Vickie

;) What a good boy Dante is...not to mention incredibly gorgeous! He did so well with SO many temptations. How cute is that Jimmy!

Here's my Noah having a rest and Zeus with my daughter at the beach recently and Noah laying in the sun Zeus is 13, Noah is 5 months younger, but actually looks older.

That is fantastic Dezzyno1. It is a great opportunity your children have & so nice that instructors bring dogs for them . You will have to take some video for us. My daughter (11) trains & competes in agility as well & everyone is so supportive & helpful to her. She loves it & will pick going to a trial with me over just about anything. I wish more kids had this opportunity.

Happy Birthday Texas He is looking awesome! Brilliant photos Sam Great perspectives & colour.

sounds like heat stroke. One of mine did this once, I ran with her to the dam & jumped in with her. She was fine when we came out but I have been very aware of it & careful since. It's terrifying isn't it!!! I would take her to the vet if she ever does anything like this again if you know it isn't heat...could be neurological or anything really. Glad she seems OK now ;)

Huge Congrats to the 3 of you!!! Sounds like an awesome night. Caffy, just saw your brag...WOOOHOOO!!!! Way to go Alex

OK, yes, I have taken time to build drive for targets .

To target something is a behaviour. It is no different to a sit or a spin or a retrieve. All vary in complexity but they are all behaviours. All can be done while your dog is in drive & has anticipation (for the reward). Targetting, like most other behaviours will extinguish if not rewarded. The reward does not necessarily have to be food or a toy. I do believe there are behaviours that a dog can find self rewarding but cannot see how targetting anything could be one of them.

He is actually doing a lot more than just making a loop & tugging. I used this technique on a dog yesterday at the pound that I was struggling to manage on lead. It is the first time I have ever tried it & was delighted that it worked instantly...just like it does for Caesar. She went from nearly dragging me over to loose lead walking in just a few minutes. There are a number of other things he explains & does at the same time though & I incorporated all these.

Haha, although she is very sweet & happy to play, I doubt even her brother could distract her from a training session and he may not be too impressed with her method of dismissal.

It's a good topic. For agility, we use body & voice signals, but regularly have training sessions without speaking at all. My dogs will always follow my body over my voice. I tend to save my voice for desperate times . Often people think their dogs are trained to voice but they are actually giving off subtle body signals that they are not even aware of. Most dogs are very aware of those signals & will act/react accordingly.

sounds like she has recognised that the limited stimulation she has given him is not enough. see below.

I was thinking the same thing. I would be speaking to his breeder, they should have good advice for you re engaging his mind. With all due respect, I disagree. While there is no harm in seeing if he will work, Sporting bred BC's are rarely bred to work (livestock). IMO, far better engaging his mind in something far more accessible to the average owner, like agility or tricks etc. It is always more rewarding for dog & owner to choose an activity they are likely to have some success in.

I saw the run :rolleyes: it was brilliant! I keep threatening to send his sister over, so Caffy can train her . Shine & Snazz met last year at the nationals & were so very cute together, like peas in a pod. I have some great photos of them playing. both were taugt with 3 poles & a clicker. Their striding is different but it is more related to their body than the method. Trim will often 2 step in training, but goes faster in a trial so it turns into a single step. We have played around with other methods, but I think we will stick with this one for the next dog/s. She generally does one or 2 runs each trial. Trim is easier for her to run as her forward drive is handler dependent, so she will wait for Chloe. Shine is harder b/c she covers the ground more quickly & gets away from her. Mostly she runs Open with them as the Masters are usually too complex. She has also run Gamblers & got a qually with Shine just last week . People are always telling me she handles them better than I do . She is very natural & just runs. She takes chances that I am not always willing to take & they generally pay off. I love watching her run them. Here is her running Trim last year. LOL, the hicup at the weaves was my fault, I told her to overhandle that bit to avoid an off course jump. LOL, lucky Trim has a good weave entry. She started very early

Finally did some video...my computer crashes on loading from the video recorder, but the iphone handled it just fine . I think I need a new computer. Anyway here is Shine: and Trim: doing some training in the backyard and the star of the shows...my daughters hiccups

Just a word of warning about feeding in crates...if your dogs like to check each others bowls when they are done, make sure that all the food is in fact finished or you close the gate when each has finished. The only fight mine have ever had over food happened b/c Noah left his crate & apparently a bit of food in it. Zeus went in to check it out and was trapped in there when Noah came back. Zeus had no choice but to defend himself, there was nowhere for him to go. Luckily, they were responsive to me when I yelled & it didn't last long or cause any damage.

I like the concept of individual attention & I think good instructors seem to be able to manage this well generally. From a students POV, I have been to a number of seminars where individual attention is given. So long as the instructor is having a public discussion with the rest of the group rather than a quiet one off to the side, it is all a learning process that just further expands everyone's knowledge. I have been in a few classes where the instructor has varied instructions slightly for individual dogs according to their level of understanding & it seems to work well. If I have an issue that I think is of no interest to anyone else, I would be happy to spend a little time at the end having a discussion about it. From an instructors POV, I try to see every dog & more importantly every handler as an individual. There are people who will try to monopolise your time and these people need to be managed (you know the one's who always start the sentence with "but my dog..."). Like the instructors I admire, I also try to vary the complexity of each exercise according to the team's ability & it seems to work well. I think the key to giving individual attention is including everyone in the group. It also saves you having to repeat the same instructions over & over again, which is so incredibly frustrating & usually a bigger time waster than individual attention. ETA I think this also depends on the size of the class & the duration of the lesson.

Agree with what everyone has said. We visit the farm I grew up on regularly & there is no fencing for the dogs. They just seem to hang around the back verandah & only really venture into the paddocks to toilet or when I go for a walk. As other have said, I lock them up if I go into town as I think they would try to follow. How bonded is Kane to you normally? Does he have a good recall? If you walk him offlead does he stick with you or does he get distracted?

I love watching Peta work with her boxers. I have spent some time training with her & learnt a lot...especially about reinforcing approximations. Inspired by this, we did some shaping tonight. Trim already has a bow (taught with luring), but Shine doesn't, so we started on that & progress went pretty much the same as the video. LOL, even my husband was impressed. Shine is like Pearl, the dog in the clip, she thinks a lot rather than bouncing around like an idiot. Her default right now is to put her paw over her eye, so that was an easy behaviour to modify into a bow. Next I did a session with Trim...nothing really in mind, just wanted to see what developed. Shine has a high 5, so I thought I'd do that with Trim. It happened straight away, so we moved on to high 10. That happened quickly too, so now we have the beginning of a beg on her haunches. It's going to look very cute when we get it on command. I also did a clicker charging session with Tia. We have done a couple before & she seems to be getting it. Tonight we got a nose touch on a target . I think progress will be slower as she is a lot more easily distracted than my dogs, but it will be an interesting exercise to teach her things.

Great point & great idea.

...or they could become domesticated. There are plenty of species who no longer use the hunting methods they once did...because they have found an easier food source.

Sheepdog people squash prey drive all the time and if you have ever seen a dog intent attacking stock, you will know there is not an ounce of play behaviour in sight. I have seen a few dogs who started out thinking the sheep were lunch actually turn into nice working dogs.

Her is the girl Kirty is talking about. Personally I don't see anything but BC in her, either in looks or temp. She looks like any other working BC you would see at a sheep trial to me . Like others, I have seen quite a few working breeds with rear dewclaws.

I assume that you will guarantee non shedding???

There's one problem with this. The people you want to constantly argue with do what they do BECAUSE IT WORKS for them. Don't you get it? Not everyone needs to find the truth of it...many people have already found the truth THROUGH ACTUALLY DOING IT! If you were achieving more than the people you want to argue with, then maybe you would gain more credibility... Surely you can understand these reactions from people? The thing I just don't get is that if you are so desperate to prove your theories, why do you do so little practical? Isn't that a large part of your scientific world? to experiment & test your theories? don't you need a bigger sample series than 2 dogs & a hare? There are so many avenues for you to pursue to test all your theories that would have to be far more rewarding than starting posts like this all the time. Wouldn't it be a far more worthwhile exercise to volunteer at a local pound & observe & test all that the animals have to offer? or join a club & train your dogs to a high level at something & move on to instructing & helping others achieve that high level? I've got to stop reading (and responding to) these threads, they are doing my head in.