs D.. and if you don't deprive your dogs of all stimultation not derived from you (and this does happen) then my comment is not relevant to your practices anyway! And for what it's worth I agree that there's a balance to be struck between letting your dog run free with others and regaining its attention when training. A very highly aroused dog will maintain its adrenalin levels for hours or days.. not a state you want a dog in for effective training. I thought it was directed at me. My mistake, sorry PF. Fran, no problems, you weren't disrespectful .

I agree. I don't see depriving a dog of all other enjoyment as an acceptable price for more attention to me. It's the Stockholm Syndrome approach and its one I'm no fan of. That's interesting, I don't remember typing that I deprive my dogs of all other enjoyment, but hey ...

I am always astounded at how many people take their puppies to obedience classes & before & after each class let them run around & play madly with lots of other dogs. Then they wonder why their dog is leaping around at the end of their lead going crazy trying to get to the other dogs in the middle of class :rofl: . I also agree with the working for things idea, that can build alot of respect & positive energy between you & your dog & will help with the bonding as well. All good things should come through you.

I have to agree completely with Poodlefan, if you wanted a person oriented dog you would probably have been better off getting a working breed or something like a poodle or one of the other breeds that have been bred specifically to be "companions". Not that that is much help to you now, but it may help in the future if you ever get another dog. She will probably get more attatched to you as she gets older, don't forget atm she is still only a puppy & most puppies are happy to "share their love around" & are often not strongly bonded to a particular person until they are a bit older. In regards to her playing with you etc, I may not be popular here but I wouldn't be letting her have play time with other people's dogs, you said "we went to the beach the other day and god we had a blast", so how much playing did she actually do with you one on one? I'm guessing very little, it sounds like she had a fantastic time playing with the other dogs! My dogs will play together in the back yard now they are older, but if I went to the back door & called any one of them, they would be at the backdoor ready to come inside & play or be with me before you could blink & they have absolutely no interest in playing with other dogs. Socializing does not mean that the dogs have to play together. It sounds like she is only motivated by the toy for a short while, do as someone else suggested & stop playing before she gets tired of it & leave her wanting more. If she is motivated by food try playing the food chase game & she will start looking to you for fun. The other thing you can do is start crating for a short time each day & when she is let out she may start to seek more time with you if you make it interesting ie crate her away from you for an hour & then let her out & take her outside & play a game with her then, rather than just when she's been hanging around the house. I have found bitches to be a little more aloof than dogs certainly in the dogs I have owned, but most of all it comes down to personality I think. Just remember that not every dog we own will be our "heart dog" (to use a phrase which I don't particularly like but have no better), doesn't mean that we don't love them & they don't love us though.

Very possible, easy for someone to misunderstand.

That's what I was going to say - since the christmas period is incredibly busy with dogs often being doubled up in some kennels I'm guessing that the kennel she asked is thinking (rightly or wrongly) that it would be just too much hassle to have 2 dogs smelling like a bitch in heat .

I don't know who you've seen huski, so I'm no help at all . If you want to do 1 thing before the class that will give you lots of options when it comes to tricks, teach Daisy a hand touch/target. It really opens up alot of different things you can teach once they know how to target your hand ;) . Tiggy, lucky! Some of the obedience clubs over here support it, but none are actually actively teaching classes. VIP does both beginner & advanced classes (which is where I train) but it's a private company & much more expensive & is also half way between Brisbane & the Gold Coast, so a long way for most of Brisbane to travel to. So these beginner classes held by DWDCQ are a great opportunity to start learning .

Trick training is fun & when you see that lightbulb moment in the dog's eye when he/she gets it for the first time is pretty exciting! I don't know who is instructing the course itself, I havent been asked so I doubt it's me but I could find out who it is if you'd like?

The dog needs to be 12 months & older to compete in DWD but training can be started at virtually any age. If you have semblence of control over your dog (sit & wait mainly) you would be fine to start beginner training, there is no pre-requisite like CCD or being able to heel etc. Bec, you should come along, it's heaps of fun & even if you never get to dance in a comp teaching the tricks & mucking around with them is very rewarding to the dog, not like standard obedience .

Awwwwwwwwwww puppy breath :D Ashanali now you've made me want another puppy ;) .

Bub, your PM is on it's way. Cosmolo, you're next (I type slowly ;) ).

Sure Cosmo I will send you a PM. Are you interested for yourself or other people you know?

Didn't the lady I sent details of get back to you Bub? I will dig up some other people I know of in Sydney that train down there & will PM you their emails. What area of Sydney are you in? (PM me if you don't want to put it on the forum).

I would suggest using a clicker & a food reward to mark when she's done the right thing, there are hundreds on threads in the forum & literally thousands of pages online about clicker training, Karen Prior is one of the disciples of the method, so you could google for her page or just google clicker training & then add heeling & you should get some good results. Using the clicker you should be able to smarten up her heeling, drops sits etc, increase her distraction threshold & wean her off the food - it won't be instantanious but you should get an improvement once she works out how the clicker works. Goodluck .

Wow, so many posts since I last posted. I don't know much about police dogs but I would have thought similar, it's harnessing a drive & is self rewarding just like herding. A bite sleeve & the way a dog latches onto it & uses it strongly resembles something that I use with my dogs all the time - a tug toy. Even if they are trained purely with adversives to start with, I'm not sure how you can think that the dog hanging off an arm like a giant tugtoy isn't really a reward. As has already been mentioned, obedience, agility, DWD, Schutzhund, SAR, tracking - the list goes on- nowdays are mainly trained using positive methods & get fantastic results. So why have so many people stopped using adversives & no reward systems in favour of clickers, food & toys? Because it works! You keep bleating on that schutzhund people aren't allowed to take toys or food on the field in competition, well guess what Sunshine, neither are people competing in obedience, agility, DWD etc, & the dogs trained positively are up there winning most of those trials (& in the case of DWD every trial as no one uses adversives when teaching DWD) so what is your point? No one has said you can't train a dog with a check chain & only praise, but by god I reckon I can train a dog faster in any of those disciplines using a reward based system than you can with a check chain - remember if you want to take me up on my challenge about the hindleg work the invitation is always there . Good point!! The rest were dubbed "dumb" or "untrainable". We now know that to be far from the truth, we were just too "dumb" to work out how to motivate them!! Yep, if you look at any of the "old days" dogs & handler combinations in obedience they were almost exclusively working dogs like GSDs, Dobermans etc. How many scent hounds & spitz breeds & toy breeds & sighthounds & the list goes on where out there competing? Bugger all, because the methods of training did not suit most dogs. Back then, as Aiden said, if someone got a dog & it wouldn't work well, the handler got rid of it & got a new dog. Happened all the time. Nowdays all sorts of dogs from every group participating & guess what? They get qualies & titles etc & they enjoy doing it! Anyway I think I have finally had enough of this, Aiden is doing a fabulous job of explaining things alot better than me & Longcoat is still not answering most of the questions directed at him, so I will sit back & watch from the sidelines. ETA - Bedazzled, I'm sorry I meant to mention earlier in the thread, congrats on your marvellous trial resuts with your dogs on the weekend, fantastic work .

It's funny because up until about 4 years ago I would have been on Angelsun's "side" & said that you couldn't get reliability out of a dog except with a check chain & certainly not using food, just goes to show how much has changed .

Sorry, I thought the thread had turned to talking about "training" that to me includes everything, not just heeling & other obedience exercises. WRT the horses & the whips, yes, they can train them with a whip making them rear on their back legs, but rearing up is a natural response from a horse, but not from a dog, I think that 99% of dogs would either lie down & cower or go into aggressive mode if you used a whip on them. And yes it has been dragged offtopic from the "never saying no to a dog" original post, which btw I totally disagree with .

:laugh: :rofl: :eek: :hug:

I started training in the '70's Huski in the days when your dog was obedience trained properly you threw your leash away and the dog was motivated to work for you with the only reward system being verbal praise..........we didn't use food at all. It would be foolish to suggest that yesterdays dogs couldn't work, they did brilliantly and better than some of today, no food, no clickers and no leash.............so how was that achieved back then I ask the people who claim without food, toys and clickers that you can't train a dog??? That's interesting, because I didn't see anywhere in this thread where someone said you couldn't train a dog without food, a toy & a clicker? What I have seen is people saying that using food, a toy & clicker you can train your dog positively & in some cases & in many disciplines alot better than you could train it using old fashioned methods like checkchains etc. I KNOW you can train a dog with a check chain & verbal praise to a high level of obedience because I have done it myself - twice in fact- but it doesn't mean that my dog(s) that I have now that are trained with food/toys & a clicker aren't just as well trained (in fact my kelpie is trained to a far far higher level than my 2 german shepherds ever were). If you think you can train your dog using nothing but verbal praise can I ask you to go out with your dog & teach it to walk upright on it's back legs around you in a circle at a distance of 5m from you? In fact, what about you teach him any behaviour where your dog stays on it's back legs for more than 10 seconds. When you've done that using nothing but verbal praise can you come back & let us know? And tell us how you did it & how long it took & I will tell you how I trained my dog to do it & how long it took & we can compare . Jeanne, I know, but as Dagboy will tell you I'm a stubborn, strong willed & determined old bag . ETA - there is nothing wrong with using a marker & a release word, many high level trainers who use positive methods would use those as well as a clicker to train their dog. A clicker is of great benefit when you are teaching a dog a new behaviour & you need to mark precisely the moment that the dog does the right thing, but many trainers including myself change over to a marker work when the dog has learned the behaviour (I think I mentioned that before too, but you must have just missed that bit).

I think huski & I both answered this question maybe even more than once, but you must have missed it. I teach my dog that the reward is NOT always on me, it may be in my pocket but it may just likely be on a baitplate that they can or can't see, in someone elses pocket, in a treat bag that they can or can't see etc. I also teach my dog that there is a varied schedule of reward & he may get a treat after 20 seconds or 20 mins but to get the reward he must continue to do what I am asking while I am asking for it. It works exactly the same with my dogs for a toy or play with me. So for me unless I was in the middle of the desert with both arms & legs broken & couldn't get to a food treat or toy ever, it's never going to happen. Even you have said that you've seen dogs go into obedience rings & work fabulously, obviously the handler doesn't have any treats in their pocket then, same with the dogs in the main areana at Crufts that do the freestyle & heelwork to music or the ones that do the obedience there, no treats in their pockets yet the dogs work brilliantly. It's nothing to do with filling or not filling your pockets, but changing the dogs expectations of where the reward comes from & when. this is not MY assumption, but the statement on the Delta website as well as those that promote the society. Sorry, I thought you would realise when I emphasised the "is" what I meant. Delta claims they are positive trainers, yep, but that is NOT the only way to train a dog positively. As I said, the way I train is about as far away from Delta's method described in the first post as using a check chain is, but the way I train is most definitely positive. Like chalk & cheese. I totally agree with these comments & yet I train positively, using food & get fantastic results with my dogs. Just goes to prove that all positive training is not equal .