Tassie

I've had to go better than that, when I had moved my reactive former BC away off a track into the bush to avoid an uncontrolled (though friendly) Lab mix - having asked the owner politely to call her dog, I heard her response - "Oh, it's OK, he won't bite" - to which I replied "Well, I can't guarantee mine won't - call your damned dog" - All this after she had seen me stop with my dogs, who were off leash on a wide track at the time, and leash them, and then go off the track to avoid her dog. How much nicer to meet the people who when we're walking dogs off leash and meet on this wide track (road really but closed to traffic), stop and leash their dogs when I stop and leash mine - dogs walk past calmly - people maybe having a little chat, and then resume walk - everyone calm and happy.

It was the first time my parents had come to a trial so I fully expected if he left the ring it would be for them.. but nope I had my dad "record" it only after he was like 'should there have been a picture on the screen?', yep the camera wasn't turned on. ;) You can't get the help these days!

Love the pics. The second one, the dog on the right of pics, is definitely going for the Guinness Book of Records on "How wide can a Stafford smile" - gorgeous. And you could label the car one as "tahen from a speed camera"

The K Mart special worked for me, RS - until it got mud in the brakes when I fell off after the vigorous Fergus shake. But you do definitely need a gel seat -- or maybe two gel seats

Just to add - just read your post in the Dog Sports thread RnL - and yes, this is what Susan Salo says and does - teaches the dog to have a rounder style, and uses small humps or small jumps to encourage the dog to place its feet well, and to think about what it is doing. You would like what she does!

My agility girl came from breeders I knew who bred for show and performance - I had seen her grandfather in the obedience ring, and liked what I saw. Apart from being a little 'demon bitch' at times, she is everything I wanted, and has her grandfather and great-grandmother's work ethic. My current boy came from a breeder I heard and read about, and whose lines I knew quite a bit about, and whose breeding philosophy I like. (And Kirra's grandfather is his great grandfather ). Again, I am absolutely delighted with my boy. I have great continuing contact with both breeders.

Hey valley, that sounds great! Sounds like you and Toby had a pretty good day - and hey, friends close to a ring are always going to be a distraction . Even my Kirra, who is old and experienced enough to know better, was distracted almost out of the ring by a piece of equipment outside the ring one time over in WA - it was on her arc, and she must have thought it was something she needed to take. It won't be too long before you and Toby are right there in the brags thread.

I started with grids, Suzanne Clothier style, back about 7 years ago. For Rory, nearly 2, I've based my training on Susan Salo's DVDs - they are both horse people - no surprise there I've been careful with him because he's quite a big boy, and I wanted him to get it right. As well as looking at jumping style, Susan is about creating independent jumpers. I still like to do grids occasionally with my agility girl Kirra - now 8 and a half - light girl and good natural jumper. For a book resource, there's a book called something like Jumping A to Z - teaching your dog to soar, by Christine Zink and Julie Daniels.

Hey that's great! Hope you had a big party with her . I do use a clicker (sometimes), but because I'm an unco klutz, I tend to use my marker word "Yes!" usually - sometimes even if I'm meaning to click ( ). Even the word does need to be charged, like the clicker, though. It does sound like something like some totally free shaping - like 101 things to do with a box, where you really don't care what you get, and you can just decide to click anything for a while, then decide to wait for something different - would help both of you - takes all the pressure off, and she can just get lots of rewards for 'playing around' - so you're mixing up some fairly rapid mark/treat with periods of waiting for her to do something else. Chair and a coffee are good for this ;) And throwing the treat away in different directions, as bedazzled says, is great, as it gets the dog moving away and then back to the object, and takes the focus off you. Then if it's gone a bit slow, you can mark/reward moving back toward the object a couple times to 'unstick' her.

@ valleyCBR - I was teaching a puppy class today, and we were learning hand targeting - stationary and moving, and teaching the front cross change of sides (not calling it that of course ). That would be something which you and Toby could probably play at a trial - it makes me laugh when I do it with mine, seeing how quickly they can make the change and get to the hand - and that would be relaxing for both of you. The people and the puppies in class seemed to get a kick out of doing it today. And caffy - I love Nancy Gyes too - she's got an article in the latest CR about retraining - and describes how she thought she would take a break and retrain contacts to running - and ended up 'failing' and deciding to go back to her 2o2o - analysing why it didn't work and deciding that was OK. I just love her down to earth attitude.

Gosh Strauss is growing fast, Ptolomy - and he looks beautifully put together. The bush interaction was gorgeous - and I want to know the sequel to the investigation of the bag.

Great stuff, lp - especially Miss Kinta. And you know what - Leo is telling you that he wants to take up tracking - he'd be a natural. GO on, you know you want to

A couple of thoughts watching that, valleyCBR. As far as tomorrow goes - band-aid needed for your nerves - swift, stiff drink? or Rescue Remedy? Longer term, the other thing that struck me was that I'd be wanting to do a lot more interative rewarding and revving up with Toby - the isqueak is great, and he likes it, but he just sort of goes off and amuses himself while you're fixing jumps. Does he tug? I'd be throwing a tug toy and then encouraging him to come back to you and have a game of tug before I did anything else. (We had a private lesson with a trainer/friend a couple of months ago when she was over, and she had us doing a 10 second jump exercise, and then tug for a whole minute - she timed it! That's a lot of tugging with a 15 kg dog!) And maybe setting him up with some revving like "Ready, ready ready" --- (mind you, this is coming from someone with a broken SLS - well, to be honest, it's mostly been non-existent - my bad for inconsistent training). So if you get really excited and exciting in training, that would help you and him in trials, I think. He is a lovely dog!

bedazzled! Hope the dogs are OK now - that was scary - bad enough dark chocolate, but with sultanas as well. You must have been freaking!

Can you maybe try sitting on the floor with her in front of you, and just putting your hand flat on the floor in front of her - fairly close so she can reach it with her paw easily. For the purpose of this exercise I would just ignore the nose touches you'll probably get, and wait her out to see if you can get a paw investigation. Be ready to mark and reward any movement of the paw at first. There should be a way to make a paw lift more likely by placing your hand so that she is a little unbalanced, and will lift a paw slightly to balance. Sorry - probably doesn't make much sense - it's something you'd just have to experiment with - or hopefully someone will come along who can explain it better. But definitely go for splitting - be ready to click/treat the slightest movement at first - do that a few times, then wait her out for a bit more. You'll see the light-bulb moment.

That sounds pretty darned good to me, Boronia - you've achieved a LOT in only a few months. Well done to you and Daisy - and I bet you're enjoying watching her learn almost as much as she's enjoying learning.

I'm confused now... what hand must you hold the lead in? I thought the brakes were normally on the right side, leaving your left hand to hold the lead with your dog on the left? Sorry RS - what I was really saying is that the rules used to prescribe which hand you had to hold the lead in - and whichever side that was, it was inconvenient (shows you how much I pay attention to bikes ). Anyway, now, you can hold the lead in either hand - in fact the rules say the lead must be long enough to hold in either hand, but the dog must be on the left of the handler/bike.

So when's his first trial, Ptolomy . You do know that all these people who claim to be going there to train your baby, are really just going to have massive cuddles with him, don't you. You must be getting excited about getting him out - he looks absolutely gorgeous, and scarily smart. :D

Yep - that's what I would do too. Lots of little excited training sessions - particularly getting her to focus on you and want to play with you.

So you know what I mean when I say if I can do ET (training 2 dogs at the same time to do it) then anyone can . Now I have to get the bike in shape again to start doing some biking with Mr Rory - apart from leading up to ET in a year or two it should help his gaiting.

It's not in the ANKC rules, but I'm pretty sure it will be in the CAWA regs that people (at least adults) must be members of CAWA (or the Control in the state they reside in) in order to take part in any sanctioned event. So you'll have to join OH up. :p (Had to do that with my friend's OH so that he could handle one of my dogs for me in ET.) about the bungee leash - not sure that would help if one of the gundogs took off after a bird - but in any case, you're not allowed to use anything other than a normal leash which you have to hold in your hand - used to be left hand, but they've changed that now (saves having to change brakes etc. over to the other side). Dog may wear flat collar and/or harness (tracking style). I used a tracking harness with mine, as I felt it spread the load a bit for them.

Gotta love these stories. And valleyCBR, Toby would probably tell you it was Lincoln channeling through him

Yes, changes of handler are allowed in the ET - a friend and her hubby shared the running when they did it with her BC - she did 2 section, he did one. Personally, although you can run a dog once it's turned 2, I would wait a year or so, both because of physical maturity and 'emotional' maturity. My 2 BC's were 4 when we did it - as were my friend's BC and another friend's Sheltie. Although the 20 km is covered in 2 hours, it's worth training the dog (and handler ) to be able to handle a pace a bit faster than that, since some judges like to do the first leg at a little bit above the average pace, to have a bit of time in the the bank to spend on the third leg if necessary, and in case of accidents, and needing to allow a team to catch up (se I had to do when Fergus had a huge shake in a sleet storm and I had to fall off my bike (to avoid falling on him. ) Then the bike got mud stuck in the brakes, and I had to borrow one for a while while mine got fixed. I was very, very glad our judge had banked a bit of time ;) ) When friends and I were training, we worked up to being comfortable at about 13/14 kph. The other thing to remember is gradually hardening up the dog's pads by riding on gravel and concrete or bitumen as well as grass. It's great fun - my friend and I hadn't ridden bikes for a looooong time - so the training started without the dog . I'm planning on doing it with Rory the year after next, when he'll be rising 4 (and I'll be old enough to know better :D .) Seriously, if you saw me at agility Nationals, you'll know that I'm a short, dumpy senior citizen - so if I can do it, you youngsters certainly can :D .

Just for interest, there was an article in the most recent Clean Run throwing the initial 'ETS' article into some question.

The gurus must be off training , so I'll have a go. As bedazzledx2 says, it's really good to play around with shaping on stuff that doesn't matter. And it's really good to have a prop - like a box, or a target, or as I did with my agility girl when she was about 7, with a balance disc I was using as a wobble board for Rory. Then you can either sit or stand somewhere fairly near, and initially, just click/mark any kind of interaction with the prop, then start refining it. When you reward, vary between giving the pup the food from you had, or throwing it away from the prop - the throwing is particularly important to get a dog moving instead of just sitting there or just looking at you. As the dog starts to get the idea, you can start shifting your criteria gradually - so it might be - c/t for just going near the prop, then stop rewarding that and wait so you can c/t for paying attention to it (however briefly), then stop rewarding just casual attention and c/t a closer approach to the prop, then ... up to say a nose touch, or paw touch, one paw, two paws .... your imagination and the physical situation are really the only limit. For this sort of playing round with offering behaviours, you don't have to worry about putting a cue on anything - unless you see something yo really want to capture. The more you and the dog play the shaping game, the easier it becomes for them. It does require patience and careful watching on your part - but that's good for us. Interesting things can happen - my Kirra at age 7, with little free shaping history, got really impatient when I tried with the balance disc - threw all sorts of other behaviours at me, and got quite cranky and whingy when I didn't do anything - but once she got a few c/t for interaction with the disc, she started giving me stuff with the disc much more rapidly. Just an interesting little sidelight - I can remember Mary Ray saying she will often use 'free time' with her dogs, just for fun, and to see what she gets - and she gets different behaviours depending on her body position - standing, sitting or lying down. Fun to experiment with.