dogdude

Good tuggies are easy to make Just source an old piece of 38mm cotton fire hose from ebay or local fire equipment service company 30cm long. Get some 10 mm cotton cord from Bunnings and make a long loop which you will make long enough to pass through the hose and form large enough handles poking out each end. (sew the ends of the cord together to form the loop using heavy cotton. I butt the ends up parallel and sew together. Then stuff the tuggie tight with craft wadding or stuffing from an old couch. Sew ends of fire hose up using heavy cotton. Colour dye if you like. Done These are almost indestructible. I agree with what Kavik has suggested regarding your problem. My link

I think that every dog should be taught to heel properly for control purposes, but mostly it gives them a sense of awareness while loose lead walking. Nothing worse than tripping over your dog every time you want to turn left.

If you are really serious about trialling then it would be my advice to get away from your dog club NOW. Stay a member and just use it for distraction training and socialising from a distance if you are able. Thats what most triallers do. Continually drilling over an hour long session will soon make it impossible to do well IMO. Serious triallers work for no longer than about 15 mins max, and work on part exercises mainly, and string it all together on trial day. Try reading the T.O.T method (sticky on the obedience page) It will set you on your way. Not sure how old your dog is, but being an ACD,if he loves balls etc then he may be suited for training in prey drive. (My personal fav method of training.) Best get a mentor if you are really wanting to be a gun in the ring. There a plenty on DOL, and from your state also. People already mentioned have a world of Knowledge. Tap into it. They are only too happy to share. Good luck!

Good advice TerraNik Thats the problem with correctional based training. With trialling, your dog really needs to be motivated positively, if you really want to be successful in the ring. My first dog was trained like this, and although he was a trial winner, he just wasnt in the same league as the more regular trial winners. He was reliably good, but by no means great.

Yep, a judge will never ask you to do a pivot turn. Obedience instructors sometimes use the term pivot, but really IMO you should never really pivot into a turn. You should break the turn down into small steps to give clear signals to your dog as to which direction you intend to move towards. A traditional left about turn requires you to pass the lead around your back. I think the other method looks far smarter if you have taught your dog to heel properly. (u turn)

Hard to explain without footage, but in trials, some people do left abouts while turning into their dogs, and then dog files around them clockwise. Others get the dog to do a sharp u turn with them, but the dogs hind quarters should stay behind the left leg all the way, which means that the hind quarters are moving almost backards, following your left leg. If the dog waits for your legs to catch up, then it is not a proper left about turn.

Selling my high jump if anyone is interested. Suit club or trialler. Solid pine and aluminium construction, P/u Epping,Vic. $150 (raw and unpainted) Full height not shown in pic.

[ I agree that a dog either has high drive or dos'nt, but its not all about working lines or breeds. Plenty of non working lines and breeds have drive to burn. Its all about the individual. I trained a Staffy with just as much drive as any working dog, and there are plenty of pound dogs on death row for the very same reason. Of course you are more likely to find a hign drive dog from a working line, but its not guaranteed. I would also argue that many potential pet line dogs do not have owners who know how to promote and nurture the drive from puppyhood like working dog owners do. Most pet owners automatically attempt to suppress high drive, and later when they want to trial they are trying to do the opposite.

For your recall to overpower a behavioral problem is an unlikely challenge for you to win IMO. You need advice from a good behaviorist/Trainer. They would probably start with desensitisation techniques coupled with rewards I guess.

Sounds like you need to do some foundation work on her drive. I always found if I had 95% drive in training, then I would get about 80% in a trial. I would aim at about 120% before I would enter, and hope for 95% or better for the trial. Otherwise, I just would'nt enter. If you cant turn this around you will only get so frustrated that you will probably give up, so my advise is fix it in training properly before you enter.The higher levels require high drive if you want to be in the winners circle. There is quite alot on youtube regarding drive promotion in your dog. Triangle of Temtation thread would be a good start.

Hi Guys! Had a bit of a tradgedy dog wise, and lost interest the last 12 months. A friend has kind of pushed me into helping him to prepare his pup for trialling, so I am helping him a bit. Have not trained or been near a dog club in over a year. Have had another skin kid recently, so the 5 of them have kept me plenty busy, and also left work to start a gardening business which has taken off nicely.

The strongest drive will be whatever drive that you have trained your dog from a pup to work with (if done properly). A dog trained properly in prey drive is always working in the frenzied (but controlled) state that you describe your lab sometimes gets in. Nothing else matters. The dog only desires one thing if the proper work has been done. Similar can be obtained with food if done properly. The best way to see what I mean is to watch Ivan Balabanov's cd's or attend one of K9s seminars.

If I truly trained my dog using prey drive, then I would not suddenly change to using food drive intermittently. Would'nt care less if if worked short term. I would look closlely at what I have been doing to change it in the first place, and then maybe try something else if it came to it. But thats just me. I dont think that you could ever have the dog displaying the same levels of drive by chopping and changing. Not talking about shaping or teaching new things etc.....talking about working.

You don't need stats to realise that a pound is not the best place to be looking for a sound dog. I am not disputing that some rescues end up great. Infact one of my trialling dogs is a rescue. When it was time to expand the furry family, I wanted to start with a clean slate, as it was bloody hard work ironing out all of the problems of my dogs previous life (sheep killer). Vickie: Are your current trialling dogs pound dogs, and if not......why not?

Luvsablue, most pound dogs are in there for behavioral reasons, and bad owners that caused them. Sure there are success stories, but if you are serious about odedience trialling at the highest level then why would you start out with a possible basket case. To promote and nurture drive properly, it is highly advantagious to do so from puppyhood. From my understanding, the OP wants a dog suited for dog sports?

My advice would be to look at a working breed if Obedience is what you are striving for. You see very few boxers in the ring, and most of the ones I have seen seem to have low drive. Maybe just the way they have been trained, as they have been used in police forces etc. If you must train a bull breed, I would look at a Stafford. Starting from scratch from a pup would be ideal, as you never know what you are going to get from a pound (behavioral wise) . Very important if you are serious about competing at the higher levels anyway, but you know what will be more important to you.

You know what Staffys are like Tiggy......4 left feet lol. Um.......No!

Probably because someone has to stay home to mow the lawns on a Sunday, and also watch the footy. I could never see myself doing agilty. Its a bit girly for me. Not sure why I feel that way exactly, just do. I like obedience though. I think males do connect with prey drive training styles though, and thats why its a shame that Schutz training is under pressure to become extinct.

Hi Jeanne I would have thought a Pap would be well below your hand signal, from an upwright position?? Should be no need to worry. I think alot of novice handlers with small dogs tend to bend while giving hand signals. (in fear of the dog missing the signal) Should be no need to if the dog has great focus on you.

Most judges would consider it as a double signal, I would suspect. Focus is important, but you need to progress to a "one way focus", with your dog. Get someone to take footage of you if you want to completely analise your work. Use a helper to mark one way focus. When trialling, you can get away with just focusing forward a few metres, and you can still see a fair bit using your periphial vision.

Hi Zug Zug. You have some nice enthusiasm there. My advice would be to either throw the reward behind, or leave a remote reward behind her for release to. Also, when the dog fronts up short of the mark, be quick with an adjustment or NRM, before the bum hits the ground. Don't take a step back or anything, just roll back onto your heels and help guide her by leaning away, and guiding her closer with your hands. Try to keep the adjustment the one exercise. If you wait till she has stopped, its like two exercises. She looks like she is coming along nicely.

Would you consider that there would have to be a ranking of importance on the "drive scale" to the dog? Talking about what stimulates the dog more, or which one would outrank the other (specifically regarding training purposes), taking in consideration what is has been wired into their natural instincts and habits of being dogs? Yes, you can build drive using anything that a dog finds cause to. But for obedience purposes etc, prey drive ranks very high on the list.

My whole point again. I have said all along that you can not tell by just looking alone.(didn't word that highlighted post too well) The only way you can tell is by training one yourself! Nobody here has said that prey drive training is specifically better than any other method.(so far). I have trained a trial winning dog on correction based training myself. I can say though that having trained using the main three methods, prey drive training has maid "me" alot more confident in my dogs reliability,and overall performance, even given the fact that we NQed at our last outing, and dog is only doing Novice. Every method and handler has some flaws.

Corvus To simplify my argument, you want to see "what drive looks like" specifically prey drive? I am telling you that I know when I have it, (by knowing my dogs training history) and I can tell you that you can not specifically see it in body language alone. To the human eye it looks like alot of other things that could be anything. My food trained dog looks very much the same as my prey driven dog while doing obedience training/trialling.

My point,......we can't. We can measure the determination and control level of the dog though, and see that a dog motivated by prey drive works differently to a dog trained using another method. Hi Corvus How did you come to the conclusion that any outer visible sign of a dog in drive is a communication? Why would they need to?. Consider why some people bite their tongues while concentrating. They are not doing it as a communication to others, they just do it. Others put their hand on their chin to think. If someone puts their hand to their chin, are they automatically deep in thought? No, we wouldn't have a clue.