Kavik

My parents sent the dog away and didn't ask me about the place beforehand. The Beagle was a rescue and quite a handful - VERY noisy and bitey when he got possessive of things. I had always trained the other dogs, but this one was my brother's. And I had moved out of home at that point. I also think they should have done the training with the dog. I think they just wanted a bit of a start, as they were having problems. If they had asked I probably would have suggested Hanrob.

My parents had the same thing - they sent the Beagle away for training, advertised as positive techniques. The techniques I am sure were far from positive as when the man lifted his hand, the dog hit the deck and rolled over on his back . . . and Beagles are not easily cowed.

I think re preferring carpet to toilet that they like somewhere soft - more like grass. By far the easiest of mine to housetrain was my GSD, he was crate trained from day 1 and was very easy to housetrain. It was also easier as I had moved out of home and could provide a more consistent approach than the crazy atmosphere with my parents I have only recently moved house as well and the dogs have been rather vocal (they had been really good at the last place!). But I found out today by talking to neighbours that there are rabbits and bandicoots on the other side of the wire fence, and that would explain it :D You gotta love Kelpies! So we will be getting a new fence that the dogs can't see through!

The thing that I am working towards is focus! Yes for the obedience ring as it looks great (eye contact and bouncy energetic heeling) - but it is also useful in real life (when there is another dog or a rabbit or something equally fun!) The precision of the exercises I find to be the difficult part of obedience if you aim for trialling. The difficult balance of needing motivation and excitement but at the same time control and precision especially for heeling. I am still learning how to do this! I agree with those that say find a club that meets your needs! It is the same as discussions with methods. Find a club which teaches with methods you like and has the goals/aims that you do.

I did this using what Erny and Tangerine Dreams said. I said the command 'drop' and followed the command with the hand signal, then making the hand signal less dramatic until I could do it with no hand signal at all. Both of my dogs drop reliably on voice or hand signals.

My connection has been playing up so I have only watched bits and pieces of the videos (and I used up most of our space last month downloading doggy videos ) I love the focus and intensity of the dogs, especially the bit where they heel the Dobe backwards, how cool is that! It is always great seeing the dogs enjoying themselves. When I watched the Schutzhund Nationals one of the most interesting things I thought was the different heeling styles - there was one dog there who practically bounced the whole heeling routine! Having watched and participated in training security dogs, I love watching the dogs gain confidence and start to really get into the work.

I can't get the links to work

That is impressive myszka! I guess I better update too! Diesel is showing improvement! He is actually starting to show interest in the prey item now in the front yard (most of the time) rather than ignoring it. Interestingly, I find if I vary the prey item he shows more interest than if I keep it the same I go between the tug I got off K9, ball on a string, home made tug (hessian) and small 'holee molee' (squishy ball, hard to explain). Yesterday in the back yard he actually looked excited and was jumping around :D . I think the cooler weather helps too.

I think I might try the method laid out in the article. Yesterday I laid out two scent squares like in the article, with food in them. Diesel worked it quite well. I am hoping someone at the club has experience with this method so they can help me when I get stuck!

You work with scent detection dogs right? I would love to get into that area! I did the scent detection course through NDTF and it was fascinating stuff. I have done a little with Zoe. The hardest part about any scent work I find is that we can't smell what the dogs can

True - I guess it is their application that differs. One thing I will definitely need to learn more about is scent!

Have already booked a place Although from what I have read (I also have some books on SAR) - they are very different. Remembering that footstep tracking is a sport and SAR is not. With SAR you want to get there fast, and cutting corners is OK, as is air scenting. With tracking, you are supposed to follow the exact track, including corners, and they are not supposed to air scent.

Thanks for the responses! I intend to continue with tracking, looks like a lot of fun. dogdayz, the stuff I have read say you can teach article indication as a separate exercise to tracking - you can teach it like an obedience exercise. The article I posted has a second part which talks about article indication - first as an obedience exercise, then a scent exercise, but more similar to scent detection (dog learns to down when it smells article) rather than anything to do with tracking. Then introduce articles on the track when the dog knows what to do with them. That makes sense, rather than teaching the dog that it is supposed to follow this scent exactly, head down, what is it supposed to find, keep motivation up, and what an article is and what to do about it all at the same time. I was confused by how the dog was supposed to figure out what to do, much less how the dog felt!

Can you join just to do the tracking part? I don't think Diesel has what it takes for the character work. I did tell the club that I had done some reading about a different way of tracking, but I didn't say too much as I didn't know how it would be received by them. They said it would be fine to do it a different way than the way they do - apparently one of the other people also did it this way. I didn't ask why they taught tracking the way they did. Being my first time, I wasn't sure exactly what to expect. I am thinking what I may try is going again and explaining what I would like to do I, maybe the other person who teaches footstep tracking can then help me.

Here is an article that teaches footstep tracking with food. http://www.schutzhundvillage.com/nose1.html

I think his problem was confusion and lack of motivation. I used a toy at the end of the track, and we are still building his desire for the toy, not where I want it yet. I could have used food, but they wanted food in an enclosed container at the end, I thought that would mean a delay with reward. I am deciding whether to continue the way they train or go to food in footstep tracking. I can see how that works, how the dog learns the track and how it is motivated. How it learns the track scent picture etc. I don't quite get how their training is supposed to work. They used to have a person at the end of each track but don't now. The rules have only just changed I think this year? I have done a bit of scent work with Zoe - did scent detection with her. So I understand a little about scent and the difficulties of working with it.

Arrgh I lost my post - puter died! Hi Sam, lots of good questions! What the club does is competition/sport tracking, also known as footstep tracking, where you want the dog to follow exactly where the tracklayer has been. Unlike SAR where the aim is to get to the person fast. All the dogs were on lead so they didn't run off. The dog was held by the instructor while we laid the track with the dog watching. The tracks were about 50 paces. Most stuff I have read concentrates on precision from the beginning, making sure the dog stays exactly on the track nose down and accurate. It seemed here we were just trying to get the dogs to get the general idea - maybe they do precision later? The dogs were given a command and taken to the start of the track, if they went the wrong way or stopped they were shown the track again. The hard part is of course we can't smell what they do, so we don't know if they are really scenting the track or not. Diesel did OK considering he had no idea what we wanted him to do. He got to the end of both tracks, although he stopped in the middle each time and had to be shown the track again. Cross tracks and distractions come later.

Well I thought I'd go and see what tracking is all about so I went to the Tracking and Rescue Dog Club's first tracking training day for the year. There was one other beginner there, the others had been doing tracking for a while. It was different to what I had expected. Of course, I have done some reading up on tracking, on the net and in the Schutzhund book I have, so I know a little bit. From what I have read, they moved us along way too fast. After getting us organised in groups, they started and each handler laid a track for their dog, with an article (we were told to bring worn socks) at the start and end. We could show a motivator to the dog as we started out (toy or food) and the motivator was placed at the end of the track with the article. We then went back along the track to the dog, put harness on dog, told the dog to track and off we went! I couldn't figure out how the dog was supposed to know what to do, we had done no foundation scent training or anything. And at the end of the track we had to get the dog to indicate the article with a sit, frop or stand. It seems to me they were teaching us everything at once! How to lay a track, how to teach the dog to track, how to teach the dog to indicate an article, all at once! I don't see how the dog is supposed to understand all that. Everything I have read about footstep tracking uses a scent pad and food in each footstep, for a long time before anything else is done. And article indication is normally taught separately. Anyone else have experience with tracking?

Destroys everything? As in chewing stuff in your house you don't want him to? If this is the case, supervise when you are home and you can redirect to appropriate chewing items. Is your pup crate trained?

At 4 months your dog is just a baby, so I wouldn't worry. What you might find useful is K9 Force's Training in Drive - as his drive training builds and utilises prey drive and uses toy motivators. This builds desire for the toy (ball or tug) - which is what you are trying to do with the jute tug. You can do a lot of this yourself at home without the use of a helper (building drive). Has your club suggested anything?

My growling question was not related to the previous posters comments on growling. Just something I have noticed with my dogs and wondering if it was a problem that Zoe growls - it is not a nasty growl. But it is noisy!

What's the deal with growling? When I do drive building with Zoe, she growls and growls when we play tug. Diesel is silent when we do drive training and tug. Zoe is generally a more vocal dog, and her nerves aren't as good as Diesel's.

I guess K9 you are luckier with the vet thing than me Diesel is 2 and been to the vet more times than I care to think about Having worked at the vet, it is much easier for everyone if the dog is not worried about the handling etc for procedures, taking blood etc. Especially if the dog is big!

But what about the physical side of things? Being hugged by kids for eg - if a dog is not used to people doing this isn't it going to be uncomfortable with the situation? Don't you want the dog to be used to being handled eg vet? And all this bringing the dog back to owner and reinforcing all things come from the owner - doesn't that impose a lot of control on the dog (as against letting it go up to people, have a wander etc)? Just trying to sort it out!

I've got a similar question to Kateshep (so I may get the same answer!?) My aim is to have my dog comfortable in as many situations as possible that we may find ourselves in - and in this I include situations that cannot be controlled or expected, as they occur in the world whether we like it or not. Some things include (but are not limited to) - children coming up suddenly and patting the dog, having a dog suddenly come from around the corner, offlead dogs running up to yours, offlead dogs running up and barking, children running, crowds of people. Like Kateshep I wonder that if you don't let your pup meet other friendly dogs and be patted by people (maybe even hugged by kids) - how will your dog cope with something like that happening later on?