Weasels

I tried this this morning and the dogs kept trying to nose poke my left hand, which is the opposite direction to where I want their attention! :p I have been using a high (out-of-nose-poke-range) hand target in front of their face for them to focus on, to get a nice prancy looking-up heel. It has been really handy to direct forward, back, in and out in small adjustments, and easy to fade to a hand-on-hip. I can see the 'pocket' target works on a similar principle but is there an advantage I might be missing? It's not too late in training to change if there's a secret advantage :)

Mark Aldridge: Lord of the Humblebrag

Ah yes of course. Less cool :/ Thanks for the heads up! Great, thanks! That's right near my inlaws too so I could probably wrangle a cup of coffe while I'm down there Thanks Piper - we have a couple of local ovals that are deserted during the week, they are great for throwing a ball :) I have some free time this week, will start scouting out the suggestions Thanks everyone!

I think Lili Chin is one of the best things ever to happen to doggy public education. Great for kids especially :)

I'll check it out, thanks! I'd be going mid-morning so hopefully some of the busyness will have abated by then anyway :) Mt Crawford is definitely do-able, I think it's actually a little bit closer than town for me :) Not too worried about the sheep, they live next door to sheeps now with some pretty shoddy fencing and don't go after them (I'll keep my eyes peeled though just in case!). Ta :)

I almost messaged you before I started the thread! I was eyeing off some forests on the road to Kersbrook, do you know if they're any use?

But its sssooooouuuutthh!! *pout* The dogs do, most days! I, however, cannot run over the hills so well :p Them things be steep

:laugh: Yay see you there :) I'll have the LOUD kelpie! :p

We are going one day on the second weekend (I've also forgotten which!). Yes Steph is coming over too, she sent me an email :) We're only trialling Sunday, OH just got home from a work trip tonight so we're taking tomorrow off. Chess needs one more pass on ducks to get her title :) As long as the handler can remember the course and the dog can remember what to do with ducks! Good luck with Cinna!! :D

That's a shame JLC I'm trying to find legal spots but not having much success. It's quite possible people like that who have a very casual approach to the term "effective control" are the reason it's hard to find good off-lead spaces.

Hi, hope some Adelaideans can help, my google-fu is failing me :/ I'm wondering if there is a decent sized area that is off-leash, in the North, East or Hills. I just went through the off-leash areas in the TTG council on google maps and even along linear park they look tiny I like to jog with the kelpies, but if they are on-lead I run off balance and get sore. So does anyone know an area that is long enough that we don't need to do 10 laps for a 5k run, or a multi-oval complex or similar that is offlead? Thanks :)

RSA - nothing to add on the previous advice, but I've found it handy to have two different commands, one for "front paws on" and one for "all paws on" (imaginatively, "two paws" and "four paws" ).

Yes the hair on the sides is thin in many dilutes but the hair on my fawn girl's back is very wiry and thick. I don't know much about the genetics either but the wiry stripe is definitely something that shows up in kelpies :) Her hair is normal on her sides and extra thick and wiry on the top. I wonder if the gene can be present but mutate kind of in non-dilute dogs? Yeah that's what I'm thinking, if the 'dorsal stripe' gene can segregate from the 'dilute' & 'thin-hair-on-sides' genes :)

Yes the hair on the sides is thin in many dilutes but the hair on my fawn girl's back is very wiry and thick. I don't know much about the genetics either but the wiry stripe is definitely something that shows up in kelpies :) (there's some pictures in the recent posts of the kelpie thread)

This sounds like a thing that's common in dilute kelpies. I wonder if maybe (heh) she had a dilute in her lineage which didn't throw the coat colour, but left the 'stripe'?

Bit of sheep-biting might be just the thing to teach Chess to be a bit less of a jerk Are you going too Superminty? First weekend or second??

JB has posted elsewhere more recently that things are much the same, and she is still managing the condition with daycare, meds and working from home. She is still sticking by her adorable fuzzy girl though :)

I saw a brief news segment on The Project to-night. It referred to these dogs rescued from the puppy farm. Bless the commentary .... because they said the 'business' was to supply puppies to pet-shops. 'Say it again ... & again!' I thought. On one of the local evening news reports (7 or 9 I think) they made a big point of it, saying more or less "think of this when you see pet shop puppies"

I see he went to the Helen Lovejoy School of PR :) (except, you know, with animals)

I wonder if this would be helpful in selecting the parentage I would like my next pup from I don't know, does it make sense to you? To apply it to this situation it would suggest that you select a pup like to express the desired traits and then provide an environment that supports the behaviours you wish to see expressed. For me, it means I still wouldn't get a dog from the best lines in the world if the pups weren't socialised. ---- None of the terms are well defined in this discussion, which I think is half the battle. Not only is 'temperament' a slippery concept, it seems a lot of people use 'genetic' interchangeably with 'heritable'. There is a whole field of study on non-genetic inheritance, so the two terms do mean different things. Steve you noted earlier that scientists from different disciplines never agree. We have at least 3 students/professionals from fields relevant to the topic and I think they've all agreed that it's bloody complicated :laugh:

Yes you can absolutely. When the lines are known and particular line or mating pair/dog produces a particular trait, that's genetic and can be identified. Problem is, breeders often lie about known traits especially faulty traits like, "oh never had that before in any of my litters" oh really Point is calling something 'genetic' isn't as simple as it first appears. Heritability is more than just the nucleotides on the chromosomes. We've known the full dog genome for some years now and the main thing it's taught us is humility about how much we don't know about genetics.

As Corvus mentioned, newborn puppies have still had an influence of environment. Maternal stress levels, nutrition, maternal effect genes, and other epigenetic factors have all affected a pup in utero. The effect is lower than after birth, but still present. If you define temperament as the genetic component of behaviour then ,circularly, it is. You can never ever untangle genetics from environment for practical purposes though.

MRB there was an article in New Scientist where the author clarified some information about the 'warrior gene'. I can't remember the specifics but there were a heap of complicating factors like different variants of the gene, interactions with other genes, racial history and of course environment. Basically way less straightforward than was presented in pretty much all the media around the study. The article is behind a paywall ( ), but is here for subscription holders - http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627557.300-dangerous-dna-the-truth-about-the-warrior-gene.html

That's great Wobbly! I love how much passion you have for working with Jarrah and troubleshooting in a fun way :) I am doing heeling games as a bronze-level participant at the moment. Fortunately I have a very very generous friend who was been watching my videos and providing feedback so I didn't 'need' the higher levels. Chess really doesn't value heeling much and her ass is in a different orbit to her front end so I'm working on that with her. Weez loves heeling and has beautiful movement, so I'm mostly working on ignoring distraction and improving precision & duration with him. It's been great fun so far (way better than club training).