Purple Julie

I'm going. Trisven, lure coursing is open to all breeds. It is at KCC park in Melbourne on 15 Jan as mentioned above. I'm not quite sure what suburb it is in. I think it is beyond Dandenong, but not as far as Frankston. I just know what roads to take to get there! Obedience isn't really a requirement, so long as you have your dog under control when it isn't in the field. Age, I would say, not too young and not too old. Actually, I think ISH was talking about running her puppies. I imagine if you have a young or old dog, you would want the speed a bit less so that you don't damage the young/old bones/muscles.

Jyra sometimes has raw kangaroo meat. It has always been frozen for at least 24 hours, then thawed before she gets it though (as with all her meat). Jyra will eat roo fine, but she won't eat turkey or raw fish.

Chicko, you'll find that out when you go!! I think it may depend on what people are interested in. Maybe I'm not qualified to reply. I have been to two workshops in Melbourne. We have talked about drives, dog behaviour and the underlying causes, dog training. I would recommend anyone go.

Oh, I don't know the Bentleigh area. I go to the Butchers in Box Hill Centro. Asian butchers are usually good to get doggy stuff from.

Oh, shame I can't be there. I arrive home from the Solomon Islands late that evening.

I wouldn't recommend cow legs, as they are weight bearing bones, so they aren't able to be crunched through. They are what are often called 'recreational bones'. If it is a beef backbone...Well, I have just started Jyra on beef backbone today, and I found that she was able to eat most of it, but there were some bits of bone that were too hard for her to break. She'll get the remaining portions of this backbone until it is finished, but I won't be buying any more backbones. With regard to how much you should be feeding your dog, it should be 2-3% of her body weight. Jyra weighs 30kg and she gets 600-640g a day (ideally, but in reality it varies from 500-800g and hopefully balances out!). I don't know how much your portions weigh, so I can't say how many to give your dog. She weighs 12kg, so I'd say 240-300g roughly would be an appropriate amount for your dog. Of course, saying that, if you fed this and your dog kept losing weight, or gaining weight, you'd change the amount of food accordingly. Kismet Kat, what state or city do you live in? We could suggest good butchers if we knew where you were near.

That is really good to hear that it worked out for you! And that you had the will power to carry it out. Well done!

Phatdex, I am a bit confused with what you are doing with Gouki in prey drive. Of course he's going to lunge at the item when you're moving it! Is he still lunging at it when you are holding it still? If so, hold it out of his reach, then when he sits, give him the ball. I don't think that at this stage you should be expecting him to sit while the ball is in motion. Of course, I'm not the expert and I may also have misunderstood what you are saying.

I don't know if anyone noticed, but a lot of the time when we were sitting down, Jyra was catching flies, or attempting to. What I found highly amusing was that even when Jyra was lying on her back in her relaxed, undignified upside down position, she was STILL snapping at flies!! What a nutty dog!

Hello. Yes, had a great day. Lots of things to think about now. Wasn't Jyra just an angel? Ha ha ha!!

"Soft bones" are what you want. Bones that are not weight bearing bones of the larger animals (Chicken legs are fine though) You can get chicken carcasses, wings, drumsticks, thighs, whole chickens, chicken necks. Any part of chicken is fine. Lamb flaps, lamb necks, beef/pork soup bones are good too. What state/city are you in?

Hi, yes, I want to come back and do more herding with Jyra too...LOOK OUT SHEEP!!

The trip to Beaconsfield is fairly straightforward for me, yet I will be consulting the Melways again before I leave!! The first time I had to go to Beaconsfield, I asked my Dad where it was, and he said, "Near Pakenham"..."Where's Pakenham?"..."Near Dandenong"..."Oh, that direction" I think I will go for the pub lunch this time. Jyra will be happy to have some of the people who decide to stay at the house look after her.

When we are talking about focus, where is the desired focus - on the prey item or on the handler? I bought Jyra a new toy today and was wondering whether to use that for prey drive work. It has a rope, tennis ball and handle. The rope goes through both sides of the tennis ball, and has a knot at one end, and the other side goes for a little bit and there is a handle at the top. I was wondering if this would be an ideal prey item, or if I should stick to the blue, squeaky ball that I have, and have attached a string (shoelace now) to. Because I have done the frustration/teasing work with the blue ball, Jyra seems to be more excited about it and chooses it over the rope-ball. The other thing with the rope ball is that Jyra grabs the rope more than the ball, but she certainly has a firm grip on it and will play tug, sort of thing. With the squeaky ball, Jyra has as firm a grip on it as she can without squeaking it, so you can imagine, it is pretty easy to get off her (as she hasn't been trained an 'out'). It's still a fairly firm grip, but not enough to squeak the ball. I just need to give the string a bit of a hard tug, and it'll come out. No amount of hard tugs will get the rope-ball off her, her grip is that firm. Now, as I'm not requiring Jyra to do Schutzhund or retrieving trials, the grip doesn't matter too much anyway, does it? Also, you have mentioned mouthing the prey item, does that matter if we're not doing competitions where it's not good?

I have thought up another question about your S&N program. Can it be undone? By that, I mean after going through all the S&N stuff with your dog when it is young and having a well neutralised dog, when the dog is older, say, and your dog has several positive experiences with people patting and playing with him, will he then attach a positive value to people, or not, because the groundwork was done when the dog was a puppy and it won't change?

Last workshop, I took my own lunch with me and took it into the pub. There was no problems. This time, I might buy my lunch, don't know yet though. Wow, it's only a week away now!

That is pretty cool. Do you reckon I could achieve that with Jyra? The other day we were at the Yarra River in Warrandyte, and there was someone throwing an object into the water for her two dogs to chase it. Triple distraction for Jyra - water, dogs, and prey item!! At the same time, I decided to go down a slope to the path below the one I was on. Not a good idea to have a dog PULLING you down a slope because of their own motives! I ended up on the ground! So, like, with a LOT of training in drive, could I just say a drive cue to get her drive focus off the distraction and onto me? Yes, I think it is possible, but I don't know if I could achieve it. Haven, Loki would be in prey drive when chasing cats, so at least you know that he doesn't have zero drive. I think it's probably inhibited by his fear though. K9, you said that when the dog is carrying the prey item, they are having drive satisfaction. How about when Jyra is lying on the floor chewing a soft toy, removing the tag, nose, eyes, etc, is that drive satisfaction too? or something else?

K9: Ideally, you set the values in S&N you & your items being the highest. When your dog has a high value on something, it will need corrections or a lot of training to re assign that value. Ok, so say you have a water loving dog that just wants to go swimming at the sight of water and say you want to reduce the value of water. Do you give the dog a correction for heading over to the water/getting into the water? My thought is that over time, the dog would get a negative value on water rather than a neutral value if he keeps on getting corrections near water. Do you teach the dog that it's only allowed to go into the water when you give a release command? Though doing that only increases obedience, not necessarily reduce value, right?

This is a really morphed thread with a dozen different topics going all at the one time, boy!! Anyway, I'm going back to the neutralisation stuff here. After having more time thinking about it, I have more questions for K9. How do you neutralise the dog to people, and which people do you neutralise him to? Is it everyone except you? Or is the dog allowed to have a positive value on the other humans who live in the house with him? I think it would be hard to neutralise your dog to people, as a lot of people see a puppy and want to pat it and play with it. What do you do when socialising your pup in public and people go up to pat him? What do you do when friends and family come over and want to play with him? Do you just lay down a strict line and tell them 'no, I don't want you playing with my dog?' I can see the value of having your dog with a neutral value to people. Not all visitors want an exuberant people loving dog pestering them for attention when they come to see you. Jyra loves people, so she's not neutralised for sure! Another thing, what are your dogs not neutralised to? You, I know, they have a high positive value for you, but are you really the ONLY thing they have a high positive value for? You train your dogs in prey drive, so don't your dogs have a high value for their favourite prey item that you train them with? And what about water (as in swimming water) and food, don't your dogs have a positive value for them? They eat, so they must like food, thus it mustn't have a neutral value...correct reasoning? Your dogs like to go for a swim don't they? Then doesn't swimming/water have a positive value too? And if the answer is no, they have a neutral value, how do you teach them not to value swimming and eating? Jyra loves swimming, too. She loves a lot of things, actually!

This doesn't happen all the time though Julie. Look at two of the time she went for Reilly. One time he was not paying attention to her in the least and wasn't even facing her. The time after that he was also not facing her or even near her. And both times she was not hyped up at the time (in fact she was resting the second time). I noticed she also reacted to any movement the little dogs were making while in the room. What behaviour of Reilly for eg, would make Jyra react during those times? Nat Nat, I said 'sometimes' twice in the quote you quoted, not 'all the time'. To answer your question, Jyra doesn't really like Reilly since he got the glint in his eye of wanting to hump her at the lure coursing. At the beginning of the day at herding, when she met Reilly, she walked away from him (avoidance). I think the times that you referred to, Jyra was relaxed and in a vulnerable position, and I believe Reilly moved, stood up one time and Jyra reacted to these movements.

Just another thing, you know how Jyra sometimes reacts to dogs and sometimes doesn't (this is in a non-prey drive setting), Do you think that has A LOT to do with the other dog, and how it reacts to her? I think so. Again, another silly question from me that I am answering! If the other dog has a neutral value to Jyra, say and doesn't do much, Jyra is less likely to react to it. However, if the other dog reacts to Jyra in some manner (positive or negative), Jyra is likely to react back to it. Do you think that is a correct reading of the behaviour or am I way off track? (Off topic that I have to post somewhere: It would be interesting to see what you could do with Jyra and Imashephead's GSD Chilli (whom you read about in her post) together at the workshop. They would both be likely to react to each other, so it's probably not a good idea really, but just wondering if you could work such great wonders that they wouldn't react to each other!)

Ah, I see that Haven already asked the same thing as me on page one! (Yes, now I am being naughty and staying up late reading the posts!) About a dog being/not being in two drives at once or switching quickly between drives: When I took Jyra to the herding workshop, and she was on her back legs looking over the fence at the sheep (cheeky girl!), sometimes she'd be fine with a dog next to her, then other times, she'd notice it and react to it. I think that Jyra was in prey drive as she was looking at the sheep and that is why she didn't react to the dogs, but then how come at other times, she did? I want Jyra to meet your GSD. You've just got the magic touch! Anyway, a big thank you to Steve for giving all this free information to the world. I'm sure it does help you to get new clients, Steve, but there are also a lot who are just getting this info for free and you are getting no profit from it (except for intrinstic satisfaction maybe). So yes, a big thank you to Steve. Really enjoy reading your posts and really appreciate your advice. :rolleyes:

Ok, I've caught up with all the lastest posts in this thread, and I must say, Leena, you asked some very good, thought out questions. Now my thoughts/questions: K9, you have said that the dogs that your dog that is in neutralisation training encounters are dogs that will ignore your dog (sorry about the grammar!). Right, so, you have dogs that YOU can find that will do this. But what about the rest of us, say we were doing neutralisation, where would we find the dogs that will ignore our dog, seeing as a lot of dogs want to interact with other dogs? Have I understood this right - what you do is, when your dog is 8-12 weeks, take him out and expose him to all sorts of experiences...Question: What do you do if your dog shows a positive or negative reaction to these things, and how do you make it a neutral reaction? Another Question: Do you completely avoid all other dogs in this phase?...Then for 12-? weeks, you keep the dog at home and don't expose it to much (whilst probably developing prey drive, I assume!)...Then after this period ends, which is when? What happens next? You do more neutralisation socialisation whilst avoiding other dogs until the dog is about 12 months, and then you introduce him to other dogs that have no interest in dogs. Question: What do you do if your dog does show interest in these dogs? Nothing because it'll soon realise that they're not exciting? (Deary me, I'm answering my own questions!) I think that's all for now. I think Jyra has a high positive value for people, and I'm not certain on her value for other dogs.

K9, it is annoying that your threads increase by four pages a day, and I don't have the time to read through all of this thread as it is nearly bedtime! :rolleyes: So, having not read much of this thread, I am asking my questions. Sorry if they have been covered already. K9, do your dogs bark and carry on like Jyra does when it cannot get to a prey item that they desparately want? I think the answer is "of course not, they're trained in drive". Probably a silly question! Ok, so as I mentioned in the other post, Jyra will bark and carry on when she is in what I have just now called, 'prey drive frustration'. That is, when she sees Lablovers dogs doing retreives (as you saw), when she is waiting for her turn to do lure coursing, etc. Also when I did as you suggested and had her tied out and I played with the ball. She does all this nonsense. My question is, how do I control that without reducing her drive? Like if you tell her to sit in this situation and say she does, she won't hold it long, because of her excitement and desire to chase, but then if you correct her for breaking the sit, that decreases the drive. So it'd be really nice to know how to queue up for lure coursing without having a mad dog on my hands. Any suggestions? Other than queuing up without her! Another question, when the dog is holding the prey item, carrying it, is it still in drive? (I think so) And if so, what level/degree of drive is the dog in? (ie initialisation, peak, etc)

Why wouldn't they? If drives excite them, then why wouldn't they tremble with excitement? Makes sense to me.