Kavik

Thank you Steve! It was a very enjoyable day with a lot of handy tips to try out. And the dogs had a good time too! I've never been to a training session with so many Dobes! The food spitting is going really well (it is the thing I practice the most though!) I tried the tip for retrieving (tying line to dumbell to make it move after I throw it) and it is working well! I just have to work on my line handling as I tangle it up . . . but Diesel is moving to pick up the dumbell much faster! Prey development is getting there - I am working on building up his prey drive at home and getting him confortable with using it under distraction. Went reasonably well at the park today. I have no problem with my photo up here

I have a 5 year old black and white Kelpie cross I got from the pound as a pup. From Zoe's appearance and working ability, I'd say a decent amount of working lines in there somewhere. I have done a lot of obedience and some agility with her (she prefers agility!), unfortunately she is dog aggressive though so I am not taking her to classes at the moment. I am hoping to get a working line kelpie pup next year, also looking into Avenpart! I hope to do mainly agility with the pup, but may look into herding as all these threads on it have peaked my interest! May not be a regular thing though as I am not sure I am up to all that travelling. My internet is out of action until Tues/wed so will put up pictures then (I am at my parents place).

I did the NDTF course in 2000, went to Melbourne for the first week and then one weekend a month. I think it was 7 months then? Can't remember. They have added more options since then.

Kelpie - sorry if it was confusing, I recall my dog to a formal front position, not directly to heel. I normally teach the recall the same as you. I teach heel as a position before movement and can get Diesel to heel from many positions. Before this I had not thought to teach the front/recall in a similar way, I taught Diesel heel as a position primarily for the left about turn and swing finish. I hadn't thought about the possibility of double signal - will have to think about where I want my hands.

Do you then give the front a separate command or do you use 'come'? ETA: Because when I do a finish I still use the 'heel' command, but some people give the finish a separate command. I figure because he is coming to the heel position I can use the same command, and I taught the finish by teaching where the heel position is.

So sidoney would you teach 'front' as a position the same way as heel? I've taught heel as a position and Diesel will come to heel position from anywhere. How would you do that with front, the same way?

I taught the front with food. You can do really short recalls (or come fores) to enforce the front position - not worrying about speed etc, just the front. Just a couple of steps backwards usually works - I also do this to straighten any crooked fronts. I also used the 'spitting food' technique to get Diesel very comfortable with the front position and looking up at me - starting with me kitting/kneeling on the ground. Sometimes I would just stand in front of him. You can also just put your hand with the food in a position so the dog's head is in the desired position. I do this if Diesel has a tendency to sit too far back to try to catch the food. I use the 'Come!' command to mean a formal recall to a front sitting position, and his name 'Diesel' as an informal recall meaning come closer to me/to my general direction.

So Kelpies can be cuddly! Xia must come teach Zoe how to have cuddles (Zoe is not a cuddly dog). Maybe the next Kelpie I get will be cuddly Diesel is very cuddly though!

Since I teach eye contact for heeling, Diesel does not see it as threatening. He knows that good things happen with eye contact! However it may make him break and want to come to me for a treat! I really need to look at what I do different at home compared to class because Diesel acts differently in class with the stay . . . may have to ask someone tongiht. Very interesting about the smile. I have heard some dogs learn to smile as well.

The area I live in is REALLY quiet! Sometimes I might find a few people at a bus stop or in a park, but even outside the vet and shops tends to be quiet. I tend to rely on when we are going out of the area for distractions, but if I am lucky that is once a week (and then those areas are REALLY busy!).

Something interesting I learned at NDTF The stay is really stay in the position I put you in until I get back (I agree with sidoney) - so you don't really need the command 'stay' at all! At Elite they never used the stay command, stay in position was an extension of the position itself. EG 'sit' means sit until I tell you to do something else (another command or release). Sit NEVER means sit and then get up right away! And if you are using a stay command - like other commands it makes no difference whether you use stay or wait, unless you are using both to try to differentiate whether you are coming back to the dog or calling the dog. The thing I am finding frustrating with Diesel is finding distractions to train with. He does not move in quiet areas, but does sometimes at training (also stays are done at the end, when he is tired and I think he wants to be finished with training at that point in the night!). I think I also change my body language in class as opposed to when I practice on walks which is making it difficult - I am working on that though(I don't always use the stay command on walks, sometimes just say sit or drop and walk away).

OK I know little about stripping but am trying to learn :p How do you keep the feathered areas longer if you strip back to bald? (probably a stupid question I know!) If stripping right back does that mean that you have to wait for the coat to get to desired length before showing (so out of action for a while)? And if not showing, will something like the Mars Coat King work OK? Eidt: Question answered while I was typing ;) I don't have a terrier but just interested in case I ever decide to get one.

That is great Can't wait for the pics! Herding is amazing to watch, may try it with the next dog (I can hear my OH grumbling from here about the distance )

I have their 'Dog Problems: The Modern Gentle Cure' book. Has good information about PREVENTING some problems but little to do once you have a problem, especially aggression. It is good to say socialise, but does not say that even then problems can arise from a bad experience or individual personality as the dog grows older. I socialised Zoe to buggery and she turned out dog aggressive. IMO 40 dogs off lead is way too risky. I wouldn't do it even with Diesel, who is the best with other dogs I've ever had, non-confrontational, backs away if the dog is too much for him, comes to me if unsure. Too much of a chance for a bad experience, and for it to go very wrong if one dog goes down.

Have more fun, relax, and not expect too much from them! And have a good sense of humour and be able to laugh when your dog decides to lick the examiner in the stand for exam! I now practice small, short exercises and try to improve them. I want to trial but I want to have fun too! I'm trying to learn as much as I can about any methods that will be fun and improve our performance. Have to admit the spitting food has really done wonders for our heeling! Although all this is much easier now that the dog I take to classes is dog friendly . . . Even with Zoe, the plan was to keep her attention and make it fun, so we did a lot of tricks if we had to wait (unfortunately hard to have down time with her in class).

I have a Kelpie cross and a GSD. The Kelpie cross gets Supercoat and a chicken wing, the GSD gets BARF. Both active dogs. Probably costs around $20 a week total for both dogs, sometimes more sometimes less, depending on if I am buying fish and vegies and livers that week.

What is also good are the long toothed undercoat rakes (with long and short teeth) - especially if your boy has a thick coat. This is what has saved my day when I was grooming Rough Collies! Slicker brushes are essential and fantastic! I think Oster also makes a dematter that is similar to the Coat King? I am lucky with my guys - all I need for Diesel is a slicker brush (although I do have an undercoat rake as well). Zoe only needs a flea comb ;)

Yes it was irritatingly funny when I would tell her to 'find' and she would eagerly go and scratch at one non-target box after another . . . I even ended up calling Steve Austin for help! She was just so sure it was the boxes she was supposed to scratch, probably because she had not yet figured out the scent she was to find. Moving from boxes to other things was the best thing to do. Zoe is not an ideal candidate for scent work either. We unfortunately did not pass the test - since starting the course I had moved out of home and gotten 3 jobs, as well as being in Sydney and needing to go to Melbourne for the test. And Zoe being what she is, I didn't know if she would work in a strange environment after travel. Would love the chance to finish the course and get the pass though! It is a fun training exercise.

Erny - that is certainly a possibility. One I always have to be careful of and it is tricky because scenting is something we cannot do - which is why it is so exciting to train. When I first started her training with boxes though, she at one point would alert to all the boxes, even when they had never contained scent! I fixed that by ditching the boxes altogether and hiding the scent in nooks and crannies in the garage instead.

My thought is that it is about the motivation for the dog to use its nose. Beagles, being bred to use their nose, have more inbuilt motivation to use it. And dogs which are food focussed are more likely to use it to find food. But sight hounds being bred to use sight, are more likely to use sight first. I have done some scent work with Zoe, it is great fun! I have done scent detection, so I first taught her the active dig response I wanted. I used food underneath an upside down recycling crate - she could see the food but not get to it. So she would scratch. And then once I got this response I paired the food with the scent. Zoe is quite good at the scent work, certainly very motivated! However, she has a very good memory for previous hiding places and will sometimes give a hopeful scratch at a place where the scent was previously hidden. I need to do more work to fix that problem. The problem I have is that she is very food motivated, and I know that if I ever had to do a test or anything with her, she would get distracted by food on the ground (probably eat it ). I have also done a bit of fun scent discrimination at the park. Throw a stick a couple of times, then throw it into a pile of sticks and see if she can pick out the right one. She can find the right one! I haven't done any formal training for this one.

Besides the owners that have been mentioned, Dogs that scream when you go near them with a brush (people think you're killing them!) Dogs which put their head down when your trying to brush their chest - like Rough Collies with all that mane! Holding their head up gets tiring! But the Collies are one of the most rewarding for me in the end. I haven't done much clipping, so it is the big brush outs that I got to do the most and got the most satisfaction from.

Clicker training is also popular for teaching the dog to look at your face. You hold the food away from your face, and click and treat when the dog looks at your face instead of the food. You are still giving the food from your hand though.

Diesel has improved 100% since the seminar! I've stopped letting him have the ones he dropped It has improved his focus so much!

Well doing anything with Zoe at the moment depends on whether I can control her dog aggression - my club have agreed to help find a non-reactive dog to help me and I will use the techniques K9 showed us at the seminar. Barring that I hope to have convinced my OH to let me get another dog next year to do agility with, and will do the foundation work for it properly this time! Will need lots of help for that though - Zoe was my first attempt at agility. If only you could see how well she works! Ah, it is so frustrating! Oh well, it is all a learning experience.

Definite similarity between dog and horse sports Although I have done heaps of obedience with Zoe to try to fix her dog aggression, she knows the difference between what to do in obedience and what to do in agility. She certainly has obstacle focus! Although if I get confused about what to do, she will stop and look to me for directions (most common with a group of jumps and I can't remember the order!). We do have the common problems of an obedience dog in agility - problems handling on the right hand side, and she does not work at a distance as well as I would like. But I can call her off jumps to go in a different direction and her recall is excellent. Something I must practice with Diesel more - I spend most of my time with him spitting food and practicing heeling