Kavik

Yep, Kelpies love to lick! :laugh:

My sister's husband is keen to get a dog for the family - my sister still needs a little convincing (at least with the timing :laugh: ). I agreed to help them if/when they decide to get one. He is a fairly loud and boisterous personality and they have 3 kids between the ages of 1 and 4 1/2 (who are also quite boisterous! More than my kids!). I managed to steer him away from an Alaskan Malamute ( ) and towards a Labrador or Golden Retriever, he would prefer a Lab out of those two. He was keen on a chocolate, but I am trying to persuade him out of a colour preference so we have more choice regarding breeders. If anyone knows a good breeder of Labradors, I would love the recommendation - not being my breed of choice I don't have contacts within the breed. PM is fine if you prefer :)

I am also going to suggest that you volunteer at a shelter or rescue organisation to help you get our dog 'fix' until you get your own :) THey are always looking for volunteers to help out at a wide range of activities, and would appreciate the help. There are general shelters and rescues as well as breed or type specific rescues if you would prefer to help out a certain type of dog.

People never listened to me when I told them not to let their dogs approach when I walk Zoe At training I even made a badge that I wore that said "I BITE other dogs" and people just laughed and approached anyway So glad I don't have to deal with that anymore!

Pointer?

I use Tasty cheese. Thanks Tassie for the loaf idea - might see if I can find that to mix it up a bit.

I use cheese too! :D I pick a brand that doesn't crumble, and that you can cut into small squares/cubes, experiment with brands to find one that works (I use woolworths brand, also have used Aldi and a few others). I found it helps if the cheese is not too cold - so I leave it out for a few minutes before cutting it. As to how much, I don't know, I don't measure, depends what we are training :laugh: but if you do feed a klot of treats, you may need to cut down their food or try to use their food as treats sometimes.

Wow that is quite a list! Hope you are able to find a good diet with food he can tolerate.

You can do foundation work (no equipment) from a puppy, but you shouldn't do much jumping or contact equipment until 12 months or fully grown. There is a lot you can work on before then that will allow you to progress more quickly once your dog gets old enough to use the equipment :) Some examples of what you can train at home: * Get your reward system in place - engagement and relationship building - so you can get and keep your dog's attention in all environments and be able to reward them - the holy grail for agility is tug, otherwise active and interactive games involving food and chasing you and food * Recall exercises especially restrained recall * Body awareness exercises such as walking through a ladder, walking backwards, perchwork, 4 feet in a box * Circle work/shadow handling * Send to a toy/bait bag and get the dog to focus on the toy/bait bag and not on you when you send - for focus forward on obstacles later on * Think about what you want to do for your contact behaviour - whether you want your dog to stop at the end of the contact or whether you want to teach your dog to run all the way through the contact - and look at different methods for teaching these. There is foundation work you can do for all of these.

Trying to get Ollie to tug is almost impossible! He has a really soft mouth and as soon as I place my hand on anything in his month he drops it. I've made a platted rope out of fleece and he seems to tug on that a little- I think it's the movement that he likes. Any other ideas? I have found at first it helps to try when they are generally excited anyway - in the morning, or when you first get back from work etc, rev them up and get them excited before presenting the tug, have fun with it and be silly, experiment with different materials, start off in an environment where they are comfortable, keep the sessions short and fun. I am now to the point of testing it a bit more, in the hope of being able to actually use it at some point :laugh: . Getting Kaos to tug as a 'balance break' when doing shaping or training with food, sending to the toy when it is 'dead' on the ground and not only in my hand, on different surfaces, working on getting the same focus and intensity in the front yard and outside the front yard as the back yard, asking for him to tug before he gets his dinner and before a walk, around treats in his food bowl and around his favourite thrown toy.

As the others have said Teach stand as a separate position first Use a release cue to tell the dog when he can move from that position Either release cue or a cue for another behaviour will give the dog permission to move If using a marker, mark for action, reward for position Good idea to make a list of your commands so you don't accidentally use one word to mean more than one thing Apart from the Susan Garrett video, I noticed kikopup on YouTube also has a video on teaching sit, drop and stand. Uses a clicker but very different to SG as it uses luring.

I like the security of the metal ones - I worry about the sturdyness of the softcrates - I have seen dogs break out of them - maybe I am just paranoid but I like knowing my dog is not getting out and another dog is not getting in. Yes they are heavier, but I like the security.

My favourite 200 dog - go Buddy!

Having a crate is very handy. For agility you need something or somewhere to keep them while you walk the course and while helping to set up/pack up equipment. I prefer a crate to a tie out for a couple of reasons. 1) They can relax in a crate and get away from the stimulation of the environment - and events can run all day. 2) I know that they cannot approach or be approached by other dogs/people You want the crate big enough that they can turn around and stand up. Remember that you will have to carry the crate though, it doesn't have to be huge. You can start crate training at any time, you might as well start now! You want them to be used to going in it well before you take them to training or events and expect them to stay in there for any length of time.

The biggest thing I would change is teach my dog to tug! Certainly following SG is hard when your dog will only tug in the yard :laugh: she has lots of great tips to help this, we have improved so much, next dog should be a cracker I hope :laugh:

I don't think any of the clubs in Sydney have a wait list.

Sounds tough to get into agility in VIC

I'm pretty sure you don't want them to look at you - you want them to continue to look at the hand with the food.

I had to take Diesel to the vet last night as he has scratched a previous sore spot on his head open again and realised that for an 8 1/2 year old dog with ongoing skin problems, he actually doesn't look too bad :laugh: I generally think of him as looking rather poorly because of his skin condition, but apart from his face (which looks awful) he is looking nice and shiny, and he has good mobility and able to run around fine despite having broken a leg as a puppy. I'm surprised he looks as good as he does considering that he is my accident prone very $ at the vet dog.

For agility, have a think about what you want your contact behaviour to be (how you want your dog to negotiate the A-Frame, Dogwalk, Seesaw) - there are a couple of common behaviours and quite a few ways of training them - do you want your dog to stop at the bottom or to run all the way through? There is foundation work you can do for either of those.

Handling by the breeders and human contact is important, I'm not sure how much handling working dogs generally get. While it would be great if they were exposed to different surfaces and noises like thunder etc I think that is probably unlikely.

This is proving a very interesting discussion :) I didn't meet Kaos before I got him, the breeder chose him and I picked him up at the airport, this time I want to view all the pups etc. Kaos has certainly given me the 'furry finger' in agility before :laugh: and of course running out of the ring has been an ongoing issue (he has only done it once this year!) Surely though if you spend time talking to the breeder about your requirements, they will know the difference between a dog that is naturally more biddable and wants to work with you vs a more independent dog? So far both of my Kelpies/crosses of Kelpies have had great food drive, so either I have been quite lucky or they generally do?

Quality pedigree breeders don't produce enough pups to satisfy market demand. I don't know what percent of pups come from BYB's but I'd guess it's 10-20%. Remove that fraction and the market would compensate: - Pedigree dog prices would rise and low income people would be less able to afford the investment. - More people would end up with cross-bred oops puppies, or puppy-farm bred DD's. - Many BYB's would convert to being registered breeders . . . and continue on their way, but producing pups with pedigrees. The BYB vs. registered breeder dichotomy is an oversimplification. There are some people who the show world would call back-yarders who pay proper attention to health. Say I wanted to breed a non-brachy line of pugs or old-style GSD's, and I found my best prospective breeding stock among non-registered dogs. The quest for improved health would force me to join the ranks of those who get called BYB's. On the other hand, the pedigree dog world is not without disreputable breeders. The Balfours (http://www.dolforums.com.au/topic/239070-breeders-sentenced-in-cruelty-case/) were pedigree breeders, and he was a show judge! Many of the large puppy farms in the USA (I use the word to mean places that raise dogs in cages and keep hundreds of dogs, producing puppies on a highly commercial basis) produce pedigree pups, with the blessing of the AKC. With GSDs there are plenty of registered breeders breeding old style dogs - just look at the working line dogs if you like that structure rather than show lines - no need to go to non registered dogs :)

Yep, really wish I had fixed that up earlier

OK some foundation work: * Most important is your reward system! Engagement/relationship building so they are happy to work with you in any environment. Ideally this is tugging, or active games/running/chasing with food. Keep it active, keep it fun! * Recall. I know that sounds boring but there are some great recall games around - restrained recall is also great for speed * Rear end awareness exercises - walking through a ladder, walk backwards, perchwork, shaping 4 feet in a box etc * Circle work/shadow handling * Sending ahead to a toy or bait bag, focus on the toy/bait bag and not on you for focus forward on obstacles