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Just want add that Bryan is actually going to be competing in the next world titles overseas. And there was a comment on the first page about him looking scared of his handler in the video that myszka posted of him in last years nationals, i can assure you he is not at all sensitive or scared of his owner, just high in drive and looking for the next command. They are a great team to watch working together.

Wyvernblade, I am in tears typing this, it just isnt fair is it, but your beautiful boy had a wonderful life with you even if it was a short one, he would of felt your enthusiasm about his training and shared in the happiness that you felt when you made progress with his issues. he will be looking over you until you meet again and he is pain free, you freed him from that and did the most loving thing a pet owner can do. Big hugs to you, be strong.

Im so sorry to hear this, I hope your boy makes a full recovery, if nothing else he has his young age and fittness on his side. Yep you need to trust your instincts, when you know something is wrong keep going till someone finds the problem. If only own babies could talk. Give him a big hug from me and sending one to you too I think you need it. Keep us informed.

Scope, i still think it has a lot to do with pack issues. If she snaps at the rotty and he ignores this she is obviously higher generally in the pack order and being the female makes me think this more so. the rotty is now having more free time from his run which will be adding to her pack issues, im not saying put him away all the time again but you may need to spend more one on one time with her to balance things. She sounds like she has this desire to please you and compete for your attention, even if she is going about it the wrong way. When you do put the rotty away and she still carrys on what do you do with her, are you trying to redirect her attention onto you with some focus commands etc or a toy. What happens when you work her on her own with the rotty away? If your doing prey drive training with the rotty and he has developed a desire for the item try putting his training on hold for a while and focus on her. steve will tell you that if the dog has drive for the toy it wont be lost if they dont get to have it for a while, and you can come back to his training after getting her a bit more focused and settled. Best of luck and again contact steve for his input.

Ok my suggestions would be firstly speak to steve again. secondly, what you are describing about her behaviour, ie being in the drop but quivering and whining could be her going into a drive ( Im guessing pack drive in this case) that she cant control and becomes overdriven. Its hard to say obviously without seeing it, but Ive seen dogs do this heaps, a trigger, perhaps the sight of you sets her into it and she isnt getting satisfactions and boils over. Just curious has this started to become worse since you started drive training with hudson?? I think she is competing for her bit of you. I know it is very hard to train 2 dogs at once, but it sounds like she may need it more than hudson at the moment, break up your time and devote seperate sessions to each of them one on one. Lastly, please never hit your dog, walk away cool down and go inside, come back out when your calm. She will counter you with physical force because this is what you are teaching her by getting physical. You want to be the pack leader, so LEAD by being firm, fair but calm. If she has gone into overdrive no type of physical force is going to get thru to her, you will only be hurting the bond that you have. Good luck and let us know how you go.

Hi KitKat, my dvd's include, training drive, focus and grip, raising a working pup, bite training puppies, preparing your dog for the helper and training a competition tracking dog. I did find them to be very helpful and worthwhile even if a bit expensive. As you can tell my dvds are all sch based, but there are so many others to choose from. If someone just wants a dvd because it sounds good and isnt going to actually put it into practice fully then its an expensive way to get an education but if you are going to use the techniques then they are worth the money. Very well set out, step by step with great examples given ans shown of what to do and what not to do etc. Have fun with your goodies, shouldnt be too long till you get them, service is quick and they will email you a tracking number for your parcel.

I can vouch for the leerburg items. i have bought a number of things from them after trying to get similar in oz and couldnt find the items or they were way more expensive here. i got their 2 inch agitation collar the agitation harness and several leads. The quality is excellent and i have a number of their dvds too. the service with them was also fantastic, great people to deal with.

Thanks Reddog for taking pics on the day and posting them for us all here

My second favorite border collie in the world behind my girl Charmain is a georgous B/C explosives detection dog that was a rescue and had heaps of drive so she was trained up and is a fantastic little worker. When they have good drives all they want to do is work and she is a little ripper. To be saved from being PTS to becoming what she is in a very short time just blows me away. :D

Tarka, thanks for sharing that with us, great work, and obviously great commitment on your part. Welldone :D . How old is Ruby?

Hi Flames Daddy, Yep we have the same thing happen at home often with Artan and having to walk and wait for the bite roll to be dropped, his intensity for it at home and training is triple what you saw at the workshop (the naked shower thing ) You get a real workout, and as you saw Steve and I did probably a bit more of the tugging and fighting with the toy because of his sch training than what some of the other dogs needed. It teaches him to keep a full mouth grip on the tug which will become the sleeve eventually. And they have to keep a hold of it and run with the helper wearing it at the same time. My arms have certainly got stronger

Just a quicky to say THANKS Steve for a great workshop today It was wonderful to see all the dogs make such great progress. Just a thought.... but perhaps we could set up another one later in the year after all dogs involved today have built their drive further and take it to the next level with more commands done in drive and with more focus. Even adding in some distraction etc and then trouble shooting from there. Anyways just a thought, but it would be a good way to build on what we did today. It was really nice meet all the other DOL people there too

Hi Sparty my comments were not aimed at you at all, i hope it wasnt taken that way ands its great when people know others that do the sport because it does give you a better idea and not just the misconceptions. I hope your father in law doesnt encounter too many hassels and red tape when he does try to move over here.

Thanks for your lovely comments flames Daddy Yep thats Artan, he's just turned 1. How does some Krispy Kreme donuts sound?? I have to drive right past a KK on my way to Steves.

Hi All, I'll be there with my boy Artan the rottie, we've been doing our drive exercises at home and he's doing great but when he goes to new surroundings he's not as switched on, so we'll see how we go on the day, its all a learning curve for us both. Look forward to seeing you all there. Steve likened it to sing in the shower at home and then having to sing in your front yard naked (or something to that effect)

Great post Jeff. Well said I wish people would come to realise that schutzhund training is not protection training. It would only take a little bit of research on the sport to work this out. The 2 keep getting aligned with each other. I have nothing against a well trained PP dog if it for the right reasons, and only the right reasons and they are few.

Can I please make one thing very very clear to you sfg-shep Schutzhund IS NOT about training a dog to attack a person. A schutzhund trained dog IS NOT an aggresseive dog, it bites a sleeve not the man wearing it, it is taught from a young pup that this is one big game, the dog has to show self control in order for the game to continue and for him to get his reward which is to bite the sleeve. Please do not attempt to train your dog to do this on your own, you need a qualified trainer and I think you need to justify why you are wanting to do this, if you wish to participate in the sport of Schutzhund then great but you will also have to train your dog in obedience and tracking too, it is not just about the bite work. A schutzhund dog is also not a personal protection dog, it is a friendly, intelligent and confident dog that participates in a sport it does not go around attacking people on command. Your pup is still a baby, do some obedience with it, build its confience in you as a handler and itself, socialise it etc. How do you even know at such a young age if it has the right nerves, drives or can take the kind of pressure of such training to be a personal protection dog? If it doesnt and you try and train it yourself you will end up like Scope said with a loose cannon on your hands that may attack out of fear and you could really ruin an otherwise well rounded dog. Please consider all this, I am not having a go at you I just think you need to get some help as at the moment you are heading in the wrong direction with this pup.

Hi Kavik, I have been doing tracking with a schutzhund club now for about 5 months and we put an equal emphasis on this side of the sport as the other 2 areas. And Believe it is very important to start the dog and handler off slowly and build confidence for this work. As clicking mad wrote it is better to teach the dog "this is what you do" before allowing mistakes to become habit. We started with scent pads and worked up. I feel that a track of 50 paces is way way too long for a novice dog. I tend to lay 3 tracks each session, the first is very short, about 3 meters, this track is for the dog to settle down and realise this is what we are here for, as soon as he reaches the end he gets small food reward from the track. given the break command and lead off the track, we go straight to the begining of the second track which is longer again, this track reinforces his training and confidence and it can be longer because he had the first one to settle down on, he really knows what he is doing on the second one and what the aim is. The third track is the teaching track, this is when you extend the dog a bit by in the begining making it much longer still and taking note of what the dog can handle by way of duration etc and after a little while you start to use this track for curves and turns, you teach the dog that the track doesnt always go straight. It needs to be a process of building blocks for both the dog and handler. i think it is really unfair and counter productive to just throw you into it the way they have. Since you are fimilar and comfortable with the sch. style of tracking have you considered joining a sch club just to compete in that phase of the sport. Have you spoken the the club you attended about your concerns and what did they say about their methods and the reasons they train this way. Good luck with it and let us know how you are getting on. It really is a fun thing to do with your dog, well i know my big boy likes it anyway.

Biting down on the sleeve is important but it is also about placement of that bite and the ability to hold on to it both physically and mentally. and that bite needs to be full and calm. A dog that is not confident will have a bity grip, meaning they try to chomp on it in an attempt to hold on to it and its feeling very stressed. A good helper and handler has the ability to take this stress away and give confidence to the dog. To the untrained eye a dog may appear to have the moves and the bite down pat but truly there is so much more to this part of the sport than people realise and i would advise against anyone trying to train their dog in the sport on their own without experienced guidance. Even with a puppy if you present the prey item the wrong way you wont build drive or satisfaction for it. Depending on the level of drive you need to adjust the ratio of success it has with capture. Clubs that want to remain affiliated with AUS need to trial its dogs and handlers to maintain that affiliation and be recognised. So for the success and future of the clubs we need to train dogs that can trial under existing rules. Im sure if the rules were different many clubs would enjoy a wide variety of breeds if these breeds also had the genetics behind them to do the work. But it goes back to my point if you arent going to compete will you fine tune the training to the same degree that you HAVE to if you are going to compete. I could go on and on about the finer points that would let you down in a trial that you spend months and months and even a year working on but that would be pointless here. many of my clubs new members try it out for the 6 weeks trial period and dont come back. Im not being a snob here but agree totally with LMWS it is one of the most serious sports you can do, so hence all the rules and regulations. And compared to other countries Australia is in its infancy with the sport compared to the likes of Germany and the US. So maybe in time things might change. Another reason the clubs tend to be protective of the sport is because of the degree of misinformation that there is about it. If we dont follow the rules we will pay the price for it. It can be likened a bit to BSL. People dont understand it, they spread misinformation and it gets a bad reputation just like some dog breeds so there fore we have to toe the line and follow the rules to the letter in order to protect ourselves, just as owners of targeted dog breeds try to ensure their dogs are in the hands of responsible owners who have the best intrests of the dog and the community at heart. Also, we all like to think that our dogs breed has what it takes to do anything, but reality is they dont. Genetics plays a huge part. My breed is Rottweiler and yes they are an allowed breed but he comes from long successful working lines on one side and show lines on the otherside ( so we do both sport and conformation with him). I am lucky his fathers working drives came out so well in him but it has still been a lot of hard work, however you can only bring out a dogs drives to its genetic potential, if its not in the lines behind your dog you wont get it. His drives, defense, nerve and even his bite and grip are genetics. we are on the search at present for a working partner for my husband, if we were to choose a rottie without working ability behind it we would have a snowflakes chance of any success with her. So I hope I have highlighted here that it isnt just the RULES that play a part in participation.

Below is the link to the home page of my sch clubs website. I believe one of the reasons some clubs limit membership and training to those working breeds only is because it takes a hell of a lot of training which is carried out one on one to get a dog to the level of trialling, which is not about boosting egos it is the goal that we work towards pure and simple. If someone comes to the club and just wants to train but will not be eligible to trial then will that person put the effort in to train correctly and not create issues for themselves and their dog, the handler who is training to eventually trial will not take short cuts because you will lose points if you do. Some people approach sch clubs and just want their dog to have a bite on the sleeve, these people will be refused by any club that is reputable and following AUS code of conduct. anything else would be irresponsible. We also train for the obedience and tracking portions of the trials. If a person is intrested in those sports then there are plenty of clubs that specialise in those areas. I hope this clarifys it for those that have questions regarding eligblity, we do it to protect the sport and follow the rules, not to be snobs ****************************** http://www.wsdc.sportdogaustralia.com/