ness

Yep I'll be doing the GSD club obedience trial I think not looked that far in advance yet .

Sorry BC nope not trialling there but doing Combined next weekend. All the best.

Nope you should be able to enter Novice on the Sunday since you don't have to complete CCD. You can have 1 leg in CCD and then decide to enter Novice if you wish so even if you failed the two CCD trials or failed one of the two you are still eligible to compete in Novice. If you passed in Novice though you couldn't then obviously go back and complete CCD. If you failed novice though then you could do CCD at a later trial.

Great to hear that the club sounds like it will be a good club. I know that you said they don't have another class starting till the 8th of July but can you pop down and watch a current class without your dog. Maybe then you can observe that they teach and it will give you a head start for when you have Emma in class. Appologies to everybody if all this has been posted but I thought I would just briefly answer your questions. Sounds like your doing a great job at discouraging them jumping and excellent work with the food bowl. Don't be overly worried about Emma not being keen when there is no food around at this stage. You don't just go from rewarding to not rewarding and she is only a baby - plenty of time to reduce the number of rewards a bit down the track. You can find heaps of puppy training articles here: http://www.k9events.com/pups1.htm On the toilet training front - do you crate her when she is inside at all - are you crate training? If you want to work up to having her sleep inside that is the best way. Dogs are very unlikely to soil there sleeping area so if you place the crate alongside the bed and take her out at regular intervals (or when you hear her stirring). Straight outside reward and then back in the crate. Puppies tend to be able to hold their bladders for the length of time in hours relevant to their age in months so at 16 weeks or 4 months the dog should be able ot hold it for 4 hours. Eventually you can move the crate to another location when you are sure she will settle for the night and then just let her out first thing in the morning. When she can be trusted around the house you can either remove the crate or just leave the door open and Emma can sleep in there if she choses. On the biting here is a link to a number of useful articles which might be of assistance: http://www.k9events.com/behaviourB.htm#biting This a really good article on mouthing by Ian Dunbar: http://www.jersey.net/%7Emountaindog/berner1/bitestop.htm Another good article on puppy mouthing: http://www.clickersolutions.com/articles/spt/SPT_Puppies.htm Yep great idea to practice having her walk on a lead in the backyard when there are zero distractions. Since you don't really want to reinforce the idea of pulling one thing I recommend when teaching a puppy to LLW (loose lead walking) is to limit situations where the dog is on-lead and likely to be highly distracted. Keep the sessions short. If you want to exercise the pup (since really they should go on long leash walks till they are more developed). Drive to a safe area and attach a long line and just let the dog run around or play ball. Then when the dog is a bit more settled you either pick up the long line and encourage a bit of LLW or you can clip a shorter lead on and again try a bit of LLW. The long line is there so the dog doesn't take off so you can't get them to return. You can also use the opportunity to work on recalls but start up really close and you can even show the dog the food and lure them away from whatever they were interested in. Never use the long line to drag the dog, unless of course its an absolute life threatening emergency just use it to step on to limit the dogs options. On the stealing front - you can have two options - work on a come command and then exchange the item for a more doggy appropriate item or secondly teach a Leave it. The best way to teach leave it might seem a bit counter productive but you basically give the world LEAVE and then reward the dog (and I mean with really GOOD stuff - roast chicken, kabana, cheese - high value rewards). The idea being the dog learns that when it hears that word that good things will happen. You can condition COME or whatever you want as your recall word. Basically just say the word and reward the dog. Its the same way you would condition a bridge word or a clicker. From there you teach the dog that if it looks at you rather than the food you reward it with better food. I am sure they will go into it in more detail at training or if they don't ask or I can write it out in detail. Anyway hope this helps some. Ness

OMG though they would have to totally remove everybody from outside the ring if they wanted to prevent any suspicion of that. I mean a family member sure but even a member of the same club or a friend (and hell when you trial a lot you are bound to have other trialling friends at the trial). Not that I do it but you could easy have a training buddy correct the dog or a number of training buddies and then have them stand outside the ring. Anybody could be construed as double handling a dog.

Hey tollersowned, What I did was back chain from the sit. Had the dog sitting in the perfect front position and handed dog the DB. Once they can do that and hold the DB for about 5 seconds then you can have them shuffle forwards a bit still in the sit. You just step a tiny way back. Eventually you ask them to shuffle further and you take more steps back. Have the dog walk around holding the DB too. Progress slowly and then eventually you may be able to get the sit in front and hold.

Not Tracy but my friend here is a Herding judge and I am pretty sure from our discussions that the dogs must have had prior exposure before entering an instinct certificate - like I said I could be wrong but that is what I thought.

Check out clickersolutions if you want heaps of really good clicker training articles. http://www.clickersolutions.com/articles/index.htm There are some other links that might be worth checking out: http://www.doggonecrazy.ca/clicker%20puppy.htm#download <Has some videos of specific behaviours and a DVD you can order> Here is a great one on Puppy shaping: http://www.clickersolutions.com/articles/2...uppyshaping.htm This link is great at giving clear instructions for teaching a number of behaviours and progressing them through as far as you wish to take them including leading to performance activities. http://www.dragonflyllama.com/%20DOGS/Leve...LevelsBook.html

ROFL ok PAX mine is a bit weird I think she would much rather do duration heelwork for a huge tin of tuna or sardines or something then a game of tug or a toy .

Although PAX I think most of them would for precision behaviours initially use food but I know for things like agility they are much more inclined to use tuggies then food. I guess it depends. I prefer to mix it up (although my girl has a lower toy drive then I would like) but food is much easier when your teaching a behaviour. It also allows you to get in more repetitions because of the time it takes to reward with a toy.

And I am sure CTD won't mind me posting the video links of the wonderful Mose completing a kick back stand.

Hmm I will have a look for a better explanation but this is all I can find tonight. "Most of the people I know who teach this use a lure dropped very quicly from nose to sternum of dog--the dog's head moving down tightly to the chest usually causes the dog to raise his rear and stand. With puppies, Marion Erp taught me to use a food dish with the puppy in a sit or down, and slide it rapidly to the chest, and sure enough, it works great!" ETA another explanation: " The kick-back stand involves the dog rising to a standing position by moving her back legs, but not her front legs. To introduce the kick-back stand, I lured Lacy into the stand with a treat in my right hand, with my left hand blocking any forward motion. This appeared to be the difficult part for her - and something that frustrated her. If I wanted her to move her head forward, why was I blocking her from moving her body? Anyway, because I was able to lure her into this position, I quickly added the verbal command, "stand." I reduced the amount of blocking I was doing as quickly as I could, reducing the frustration level. We worked on this for just a few minutes each day, and now she is doing a kick-back stand with the verbal command, and the frustration and confusion are gone. It is important for her to do a kick-back stand because she will need it for the novice stand for examination and other exercises. If she were to move forward into a stand, it would encourage forward motion, which is undesirable."

Have you taught a kickback stand???

Ok for those of unfortunate poor souls to be training breeds who aren't into retrieving I use food to help increase a retrieve drive but the same holds true for anything really. Throwing toys, food, playing tuggy are all open to injury if over done. As for how far - hmm further then I seem to be able to throw a toy sometimes .

Hmm yeah if I could get a second dog though it would be a BC not a toller - some of the tollers are dead from the feet up (but don't tell them I said that) although you could equally argue that for some of the BCs around the place.

I was going to say I don't throw it short distances either, unless an occasional bad throw. Usually I use quite large pieces and throw them quite a distance. ETA WMR - its not that I don't like the way my dog works I want to keep her and steal the toller .

You don't say WMR - sure you don't want to join us . ETA. Maybe we could use leopuppy to do the kidnapping .

leopuppy and PAX are fighting again. I'll take whoever thinks they can help best in my devlish plan to dognap my favourite toller over there. Whoever is willing to accept the mission - it won't be easy since the person knows full well of my intentions . Better yet what do you reckon we can smuggle some of these gurus back in the luggage since Perth have so many its about time they shared. ETA. If they are good and come without a fuss we may even provide food and water .

Alright if your looking at trialling my answer would be train whichever dog you wish to trial. Don't confuse the dogs while they are learning and if when they are fully competent you wish to work the other persons dog then give it a shot then. If however they are a bit like mine you might find they just won't work for anybody else (or only a select few). Mum handled Ness in obedience class about 3 years after I had trained and she already had her CD title. Ness will happily work for mum when I am there but not at the standard I like - hence she isn't doing it anymore. If it were me and my aim was trialling I would want to work with the dog and me only so they didn't learn any bad habits from the other party (although they can differentiate) its just better if they don't.

leopuppy. Just wait till you teach a glove retrieve and the darn dog takes it upon themselves to sit so close and then shoves both glove and nose where you would rather they didn't. Although I only discovered when it was suggested to me to use the opportunity when she returns to work fronts that she was shoving the glove and letting go but not totally removing her nose. Not sure if a judge could tell she has let go or not but I sure could when I took a step back to get another front and the glove dropped at my feet .

ROFL PAX we must be. You know what there have been a number of times I have emailed Gina and she has said OMG you sound so much like me . Other times I have posted responses on the list before the "gurus" and then they have come out and agreed with what I have to say. . Ok I have maybe spent way to much time around them that I am starting to sound like them. Thats REALLY SCARY.

Oh yep I use get it for everything. 2 food game, tossing toys, tuggy. It seems to be a generic cue which leads to increased excitment. Bit like my Are you ready? which I use to say before I tossed a toy at the park, or creek or beach. Funnily enough it took very little to establish that as a cue to switch her on for heeling because I had spent so much time using it for other fun activities. It was suggested over in Perth and when Gina tried with Ness the very first time she was instantly more enthused and looking for action. It was only thinking it over later that I clued into why.

Oh bummer. Yes Ness seems to draw a crowd when we train but lucky she doesn't fall apart. The other day we were at the park and some toddler kept picking up the gloves as I was attempting to throw them out ROFL. We always get comments when I asked her to do stuff. Especially when we are out practising tricks for our freestyle routines.

Yeah I know how she trains it in that she showed me what I need to do from where we were at but my dog STILL doesn't get it . I know do you want to borrow her and have a shot LOL. On the other hand I found out that my heelwork which I thought was crap really isn't quite as bad as I had been making out. Amazing what a slight shift in criteria can do to making it look better than it was. I was trying to get a shoulder target (Ness's shoulder) but she couldn't do that however if I make the criteria x cm away from my leg she seems to get that strangely enough . Now to work on our about turns. Thats this afternoon's experiment and a shot at scent discrimination to see if we are still fine with that. ETA What went so wrong in your training session that it was a disaster????

No Probs PAX I got the message. I know she keeps telling me DR is a walk in the park - I keep telling her sure I'll send Ness over because sorry she just isn't getting it. My BC isn't a gundog although she tells me that BCs make great gundogs!!!!! Although the latest from them is that I am apparently dead if I do food instead so I guess we must keep battling away with our DR - gee these WA people are good at positive reinforcement on their dogs BUT brutal when it comes to dealing with humans . ............... All jokes aside they are very willing to tolerate my questioning so we shall keep persisting and harassing till we sort it out.