Casima

Hi Sally, This might be a bit breed dependant, some breeds have more "fetch" potential than others, and some might never be interested. What breed(s) are your pups? For my working dogs I found the best way to get a new dog interested in the ball is have him around when my older dogs are chasing balls, it takes alittle while but the excitment and obsession with the ball seems to be contagious. Since you have one who will play with a ball keep at it. If you find the new pup is more interested in chasing the other dog rather than the ball, try standing with the ball in your hand and only throwing it when the pup looks to the ball instead of the other dog, that is what worked for my youngest, but don't try it until they are really interested. Don't over do it, stop before they get sick of the game, Kavik's advice is great. If the pup isn't returning the ball you can try training it seperatly using food rewards. 100% agree with Kavik, don't use sticks, they are scary Catching toys seems to come once the dogs are keen on the toy, all of mine will try to catch but I never taught it. If you wanted to teach a proper safe catch, the Disc Dog/Canine Frisbee people have ways of doing this, you would need to do a search.

Hi Dog walkers! and welcome kchogan I haven't been updating as well, but I have been walking everyday since my last post. I've decided to do seperate walks again for awhile, Anna goes by herself and the boys go together as I think it is better for all of them. So I've been taking Anna, comming home and swapping dogs then walking the boys double the excercise for me too tiring tho, I hope I can keep it up.

I had been a regular poster on an overseas dog forum and decided it was time to find an Aussie equivalent as it was frustrating getting to know all these people and dogs I would never meet I've since met several people from DoL and their lovely dogs :D Most of the time I read rather than post as there are so many people here that by the time I read the post anything I would have said is already said but I learn tons from reading. I love DoL because there are people from every corner of the dog world here who share their views and experiences. We have tons of experienced pet people, dog sport people, showies and breeders, working dog people, pet care professionals, rescuers and trainers of all sorts. Also I love that there is pretty much every breed covered by at least one poster on here and we have the odd overseas poster who adds a different perspective again. The other reason I love DoL is because it is a great time waster, especially useful for killing away the many hours late at night when I can't sleep ;)

I hardly ever feel the need to wash mine, partly becuse they all go swimming in the dam/creek most days and it feels like a waste to wash them only to have them go in swimming the next day but also none are into rolling in things and only Benny has a tendancy to smell doggy. Anna has teflon fur! I think she has had 1 bath in the 1+ years I've had her, even when I got her out of the pound after 6 weeks in there she didn't smell at all. Raffy is pretty good too at keeping nice, he does get regular brushing tho. I probably should give them all a wash before the warm weather is gone and that will be it until after winter unless something icky happens.

Hi folks, I might do the ET again this year in Sydeny with Anna this time, more for my fitness not hers as I'm sure she could do 20kms no worries right now, its me who needs the excercise. ;) Raffy did his last year and Benny a few years back both my boys passed it very easily and Benny literally pulled me the whole way around so I needed to break instead of pedal around the whole course. we had trained so he didn't pull but the cold morning and excitement of the other dogs was too much for his self control. I found the hardest part was riding so slowly, its much easier for me to balance on the bike at a faster speed so I tend to train at a bit higher speed, other than that I find it quite enjoyable and a great reason for me to get off my fat butt and ride reguarly Just incase anyone is thinking of running with a smaller or less athletic breed, last year there was a jack russel, boston terrier and pembroke corgi at Sydney, all passed.

Hi again Ness, glad to hear training went well and you broke things down more, sounds great I would always choose to run as much as I can on a course even tho my dogs have very decent distance skills. It will help your dogs confidence and speed, usually the more you put into a run the more your dog will too also your own acceleration and deceleration on course are great cues for your dog, eg if you are accelerating or running flat out your dog should be driving that line along parrallel to you (hopefully powering ahead) if you then slow down comming up to a turn the dog should read that as part of your turn cue before perform a front cross etc which gives them more information about where they are going giving you tighter turns and better lines around the course. Lastly, I don't find my agility runs nearly as fun for me if I haven't run too and I am not an athletic person Having said all that, I am usually about 1-2 metres lateral through most of the course and especially at the lead out you don't want the dog needing to see you through the uprights to take the jumps. I didn't ever teach my dogs distance, it all came on its own, smaller or dogs with less drive may need to be taught, but Kenzie should be good. If you pay attention to setting your dog on a good line on course all the time, and have built value for the equipment you should find it wont matter if you are 1m lateral or 10, you are driving the parralel line they should drive it too. Or if your movment is supporting the dog to send ahead it should go on the line you have set, just don't get stuck on a distance line as the dog should come to you if you are stopped. If you get a chance at the end of training after running trickier courses with lots of handling, its great to set up a quick speed circle to let her blast around, work on some lateral distance there, hopefully this will help her look where she is going too. Too much turning work without fast bits can permanently slow up some dogs if you arn't careful. I will second this recommendation great for building the dogs understanding of your handling cues and building value and focus for the equipment... you can also swap (most of) it around to be "1 tunnel" or "1 tyre" or "1 seesaw" etc great stuff

My youngest is going to be "puppy" until I have a new youngest in a few years time I have found all my dogs have "grown up" mentally at around the 2 year mark.

Hi Ness, since you are after advice, I have a few comments to add too... To me it looks like Kenzie got 3 rewards during the 2+ mins of video (correct me if I am wrong) and all 3 happened for her contacts, no wonder she goes off back to the contacts when she gets confused... that is where she gets paid. That looks like quite a tricky course for a baby dog, I would be breaking it down alot for sure, and trying my best to handle it so it flows, even changing it a bit if you have to. Ideally, you want to go and walk a part of a course for her, a few times, work out your handling and what you want to reward, what your criteria is for her and what you will do if it goes bad. That way when you get her out you will be confident and you can reward her for the good parts, and try the bits that went wrong again and reward when they are right. From the video it looks like she loses confidence in your handling once things start to go south and since you hadn't rewarded anything up till that point and you just kept on trying to get her around the course things didn't get any better. I would have rewarded her start line, then rewarded after the first tunnel for the Fx, then sent her into the tunnel again to work the next little bit and when she missed that jump I would have gone back and restarted that little sequence probably from the tunnel again and rewarded her for getting the jump she missed the first time. etc, just split it all up and run it as lots of little sequences and restart any that don't work rather than just redoing the missed jump. That way it will also be easier for you to handle better as well as you only have to worry about 1 thing at a time. From memory your older dog is slower, so it is probably a big adjustment for you to get used to handling a faster dog, to me it looks like you need to do some work on your timing, positioning and confidence for your handling, you also need to learn to trust her to work at a bit more distance and more independantly so that you can get into position to handler her more. If you keep running her in shorter sequences that should help you get a feel for how fast you need to be, and keep her confidence in you up too. For her contacts, make sure you reward down low as well as straight ahead, head low keeps her back straighter and is better for her. Unless you are really good at handling tunnel DW discriminations I wouldn't send my baby dog from that end, I would use the far end of the DW and Tunnel only until the dog is more confident with the DW behaviour as I've seen how much it can lower their DW confidence if they get the discrimination wrong. I would also continue to work on building value for all the obsticals, that will improve her distance skills alot! and also make it easier to handle her as you wont need to feed her onto all the jumps etc, she should grab them herself better and as Vickie said, the hardest part of distance work is sending the dog on the right line, once you have that figured out its easy Kenzie is a beautiful girl, good luck with her

Hi Dog walkers, sorry I've been MIA for awhile, I spent 10 days in Melbourne at an agility seminar. The dogs and I have had an hour walk last night and Sat night, and if the rain holds off we will be walking again tonight. Sorry to hear about everyones "interesting" dog walks I hope everyone has trouble free walks comming up.

I am terrible at writing but my letter is written, will mail it soon. I will try to convince my Mum to write one also. Thanks Julie and the MDBA, you guys rock

Benny ate fish that had been washed up on the beach once, don't like his chances of actually catching live ones tho.

My Benny is not an affectionate dog at all, infact he will often avoid anyone who looks like they want to "wipe their yukky human hands" on him the one and only kind of pat he seems to actually enjoy is on the face, top of muzzle and head or sides but I don't mean the light slaps kind of patting, I've never met a dog who was keen on that?

Petbarn in Orange as DIY, I haven't been in there for ages (since getting more dogs the cost started adding up and I now do them at home.) but it was $7 per dog and I think that was for 15 mins, although there is no timer or anything and you just pay at the shop when you are done and unless there is lots of people waiting I don't think anyone is keeping an eye on the time. They have a hydrobath and a blow dryer, not sure if shampoo is included as I always bring my own. Towels cost extra but I can't tell you how much as I bring my own of those also.

I don't know about over your way, but most of the trials I go to I either can't park near enough the rings to keep my dogs in the car, or its too hot to leave the dogs in the car, or the car is too close to the rings and the remaining dogs would bark when I took one dog for a run as they can see. I use a pen and put all my 3 in together (and sometimes my Mum's dog too) my pen has no roof and folds up quite small, easily fits in my corolla and only weights about as much as 1 medium wire dog crate I love my pen! I made a cover to put over it so that my dogs can't see the rings and they all wait quietly in their pen when not trialling/training. I recommend getting a pen with a built in door on one panel. I also just bought a 2nd hand show trolley with cover, as I'm now trialling 3 ;) dogs and I often have ring clashes with 2 different dogs in 2 rings, I can wheel the trolley over and leave 1 dog covered and waiting making dog swaps quick and stress free.

Here is my 2c as someone who trains agility. I started out training as a lurer, and a few years back I was converted to targeting and now I will chose to target train over lure 99% of the time. here are the benifits to targeting I have found... - Much better understanding from the dog - leads to more confidence and speed - great for agility - Much faster learning - Very easy to train a behaviour completely independant of me... the difference in independance of a dog with target taught contacts and weaves compared with lure taught is HUGE! and very important for a great agility dog. - The ability to teach more complex behaviours, eg I taught my BC to do a handstand essentially with targeting, there is no way (that I can think of) that I could have lured this! - More fun for me, I love to watch the wheels turn in my dogs heads as they think through a shaping session, much more fun than lure training. - It seems dogs with a long history of shaping keep their brain switched on when in full drive a bit better as they are used to thinking while working for high level reinforcement. (Am sure there are plenty of exceptions either way, just my experience) I think one benifit of lure taught behaviours is that it is very easy to phase the lure into a very reliable hand signal, but for agility this isn't important.

What a terrible experience Cuch, I hope Max wasn't too worried. It is very sad that some people just can't keep their dogs in its like they think the rules don't apply to them or something My 2 boys had their trip to the park again, only about 45 mins as we had to wait for it to stop raining before we went, poor Anna she is very upset with me hopefully her leg is all healed up by the weekend.

Hi Daisy Good to hear Hugo's walking skills are improving Fingers crossed that Matilda has found her new home! :D My 2 boys had an hours walk at the park today, don't think Anna has forgiven me for leaving her behind yet :D the boys enjoyed their trip to the park without the pesky little feral sister.

What a nightmare Bindii, I am so glad to hear that Fletcher is ok.

We didn't miss our walk today after all Raffy had a short walk up to get money from the ATM maybe 15 mins max. Then Anna and Benny had their trip to the Chiro, and Anna has to be rested for the rest of the week... she is going to go crazy and we were home again in time to take Benny and Raffy to the park for 45 mins Anna was not impressed being left behind but I can't just not walk the others just because she can't go.

Hi again Sorry you arn't feeling well Asari I don't think it hurts to miss the odd walk or 2, keeps the dogs flexible, but they are always super keen the next time they go Hope Charlie is feeling better, glad he gets to walk now too My guys just got back from a 50 min trip to the park Don't think we will be able to walk tomorrow as they are all booked in to see the Doggy Chiro right at our usual walk time.

Hi Dog walkers! I dissapeared off to Sydney for the weekend, back now I thought I better bump us up from page 3. How is everyones dogs going? Daisy, a chart sounds like a great idea, I had enough trouble keeping track of 3 when I was doing seperate walks at one point Cuchulain, my dogs love the beach, Max is very lucky!! Pepper and Jax, Agility has to count for something with the way my feet were hurting after the trial on Saturday, good luck with your classes, Agility is so much fun! Here is our walking log for the last few days... Thurs no walk, we were driving Fri 1 hour off leash walk at my parents Sat Agility trial all afternoon/evening Sun 1 hour off leash walk

Hi Daisy, good on you for taking a foster to training, I bet he loves it and I'm sure will help him find his perfect forever home even if it makes parting ways harder. My dogs miss training, hasn't started back up yet this year for us.

Just got back from an hour at the park, our first time since the incident the other day. No unsocible dogs or people today, the dogs had a great time, I LOVE watching them zoom.

We just had a big hail storm here, after it was done I let the dogs out and Anna my BC was walking around eating the hail! funny girl. I don't normally give them ice to eat, but sometimes their food is still a bit frozen, thanks for the warnings, I will make sure food is better defrosted from now on.

Hi dog walkers, my dogs and I went for a street walk tonight for almost an hour, its been awhile since we have bothered with on leash walks, but after the first block of feralness they settled down and were good boys (Anna is an honorary boy :p ) Not nearly as nice as a good run at the park but better than nothing until I get my nerve back to go there after last time.