Seita

What a super idea Huski! I might do the same, strange place, strange people, strange dogs = perfect proofing opportunity!

I've been playing with this stuff too just without the box. Just start out asking her to swing only a little on the ground and then increase. I'm trying to fix our flip finish at the moment so I've been asking her to sit and then standing on a 90 degree angle from her and asking her to swing her bum into heel from there, soon I'll increase the angle a bit more and eventually (hopefully) she'll be able to swing it a full 180 back to my leg! And if that doesn't work then I've still got my round the back finishes!

There was an episode of Big Bang Theory where Sheldon does this to Penny, very amusing although he doesn't use a clicker I think it's on youtube somewhere!!

Seek back update: I've started dropping the article around a metre from the start peg every once in a while. I'm not doing it every time because I want her to always go back to the peg to start looking. She has started scanning with her eyes as she runs back to the start peg and if she doesn't see it she's then dropping her nose to the ground and starts sniffing for it! I'm pretty pleased with how she's progressing, hopefully within the next week or two she'll be able to do a seek back regardless of where I drop the article! On another note, I've started fine tuning presents, finishes and RATs (she tends to go a bit wide in those). What sort of games/exercises to others use to fine tune these things? I'm just playing with position against my leg regardless of where I move and also doing recalls from a range of angles and throwing something to retrieve off in different directions to work on these things, but I can see it getting boring pretty quickly does anyone have other little exercises to help work on these niggly little things?

no one has volunteered a border collie yet! I have one!

Just had to laugh when he was talking about her "Oh look there's Betty - awwww" - he sounded like Frank Spencer With his very english accent as well!!

aw come on we weren't that scary! But when MrsD dragged you up to meet Huski and I, you looked like you were being taken to an interrogation!!

You can use whatever word you like. I use 'lets go" I need to start working on he right hand side heel as well if we are going to ever do agility, will probably only be next year but might as well train him to heel both sides while we are at it. His heeling has come along so much in the last 3 weeks I am very happy. I'm pretty sure that for competition your commands need to be one word only. If you're planning on competing you may want to rethink this command. Can your commands be contradictory? I would like to use come for my left side heeling command You can use what ever you want as long as they are one word and you are going to remember them! I train in a different language so every single one of my commands is different to normal but I made sure they were all short commands so even if a judge can't understand the language they'll be able to tell that I haven't said enough to be multiple words!

You can use whatever word you like. I use 'lets go" I need to start working on he right hand side heel as well if we are going to ever do agility, will probably only be next year but might as well train him to heel both sides while we are at it. His heeling has come along so much in the last 3 weeks I am very happy. I'm pretty sure that for competition your commands need to be one word only. If you're planning on competing you may want to rethink this command.

I just use whatever club is closest to me and do my own thing, I move in and out of classes as it suits me and quite often do something else while in class anyway! I too would love to meet up with a group of like minded trainers but unfortunately we're all spread helter skelter across the city and it would be a mission to organise something!

well Ella is progressing along nicely with her retraining of the seek back. I'm still dropping it at the start peg and I can do as many turns as I like and walk a good distance from the start peg (currently going about normal distance for a trial but will probably extend that longer just to make sure) and she rockets back to the start peg to start looking for the article now! I think in the next few sessions I'll start to drop it a step or two from the peg and start increasing how far from the peg it is gradually! But she's come along soo far since I started retraining it! On another note she did a lovely scent discrimination under distraction this arvo! There's all these kids in the park behind my house and I put the articles out next to a path and as I was doing it I had a few kids come up and ask what I was doing. They ended up hanging around about 2-3 metres from my articles watching and there were other kids walking along the path nearby too and she didn't even look at them! I'm gonna have to start finding more distracting places to train now to really proof her!

Huski - There is one just near the blunder road round about that goes over the ipswich motorway - it's behind the bunnings! Sometimes I really do love living in Durack... I can get home cook dinner etc and leave at oh may 6:25pm LOL :D

I think it's partially excitement related but it usually this means that the dog is trying to win the game by dominating you. If you just ignore him till he stops he'll quickly learn that it doesn't win him the toy/game and he'll learn that the only way to win it is by doing what you say! My GIRL used to do this in the early stages of training to try and win the game, I always felt really stupid with this female puppy (around 12 months old at the time) humping my leg! But ignoring the behaviour made it stop within a few weeks. What I did is I told him 'no', ( yes I do say no to my dog ) walked inside and left him outside for 15 mins. When I went back and tried the tug again he sat nicely when I took the tug off him Good work! That's a good way to handle it and he'll learn pretty quickly that humping isn't going to get him the tug! Did I miss something? Is Ptolomy in QLD or Huski are you down south???

I think it's partially excitement related but it usually this means that the dog is trying to win the game by dominating you. If you just ignore him till he stops he'll quickly learn that it doesn't win him the toy/game and he'll learn that the only way to win it is by doing what you say! My GIRL used to do this in the early stages of training to try and win the game, I always felt really stupid with this female puppy (around 12 months old at the time) humping my leg! But ignoring the behaviour made it stop within a few weeks.

As I feed my dogs breakfast I don't tend to feed them the day of a trial, or only a small amount especially if it's a day time trial or an early afternoon trial. I don't use food rewards for trialling but I'd rather they not have a belly full of food when I'm trying to get the most out of them. In the early stages of training I did limit the toys that my dog had access to, she got things like treat dispensing toys but nothing super exciting as I was trying to build desire for the toys that I trained with. Now that she's beyond that stage of training and I've fostered a very high desire for anything I've got she has free access to squeekies and chew toys and all kinds of things and I don't feel that it affects her drive. In the early days I would make sure that during training sessions she only had access to my toy but now she can work with all her other toys strewn across the yard and doesn't even notice they are there. I tend not to train my dog the day of a competition but will usually do a normal session the day/night before. She never has access to other dogs, at the moment she's my only dog and when I have multiple dogs I tend to run them separately anyway. She doesn't mix well with other dogs and also doesn't have a big desire to play with them. But if she did I would definitely deprive her of this to the extent where she could only play with boring dogs and only play for short periods of time. I also limit what other people can do with her, pats are allowed for a short while but after that she is ignored otherwise she just gets a bit obsessed about getting cuddles and that's not something I want. I don't tend to allow people to play games with her or feed her and I'm forever yelling at my husband for getting her all worked up and excited for no reason! If she's on a break from competition my rules do tend to be relaxed and I will allow her more pats/cuddles and I do allow short games of fetch but once she's back in competition this all stops unless it's from me. I think this is probably the only way I really deprive her and I do so because she has such a high value for other people and getting pats that I don't want to risk her starting to value a stranger as potentially more rewarding than me when we're in a competition ring.

Ok am going back to dropping at at the start peg but I think I'll still drop it behind me as I really don't think she needs to see it drop as she is very obviously using her nose to find it. Hopefully things will start to click into place for her soon! ETA: Update on this afternoon's session, I did about 4 or 5 short seek backs this arvo, I dropped the article at the peg for all of them and on the last 3 I did a turn (both directions) and for every one she went back to the start peg and started looking from there! I wasn't further than maybe 10 metres from the article on any of them but the corners didn't confuse her one bit after doing a few straight ones first! I think I must have been making it too hard for her by dropping it near the start peg rather than consistently dropping it at the start peg to begin with! Fingers crossed that we can fix our problem reasonable quickly!

I've been dropping it behind me always within a metre of the start peg, she is definitely using her nose to follow the track back to the start peg at the moment and if she doesn't find it on the way to the start peg she starts searching back towards me along the track. I don't think I need to start dropping it at my feet but maybe I should make sure I drop it at the start peg for the time being rather than somewhere within the first 2 or 3 paces?

Quick update on Ella's retraining of the seek back. So far we can very consistently do a straight seek back of around 10-15 paces/meters. But if I push it past that she gets confused and runs about half way back to the start peg and then starts searching randomly from there. The couple of times that I have added a small corner (after only doing maybe 5 meters straight ahead and only a few paces after the turn) she seems to get lost and start searching everywhere. Should I just keep her on straight ones and keep increasing the distance? Or how do I get her to take the idea of following the track around a corner? I'm sure she'll get it eventually it's just that this is the one exercise that is holding us up from getting into the ring and I'm getting a bit impatient!

I do something similar with my foot work except I have my feet doing the exact opposite to the diagram! For a right turn I point my right foot on a 90 degree angle to the right and then swing my left foot around and the same for the left turn, point left 90 degrees with the left foot and then swing the right around. So I don't actually make a T but I still give a signal as to which way we are going for the dog. However I think the T is better for the right turn as it's probably a bit clearer than what I do. But there is no way I'm changing my footwork now, I've been doing it this way for 10 years I don't think I'm going to be able to change any time soon!!! I have enough trouble changing hand signals after all these years!

I knew a dog once that was such a pale red that you would have thought it was white unless you had it out in full sun where you could *just* see the faintest hints of the red colour. This pup will quite possible be like that.

I know a senior judge and I have asked this person if it was right that competitors were being pinged for putting their hands in a different position before the recall, and after the recall. This particular judge was adamant that there was no penalty!!! This person is a senior judge and is a current judge. I would not risk the change of hand position myself because it comes down to who your judge is on the day. It was a senior judge who picked me up on this and I asked another couple of senior judges who all agreed that that hands must return to the same position as they started in. That said the same senior judge said they'd ping me for my foot work as they would consider it a double signal as well - when I stop for a halt I take a longer slower step with my right foot and then bring my left foot up in line. Some people take a shorter step before stopping, I just take a longer one and this person was adament that they consider it a double command. There's a reason I choose not to trial under them ever. Needless to say I will be enrolling in the judges training program later this year so I'm sure I'll have LOTS AND LOTS of questions to test out all the senior judges!!

k9pro: http://www.k9pro.com.au Steve has some really great long lines! The ones with rubber in the middle are really good for grip, I have one of the 15ft softer nylon type lines which is really really lovely.

It's not something I've heard of (and I'm SE Qld). The only thing I've been told is no matter where you choose to have your hand you should keep that position for the whole ring workout ie. don't let your hand swing one minute and then hold it to your waist the next minute as this could be seen as a double signal I know of a couple of judges here in QLD who don't like the hand on the hip thing, if you have both hands held across your middle it's fine but one down by your side and one up could get penalised by certain judges. My biggest issue with hands is when giving commands like retrieve or go to the box and putting my hands back to the same position that they started in... I might start with hands by my side when I throw the dumbell and after the command to retrieve put them at my middle and then give the command, I keep getting told off for that! At my first CCD trial I got pinged every time I looked at my dog... lost 12 points in total on the heeling which was a combination of looking my dog and her bumping into my leg which the judge considered crowding.

Hey Kathq! Looks like you and I will be debuting in UD together! I'm almost ready for UD too... still got a few issues with seek back and gloves on occasions but am feeling confident that we'll be in the ring withint the next 2 or 3 months! Sorry got nothing to offer in the way of help with your gloves but I like Ptolomy's sugestions and will try some of them myself!

This is what I do, rather than have my head up and looking dead straight ahead I keep it at about a 45 degree angle looking at the ground a few metres ahead this way I can keep an eye on where my dog is without making direct eye contact.