ness

PAX since the person who walked me through it also has lessons from Sue I am pretty sure I trained in a similar way. But I have lots else to ask Sue .

ROFL you got to be kidding. Its certainly not been an easy battle (I omitted the fact that this same dog will be 7 this year and only just got her ADX 2 weekends ago - but has since got another 2 passes both with first places).

Ness is a very whats in it for her dog. Its been a battle but I think we have got there now. Mostly I found out was because the way I was using positives wasn't the most correct way. Reading and trying to do it by yourself is one thing but being able to see it done properly is another.

CDX took longer then I care to remember. UD well its all come together rather quickly (especially since its my first dog and she didn't have solid foundations so I have had to work on building those again).

Oh yes we hope to get as far as a UDX title to (but that isn't quite as realistic as a UD title at this given moment).

Who ever denies a dog from doing a run?

Yep shoey LL is right you need the dog comfortably retrieving each of the various article types before you introduce scent. Let me know when your that far and I can walk you through it .

If this is going to turn into a positive thread bashing I will not but if it will remain civil I am happy to.

Ok I have just trained the 1 dog so far.

Titles obtained to date (for convenience sake I have listed the highest title obtained)

- CDX (and CD both obtained in straight number of trials i.e. 3 passes from 3 trials, CD 4 passes from 4 trials)

- ADX

- JDX (3/7th JDM)

- GD

- SPD

Ok so my results aren't quite in the calibre of some of the others but if you head over West you will count multiple Obedience Champions trained totally using positives methods along with multi-titled agiliity dogs. In fact as I have said in other threads you would be hard pressed to find an Obedience Champion over in WA who has not been trained using totally positives.

We are currently training for UD.

Hmm yes dog loves rain HANDLER DOES NOT .

Thanks for the wishes for the Nationals. Not sure she will probably be a spectacular failure after two successful weekends just to bring me back down from cloud nine.

Nope I don't have it. I know some of the ones at the last trial were me bars but we are pretty sure none on Sat or Sun were me bars. They were not due to crowding or poorly timed front crosses they were just her not picking her legs up.

ETA. Should have been more polite the first time - thanks would be much appreciated Vickie.

Hmm she jumps 500 usually and I stuck them both at 600 and 500 and she was knocking at both heights.

Yes your right wheres my rock. Not bad for somebody who I didn't think would ever get a title and we have got 3 since October - GD, ADX and CDX.

Having said that though I just set up some jumps in the yard and OMG did she pull them. No reason she should either as they were just simple straight lines. Not holding out much hope for next weekend if she keeps that up. She was very lucky with one in excellent agility yesterday arvo I swore it should have fallen.

LOL I did take the camera but it was so god dam wet and you were madly running from one ring to the other. Saturday in particular most of the time you were sheltering in tents. Hopefully I can get somebody to film some of my runs next weekend.

leopuppy but I swear she isn't really just like the rest of them.

Thanks everybody for the congrats - its certainly been a good while coming.

When the rest of the WA crowd arrive next week there will be one huge title cake to share around since they undoubtably deserve some of the credit for the "new" Ness.

No pressure at all hey Leopuppy .

Can you imagine what would happen if she did!!!!. We will just take it one round at a time and see what happens. I just want nice clear consistent runs - anything else will be a bonus.

Well we had a pretty good Pre-Nationals weekend of agility trials - unfortunately the weather wasn't to kind and on Saturday it was more a case of hiding out in the tents then watching some of the best dogs from around Australia trial (yes lots of people made the pre-weekend trial).

Any way we had a few hard luck runs with single bars down (all the passes we actually needed like Masters Jumping and Open Jumping) however we did manage 2 quallies yesterday from 5 runs. Both the quallies came in Excellent Agility. Its a bit ironic since it took us forever to get our title (first quallie in 2004) but in the last 2 weekends of trials she is 4 passes from 5 runs.

Not only is she 4 passes from 5 runs BUT 4 first places to go with it .

So yes she added another two first places to her tally yesterday. I guess that made up for the near miss we had in MJ with just the 1 bar down but under time - never mind.

Bring on the Nationals - looks like Ness is already firing.

On the basis of our success the Western Australian's have claimed her (and I) as an honourary Western Australian ROFL.

. Hmm what is it about BCs and there opinions on their handlers handling. I was having this discussion with somebody else only yesterday LOL. At least you have the excuse that Trim is fast LOL.

We did some training last night. Set up a couple of serpentines and pin wheels. Little bugger drops the second bar on the serpentine pretty consistently unless i am way behind her - slight problem though is I am never behind her because she doesn't run fast enough. She hates me crowding her landing space. If I am in front she has a tendency to over run and not take the bar.

Well done to Mav and Mai.

Vickie I thought you and Trim look wonderful and it was a nice run apart from the tunnel mistakes - that second one reminds me of Ness at Autumn Fest in Excellent Agility. She was suppose to take the dogwalk but decided to have tunnel suck that day and I think did the tunnel like 4 times in a row before completing the dogwalk .

Hehehe trust Josh to win the fastest eater .

Hmm feralpup - I haven't got any stories. We have been in 4 novice trials and 3 open trials and passed at every single trial - nothing unusual has happened .

Ok I am jealous - Ness is going to have to sit down and watch how a real BC does it.

We did our own training tonight and we were buggered by the time we had set the equipment up LOL. There were two of us and we had 13 jumps, a broad jump, a kids play tunnel and a set of weavers .

Oh yep it works now

I can't watch Trim.

I do it that way because I don't want her proper heel command becoming sloppy over time. Hell if we walk through a crowd as long as she is paying attention to me and close in I don't honestly care if she is slightly ahead, slightly behind, a bit wider, if her head isn't glued to my leg at all costs. Sure I want her paying attention yes but for that her head doesn't need to be located right next or touching my leg or even held as I would like it for trialling.

ETA. The only confusion between LLW and teaching heeling depends on how you wish to teach it. If you have spent ages working on reinforcing coming to heel and setting up and working 1 step at a time there is really no need for the confusion. None the least bit if you have the dogs at a stage where you can have them off-lead when you commence heelwork training. Failing that you can start them off on-lead in big circles (but of course don't expect more than a couple of paces before rewarding for a number of times)

Yep actually "with me" is probably the best to use as it is not suitable to be used as a trialling word and leaves room open for people to later use either heel or close for heelwork. Its also tends to sound less command like and therefore friendler. Its hard to say with me in an aggressive tone where as you should see the tone of voice people can use to say heel or even close.

Interesting hopenfox my word for heel is close . I never used "formal' heelwork outside the trial ring. If I want Ness in close because of lots of people walking past I just either reduce the amount of lead she has and then require a loose lead or I just call her name and have her watch me - which could be a watch verbal command as attention in the ring you ideally want as a default behaviour together with heeling rather than one that is verbally commanded.

My thoughts are that LLW should basically just be a default behaviour and no cue required other than the leash. You can still teach the dogs to look at the handler when they say the dogs name as an attention getter or a verbal watch command but quite simply the expectation is the leash is on the dog must walk nicely.

Yep what I meant was we have never done an angled jump from a stationary position LOL.

I will set up a pin wheel later in the week when we are having a training session and get some videoed :p . So long as I put my FC in the right spot ROFL. I think I still try to put to many FCs into a round sometimes and use them when they aren't required.

Any good suggestions on how to encouarge your dog to drive forward so you can rear cross on the odd occasion you actually need to rather then me having to run the entire way around the outside like I did in that PM jumping round for fear of her dropping the bar on me.

Is it a matter of setting on jump up and doing something like throw a toy out in front and then cross behind the dog?