Vickie

Was just speaking to someone who trials regularly in NSW. Entry costs are between $4-6 for each run for 3 sheep trialling. NSW doesn't yet have the ANKC trials that ML is talking about, but will soon, I believe & I'm sure the costs will be about the same as QLD.

Perrys Mum, looks like she had a really good time. Be prepared for major addiction. I'll look forward to the next update. Blades, I don't think sheepdog trialling is expensive to enter, but the trials are held all over the state, so the travelling I guess could get expensive. Has your son started training yet? There are 2 places that he can go in Sydney with his dog to train for as little as $3 a day. I would say the biggest expense :D would be the fact that once you're addicted, all you can think about is how to get your own property, with your own sheep...now that could get very expensive . Vickie

Any pics Perrys Mum? Where was the workshop?

Thanks for posting Trifecta, What a good result! It makes you wonder how many are out there with that kind of potential, and how many of them have actually worked before. I'd be happy to take any promising looking dogs in the Sydney area with me to sheep & see how they go, but unfortunately cannot foster at my house right now, but could pick them up on the way or meet someone at herding. Vickie

I remember having the same problem with Noah years ago. He is a dog that took to the clicker very quickly & has always been very enthusiastic to offer behaviours. He also had no interest in retrieving whatsoever. I am certainly no expert here, but I do remember one thing that seemed to help. He had a lot of trouble with holding the dumbell. All his previous clicker work was to do something...rather that nothing (ie the hold). Initially I had to do a lot of work just to get him to touch it with his mouth, and this was done by creating a little excitement about the dumbell. I then needed to be careful as my next step was a behaviour that required no excitement. I took it very slowly. All we worked on was the hold & I never introduced the word give until we had a reliable hold for a period of time, as I didn't want him to anticipate the give. I worked with him every day, by ourselves in the lounge room where there were no distractions whatsoever. I sat on a chair, with him in front of me & started clicking for touch, the mouth over, then a hold for longer durations. Because all the holding was done over my knees, the dumbell never dropped to the ground, so there was always success. I didn't take my hands away until I could see that he was reliable holding it on his own. The click was the release. After this was reliable, I added the word give to the click. It took a long time & a lot of calm patience. I would set yourself a program. 3 times a day, 5 mins a time. It may take a couple of weeks but I found that for a dog who had absolutely no inclination to pick that dumbell up, it was worth getting the behaviour so reliable. As I said I am no expert, this was just what worked for me. I think the key was structured sessions, with goals & a lot of patience. Also the training done over my knees and resisting the temptation to move too fast. ETA: By the way...I gave up with Zeus, he has never been one to offer behaviours with a clicker.

No traitors allowed here Cloverfdch, Research is the best solution. I am constantly amazed at the fact that my working border is keener & faster and has a heap more drive than the other 2 yet is in most ways so much calmer & easier to live with. There's no destruction, no barking & other than her one fault (which I created) of constantly shoving a tennis ball at me , she is a much more settled dog. I know part of it is consistent training that I didn't apply to the others, but I think a lot of it is just her and the way she has been bred.

Oh dear , Keep up updated lots of big to you & Amy.

Fido, I'm so sorry. I don't know what else to say except :D RIP Jessie.

That sounds very positive Fiona. I'm sure everyone will be much happier when she gets home.

:D Hope the day goes fast & with some good news coming soon.

Oh Fido, what a shock this must be for you. Wishing you & Jessie all the best for Tuesday, we'll be thinking of you & waiting to hear some news. Hang in there Vickie

My thoughts are with you, Lablover & your little boy. Hoping for good news soon Vickie

Lia, My honest opinion as a handler, competitor & instructor is that it depends on the dog and it's motivations. We have some dogs with aggression problems at our club who are managed quite well, and a couple who are not. I think that if a problem dog is trained to a high enough level of motivation in agility that it is extremely rare for that dog to leave a course to get to other dogs. Not all dogs can be or are trained to this level. It also depends on the extent of the problem. Many problem dogs just need to be managed while waiting to run. Problem is, as I'm sure you know, is that relies on everyone controlling their dogs, so that no uninvited approaches are made. Personally I would be very uncomfortable if there was a dog at a trial who was aggressive and was not completely motivated by the course. I would also be uncomfortable if this dogs usual intention was to rip another dogs apart, rather than confront it.

OK! Enough you guys!!! I'm just toooooo jealous.

How devastating for you & Dave, Tracey I am truly sorry Vickie

Actually you took my quote completely out of context. Obviously "joy" was not an appropriate word for me to use. I think many of us are capable of understanding the concept of disassociating ourselves with an adversive whether or not we agree with it's use. I wont read the book, anything that is that complicated for the average human to grasp, IMO is far too complex to be trying to get across to a dog and will usually fail in application more often than not by the majority who try it.

Actually I think I can identify with some of this. Sidoney, I'm sure you remember the method I used to stop Trim screaming at agility. I think there are many parallels in the method with the above, although I probably do not have teh background in theory to explain them properly. I stand by the view that I don't believe all dogs can be trained in a purely positive manner to do all things. I also strongly believe that nagging a dog for years is crueller than a correction delivered without emotion that is effective on it's first application. I have also read the extract of the head dumping exercise a number of times now & do agree that it's an odd writing styles but wonder if most of our horror at it is due to the human emotion of feeling terror at the thought of drowning. I wonder whether an unexpected harsh correction with a check chain would shock a dog as equally while at the same time producing more physical pain than dunking the dogs head. As for building up the joy in joining in with her dog, again, it's not that dissimilar to trainers who use happy motivation to their dogs & then inflict pain as a punishment for the dogs lack of understanding of a command. It happens all the time & while we don't agree with it, I doubt it would ellicit the same reactions as the head dunking story. I'm just trying to see both sides & put this into perspective by seeing it from the dogs point of view.

PGM, I am not trying to correct you, I am trying to give my ideas on your comments in respect to this discussion. Although I have grown up with stock, I am very new to herding and expect to be still learning for the next 50 years, so currently what I know, in the greater scheme of herding would probably fit on a pinhead. As far as what the need for training? Only my opinion but this is how I see it. The dogs instinct is to feel in control & bring the sheep to the handler. For the dog, the activity doesn't really exist without a handler in the picture. As I said before, there are many ways a handler can move which will apply pressure to the situation, sometimes resulting in a positive effect, sometimes not. In practical terms, in a large field, a handler cannot always be where they need to be to apply that pressure hence the need for training a dog to obey a command at a distance. Non herding people, when they talk about their having instinct for herding, usually refer to their dog wanting to chase something. That is not herding. Herding is the dogs ability to move sheep and the ability to feel where they should change their pace in order to impact the sheep. I think most importantly, herding is the dogs ability to do this while keeping the sheep relatively calm. I'm not sure that I'm explaining my thoughts here very well. I just had a 2 hour conversation about training my pup and I have a lot of things going around in my head. As a handler, training a dog in herding is about looking for opportunities that naturally present and using them to teach the dog something, and we talked a lot about this this morning. The example was getting a young dog to stop. I managed to achieve this on the weekend, without ever having trained it on sheep. All I needed to do was to feel the moment where everything was in balance, where my pup felt in control & she had brought the sheep to me. Asking for a stop there was natural, she had done her job & my stopping her was an acknowledgement of this. Probably way to much information, but the concepts can be used in many areas of dog training, it really is just setting the dog up for success. I still don't have a stop on her and that is something I will set about training, but I will use opportunities to train it. Trying to stop her at this point, when she is not in control of her sheep will end up having the exact opposite effect of what I want. Yes I have read Nops Trials, it is a very special book and I am slowly getting a lot of insight into the emotion and feeling with which it was written.

PGM, I think that is a fairly narrow view of what a reward is. I agree that BC's don't usually want to kill/eat sheep. Their instinct rather is to control them and bring them to the handler. As a handler there are many ways to reward your dog with sheep, just as there are many ways to punish...just in the way you step and whether or not you allow them to do what is instinctual. And to these dogs, that reward is more important than anything else...without them the exercise becomes pointless, both to the handler and to the dog. I think that using herding as an example can be very difficult for someone who has no experience in it to grasp. For instance on Saturday I rewarded my dog by stopping her while she was working sheep. To the average person, this would make no sense at all as a dog training concept and is probably fairly unique to herding. I know you don't like theory, but are you familiar with the theory of applying & releasing pressure? They theory (basically) is that you can reward your dog by releasing pressure at the right moment & let them "have their sheep". Applying pressure at the wrong time will often result in disaster. Herding is very much about rewards and only a good handler with theory as well as experience will be able to reward the dog. I'd be interested in reading the discussion that you are currently reading, maybe you could pm me the link?

Thanks for coming back & letting us know. I'm so sorry it hasn't worked out for you guys and that you spent all that money. I can't help giving another word of warning. Please be careful where you take him for obed. training. The last thing you need now is dog aggression on top of everything. I have a friend with 3 tollers who trains obed. at a high level with positive training. If you're interested, I can call her & see if she would mind if you called & had a chat. Hope to see you back at the park soon Vickie

PGM, out of curiosity, I was wondering if you'd mind sharing what type of dog you have and what type of training/competition you do/have done.

Thanks Tabata, I hadn't seen it. While the points he is making are different to mine, I think they are all very good ones. I have seen that behaviour a lot at seminars...it drives me crazy, it's unfair to the dogs & rude to the presenter. I think we all all guilty of it a bit...I know personally that I run my dogs much better in a trial than in training as I am able to maintain better flow throughout a course in a trial. Also the adrenalin of a trial seems to give me personally speed that I can't seem to simulate in training. I know it's not fair to my dogs & although they seem to give it their all regardless, it is something I am always working on.

I'd like to add to this. Even without being intentionally "harsh", there is another hurdle here to overcome. If a dog is extremely fast & motivated, the handler requires absolutely perfect timing. These dogs need to rely 100% on the handlers body language & there are no 2nd chances. If there are 3 obstacles in a straight line, and you want the dog to take the 1st 2 but turn before the 3rd, you need to know exactly when to turn/call the dog. This point can & will be different depending on the dog. Many dogs who are experts in reading body language, will also read the slump of the handlers shoulders, when they took that 3rd jump b/c the handlers body language/call was late. They may also wonder why the the handler is drilling them on the same thing over & over again...when as far as they are concerned, they got it right. I try as hard as possible, when my timing is wrong, to keep my dog going, pretend that was what I wanted & then work out what the hell I did wrong while my dog has a break. I gave a lesson last week to a dog who was working very wide and I was trying to tighten him up. The owner couldn't understand why I was rewarding the dog...even when he turned too early & missed the jump completely. To me this was progress as he was just following the cues he had been given, which is actually the ultimate goal in agility.

I had a goat once who did this...think your self lucky...she ate it after she took it off

Why does it matter? Agility is fun, it's meant to be a happy game. The majority of people out there doing agility just want to have some fun. Believe me, any kind of happiness on the dog and handlers part are immensley preferable to the some of the miserable people with their miserable dogs who regularly come to lessons. I have to wonder why they bother. All my dogs have enormous motivation for agility, and 2 of 3 of them would turn up their nose at a treat if I tried to offer them one, the other will take something at the end of a run, if I offer it. There's nothing wrong with that either. It's the way they have been bred & the way they have been trained. That is not to say that I don't reward my dogs for doing agility b/c I do, I just happen to know what they want more than anything...and I give it to them. It's very easy to inadvertantly train a dog in a negative manner in agility, regardless of whether you are giving them treats or not, again it's about knowing what they want. Not all dogs are capable of the same motivation levels nor have the same aptitude for different activities. You can train most dogs to have motivation in agility but not all dogs cope with repetitive exercises or become obsessed by the game itself and some are just more naturally suited and for them, agility will become serious work. Having dogs who find the activity more rewarding than any external reward you could offer provides it's own set of challenges in training and not every handler is suited to nor wants this. Most people want to have fun & I don't think it's something that the dog can fake.