Agility Dogs

My dogs earn every piece of food they get. No bowls for us. Interestingly - when I fed from bowls I would get some resource guarding behaviour between the dogs if I handed out bones or pigs ears. (Two would retreat into a corner and bark on the off chance that someone MIGHT come near them.) Since moving away from using bowls and making them work for every scrap this behaviour has disappeared. Not sure if the two things are connected, but it does seem a bit coincidental.

This x 100. I don't always leave a collar on the dogs when they are training, but sometimes I do forget to take it off. They run without their collar in both ANKC and ADAA events.

Thought I'd share what we've been doing while we learn Susan Garrett's new handling.

Thanks. I can't really take the credit though. :) I'm lucky to have had the support of Winpara and Trumagik folk.

Just my three this time. :)

My guys train off lead every day, but just letting them have a blast around an open space happens about once a month.

I didn't know that, but Rod is AWESOME!!!

I have heard of several clubs in Vic recently sending trainers to various seminars/conferences in lieu of paying wages. You could also suggest having other professionals coming to do in-house information sessions, occasionally on how to introduce haltis safely and positively, for example. We do both those things. :) Although wages - LOL!! Just looking at what might be the motivation.

Until recently they have been unless I was training or at a trial. Now they are all the time unless I'm training at club or at a trial. :) I guess some of us have to learn that we aren't above he law the hard way.

I have been bad - I got fined for having my dogs off lead the other week. I can rationalise it any way I like (don't like dog parks, dogs are harassed in dog parks, too hard to train etc etc.) but the bottom line is that while I was 'only' doing group stays and recalling one dog at a time across a 5m distance I broke the rules. Fair enough. Interesting point - dogs not in a dog park can only be considered to be under effective control if they are on lead. Just because they are on lead does not mean that they are under effective control. My first reaction was to appeal and ask for a re-assessment of the fine and hopefully have it down graded to a warning. (I subsequently decided against it - not worth annoying the council and easier just to pay the fine.)BUT in so doing I found a few interesting points in the council's by-laws. (Brisbane City Council.) 1. Dogs on leads in excess of 2m in length are not considered under effective control. (Extender/retractable leads are therefore not legal when they are let all the way out.) 2. (And this is the scary one after reading a lot of the commonly held beliefs on DOL.) There is no mention of 'at fault' or circumstance in the determination of whether a dog is deemed dangerous or not. It simply states (and I'm paraphrasing) 'If a dog takes another animal (or any part of the animal) in its mouth regardless of whether it inflicts a wound or not it is considered dangerous. Likewise if the dog rushes another animal in a manner that causes concern it could be deemed dangerous.' So......If another dog or (more likely) cat comes into my yard and my dogs injure the animal they are technically at fault and could face dangerous dog restrictions. Similarly if an off lead dog rushes up to my dogs when they are on lead there is no excuse for a less than friendly response. It seems unlikely that the scenario in my second point would play out that way, but in reading the rules that is the way they are written. 3. The rules state that any individual should only walk one dog unless they are physically capable of restraining multiple dogs. (Apparently its ok to have one dog that you can't physically restrain if you need to.) Just thought I'd mention it. I'm not suggesting that any of these rules are right or wrong, it just surprised me how they are worded and how they could be enforced. Oh - and make sure your dogs are on lead in and around the inner eastern suburbs. (The guy who got me was hiding in behind houses adjoining the park.)

New personal favourite......Just after two barky little dogs ran about 50m from their owner to 'say hello' to my very interested border collies - only to take offence at the border collies boisterous greeting. In response to my (polite at this point) request for the lady to call her dogs back I got, 'It's not my problem if your dogs are insane, they are under control. You have the problem.' Ummmmmmm....... 1. The dogs are meant to be on lead. 2. I don't want unknown dogs running up to mine. 3. The little dogs were being rude, it was not 'just' a friendly greeting. The upside is that I've done a LOT of work to make sure that CK's greeting is friendly. The problem was that the smaller dogs took fright at 3 wired border collies thinking they wanted to play and responding in border collie fashion. Needless to say I wasn't quite so polite in response, especially when she suggested my dogs are not sane. What made this particularly annoying was that I had copped a fine for having off lead (technically 'not under effective control') dogs in a quiet park at 6am 3 days earlier. 3 dogs in a stay being recalled one at a time over 5m. Not really a danger to anyone, but I know I was wrong - rules are rules. I just wished they were enforced where the is a problem, not just where it is convenient for the inspectors to get to.

I know this is an old topic, but I've been thinking about it a lot in the context of our club where we have inflexible rules on some things. (Largely imposed by our national body.) One of the problems with a training club is that the instructors are members who give freely of their time to help others - in many (most?) cases this means they don't have the time or inclination to learn a variety of tools or methods. They are applying the method they have used on their dogs to their teaching. This contrasts to professionals who's job it is to understand a variety of tools and deal with a variety of dogs. I'm not saying in a perfect world that all club instructors shouldn't be able to use a variety of tools, I'm just saying that in reality they can't, but the clubs need them in order to continue operating. For this reason clubs (or at least the clubs I instruct at) tend to adopt a one size fits all approach. Doesn't work for everyone, but is manageable from the club's perspective. A good example of this is handling in agility. Most SEQ ADAA clubs teach Greg Derrett exclusively because that's what we've all been taught. At our club there are two of us who have an understanding of other handling systems, the effort to upskill everyone to understand APHS or Susan Garrett's new system would be massive/unworkable so for the time being we stick to what we know. Greg's system is not suited to all people, but........ I have recommended people look at other venues when our methods don't suit them or their dog. It's all about what we can do with limited numbers of people and knowledge. Maybe that's the club's motivation?

Sounds like my neighbour. When he came over to introduce himself I was doing some shaping (with food rewards). He rolled his eyes and said 'of course they'll do what you want, you've got food'. I let it be. He now has two out of control dogs that bark constantly, but might be starting to come around. The other week he was chopping trees that over hand our fence. At the same time I was training in the back yard (yes, again). He was kind of impressed to see 3/3 dogs run the width of the back yard, circle around the back side of a jump and come back to me, then do it with a tight turn going over the jump the 'right' way. I'll keep working on them in the hope that one day the poor souls may get out to agility or something similar.

Thanks. It is a fantastic event. Just the right mix of relaxation and competition.

LOL. Most people can't (With the one exception.....my grey faced girl Xena.) Four of them are related. Two have the same father, two have the same Grand Father or great grand father (I forget) and one has very similar lines with a relative about 3 generations back. The good thing is that they can tell themselves apart and will answer to their own name instead of any name! That would be interesting.

:) Thanks - they are pretty cool. Had a great time. I went with slightly higher expectations than I perhaps should have, but after the first day had a good think about what was going on and by the end of it was really pleased with how the puppies ran. Ended up with a heap of clear rounds and second place in the Maxi Team challenge.

A friend and I shared a house at the ADAA Grand Prix in Tamworth. These were some of the pics we took.

Sorry, I'm not much help with your pup, but I do know what it is like to live with a challenging dog so I have a lot of sympathy for your situation. I would however second this - I sent our dogs away to be trained and whilst they were given the basics I don't think I'd ever repeat the exercise. Once they came out I still had to spend another 6 months working with them to get them to where they 'needed' to be. If you can find someone who will work with you at your home it will really help with the overall relationship and have them working for you rather than someone else who doesn't have to live with them.

Good girl Mindy!!!! Yeah it was fun, was almost too much fun for the girls Well done!!!!

The second video is on Sunday after the Saturday night comp. :) YAY. She was a little tired last night, but after 5 days I think she has every right to be. It's funny, I didn't ever think a dog could roll its eyes, but guess what.......she can!! (Or at least I'm sure I saw her do it a couple of times on Monday and Tuesday nights.)

So proud of my girl Xena. This was her first big trial after coming back from injury - 5 runs on the one day. 3 for me and two for someone else because I had to run off and pick someone up from the airport. Two firsts and a third. A missed weave pole entry for her stand in handler for 1 fault and I got eliminated in our advanced agility run (which with that small error was AWESOME) To top it off she's been working with some very beginner handlers from New Caledonia this week and doing a brilliant job looking after them. (So has Mr CK, but he has always worked for anyone who happens to be holding a toy or food :laugh: .) Who knew they both spoke French!!

Every time I read a thread that says 'Report it to the council' I can't help but wonder if we are doing ourselves a disservice and encouraging the nanny state thing by reporting every near miss or thing that could have gone wrong if something was slightly different? I'm not suggesting a general state of anarchy where we allow rabid dogs to attack at will, but surely there is a middle ground where we accept that sometimes stuff just happens and we need to deal with it? FTR - one of my dogs has done something that many on here would have advocated reporting him for. I made a mistake and let it happen - it shouldn't have and it certainly won't happen again. The guy who owned to dog it happened to (no vet bills or visits involved) was mightily annoyed, but has moved on and everyone is fine. Would it really have helped the world to report the incident and hilight bad dog ownership and stretch already lacking resources?

ABSOLUTELY agree with all of this - especially the last sentence.

Love it. Great article. This lady: Is a true inspiration. This dog, running with an Aussie handler medalled at the IFCS Continental Championships of the Americas - certainly no slouch. But Linda handles him with ease - because he is well trained and she trusts him. :)

I really for for you, the situation is so stressful. We have a similar neighbour who defaced our drive way and then left threatening notes in our letterbox when I told him to to touch my drive again. He has since moved on to complaining about other things (and has complained about just about everyone in our street for one reason or another). Now just smiles and waves as he walks past - NUTTER. Not much help I know, but hopefully things work out for you like they did for us.