Staranais

Anyone taught this & got tips to teach this (beyond the old place the dog's feet on the rungs & praise/mark)? Dog concerned has reasonably good hind leg awareness already (can do elephant trick, can back up, can target hind feet to items on the ground). Thanks!

Please do. Like I said in the training thread, I would travel a considerable distance for a consultation with Steve if I had a dog with any aggression issue.

Snap!

I have no idea if he's near NewCastle, but he's in New South Wales: http://www.k9pro.com.au/ I would travel a considerable distance for a consultation with Steve from K9Pro if I had an aggressive dog.

Sometimes you have to be (a little bit) cruel to be kind. Agree. I have no hesitation in proofing things with an e-collar that are required for my dog to do her job, or for her safety. Use with the advice of an experienced professional, though. E-collars are not things to just stick on your dog & experiment with.

That's sweet of you to say, but we're really just novices at this - advice from everyone is useful! She's liking area search more than she's liking tracking at the moment, but I'm hoping we'll get there with the tracking at the end too!

I think perhaps it is the job of the trainer to ask the clients what their goals are, and help them to meet those goals. It is sad if the owner wants the dog to learn not to pull, and the trainer just sticks it into a management device and doesn't address the client's goal. To me, that's a bad trainer. But for some clients, perhaps their goal is just to make the walk manageable with no more fuss or time or effort than absolutely necessary. For those clients, perhaps a management tool is the right choice.

LOL, were you trying to prove he's not a pitbull? The Bitsa test we have here doesn't have APBT as an option, last time I looked at it, so no dog can come back as a pitbull.

Just to clarify - It's not a recommendation for a permanent tool but for a temporary training tool. They usually end up on a flat lead only. The main focus being to prevent the dog from distractions to the side..the halti is only ever used to "lead" the dog back to where you want it - then you revert back to the flat lead - it's a bit like stearing a bike. I'm sure most of the instructors at any training school would have agreed that ideally the dog would be weaned off the tool when trained. But that wasn't necessarily what happened. Most of the people I saw at one particular school who took the companion obedience class only and had their dog put into a halti, left the class at the end of 8 weeks with their dog still on a halti. It was not weaned off in the majority of cases. I still think this is better than the dog not getting taken for walks at all, though I personally feel it's not ideal.

In my ideal world all dogs would be trained to walk nicely on a flat collar (and walk nicely by your side on command off leash, and have a great recall). A well trained dog is safest, and I think often happiest, I think more likely to get rehomed if it ends up in a shelter, and certainly gets the most freedom. But it's not an ideal world, and if dogs need to be perpetually kept on a halti/harness/long line/other tool in order for their owners to give them some exercise, I think that's far better than nothing. At least they're getting out of the yard and doing something with their legs and brains. I do think it's a little sad to go to the obedience schools where the answer for every pulling dog appears to be to just immediately stick it in a halti. I've been to volunteer run obedience schools where that appeared to be the standard recommendation for any pulling dog. I don't know if they did that because the trainers didn't know how to train a nice loose leash walk, or whether the trainers just assumed that all handlers were lazy or unmotivated or couldn't be bothered to teach the dog to walk nicely.

There's nothing on VIN about any kind of tryptophan toxicity, and I've never heard of it. Wouldn't turkey contain mainly L-stereoisomer tryptophan anyway, like any other meat? I too have heard of tryptophan being used for anxiety disorders, though, it theoretically makes extra serotonin in the CNS.

Well they can but it should be viewed as a fault according to the standard. Why is it like that in the standard? I have no idea. It is one of the things in the standard that I don't agree with. OK, thanks. It seems strange to me. Most of our working eye dogs (working B.C. and the very closely related N.Z.H.D) have short coats. Seems strange to me that these dogs would be "wrong" in Aussie. Perhaps the long coat is preferable in Scotland/England for some reason, and maybe it's better in Aussie for some reason? But the cockies here definitely seem to prefer short coats on their workers, all other things being equal, so I'm glad our standard allows it.

So, why can't show border collies in Aussie have short coats?

I feed about half raw, half kibble. That means about 80% of her calories/minerals/vitamins etc come from kibble, since it's so much more concentrated. Does the raw "do" anything for my dog that the kibble wouldn't? I figure bones are fun for my dog - she likes them - and why not give her something that's fun. They help keep her teeth clean. Also, since I use food for training I do give her treats, something more exciting than kibble, and since some weeks she eats a lot of treats I figure she might as well get healthy food treats (= raw or cooked meat and organs) instead of junk commercial treats. If the raw parts of her diet do anything else beyond that for her, I can't say. I do know that I feel better eating a diet of mostly fresh rather than mostly processed food, so just from analogy, I'd wonder if she feels better with some fresh food in her diet. But of course I couldn't prove that in any way. Whether or not I feed raw or dry, I'd always supplement with joint food also.

We don't know. You can't tell for sure, except if you send each batch off for anaylsis, as Nekhbet claims. There are computer programmes you can use to test whether the diet being fed to a carnivore is complete & balanced, many zoos use these for their carnivores. An example is Zootrition, http://www.zootrition.org/ However, even these rely on the assumption that the food you're serving has the same nutrient content as the food on the database. Dog food manufacturers tend to certify their food to AAFCO standards, which itself uses data from the NRC (recommended nutrient concentrations for dogs are published in Nutrient Requirements of Dogs & Cats). If your bitches do better on a dry diet, I'd say it's a safe bet that there's something missing from your raw diet. Different dogs have different tolerances for nutritional deficiencies, same as humans. So even if the recipe you're using works for other breeders or other dogs, doesn't mean it's 100% complete for all dogs.

Yes, my girl is nicer to follow when she's tired too! We're doing 1 hour old tracks at the moment, I'll alternate length between about 100 and 500m depending on what paddocks are available to me & what I feel like working on. Our focus is SAR, for qualification purposes we'll need to consistently be doing 1km long 3 hour old tracks, with unknown starting points, in rugged terrain & just about any weather conditions (among other requirements). Luckily for me, the feedback I'm getting indicates that I'm the one with the problems - my girl is probably talented enough, I just need to learn to handle & read her nicely. She's my first real tracking dog, so hopefully the next dog I train will be much easier!

I'd say flirt pole. Lots of short, exciting sessions, always stop when he's still excited and leave him wanting more. Plus prevent him accessing any of the animals he'd rather chase, so it's your toy or nothing to satisfy his drive.

I can only tell you the law as it is in NZ, but I think Aussie is similar. If a vet uses a medicine for a different purpose, at a different dose rate, via a different route, or in a different species than the manufacturer recommends, then that constitutes "off label" (discretionary) use of the medicine. A vet is allowed to do this for an animal under their care (following certain guidelines), but if they do then the drug manufacturer isn't obliged to take any responsibility if things go wrong - the buck stops with the vet. Sometimes vets are pretty much obliged to use drugs off label, for example there are very few drugs that are registered for treating llamas and alpacas in this country, so almost every time you treat a llama for anything you'll be using drugs off label.

So does that mean she's out of the puppy program, even if they can control the allergy with meds? If they can find out what she's allergic to, would the guide dog people be prepared to give desensitisation injections a go? Lots of things you can try. If they think it's an allergy, I'd personally be far more inclined to try a novel protein diet (made with one source of novel protein, one source of carbohydrate, ONLY, for 4 weeks) or a hydrolysed diet (Hills Z-d or etc). If that doesn't helped, you can be pretty sure that there's no dietary component to the allergy.

Interesting tips, thanks Leema! Perhaps I'll try placing the end of the track (= toy) right after the first corner for a while, and see if that makes her pay more notice to corners. Similar to your bottle cap idea. But at the end of the day, it might just be the price of having a fast dog - possibly when we start doing really long tracks, she'll slow down a bit and hence won't overshoot the corners as much.

I've read the handouts that the company sends to vet clinics to try to get us to sell Bitsa to clients. It sounds very good and very scientific in theory. But in practice, I've heard many horror stories about dogs getting results that are clearly inaccurate.

Yes, there's plenty of opportunity to educate restaurant owners when they apply for alcohol licenses, Food Safety certificates, etc. I wonder if they are provided with information about assistance dogs at this time? It would be a good way to ensure ever restaurant owner, no matter where they are from, understands the laws around these dogs.

Hooray! That's really awesome!

I thought your point was that it was unlawful to do so. No, that was Staranais's misinterpretation which I corrected in an earlier response Er, no. I asked who decided that the "accepted definition" of an animal behaviourist is a person registered by the AVA, and you replied "by law". I asked this in post #28, and you answered in post #57, of this thread. You claimed: This is false. You might not personally like the fact that trainers who deal with behaviour can call themselves "behaviourists", and you might think that the only proper behaviourists are Veterinary Behaviourists with AVA registration, but the AVA themselves don't appear to have an issue with non-AVA members calling themselves "dog behaviourists". The AVA does not think that trainers are implying AVA membership by calling themselves "behaviourists" and they do not think that trainers are misrepresenting themselves by calling themselves "behaviourists". I asked this specifically so there could be no confusion. And like I said, the president of AVBIG pretty much has the final word on the topic so far as I'm concerned. After checking with the AVA, I will continue to call trainers who deal with behaviour, "behaviourists". And I will continue to call Veterinary Behaviourists, "Veterinary behaviourists".

It is a good idea. Depends on the type of offleash space as to how practical it is, though. The off-leash space I usually take my dog to is a river walk that is designated multi use - the signs indicate that you're allowed to walk your dog off leash, go jogging, ride your bike, or ride your horse there. So separating it isn't really practical, the whole idea is that lots of different sorts of users should be able to share the space. It usually works OK, most people are pretty polite - I guess the dogs have to be reasonably well behaved so that they don't chase cyclists or joggers, who would give you an earful if your dog harassed them (and rightly so).