kyliegirl

B-Q Echo is 7 months now, I heard they calm down after 1 yr so I am hoping this ends soon and he gets over is his doberteens as they call it I think i feel the same way as you and daily I wonder if getting Echo was a mistake. But he is here and I need to do my best to make it work

Oh yes ohsoswift I agree that echo fits the book of "full of their own self importance", it takes alot out of me I think my next puppy addition will be a much more submissive breed with a personality to match my own, I think Echo and my personality clashes atm and it does not feel we are connecting very well because of this, but I am trying my best to make it work for both of us. we have those rare days where he will be good and be that lovely companion i yearn for, but alot of the time its VERY hard to get along, he is just that pushy.

had echo for 5 months so far, still trying to bond, its very hard since he is always trying to push us around it leaves little time to just respect and enjoy eachothers company I am hoping he will eventually get the point that he will not run the house and to just settle down and stop trying to push the boundaries. He is quite a full on puppy lol, I still have post puppy depression, not so bad now though.

just curious, do you think an aussie requires more exercise than a dobe? everyone says a dobe never stops having energy lol Echo seems to require more physical then mental exercise.

he is a dobermann SSM, I will wait until he is a bit older then

I am thinking it might be good to start training Echo to keep alongside a bike so I can take him for a run and be able to keep up with him, he loves to run, but he refuses to run very far unless I am with him, and honestly I just cannot do the amount of running he wants lol. Is 6 months too early to start teaching him to run alongside a bike? He has alot of energy to burn and I do not have the same amount of fitness as he does to be running all day, when i do run he wants to run faster because he loves it, I am the only one holding him back lol, he hates not being able to see me (maybe a good thing since his recall is great)

bowwowy - thats horrible, I was also told the same thing by my teacher, she really didnt like me and I didnt learn much in school because she was making us do only abstract pictures instead of learning some key important basics which I ended up having to teach myself like understanding the colour wheel and working with light and dark etc. It annoys me that I did not learn anything from art in high school dograwesome - I am VERY glad you will take what i say constructively I am very glad that you are open to learning and improving and I really encourage you to persue your artistic ability, with your abilities now, if you continue to practice and learn you will absolutely amazing in no time. Btw in regards to books, I would HIGHLY recommend going to the link below to some free downloads of books authored by andrew loomis - an amazing artist and a brilliant teacher, his books will really assist in helping you improve These books have been openly available for free download by artists for artists, as his books are very rare (no longer produced) and really old you would be lucky to find an original for sale for under $100. But thankfully some of the older professional artists at conceptart.org scanned theirs to share Andrew's knowledge and expertise. Books by Andrew Loomis if its any book any professional artist would suggest its Andrew Loomis's books ;) I hope you continue to show us your work as you go!

I second the grid bit, I use grid system on any commissioned work and it is very handy when you cant seem to get an ear right ;) I only use it for the rough sketch though and then once i have the base lines done i transfer onto the final paper to be used and then all of it from there is purely reference photos supplied to work off, i tend to work off 3+ pictures to get details etc right :D Your work so far is great and you have talent, I would love to see you work forward and read up on some tutorials to boost your potential :D Please don't take my critisism the wrong way, I only hope I may point out some things which may in turn help you improve The picture doesn't look like a gsd to me, but is still very good, the perspective is off which in turn causes the proportion of the dogs head to be a little skewed, I would suggest reading on some perspective tutorials and also doing some skull/head studies from different positions and angles to help train your brain to notice and identify the differences in shapes when looked at a different angle. The mouth to me looks dislocated and does not look attached to the head causing it to look like an under-bite and appears to have the lower jaw connecting to the neck instead of the skull, the nose is also on a different perspective plane to the rest of the head causing the nose to look turned up while the head is turned down. The eyes are not aligned making them also appear very off while the ears are aligned but are also off due to the positioning. The shading is nice, but maybe a bit too harsh in the wrong areas, and not subtle enough in other areas. For example the point between the eyes looks like a lump instead of a balanced curved flow between the eyes while the nose appears curved upwards because the shading is too deep on the top of the nose making it appear shaded instead of coloured dark. I still have trouble with perspective, which in turn causes my ability to properly identify animals positioning to become skewed, often this is noticeable in the way i favour particular positions over others which in turn causes static and boring positions or there are obvious (to me they are) flaws in eye position, size difference and other flaws. Its a HUGE learning experience and I can honestly say that with art you can never learn enough, I encourage ppl to critisize my work so i can be shown the flaws that i may miss and then work from them and improve them, you always learn new things, even now I am reading through many books on perpective, drawing, shapes, colour identification etc to improve my art. I dont think I will ever hit a point that I can say I am experience, or that I have learnt everything there is, or that i am a professional.. Hell even now I can't even say I am happy with any of my works, I look at them all months later and find things I really want to fix.. My OH says I am a perfectionist and also crazy. my only biggest suggestion is to keep practicing and don't be afraid of making rough copies before a good copy, I can make up to 3 or more rough copies of a dog before finalising and transferring onto a good copy sheet and working on everything from there. I don't really work with lead pencils with commissioned work, it is all mostly colour, but the same rules apply. Also a good thing i found when doing the good copy is to slowly apply layers, don't try to do it all at once. Instead put a very light layer each time and gradually work it up, applying the shadows where required and then working up.. I can have more than 15 layers of colour on the one picture with this method, but its helpful and very effective in ensuring you don't overdo areas. Its a good method in forcing yourself to sit back and look at the whole picture before going back in, it is also much easier to fix areas if you layer lightly as it is not pressed onto the paper and is easier to remove. here is a picture i did a while ago of Chill with the layering method, you can see I gradually applied the layers over time, I think the final had well over 10 different colours in the coat alone along with 20 or so layers of building colour/shading up. I can see alot wrong with this pic now, but that's just me I am my own worst critic lol! first base layers on the neck finishing the layers on the right neck a few more layers on the neck final layers final pic with more layers added to the neck over time

oh no huski i do not think that at all I really appreciate your advise ^^ you have much more experience in dog training than me :p

make sure you take lots of pictures d&r!!!

awesome picture

sorry for late post, I had begun to use alternate methods of distracting echo during walks, so far its working well, we have begun to use a squeaky tennis ball attached to a rope which when we approach a distraction and he begins to focus on a person or dog i pull it out and squeak it and then play tug with him once he gives attention, this has worked quite well and seems to be very effective in snapping him out of becoming fixated on dogs/people. I have also started to do random things during the walk to keep his attention and make it more enjoyable for him and me - eg. running over to a fallen tree and checking it out "oh look at this!"*amazed voice* this helped maintain alot of attention from him. we are going to continue using these kinds of methods and work on neutralizing him to everything gradually

i never said he was dumb, i just joke about it

thanks everyone for the help, to answer some things about echos training betsy- he might be hitting adolescence, he is beginning to react to dogs barking aggressively through fences (I thought i had conditioned him via clicker training to ignore fence barkers but this appears to have regressed suddenly) he raised his hackles and now huffs and puffs, all i do is stay silent and pull him along and try to get his attention on me. I made a thread a while ago and everyone seemed to be telling me to do more with echo, and now i am being told to do less. I just cannot seem to make sense of it all? He currently is learning bow, spin, place and up plus touch since today. I train these seperately and a training session of 5 mins will usually only target two tricks at a time. I thought this wasnt too much? As for the NILIF program, admittedly i have not been consistent with this. I also did a test this morning on echo to see what he did when i held treats in my head where he could reach, from the tests i did I have gathered that we haven't been strict enough of this and he assumes that he should have the food in my hand without any consent (I was doing the see but don't touch closed fist and boy he was adamant on trying to get the food without any permission.. will need to work on this and leave it) I gradually had some progress on this after 10 mins where he started to look at my hand and then to me for permission, but would regress frequently so i will lower the difficulty to help him get it and win. KTB- I tried that with echo today, from what i can tell on his body language he isnt quite getting it.. at one point he did kindof get it, but he seemed half hearted about it. if that makes any sense? It was like he went "oh yeah, i get it, i jump up here i get food.. ok.. uh.. cool?" and then went off to observe something else before offering again.. niques- I have, but atm i have to be quick, I am worried that constantly click treating as he stands he will not get it either. He is still a very very slow learner and while some things he gets instantly, he has extreme trouble learning others even when i lure him. Echo definitely has a free command which we use for releasing him from sit/drop and is also used for playing tug when we tell him to release. wizzle- thanks for the info, I think we are living your life lol! I think the mistake i am having is i am still rewarding with food here and there for sit and drop during training, i will stop this and see if it helps him get the idea we aren't learning those anymore and to focus on the other things. good tip thanks! kuma- i think echo is just that lol, its hard not to tell him he is a brainless lump of dog sometimes lol, he just doesnt seem to get it alot of the time. I do give him leniance on this as I understand dobes (especially males) are quite slow as puppies lol. We do currently train in drive, this is where my problem is lol, he is so driven by toys that he will ignore the clicker and me as all he cares about is the toy, which if we are too close trying to teach him something new and the toy is in reach, he WILL try to grab the toy.. He LOVES tug and he LOVES fetch and LOVES sqeaking toys. btw love the photo of kuma So cute!!

hi betsy, kind of but not really Echos problem is he has trouble learning because he is too focused on the reward (treats/toys) that he will try to demand them if you dont give them to him when he offers sit/drop or try to lure him to learn or do something new apart from sit/drop.. he fixates on the toys/food instead of seeking me to find out what i want him to do, he just assumes sit and drop is the be all end all and therefore if he offers it then he should rightfully get his reward. He couldn't care less about the clicker and does not appear to realise we are training for new things, not old so he will just park his butt on the ground until he grows tired and starts to demand food or try to grab the toy, he does not look up at me or try to offer a behaviour to get a click, he just sits there. I tried the box thing, with both a small and large box, but the second i click and treat something, he realises food and then just sit/drops constantly and ignores the box, we sit there for 10 mins until he gets bored and walks away, i can kick, poke and tell him to go to the box but he does not get it. I dont think he understands offering behaviours? I am not sure how I can get him to understand offering behaviours.. ktb- we dont teach stay instead we have been teaching echo to sit/stay drop/stay in small time increments until released.. of course it doesnt help when my oh keeps forgetting to break the sit >_< really frustrating and he gets confused. The furthest we have gotten is "up" where he stands on his hind legs, I am slowly extending the time he stands - but this is very slow. I have been teaching stand, but again slow and he will plonk his butt back down after a second or so..