bedazzledx2

My boy is entire and has been used at stud 3 times...by the second time he knew what it was all about and by the third time he decided this is what he was born to do I now have him on the implant Supralorin which has proved to be wonderful!!! He still has great attitude but without the need to check out every fanny in the vicinity not to mention the peeing on every blade of grass!!! :p He is a very nice Aussie and I would like to have a pup from him down the track which is why I have chosen not to castrate him. My next pup will be a working Kelpie girl (although I also have a boys name picked out just in case ;) )

Good advice wuffles I will remember that for next time (hopefully never!)

Ah Ptolomy....come on over to the dark side :p Its about as close as I am ever going to get to being a judge ;)

Absolutely Tiggy! You can do any exercise in any order you like or even just bits. There's an article in the Canine News written by myself and Ptolomy on page 13. I usually let the judge or caller know what my intentions are but if it goes pear shaped you can abort and do something else ;)

The rules don't say anything about colour so Yes, you can use any colour dumbbell you like. Dogs don't see red or orange very well and if he is distracted for a second and doesn't mark where it lands he could lose sight of it. Most experienced triallers will use a white or light coloured dumbbell in order to give themselves the best chance. Anything can happen in the ring

There are no Dogs West affiliate clubs that would allow or endorse prong collars. Perhaps a private trainer would be able to help you make the transition to the mainstream clubs?

Its great for dogs and puppies but please DON"T COOK IT!!!! Grains are also not a natural food for dogs and you will find most bickies are loaded up with rice and/or wheat. You can also buy BARF (biological appropriate raw food) patties from most pet and produce shops and some vets.

Not now but many years ago I used to run my kelpie girl at the local oval. She was ball mad and quickly found there was a large prickle bush on the edge of the oval that had a gold mine of tennis and cricket balls underneath that the kids couldn't get to!!!! She would race down to the bush and proudly emerge with her treasure!!!!

Wow...I go to work and come home to a new topic with 2 pages already!!!!! Great topic I absolutely love the clicker It's a fast, accurate event marker that used correctly gives the dog an adrenaline rush along with the treat (which can be play, food, toy or whatever turns your dog on) Delivery of the treat depends on what I am training. For heeling I will click and treat in position. As the dog becomes more accomplished I will click and throw food in the Hansel and Gretel game but always with a release word of "get it" in an excited voice. If I'm working on straight fronts or perfect finishes I will click and treat in position. In shaping a behaviour I will click and throw food to get the dog up and away so I can get multiple repetitions, so for this, 'click ends the behaviour'. I shaped retrieve and clicked the smallest increments, so the click was, for example, for lifting the dumbell off the ground at ankle height. This meant he dropped the dumbell to receive the treat...click ends the behaviour. Later on when the behaviour is fully trained and I want to work on pick ups at a distance I will click just as his mouth goes on the dumbbell and he will drop it and come for his treat. It gives me a wonderful tool to say "that bit in the sequence was perfect...have a treat" Bob Bailey said to use the clicker like a scalpel.....great advice. Must change my signatur photo....holiday is over....back to training

They do call them Space Cadets don't they!!!!!! (also joking )

Me too RubyStar! Rally sounds like fun though and looks like it could compliment competition obedience. A link to the proposed new rules for Obedience, Rally and Tracking is here http://www.dogswest.com/ Some of us (and our dogs) find regular obedience fun, too! :p If Rally-O makes it to Perth I might come along for a looksee!

At what point did I Make fun of you?????? You seem to have a chip on your shoulder. Please go back and have a look. I will now choose to respond to other posts but it is quite obvious that you neither need nor want any advise from me...no matter how well intentioned. So be it. Have a nice life. One of the reasons I post in the training forum is so I can learn from more experienced trainers/triallers like yourself. I'm not however interested in being shot down by people who don't know myself or my dog and at best have watched a couple of youtube videos I've posted and gotten a laugh out of them. I know it can be a bit of a joke when people see the breed I have but we both enjoy training and at the end of the day the fact my dog is happy to work is the most important thing to me. I know how far she's come and sure I'm inexperienced and we've got a long way to go but I am still proud of her, however amusing you may find it. You are the one who has assumed that when I talk about training in food drive, that it means I don't use play/praise, even though I have explained when bluntly questioned by you that I do... not sure how much clearer I can be??

If you go look you will find I never said you should train purely with praise. You did incorrectly quote me on one thread as saying that...I chose not to respond at the time. I am glad you have found a great way to train your particular dog and I sincerely wish you the best of luck. I am sorry you have interpreted my questions and advice as being critical...they were not meant to be...I was actually trying to get you to think about the bigger picture but hey....what would I know? Do you know what my methods are???? You never asked. You might be surprised!!!! When have I ever not listened to someone who is being helpful to me? Considering you have never met myself, or my dog, what methods do you think I am opposed to? Or is it purely because I don't hang off your every word and blindly follow your ideas that makes you think I am "closed to altnerative methods"?? Does having an alternative approach to training than you do mean that I am wrong or closed to methods other than the ones I am using? The method, by the way, that has made a massive difference to my dog - not that you would know, seeing as you haven't met either of us Am curious exactly what instances you are referring to, Bedazzled? Do you think everything I do with my dog is just something I've made up myself and not things I've learned from a number of other trainers and triallers? Seeing as I know my dog better than anyone else including yourself, I AM certain that training in food drive is the best way to get the best out of my dog. Have you ever trained a drivey scent hound before, Bedazzled? I would LOVE to see you come and train my dog simply using play/praise and get the same results I do when I utilise her food drive. I NEVER said that training in food drive is the only way to train her, but that it is the way to get the best out of her. Or do you think you know my dog better than I, and the trainers who teach me, do? Also curious where I said I can tell what drive a dog is in simply by looking at it? I have never and would never say such a thing. I would appreciate it if you didn't take the words out of my mouth I don't particularly care about the jargon, I use it for MY understanding only - as long as my dog is happy and working well that's the most important thing to me. You can put us down as much as you like but at the end of the day I don't need to belittle other people to make myself feel better

The problem is Huski, is that you don't listen to anyone who is trying to be helpful to you. You are sooooo tied up in your own interpretation of a training system that you are closed to alternate methods that you made need down the track. You are certainly convinced that you can only train and trial in 'food drive' with your dog and that you can tell by looking at a dog what type of drive it is in (which is where this thread came from). I'm not making fun of the method....I have already posted that I think its great that people are now practicing motivational reward based training. This is the norm where I train. I just don't do the jargon.

Hey! I've got one of those!!!! An Aussie, BC and a Toller!!!! All in drive

I guess it depends on what you are training for. I am the first to put my hand up and say I know nothing about training Schutzhund or protection work. I do know a fair bit about training competative Obedience and Agility. For those sports I do beleive it is possible to train a very high level of reliability and style without using compulsion. For the average dog and owner it does carry over into real life. My obedience trained dogs will call off a cat or other animal, they will sit, down, stay on command out of the obedience ring context but that is probably due to training and positive proofing. Staranais said it all in the last paragraph....completely agree! I used to think that too, now I'm not so sure. I certainly don't think you can teach a recall off a running cat by bribing a dog with food or with treats. A high prey drive dog will view the food as completely irrelevant in that circumstance. However, with some dogs, correcting the dog to within an inch of its life is not necessarily going to stop it chasing either. Positive or corrective, the solution to that type of prolem must be done intelligently. In my experience, the correction must be timed appropriately (before the dog is fully spun up in drive). IMO the timing of the correction is in many ways more important than the magnitude or type of correction. With my old boy, I had far more success in correcting him and redirecting him gently as soon as he started to think about doing something inappropriately predatory, compared to correcting him harshly when he was already adrenalised and focused on his prey. However, positive solutions can be really helpful too, either as stand alone solutions, or to augment the corrections. You can work on desensitising the dog to the cat, you can work on prey drive games so the dog understands that obeying you leads to drive satisfaction, etc. It's not just about waiting until the dog is taking off after the cat, and then waving a cookie around. Also, in my experience, many people whose dog won't recall off a running cat, also have dogs that won't recall in many other circumstances. They just don't have a good recall, and jumping straight to correcting the dog for a hugely distracting recall isn't the answer. The answer is to go back and train all those intermediate steps that they missed, and then work on the huge distractions like running cats. But hey, what would I know? Personally Staranais, I think you have a very good understanding of general dog training and in fact, you have provided an excellent post Correction and positive re-direction with crucial timing of events was the basis of my GSD's obedience training with predatory behaviour which was not attainable easily without some compulsion. It may be possible to achieve results with "expert" positive reinforcement but on the average of what I have seen from dogs trained without compulsion at our Schutzhund club, the unreliability rate is high in those dog types. For the average person, it appears more successful to train with a combination of both methods. Too many people I believe are clouded with the thought that training without compulsion is always best for the dog, but depending upon what you need to achieve, complusion in some behaviour in some dogs should be be regarded as just another training tool in the box. With my dog especially, positive conditioning proofed him against predatory behaviour with certain distractions, but corrections proofed him against every distraction with far better reliability. It's a case of having an open mind and access to all methods of training and using what is most appropriate. Neither purely compulsive nor purely positive is the best method to successfully train every dog.

Arrgggghhhh!!!!! I give up!!!! I don't use this terminology. You do!!!! I have said right from the beginning.....what does it matter what drive my dog is in? I require my dog to be engaged in the training game and I don't give a blind fig what 'drive' he is in! Thats it...my last word on the subject! Bedazzled, what does drive mean to you? How do you define and understand it? I can see a difference bewteen a dog who is motivated and a dog who is working in drive. I see it in trials or at training all the time. I see it in my dogs. Drive, to me, is a state of mind, it involves the dog going through a motor pattern in response to a stimulus, the end result producing a chemcial reward (endorphins). I think Seita's earlier post really articulated what drive is to me. There are positive drives (pack, prey, food) and negative drives (i.e. defense drive). I have seen a dog trained in food drive look the same as a dog trained in prey drive. At the end of the day, how they got there doesn't change the fact they are both still working in drive and can both achieve the same type of intensity. To an observer, does it matter what positive drive the dog is working in? Not IMO, when it can produce the same result. Like I said earlier I think there is only so far this discussion can go via the written word... it is so much easier to convey in real life

"We can measure the determination and control level of the dog though, and see that a dog motivated by prey drive works differently to a dog trained using another method." I disagree!!!! Its all relative. How can you tell what 'drive' my dog is performing in???????? This is where the drive debate fails utterly in my opinion. Someone says "Hey that dog works well...look he is motivated and up and happy...he must be in prey drive" or are you combining (lumping) all 'drive' training against all 'correction' training...or are you assuming all correction training is when the dog looks unhappy and lags???? I can show you 3 (for arguments sake) different videos of 3 different dogs working in 3 different 'drives' and I would challenge anyone to tell me what 'drive' they are working in or have been trained in.

I need a few things so if you are going to put in an order I'm in too

This article is interesting http://www.clickertraining.com/node/2451 One has to wonder just how punishing "corrections" are to these dogs. Especially if it happens many times. Maybe it's a NRM. Although I do agree that what is punishing to one dog is not so much to another. And if the dog has become over-aroused where he just wants so badly to do something that everything around him fades to grey, you'll have a hard time being noticed without something punishing or doing a lot of conditioning and management for a while. Prevention is better than cure, though. If you pace your training sensibly, you can build drive and control at the same time. I'm discovering this for myself.

I use the clicker to teach most new behaviours but not for toileting. I think the clicker is too precise a tool for that. At what point do you click? I like what you are doing at the moment but I wouldn't even mark it with "yes" as I like that word to be my alternative marker for when I don't have a clicker on me and again I want it to be very precise. I also use a word, 'go pee' is good and I repeat it quietly and calmly while he is peeing along with a quiet 'good dog' and I don't treat. Putting it on a verbal cue is a great idea and so very useful as you can use it in so many situations.

Excellent idea probably a good idea to video him as he's learning so that if you hit a stumbling block you can see where he's going wrong. I's soooo bad with diaries I've given up trying Can you also explain what rear end awareness exercises you are teaching him.

Spot on Ness!!! Its a bit like opening the car door. My dogs are not allowed out except on command which is their names individually. I learnt this trick form a sheep farmer many years ago who taught all his dogs they were to stay in the ute until he called them by name. I thought it was pretty cool and have taught all my dogs this since and I'm sure its saved their lives a few times.

Sleep drive

Not here they're not. Show dogs perhaps? but the overwhelming majority of sporting dogs here in the West are first and foremost pets and live wonderful lives with their families. That doesn't mean people are not competative...they are! The most successfull teams in competition obedience and agility are positively trained because it works!!!! Proved over and over again. That's correct Kavik, I totally agree, but we are talking general obedience. Many sport dogs purely raised for competition are never taught general obedience and are kept in kennels and runs and bought out only to train for sport and put away until the next training session where nothing is trained that could have the potential to compromise it's sporting ability and performance. Sports training is a different concept entirely.