sidoney

I did ToT with an over the top foster and found it effective and easy.

Train drive before you train control. Have only enough control that you need for day to day living. You need to elevate drive first. I wish someone had told me that early on. Choose training methods that split the behaviour down into the components and train the components. As Susan Garrett says "be a splitter, not a lumper". The more you split behaviours and train them separately the better the dog will understand. Many clubs "lump", that is, try to teach a lot at once - as an example, contacts, they try to run the dog over the contact and teach the end behaviour all in the same process. Better to separate it. When you put it together it will work beautifully. As an example, I trained a "one rear toe on" end contact behaviour on planks and a milk crate (bit by bit, did not put those together at once). I took my dog to the club and used the half height dog walk. I put her on the side of the down plank twice and got her end behaviour. The next time I took her over the whole thing. She basically RAN to the end and stopped as I wanted her to. It was putting together previously learned components. I was walking on clouds that night. It's a great feeling.

I've heard from a few places that Shaping Success is good ... it's on my list of books to get.

DO NOT TRY TO SLOW YOUR DOG DOWN. You will regret it forever. Train the stop behaviour separately and then put it into your contact performance. I recommend buying the "Contact Training" edition of Clean Run (www.cleanrun.com) for ideas and training programmes for different ways of doing this.

My Vizslas sleep inside but have comfy kennels with flap doors if we have to be out at night, which they go into until we come home. I once sold a Vizsla puppy to a family (recommended by the owner of the sire) who said they would be keeping the dog outside. Their previous dog had been outside, although very well looked after. Anyway the dog ended up sleeping on the bed. Hard to deny Vizsla appeal and a GSP is very alike in that respect.

Kavik and I are both coming.

What, positive punishment techniques? GRRRR

Congrats LL .... and aaarrgghh piccy not working!

Hey safadao, glad to hear that your problem is solved now.

It's not just obedience training where clubs have a difficult time finding a mix that satisfies.

Well you know I used to love obedience trialing too ... only have time for agility though and if I have to make a choice ... which I do ... well agility wins for me. Of course it's even LESS connected with day to day obedience/manners than obedience trialing.

Concur with those who say don't take the growl out of the dog. Then you may get a dog that bites without warning. Address the issues that cause the discomfort.

Weeeelllll ... there are many fields of competition. My chosen field is agility. Def. not boring. Pointless, probably, apart from the challenge, the achievement, the improved companionship. Training a competition dog goes beyond training a companion dog in terms of accuracy and exact behaviours. Also a greater range of behaviours. It's a fun thing to do for people that love to train. However I do at times see competition dogs that are not "life-trained". That is sad.

Don't see that it needs to be one OR the other. I compete AND live with and enjoy my dogs. I find the high level training improves our relationship, as yb mentioned. They are also great to simply be with, well mannered and so on.

Well put yb! It's the challenge that gets you hooked.

I think it's stylised but may have some connection with daily life ... if people let it ... there are plenty of dogs that trial well but are shocking outside the trial ring. Most competitions are stylised versions of life situations really.

Here is a link to triangle of temptation. Top of page.

Continue with the sit training. Get him to sit for everything he wants. Everything. That way you give him something to do when he wants something from you - "say please by sitting" it's sometimes called. He can't be jumping when he's sitting. What you should be looking for is a sit when he wants something, without a cue from you. He offers the sit. You can give him the idea by holding some treats, he may try a number of things, when he sits, give him the treat immediately, while he's still sitting. Then move away, he gets up, show him the treat, he sits again, you give the treat. Repeat until he's offering you fast sits. (If at the beginning he doesn't offer a sit within a few minutes you could lure a sit for a few times, until he gets the idea). Once he's learned to sit for a treat, you can wait for him to sit before being patted, going through doors, going into the car, dinner, having the lead on, etc. I would also be doing the triangle of temptation programme - great way for the dog to learn self control, among other beneficial things.

Yes your dog can certainly learn different ways to behave. Keep in mind that if he has a history of these behaviours that they may take longer to change - this applies to dogs of any age. However consistent training on your part will make a difference to how he behaves. I don't know Bexley so can't advise but club training costs are normally (estimating here) membership fee approx 20-40 or so, joining fee maybe 20-30 and weekly training fees probably 3-5.

Hey, that's great! Congrats to you and to Jack!! Looking forward to the piccies of Jack with sheep next time ...

They may be doing it to increase gut microflora. There are suggestions that dogs may do that - horses sure do - IME foals always eat a bit of their mother's poo. Probiotics might be something to look at, if not as a way to stop it, as something that he might need to establish/balance the microflora.

Try picking the box pvc up a bit higher at first - so the dog has to step over it - makes it more noticeable. When the dog understands that, you can (gradually if needed) move the pvc down. For me, I'd probably teach it with a clicker and leave off the cues until the dog is reliably offering to go into the box.

The avoidance sounds like the thing to be fixing here. You need to be unstressed about weaves. The more you stress about his weaving, the more stressed he'll be. Weaving needs to be fun and fast. Don't get hung up on accuracy at this stage or anything other than making it fun and fast. IMO it's very difficult to teach a dog to weave with once a week lessons. Let poodlefan and FHR advise you on the training progression to take. You can make weave poles out of tomato stakes if you want to - anything like that really. poodlefan's suggestion of guides sounds like it might work for you - just make sure you wean off the guides promptly (again poodlefan and FHR can help you) as to stay on guides (or channels or angled poles or anything like that) for too long can make the dog reliant on the aids.

Things like dog motivation and understanding scent and so on would be things in common though.

I am in NSW and sounds like the same kind of thing.