wuffles

I totally agree that there are lots of idiot owners out there. But I also think tolerance might come into play. I was at our local oval last night which is also a dog off leash area outside of school hours (which I believe is a big no-no in some states). There were lots of parents and kids there running, playing ball games. There were also a few dogs. Most of the dogs ignored the kids and vice versa. One of the dogs (not mine) went up to a child to say hello. Child patted dog, dog moved on. Everyone happy. I don't know whether we should be banning these kind of situations just because of the potential of something to go wrong... it was such a nice afternoon.

One of the reasons as I see it is such strict laws and regulations about what you can and can't do with your dog. I'd like to take mine with me everywhere but even sitting outside with them at cafes is hit and miss. Sometimes they're not even allowed on ovals to watch sports games on weekends. If I want to go over a friend's house, most of them would shudder at the idea of me bringing my dogs over. And God forbid they be let off leash anywhere but a fenced dog park!

No probs Clastic, next week should be fine I can just come round your place if you want (will leave Mars' girlfriend at home) or we could do an oval or something. Here you go KTB... hopefully no awesome dog trainers come in here and read this and pick it to pieces Teaching heel position itself is important to make sure the dog actually knows what is expected of it from the start. I think it's a much slower process if you only have a vague criteria of 'you must walk beside me' which will most likely result in wrong timing and a confused doggie! I know this from experience So set your own criteria for what you mean by heel... for me it is, dog's shoulder touching or almost touching my knee, watching me, straight! Of course build this up as you would build up a reliable sit or drop or stay and don't expect them to do all of this straight away Ava knows she's not going to get a reward if she's asked to heel and her bum is sticking out to the side, or if she's not looking at me. Building up slowly... unfortunately this is pretty much impossible in a class situation so it's one to practice at home. Once the dog can find heel position while you are stationery, you can start walking... but little steps. One step, halt, reward. One step, halt, reward. Once the dog does that reliably, do two steps, halt, reward. Then vary the amount of steps. If the dog starts forging after 2 steps, go back to 1 step and build it up again. Takes a lot of patience! Make heeling rewarding for both you and them! It doesn't matter if you are popping treats every 2 seconds to start with. Play the 'two food game' which is where you throw some food away from you in one direction, let the dog go get it, then throw another piece of food in the opposite direction, let the dog go get it, then ask them to get in heel position. If they get it right, throw food and repeat. This gets most dogs pretty excited, even Satch doesn't mind this one! Ava loves catching food so if she's a little flat I will throw her rewards up in the air for her to catch them, this often puts her out of heel position so I make sure she is released, jog a few steps away, ask for a heel and repeat. Or if your dog likes to chase you, run away then ask them to heel, mark reward release, run away again, etc. And one that has been very important for us and I wish I had done sooner: stick to your criteria and enforce it! I had been inadvertantly rewarding sloppiness for a long time. I think it's not so bad at the very start but once your dog definitely understands what is expected of it, don't reward half-arsed efforts. If your dog loses focus or leaves heel position, release them without reward and end the game. If you're at home you can end the training completely, they hate this. You can crate them as well, or what I do when I'm out is turn away from Ava with arms folded so she knows the game and therefore chance of reward is over. I wait about 30 seconds then try again. What I was doing initially was, if she lagged or sniffed the ground, I would call her to me and once in the right position, reward. Being much smarter than me, she realised that she was still getting rewarded for this, so why bother focusing all the time?? As soon as I said heel, she'd be nose down... then look at me occasionally to see if she'd get a reward. Lastly getting rid of a lure and eventually getting rid of food from your body at all... this is probably for once you have it quite down pat and want to get longer duration without reward. I do think it's still important to teach even if you don't want to trial, because there will be times you don't have a treat! I now give lots of 'jackpot' rewards from containers. I would get out 3-4 containers with 1/4 of her dinner, or something really good (like a sardine or chicken neck)... open one, show her, place it on the ground. Ask her to heel for say, 2 steps, then release and encourage her to go eat the food from the container. She LOVES this I'm still working on it... up to about 70-80 steps of heeling before releasing to go to the reward.

Teaching heeling will be different for each dog, I guess the same as all training really I'd say the main things that have improved our heelwork: making sure the dog knows what heel position actually is and make it FUN and REWARDING starting out very, very small--one step at a time--and not moving on too quickly! once the dog understands something, being strict about its enforcement letting the dog know that they will still get a reward for doing the right thing even if it is not in your hand at the time. I just typed out a big, looooooong explanation of each of these points but I'll PM it to Clastic so I don't bore everyone else - let me know if anyone else wants it and I'll send a message! With Ava being my first trialling dog I've just had to pick bits and pieces of advice from lots of sources... I've never found all this info in one place... so hopefully it's helpful Clastic I am also happy to meet with you one arvo after work if you want! Not sure how much help I'd be but I can try!

Ava ate all the plants too, not that there were many to start with. She shredded a grassy shrub down to its stem (which has grown back in the past few months, YAY), stripped all the bark off one of our climbing plants, and dug in the garden beds and exposed all the plant roots. We didn't have any pot plants but I can tell you pretty easily what would have happened to them if we did Edit: On another note, I sent in the entry form for our first obedience trials on 26 March ;) Eeek! We had a bit of an average training session last night but there were annoying little midgie bugs everywhere so I think they were a bit distracting. Ava is LOVING being sent to a reward at the end of an exercise, you should see how fast she runs to the treat container! Is anyone still up for a playdate on Sunday morning? And if so, could I be a pain and ask if you can help us practice Figure of 8s?

When my dog decided that the neighbours needed woofing at, we filmed him to see what was actually going on. That may help you determine if there is a particular reason, how much he is barking, etc. We have also taken some mornings off work and use weekends as an opportunity to 'sneak up on him'. We pretend to leave like normal in the morning but stay home and keep quiet in the house. That's the only way we could catch him in the act as he was fine when we were around. All he needed was an interruption when he started barking, and he shut up. Our neighbours aren't very cooperative but when they are in the yard (especially when their child is squealing) I go into our yard with the dogs and sit with them right next to the fence, and give them treats for being calm and quiet and ignoring the neighbours. We are still monitoring the situation but these actions have helped a fair bit. Good luck, it is so stressful Edit: We also upped both our dogs exercise even though it meant getting up at a ridiculous hour! Mine really need their morning walk or they become a lot noisier. My younger girl goes for a 30 minute run with OH 3 x week and this has really helped her energy levels.

Must be a bad night for dog toys today as Ava destuffed a cheapy tuffie-style toy tonight. Came out of the shower and it was snowing. I told her as long as she only destroys her own stuff I am happy! I only wash mine when they stink. Satch hasn't been washed in over a month, Ava had a bath 2 weeks ago. Sometimes we go at least 2 months with no bath.

All dogs are different. For example, yesterday, my 36kg boy got about 1/2 cup of kibble for breakfast and one chicken frame (about 250 grams) for dinner. It looks like such a tiny amount of food for a dog his size but any more and he gets porky!

Little Miss Whiteface had a good day at training today We decided that we're going to hang a 'WILL HEEL 4 FOOD' sign around her neck due to her propensity to glue herself to the left hand side of random people with treats So funny how he spends half the time going "Ava! Lookie! I have a toy! Look! Toy! Ava!" and the other half of the time going "KEEP AWAY FROM MY TOY OR ELSE."

Mine are in the backyard when we're out. No access to inside because Ava isn't trustworthy and the dog door would have to be so big for Satch We have 5ft paling fences. Both gates are padlocked as we don't trust people (neighbours) and Ava can open gate latches. It would be pretty hard to steal a dog from our yard, although I did worry a bit about Ava as a puppy as she was very cute. My dogs wouldn't do well if they could see through the fences, especially if there were dogs next door. I'd either have to fence them off completely or change the fences if that were the case.

Spin is a good one and my girl loves it! It's also easy to teach by luring

In looks maybe to a degree but they are different breeds and as such do have differences. Also probably worth mentioning that often BCs and Aussies are on a very different page play and interaction-wise so the temperaments may be harder to match I find them very different breeds but I do know some people have both

It's hard to know whether she will attempt to escape again or not. My rescue boy was surrendered to the pound for escaping through loose fence palings. At our house he has shown no interest in the fences. He is just opportunistic. He won't go out of his way to escape, but if there's a gap, he'll go through it. Could you try filming her to see if she does actually attempt escape?

Mine have been on BH for a a few weeks now and are doing very well. Their coats have always been pretty good so no difference there but their poops are much smaller so that's good

Such a hard life... Been a hectic few weeks at my place so didn't have much choice of photos! This was the only photo taken during week 8 so I thought I'd play around with it a bit week08 by wufflesx, on Flickr week09 by wufflesx, on Flickr

We stayed at Batehaven which is right next to Malua Bay Make sure you check which beaches are off leash 24 hours and which are time share because it can be a bit tricky... last time we took Satch to the beach he was scared of the waves too, but he seemed ok this time! I still can't decide I guess I should go ahead and do it. Just not sure our heeling is ready! I am so confused about what I have to do now though - everyone was telling me that Ava's papers need to be transferred to the ACT instead of NSW? I am a member of DogsACT but her papers are still DogsNSW. Ehhhhhhhhhh? I might have to talk to you on Sunday, can you please bring some forms?

Thanks! The thing was, I thought that one of the useful parts of rearend awareness training was the ability to put the dog into a very nice heel position. My problem is that every time I take a step towards the dogs, they pivot so they are never next to me. You can shape the dog to gradually move towards you while you stand still, this is how I have seen it done in training videos. You'd never be able to move towards the dog because it has been taught to move with you. So you'd need to stand still and then continue shaping until the dog is touching you and moving with you while touching you. I don't have a command for either direction as at the moment I really only do the exercise for a nice heel position. So I just use the word "heel" for Ava. KTB, what happens if you get the dogs to stand in heel position with their front feet on the phone book, then take a step away from them around the book? Will they follow you, or go the opposite direction? Maybe try that and lure them to stay in heel position beside you?

And here is a wedding teaser pic :D We won't get the professional photos for a while yet.

is a video of the doggies at Tomakin Beach. We went there on Wednesday and were the only ones there, until a man with a metal detector arrived... of course the doggies had to go say hello to him (ignoring our calls :D) but once they'd had a sniff they came back of their own accord. Satch got used to the waves pretty quickly, although still didn't like when they broke on him, whereas Ava was a bit more wary in general. Poor Satch, Ava spent most of her time chasing him and hanging off his neck... The house we stayed in was nice and dog friendly of course! The backyard was grassy and secure. Satch hated the floors (laminate floorboards) but we worked around that. On Thursday we went to one of the beaches just south of Broulee which is 24 hour dog off leash. There were a few other people there and some kind of surf carnival on the northern part of the beach but it was so expansive that we had no trouble letting the doggies off for a big run. Love this pic - rawr Weeee wuffles and the doggies Satchmo takes off Doggies play Poor Satchy

OK, I've been through the thread and replied to lots of things... sorry anyone I missed Now I just need to sort through our pics and videos from the week! Thanks for all the congrats everyone! kyliegirl: Oh Echo is gorgeous in your videos! I love the big eyes while waiting for his dinner :D Satch drools if you make him wait too long And Echo is such a calm boy, well done with his training ravenau1: Any Aussie questions yet? I noticed you asked one about colour in the Aussie thread, I think you chose the hardest to answer question out there considering we don't know what colour Ava is genetically! Regarding dogs on the bed, Satch is not allowed up, and he doesn't really have a desire to do so (he sleeps in the lounge room anyway and only comes into our bedroom if he's afraid). OH was very against dogs on the bed but Ava is allowed up occasionally -- only when explicitly invited. Generally I only let her up if OH is going to be up late or is out for the night. She does take up a lot of room and I have to take OH's pillow off the bed because she loves that And sometimes she does wake us up with her dreaming ("moof! moof! *kick*). Ava's energy really used to frustrate OH but she has calmed down considerably and he is smitten with her now. Hopefully Astrid turns out like our little miss has -- she's always ready to do something but at least chills out every now and then these days. It seriously felt like she never slept when she was little KTB: I'd probably put Elbie and Ava on a similar level of drive but different types of drive, would you agree? Elbie is very herding oriented whereas Ava is... foooooood. FOOD. OMG FOOOOOOOOD. ;) And Satch is way down in the next-to-no drive category. I have booked in with K9 Steve on April 30 and I think I might try to take both dogs. I'd love to see if there is a way I can motivate Satch, whereas I'd like to get some trialling advice and try some training in drive with Avie-bear... Thank you again for the pressie by the way :D betsy: Yay for Ziggy catching a frisbee Ava will never do that. Sometimes Ava mixes tricks up, for example my hand signal for spin is similar to roll over so sometimes she starts spinning then throws herself on the ground for a roll KA: Pug crosses tend to be robust little things so I'm sure Kuma will have fun when the puppy gets older Hopefully they don't talk too much through the fence though! I leave collars off mine because I think there is more of a chance of them getting caught than escaping. There's no way they can go over the fences (touch wood) and our gates are locked. However, they do jump up on the fences, and mouth each other's necks in play, AND Ava squeezes herself into small spots (like behind the BBQ) so there are plenty of ways for them to get caught. Ava is due for her booster shot next week too. Thankfully she loves the vet!

My pup left her siblings at 12 weeks old. We visited her breeder when they were 12 months old and saw her mum and two brothers. None of them recognised each other that we were aware of, just acted like they would with any other visiting dog. She did seem to recognise the breeder's kids, though

omg corgi Ava She even has a little white spot on her back like Ava does! The Ark can tell you that Ava was herding chickens at that age. She just decided at 6 weeks old that the chicken may be more fun to eat than the chase Just got home from the coast so will have to catch up on the rest of the thread and post some piccies later!

I would agree that often that's the case, but not always. I don't think that anyone would guess that my two dogs live in the same household going by their training... my low drive boy knows the basics but I struggled to train anything more complex with him (even quite simple tricks such as spin or roll) so he just gets short, easy sessions every few days. My medium drive girl has been a dream to train, she is 15 months old and ready for obedience trialling. I have had very few problems training her.

My Satchmo is very low drive. He's not highly food motivated, is not pack driven, is disinterested in toys. I do suspect that I could get more out of him if I could harness his prey drive properly but I think it would be a LOT of work!! I don't think it would be possible to get titles on him to be honest. Is he trainable? Yes. But I doubt anyone could motivate him to heel for 2 minutes... As some others mentioned, he is a very easy dog to live with. Fine being by himself, doesn't need lots of play or attention or exercise. He is OH's kind of dog

I think it's real... it really is very similar to Ava's reaction if she thinks she may be in trouble. I might be wrong though! A few days ago I was in the kitchen and dropped something, swore... she got up off the rug, squinted at me and went and hid under the desk! Poor sensitive little girl.