wuffles

Haha no, I just have to THINK about getting a treat from the laundry and she knows :p If I did that my girl would sit there the whole time not moving a muscle, wondering when I'm coming back from the out of sight stay

Touched, just lightly. Just a suggestion though that I got from another DOLer - don't have to try if you don't think it will work :) It took me 6 months to get my girl holding the dumbell so hang in there.

My dog is (most likely) a GSD x and his healing skin turns black (eg. if he has had a hotspot). After a few weeks it goes back to normal skin colour!

Kavik I had some success getting the hold by lightly placing a finger under her jaw when handing it to her. Seemed to give me that tiny bit of extra time to click and it went uphill from there :)

Oh my gosh I had so much trouble with this. I ended up getting a great formal retrieve but she still won't do an informal one. Good luck!

If I need to take one out without the other, I give them a bribe. A bully stick works well. My girl is the worst so I put her in the backyard with a chewy, close the blinds so she can't see me, then leave quietly with my boy. I think blocking the view is a big key, and you could do this without leaving to practice. Mine get walked separately every morning but my hubby takes one and I take the other. They know the routine so don't kick up a stink.

As already mentioned, for me it came down to the right litter being available from the right breeder at the right time :)

So for an inexperienced trialer, like me :) out of CD & CCD, would I be better off in CCD & if so, why is that?? I did CCD and found it a good confidence builder for both my dog and me. If you are nervous about having your dog off leash with potentially a lot of distractions (people and kids right outside the ring, dogs fetching dumbells only a few metres away, etc) then I would do CCD. In CCD if your dog gets really distracted the leash will go tight and you'll lose points, but the leash will generally bring them back. In Novice that doesn't happen :p

Most of the experienced triallers here are skipping CCD, but IMO it just depends on the dog. The leash generally helps the handler's nerves at least :)

There is no way I'd enter an obedience trial without ever seeing one before! There are a lot of intricacies and it's important to be respectful of others and their time etc. Don't want to sound harsh but I would skip the obedience trial this time and just watch so you are prepared next time :)

I feed them frozen as well. Sometimes I rinse them with water so they don't stick to their mouthes but that is it :p

Once we were staying in a holiday house on the coast with our dogs. I'd just done a load of washing, and I went out to hang it up, and I went out through the laundry door. The dogs were hanging around the other side of the house, and when Ava heard me she came roaring around the side of the house, barking and teeth bared :eek: She stopped about 2m away from me and wriggled her bum and looked embarrassed, but for a brief moment I was actually scared of her :laugh: I've never underestimated her since then...

Sorry, change of position :) In Open that is leaving the dog in a stand, asking them to drop, sit and come. It's the last exercise in the ring which means her brain is sometimes out the window by then so in our last trial I got a "Sit? What's that?" :laugh:

My big, intimidating dog who barks at people walking past the house would probably run away. If I was really lucky he might come back to check why I was screaming Strangely enough my cute, sweet younger dog (medium sized) would probably try to protect me. Her protective instincts seem to be stronger (most likely related to breed) but she's less likely to be a deterrant.

Nope, no preference. I have one of each.

Good topic :) We compete in obedience and agility. My competing dog is 2.5 years old. We're in Open obedience, Advanced rally and Novice/Excellent agility. She's my first dog sports dog. She's medium drive, food obsessed but very very soft. Mine gets breakfast in a Kong/treat toys when I leave for work, so no training then. Upon some people's advice I might ask for one exercise (COP at the moment) before dinner. Not having much luck there as her brain explodes at the sight of the bowl :) I rarely do agility training outside of classes and trials due to time issues I train at club once a week. When I muster the energy I might do a quick session at the local oval which usually just involves some weaves and short jumping patterns (I only have 4 jumps). To be honest I haven't done this in many weeks. But this is probably why we are not so great at agility :laugh: Obedience-wise, I do more training when I am teaching new things, but as we've been trialling in Open for a while now I only do a session at the local oval once a week (occasionally twice a week, occasionally once a fortnight). We do attend class at dog club once a week as well. I do a few minutes every few days in the living room, just heelwork turns and basic stuff. This includes rally exercises and rear end awareness (which always needs brushing up on). We walk every morning and occasionally I incorporate some training but not much. We try to do mock trial type things at least once before each scheduled trial (obedience). I don't keep a training diary but I should. I try hard not to overtrain because when I do, things break. My dog is still very young in the obedience world and although she loves training, I have found that too much of it causes issues for us. If an issue crops up, I go back to basics a few times (eg. A crooked front/anticipated finish that I got the other day, I went and did some short recalls with lured fronts. Then the next day I did a few more, then did a full length recall which was good). I don't train in the few days leading up to a trial. My first goal is to get each behaviour with enthusiasm. This is more important to me than doing them perfectly. I nearly always start a training session with the 2 food game and very short, quick exercises with big rewards. When still learning I mix known, "fun" exercises with the new ones to build confidence.

I have a large dog, not a giant, he's 70cm at the shoulder and 35kg. He's black. People stay away when we are on walks and you'd be nuts to break into the yard with him there (although he puts up a big scary front, he'd probably not actually do anything). Have you considered large breeds as well? Even a black labrador barking would put most people off

To be fair it's generally harder to distract a dog doing agility than obedience because doing the course is a reward in itself... I'm yet to get my dog to find a whole obedience routine rewarding (although she does like bits of it).

I hope this isn't getting too off track (although it is my thread and I don't mind :laugh:) but at a trial last weekend we were asked to stop TALKING next to the Novice obedience ring (the ring was in a fenced area) so obedience is still a bit regimented over here :laugh: Edit: By this I just mean, it's difficult to reward your dog at obedience trials, or even warm them up sometimes.

I could use food but it's not huge on her rewards ladder, so fingers crossed they're ok with her tug. I've gone from having dogs that hated SFE and being handled by strangers to a dog that loves everyone - I'm happy to work with what I've got :laugh: Used to be hard for us, she loved everyone, lost a few points in CCD... but got it together in Novice and now she just stands there and looks disgusted :laugh:

No-one at my club uses balls or tug either in mock trials, but I'm pretty sure no-one would have a big issue with it if it was explained beforehand :) SFE is our easiest exercise Touch wood.

Thanks for the comments everyone! I agree with this - including being intimidated by others. My shepherd is 'almost' ready for the ring, something I've been preparing her for since I brought her home at 8wks. She's ball driven (loves her tug too) however there's not a lot of places where we live that encourage any sort of reward let alone using her prey drive. That's been fine until now - I take her to a local club and they're ok with me going off doing my own thing but now I want to try her in the mock trial ring and I'm already feeling intimidated . At the moment I train at the far end of the paddock so I won't upset anyone, but their mock trial ring's right next to their classes. I won't be throwing her ball but I would like to use tug in the mock trial ring but I'm pretty sure at best it won't be appreciated and at worst I'll be asked not to use it - so yes I'm already feeling intimidated I would recommend asking someone involved - perhaps you are worrying about nothing! I've found that as long as I listen to advice without being rude, and pre-warn them about my intentions, people don't really mind what I do. The more rapport I build with people by training and trialling my dog, the easier it gets :) Trust me I was very intimidated by the senior triallers at first but now not so much. My other suggestion would be to find some like minded individuals (I didn't find this difficult at my club, there are quite a bunch of us but we are generally novice trainers) and run some little mock trials of your own. All you need is some rope and a start peg and you can do what you like! :) We did a run through yesterday, not strictly a mock trial but as close as we're going to get at the moment. I actually found that our biggest problem was just going into the ring, before we even got to the start peg! So I worked on that a little, then did a run through which was quite decent. We'll see how it translates to our next trial.

I don't repeat. Sometimes I give my big stubborn dog two chances because I'm lazy, but my little obedience dog doesn't generally get any commands repeated. I have learnt when she is going to respond and when she isn't, and when she isn't.... I don't give the command at all :) The only reason she doesn't respond is if she doesn't understand, or is over her threshold.

Mine looks up but she pays attention to the whole picture... shoulders, legs, feet, face, hands. It's very easy to confuse her if you get one part of the "picture" wrong... for example if I tell her to stay but step off with my left foot, she will step off with me but be completely confused about whether she's doing the right thing. When stepping off from a halt, if I don't time my signal/command properly she will anticipate just with the tiny shift of my weight forwards. This is my girl's natural heeling style, if she looks ahead she gets too distracted (she doesn't heel super close in general but does look up). IMO you should work with your dog's natural style if possible. Figures of eight are really good for getting your dog to follow your shoulders (I start off training this with really exaggerated shoulder movements and changing speeds). Oh, and just wanted to add that if you exaggerate shoulder drops or turns of the head in trials many judges will take marks off.

Thanks huski. That is my thought as well and is what I do at the moment when I get the opportunity. I'd like to be a bit random, for example rewarding after 10 steps of heelwork then leaving the ring, or just doing two exercises (eg. SFE and recall) then rewarding/leaving. The people I train with think I'm nuts, though, so I need some validation to make me feel better :laugh: I do think that some of my dog's issues have to do with my nerves but she is also anticipating the lack of rewards also.