ness

Nope they live happily as desexed pets and I would never get involved with the breeding side of things. The vast majority of the dogs competing in any one given weekend in obedience and agility around here would be desexed and therefore not available to add to the gene pool. Most performance people compete in sports for the sake of having a bit of fun with their dog not as a measure of their potential breedability - at least the circles I run in. Its a hobby and a passion and something fun to do on the weekend .

Yep Matthew is where I take my two Wynnlake and would be my recommendation.

Kavik - my biggest thing for getting over obedience nerves seems to be trialling a dog in UD. I don't know now we seem to go into the ring with a wonder what will break and need repairing next mentality . Ah well so long as the dog still enjoys it thats the main thing. Also I guess trialling an older dog (she is 10 in a few months) I also go in with a bit of a sense of who knows what the next week will hold we might as well enjoy each and every trial we have left .

Kavik - yes nerves help foster nerves. I am going through this in preperation for Kenz's second agility trial on the weekend. Telling myself I have to be confident in her and not worry about what if she meltdowns and handle that if it should happen. It most likely won't but its hard to totally wipe that from your mind when you have a nervy dog. We are lucky that we have regular ring practice at club so when Kenz is back ready for ring work we have plenty of opportunity to work through that .

yep my first dog AD was put in the ring long before she was ready and I have paid the price ever since. Kenz possibly wasn't ready (and I am still not sure she is ready or is that I am not ready ) but I think that we need to get out there and give it a go because we can go on practicing indefinitely but we are both lacking ring experience and we are really still yet to gel properly. But she is a baby and that is to be expected. Last night at training I saw some promising signs of that though and hopefully if I remember to run her the same way at the trial and have confidence in her then we might have a bit of luck. It will certainly be a bit of fun at any rate. Just have to remember its just another training run and we will see how we get on.

You will be fine SB she wasn't that far off at her first trial .

Oooh yes Tiggy please video .

Awesome news TerraNik .

Another for Susan Salo grid work from me. I don't do enough of it but intend on doing more. We did a little on Monday night (first time in a while) and it certainly paid off last night when I ran my youngster around a course. She was finding her line nicely.

My nervous girl enjoying every single minute in the ring: First up agility - Sydney DWD Comp - I will also point out that she managed to qualify in three out of her four routines whereas my seasoned rock solid dog with multiple titles including currently trialling in utility obedience managed one pass out of four . I actually expected it to come out the other way.

K9Nev wrote: It amazes me how people can put an anxious dog through the stress of trialling where quite clearly it has an insufficient nerve platform to do the job. Anxious dogs IMHO are better off curled up on the lounge enjoyed as pet, not being exposed to the stress of competition when genetically compromised. I have an anxious dog with a less then desirable nerve platform who some suggested to me was best written off from a performance perspective as a 16 week old baby - not a great thing to hear when you have purchased her with the intention of trialling in the future. She is now just over 2 and has one ANKC DWD title under her belt (obtained interstate to boot and with placings including a win achieved at 20 months of age). She has been entered in one agility trial and while didn't qualify it certainly wasn't due to her "nerves" more to do with the fact my first dog is a little slower so my handling wasn't quite up to scratch. Do you suggest that she is better off curled up on the lounge? She is also pretty high drive. We also started the K9Pro Training in Drive package a little over 9 weeks ago and all I can say is its like I have a new dog. There is absolutely no reason why she won't get in the ring eventually from what I have seen of her now. Sure she will have her good days when things are running to perfection and some days something seemingly minor might totally upset that and she comes off a little worse for wear but thats ANKC trialling for you. They aren't robots. Even dogs with ideal genetics will still have bad days.

Also think part of it is to do with the fact Kenz still seems to want to pull off a long straight line of jumps which means she is likely to run past one as she can't control her speed in order to judge the jumps. Yep a training issue still but we are working on it. Whereas in open because there is more complexity to the course she is handling them because there just isn't the long straight runs to the same level. Having said that she has only run 2 JD courses and 1 JDO course so far. But then she made a serious mess of the two JD courses and only had 5 course faults in JDO. I agree though the novice courses are a bit to simple though and I find the faster the dog the more a mess they seem to make. The slower novice dogs seem to cope with the straight forward courses a little better. I am still toying with running her at 500 until she is out of novice jumping just to give her something more to think about. Having said that though she isn't yet at the point where I could expect to run her at 500 and 400 on the same day and have all the bars stay up so if I opted for that I'd just have to enter only novice jumping with her.

Hey huski - I use a hand signal with Ness (but then I have to for UD). Kenz hasn't got that far yet so I just use a verbal position cue.

She is sooo adorable Nik .

I figure Kenz will have her JDO long before she has her JD at the rate we are going. She seems to handle around the tricky courses better then she does the simple stuff. Not running her in agility yet as I am not confident her contacts are proofed and that she understands her job properly. She has never missed a contact in training but having made the mistake of entering Ness far to early with shitty contact behaviors and still living with that mistake 9 years later I felt we would hold off. My real concern for this weekend is the wet weather forecast and the fact Kenz's tail is soooo excessive that I think I might get some bars pulled because she will flick them off with the weight of her tail. Might have to resort to the scissors between now and then.

Hey Vickie, Great thread. I run 2 BCs and yep they are both very very different to run. I am thankful that Ness is reaching the end of her career just as Kenz is getting started because I don't think I could adapt to running to very different dogs. I am still in the very early days of learning to run Kenz and work out what I need to do to get her to go where I want and keep her bars up. They have very different committment points to obstacles and that is in part no doubt experience. Kenz will pull off an obstacle until she is actually performing it whereas Ness is committed when she spots it. I have Kenz entered in her second trial this coming weekend - no we still don't have it together but we are at the point where I think the only way we will get it together is getting out there and giving it a go. My handling is still very much suited to a slower dog so I guess it will be a bit the case of baptism by fire .

K9Nev I think its actually against ANKC rules for members to use such devices on their dogs. I think if the ANKC find out then they will suspend your membership. And I don't just mean in competition I mean full stop on a dog. The one I am thinking of used it to stop a dog who was chasing bikes.

My turn for a question to spark a bit of discussion - what do people do to make the transition from getting a perfect round at training to getting a nice round at a trial. Do you do anything extra in your training to get ready or do you just enter a trial and hope for the best? I will add something on what I do sometime tomorrow but am interested in other people's responses.

Mason's mum are you using a "stay" command or just a position command? I know with Kenz I have taught her sit means sit until she hears a release command. So I don't actually use a "stay" with her. Drop with mean drop until released. Same for stand.

Well my UD dog is finally starting to regularly turn out some pretty consistent training rounds - she nailed each exercise very well tonight. Maybe she might just have a UD title in her yet. Her work was seriously on fire. Go Ness .

Yeah but MRB it comes out of their food quota for the day and I don't use that many any more and we don't do that many repetitions. For everybody else I use the 4-legs stuff and keep it in the freezer. Usually I break them up for most of my training into lots of little bits. I only used toys for the 2x2 weaving since Kenz was more toy focused anyway and had a rock solid retrieve.

Tiggy sure I'll just pop her in a padded post bag. Her latest favourite game is madly racing around the football goal posts.

Hmm Ptolomy I'll give your 2x2 issue with soggy bear some thought. Kenz use to do that as well. I think I must have delayed the getting it out to throw. So the head was still down I also remember sticking a huge thumping traffic cone out in front (mostly so I had something to aim at). Wonder if you could do something like that though. Teach Cider to run around the cone and then place the cone out to give her some forward focal point. Thats a bit of lateral thinking and I know not strictly SG but it might help.

Cone racing sounds like a game Kenz would be good at if its anything to do with dog madly running around cones :rolleyes: .

there is 400 pocket rockets . Oh wait nah 300 BCs gotta clean up .