Staranais

You're welcome. Canidae is a medium to high quality dog food that I like, and that my dog does well on: http://www.canidae.com/ I'm not sure about who stocks it in Aussie, or how much it is. ETA - if they have visible tartar on their teeth, I'd get them scaled properly. It's much easier to keep teeth clean than to clean dirty teeth.

I love all of Michael Ellis's DVDs, they're great for performance dogs. The first couple of Ivan Balabanov ones were really good, too. The Other End of the Leash is great too - I must re-read it. Really like Steven Lindsay's 3 big books, though he can be rather dry to read, they're more for dipping into. I also love Silvia Trkman's website - not technically a book or DVD, but there's a lot of free information there to read: http://silvia.trkman.net/

Yup, canned is crap. I'm on a budget too. My 28kg malinois girl gets part Canidae (works out about $10 NZ per kilo for us) and part raw (works out approximately the same price as the Canidae per 1000kJ), hence she costs about $4 or $5 NZ per day to run. For the raw, I buy * Veal neck bones, beef brisket bones, recreational cannon bones, and fish heads, all at approx $4/kg * Heart and green tripe, at $5/kg from a pet food supply store * Liver and kidney, at about $7/kg from the supermarket * Fish oil, vit E, green lipped mussels and glucosamine, also from the supermarket * Healthy table scraps are free! If you have your own freezer you're lucky - you can buy things in bulk when they're cheap, and freeze them for later.

Good decision, I think. Taking on an already DA dog can be a steep learning curve, and often a heartbreaking and expensive one. I learned a lot of very valuable things from my own DA dog, but it was also an experience that I wouldn't wish on any pet owner.

It's true Poodlefan, you can never entirely avoid idiots. But with my own DA dog, I found that some obedience clubs had club cultures that were much safer & more accommodating for him than others. It pays to shop around when choosing an Ob club, in my experience, especially if you have a special needs dog.

Leave the club, and tell them why you're going. An uncontrolled & chaotic environment isn't helpful for anyone's dog, but for a DA dog it's 1000 times worse. You might not be able to control how people act at the club, but you can stop putting your dog into that situation. Speaking as someone who has had a DA dog at several clubs, taking him to a place like that & then correcting him for snapping when he's being harrassed will not be helping him learn to be relaxed around other dogs. I also would not care to take instruction at a club where the instructor's dog has no recall.

Sadly, you're right. Outcry from people who haven't seen these tools used appropriately has caused the prong (aka pinch aka pressure point) collar to be banned in many places, to the detriment of legitimite trainers. Advice like the advice given in this thread is not going to help the situation, either. If you try out the prong collar on yourself, you'll understand that when a correction is given it feels uncomfortable (that's the point, after all), but no more so than a check chain (and it is safer, as it's limited slip - hence my preference for the pinch collar over a check chain). It is not an appropriate for all dogs or all situations, is not an appropriate tool for unskilled handlers, and you certainly don't need one to train a dog, but any abuse is in the handler not the tool - exactly like any other correction collar, including check chains & head collars.

Exactly. I use prong collars, and I use e collars. After reading your advice, I would also not let you anywhere near my dog. You're clearly trying to backpedal away from what you originally said. Nowhere in your initial post did you say "give a correction appropriate to the dog's temperament" - you said to correct the dog "as hard as you can". Please, if you're sick of it here, feel free to leave the site any time you like.

I agree too. My dog has a medium sized yard which she enjoys, but even if she had hundreds of acres, she'd still go nutty with boredom if I didn't do things with her several times a day (especially since she has no other dog to play with at home - there's just me to entertain her). She wears tracks around the lawn pacing when I'm not there, but it doesn't tire her out at all, she's still ready to go whenever I get home. Having said that, I think she'd probably be pretty miserable (and make me pretty miserable) in an apartment.

I was just thinking that! Having said that, I do muzzle my dog when out bush in case she happens to come across a poisoned possum & poison herself by eating it. So asking people to fit muzzles to their dogs (and perhaps fining people without muzzles on their dogs) might be a better solution for everyone, than such an exhorbitant fine for something most dogs will instinctively do.

Thanks VetRG, I'll try to remember to have a look at the BSAVA congress proceedings when I'm back at uni next month.

Wow, I guess I don't know any proper trainers, then, since I don't think I know any trainers who would advise that.

In my experience desexing can help reduce marking, but if marking has become a habit, desexing won't necessarily eliminate it. If I were in your situation, I would not give the dog free reign inside the house until he has learned not to mark. You don't want him developing a habit of marking inside. Even entire dogs are quite capable of learning not to mark inside, but you need to be consistent about not letting him mark inside - just like housetraining a puppy.

Not sure if I can answer - my dog is in training for work, not sport (although I may do some tracking and possibly Ob with her later). I picked her specifically for work. I love her to bits but she's pretty high maintenance, so if I didn't have work for her to do I'd possibly have picked another breed instead (maybe a bull breed). I got into the work via my other hobbies (hiking lead to being a SAR volunteer, and that has lead to attempting to qualify my dog in canine SAR). It hasn't taken over my life, but is definitely a large commitment. But then again, so is doing SAR with no dog.

I voted, since who knows, I may easily end up in Aussie one day! But perhaps I shouldn't have. NZ sounds the same as Finland. One command, which can be either verbal or hand signal (or both together at the lower levels is OK for some exercises, I think). I've never noticed any problems with it, but then again, I've never judged Ob or WT, so perhaps I'm just oblivious to the issues. Drawn out or double commands are penalised, no matter what language they are in, & drawn out or double signals are penalised too.

Interesting thread - I'll watch with interest to find out where I shoudn't look for a job when I graduate. Sounds like there are few bush areas for hiking that are dog friendly? That's a bummer.

there are more than 200 Aboriginal languages in Australia Oh interesting, thanks. I guess it's far simpler when you only have one native language. It's different here - I can't imagine anyone here getting away with telling someone they can't talk Maori, in the ring or anywhere else.

Usually I do, sometimes I don't. If I'm doing dog friendly things and travelling by car, I do. If I'm flying I can't. If I'm staying in a hotel room, or spending my days doing things that she can't do, I can't. Taking a dog can be restrictive - lots of places you can't go, e.g. national parks, centres of many towns. She's also large, noisy, and very energetic so I can't exactly leave her in a hotel room by herself during the day.

Innocent and possibly silly question here - why is Aboriginal not accepted as an alternative language (is it even a single language), since that's about as Aussie as it gets, right?

Thanks for that explanation TSD! I might have a play with our stand stays using that technique - she is already pretty good but I like to reteach her things in lots of different ways since I think it aids understanding.

Off the top of my head - abscess, grass seed or other foreign body, wheal from an allergic reaction, spider bite, blocked hair follicle, fast growing or degranulating MCT, soft tissue injury? A trip to the vet would be best, I think.

That's a good point. I find my girl will often revert back to the behaviours that have been reinforced frequently recently if she's feeling at all confused or frustrated about position changes. Can you please explain the steady feet game, TSD?

Sounds like "stay" has become associated with "down" to her. I'd stop giving the stay with the sit - just say "sit" and gradually reward after longer & longer times. The command stay is unnecessary if you use a clear release command - I never use a stay with sit (although I do use it with down if I'm going to wander off and leave her for a while, so I guess for us "stay" just is an informational cue that means "please stay lying down even though I'm going to wander off and leave you for a while!"). Ness's advice is good too.

I used to keep one, but now I don't bother - it got too complicated, plus I already know what my dog can do since I ask her to do it regularly. But I do find video records to be useful. You can examine it at the time to see what you'd look like to another person (heeling etc) or what unintentional cues you're giving, and look back at it later to see how you've improved (or haven't).

Oh that's really interesting - could you please post a link or reference if you have the time? Ta