Staranais

Wow, let me see. My girl's tricks include: competition sit, competition down, competition stand, attention heel and pivots, attention front, dumbbell retrieve, "be a meerkat" (beg!), walk backwards, spin left, have a piggyback, target with her front feet, target with her back feet, climb on this, climb off this, bark, quiet, find my keys, find your toy, bring it, & heel between my legs. Those are the ones I can think of right now. I teach tricks constantly, and for lots of reasons. I think teaching tricks is good for her brain - the more she learns, the easier it is for her to learn. Doing tricks teaches her that working with me is fun. And expanding her vocabulary allows us to communicate more easily. Many of our tricks are useful things, or small components of competition behaviours, in case I care to compete with her later. And many help her develop physical coordination. Silvia Trkman is my inspiration when it comes to dog tricks! http://silvia.trkman.net/

Well, I don't think any of the departments or disciplines I mentioned are exactly advertising the fact they use e collars? I too would be interested to know what happens at this seminar, however there's no way I'm paying $160 and buying a plane ticket to Oz to do so.

That could be related to horses... there have been massive debates in the horse community internationally about the use of Rollkur and whether it is cause for a cruelty case, particularly in light of video up on Youtube of horses warming up at major competitions with their tongue hanging out looking blue There has been a fair bit of research done into it funded by the FEI - the results of which were a matter of semantics to most people It would be an interesting talk to go to although price is very steep! I was wondering if it was about electric collars, since they seem to be on the SPCA's hit list, and they're used on many working dogs (I've heard of them being used on police, conservation, farm & SAR dogs for various applications). Aren't we all a suspicious lot. ;) The lecturer himself looks like a reasonable guy & an interesting speaker, from the link Aidan posted.

Schutz/IPO is mostly for the working breeds that are traditionally used in "police" type work, e.g. GSD, malinois, rottie, dobe, bouvier, etc. It is not usually done by border collies, they are working dogs too of course, but they a different type of working dog with a different temperament & skill set.

Eek, that's a little picky! Whenever possible my malinois and myself are both still asleep on the bed at that hour of the morning.

Bolded to say, are they for real? This statement makes me suspect that they have never seen a happy working dog, seeing as they seem to find the idea so incredible. Have they never left the university grounds to see how dogs are actually used in real life? The dogs I have seen working out in the real world (SAR, farm dogs, customs dogs, police dogs) all absolutely loved their jobs. Most dog jobs employ instincts & drives that the dogs like, even need, to have satisfied. The dogs that don't have the drive to do the job or earn the reward simply don't get used. After all, why on earth would you want to rely on a team-mate who would rather not be there?

We're doing a mixture of raw/real food and Canidae. So you could add Canidae to your poll, & perhaps we could be allowed to select more than one option?

I honestly haven't found barking on demand to be a particular problem. If you have a NRM, you can easily get rid of the barking on demand issue - NRM followed by end training session or stick in time out. Only takes them a few goes to figure out that barking is only reinforced when it's done following a command, whereas pushy barking only ends in enforced boredom. So I guess I'm saying, the problem can come up, and it's probably fair enough to mention it, but it's also easily cured, even in a vocal dog like mine (& you probably don't get a lot more vocal than a WL malinois, my girl always has a lot to say).

Everyone does it differently, I guess. But I found I could get many more reps in if I could turn the barking on & off at will. Bark - quiet - bark - quiet - bark. Rather than having to wait for a bark to ask for a quiet. I guess I'm just impatient & don't like waiting. Edited to add - I also like to have a speak command so I can ask for it when I want to, for various applications. So that's another reason I chose to teach it that way.

Ok, so teaching speak would be useless for me then (except as a trick.) Will try the quiet command first. This article was very helpful for me. I found teaching speak first made it very easy to teach quiet, since the dog seems to quickly understand the contrast between speak & quiet.

Got all four already, but thanks very much for the offer. And they are very good (well, I wasn't that keen on the retrieve one, but I loved all the others). I do have the send away nailed. It's modifying it to include the redirection that has me a little stumped. Luckily I won't even need to think about teaching it for a few years - plenty of time to think & research.

We're taught that two vacc are best - a priming dose (with the pup over 12 weeks old), and a second dose to induce the anamnestic response (usually given a year later). So if the pup didn't get any vacc originally, we'd want to give it two now. If it had had one after 12 weeks old in the past, just keep going with the regular protocol of one at 1 year old, then one every 3 years (unless owner wants something different e.g. titre test). Even Dr Jean Dodds recommends a 1 year booster after puppy vaccinations, and she's a very strong supporter of the minimal vaccination protocols. The earlier puppy vacc are just to protect pup in case it loses maternal antibody protection earlier than 12 weeks.

That is interesting, Shadowwalker. But I still find it strange that this is his foundation bitch from the 1950s: She looks almost like a huntaway! And this is an example of his current girls: They just both look very different to me. The breed has clearly changed greatly in these last 60 years, and I guess I just don't understand why the new dogs are thought to be an improvement.

No, that doesn't sound right to me. So long as she's had one vaccination when she was at least 12 weeks old as a pup, then she should just need one dose at one year old.

Yes, there's nothing at all wrong with trying the natural route first (so long as the dog isn't in misery, in which case steroids can bring great relief). I wouldn't be keen for my dog to be on long term steroids either, unless it was necessary. About the flea allergy, once a dog is sensitised to the flea saliva, even one flea bite can cause a massive reaction. So it's quite possible that the dog is reacting to a flea bite allergy without you seeing fleas on the dog, especially since this is the most common canine allergy. Have you flea bombed your entire house. & thoroughly decontaminated his bedding, to make sure there are no fleas anywhere? The idea with flea bite allergy is, to my knowledge, to get rid of all the fleas & give a short course of steroids to break the cycle of itching & scratching. Shouldn't need long term steroids so long as you can completely control the fleas. & how did the vet determine that this was flea allergy dermatitis? To my knowledge they can normally have a pretty good guess due to the appearance/distribution of lesions on the dog (on the lower back, thighs, belly), plus the history, but you can't know for sure until either the dog responds to flea control or you do intradermal testing.

You can add regular salmon oil caps to any food and make it high omega.

I can see both sides. Some rescues are over-picky & unwilling to ever bend rules, but some adopters can be more than a little unreasonable and pushy too. I think a lot comes down to how the rescue phrases their refusals. Being told point blank you can't adopt a dog from the rescue because you work full time, as someone on this thread says happened to them, is (IMO) silly. Plenty of dogs live with people who work full time, and are perfectly happy. That's different to being told you can't adopt this particular dog because you work full time. Every dog has its own issues, and some wouldn't cope in that situation.

That would be really interesting, please let us know the results! Although to be fair you would need to repeat it many times to ensure the results really were related to breed (and not caused by one of the dogs being fitter or a better example of their particular breed or similar). Aidan, what were the recommendations made in the Fortunate Field experiments? I have never heard of this before, but it sounds very interesting.

I do. It wasn't a criticism, I just wanted to check we were talking about the same thing. Kavik, I have previously taught the send away with the toy at the edge of the field where I am doing obedience etc. i.e. I will be heeling the dog for a few steps, the dog knows the toy is at the edge of the field. When the dog is a working a few meters away from the toy, I release to the toy as a reward (remote reward), then she brings it to me to play with it. Then just gradually add distance. Fast forward a few weeks, and the dog is starting to anticipate the reward & when released after the heeling will run to the edge of the field where I point to get the toy, even if she hasn't seen me place the toy there, she knows it is always at the edge of the field where I point. Toy is always at the edge of the field so the dog doesn't slow down & start searching for it before I drop her as you so often see in competition, she will run to the edge of the field before she starts searching & casting around. You can then add the drop every so often, drop the dog & then immediately release the dog again to the toy. Dog by this stage already has a DOR which is similar, and also she knows I won't play with her if she doesn't drop (so blowing me off & getting the toy is pointless), so that part comes pretty easy. Haven't taught it to my current girl yet though, but worked for my last dog pretty well, so will probably use this method again if I have no reason not to. ;) Beagie, that's interesting, how did you go about teaching it though?

They can do other things though (at least, they can over here - presume they can in Aussie). Obedience, agility, flyball, endurance test, working trials, etc.

With the herding I've seen though, the left command has actually been a clockwise command (circle to the left/clockwise around the stock). Which is a little different to what I'm after.I've never seen someone send a dog out trotting on a straight line to its left, does that ever happen? Has anyone got any links to any good competition retrieving intro site? I've had a google, but can't find much on redirections in retrieving yet. Is it called something else in that sport? Thanks!

Should a GSD trot more efficiently than a mally then, who has no slope? So if we grab someone's moderately sloped GSD and run it beside my mally on a bike, then all other things being equal, will the GSD be able to trot considerably longer? Has anyone ever tested that out?

Not this again. Didn't you make this claim in another thread? Certain breeds of dog do not have "rounder" teeth than other breeds. You can't point to a retriever skull and say "ah ha! that's a retriever skull not a german shepherd or pitbull skull, because the teeth are rounded!" There's just no difference in the tooth anatomy. And a retriever can do substantial damage to a person or child if they decide to do so, just like any other large dog breed. Watch a raw fed retriever demolish a carcass and you'll see what damage their teeth can do a person if they are so inclined, just like any other large dog. I understand you like retrievers, and they do usually have nice friendly natures, but making incorrect claims about their anatomy doesn't help anyone.

There's a shortage of the vaccine over here in NZ, too. I have no idea why. Really sucks for the people who are wanting to export their animals.

Thanks guys, those are some great ideas to think about. I don't currently teach a send out with a target for a couple of reasons, so these would be pretty different to what I've done before, will have to think it through before I decide whether to give it a go.