Seita

I think it depends on the judge and also the state. I think some states are more lenient on this, whereas in QLD you would be heavily docked for continuously looking at your dog.

wow Huski she's going great guns!! C ;) She's picked it up soo fast! Can I pick too? You step into her when you ask her to heel before you leave her to put the article out... I'll bet that you probably do this in other places in training too! You'll get pinged big time if you do it in a trial so try to avoid making it a habit! I know all about bad habits... particularly with my hands, I have to really concentrate on what I do with them before I give a command and after I give a command and in between!!!

That sounds great DagBoy :D Went to the post office today to get a money order for the seminar. The lady asked me who to make it out to and when I said "dancing with dogs QLD" she gave me a funny look and said "Should I even ask...?" Sounds like you are going to need to get a cheque book! Paying for a money order for every trial is going to start costing you a bit!!

On the topic of heeling, I don't care if my dog doesn't prance, all I want is her right beside me looking at me. I don't care for the UK/schutzhund style of heeling where the dog leans on you and has it's head wrapped around your leg (the bigger the dog the easier it is to see this) as this is definitely crowing and it's a pain the butt to walk in a straight line with a dog doing this! :D I'm really fussy about body position beside me, I want shoulders in line with my left leg at all times with her touching my leg (having a coated dog helps here!), any further ahead and judges up here will dock you big time and I also don't want a dog behind me either as that can lead to lagging. I do tolerate brief glances away during heeling but I preffer that my dog looks at me continually but I also know that I don't train enough on this to get it all the time.

I've been pinged for crowding back in the early classes, not the whole way through the heel pattern but in some sections particularly coming up to a right or right about turn. I've worked really hard to ensure Ella doesn't push into me when heeling, rather walks along very closely looking at me. If you can feel a dog pushing against you or coming across the front of your leg then that will be classified as crowding. There is a difference between being able to feel the dog closely at your leg and feeling it push into you.

Well I put a post up and did several short seek backs, around 5 metres in a straight line and she tended to run straight back the way we walked to the post and if she found it on the way she'd bring it back, if she didn't and got to the post she tended to start searching along the track which is great. She did get a bit lost a few times and headed off away from where we'd walked so I'll keep it short and straight for another session or two before increasing the distance or adding turns. Here's hoping it doesn't take too long to retrain this!

Seita how did you originally teach Ella seekback. Just a side note - when I first put UD together for Beans I would send her to find her seekback and she would head in totally the opposite direction that I had come, looking in areas that I hadn't even walked - eventually she would end up back at the start post and find the article - I went back to baby seekbacks - so would often face the star post area - and then the penny dropped. To increase the speed after she had picked the article up I would click and take off running away from her and she would coming running after me at the rate of knots - it didn't take long to improve her speed. I originally taught her by dropping the article and walking a few steps past it before turning around and sending her to find it. I think I moved from there too quickly to doing longer ones and then when I added turns I think she had no real idea on how to search for it. I used to play the find it game where I would hide an object in the yard or house and let her go find it and I think now when I do a seek back she reverts back to that so just runs around willy nilly looking for it. She finds it most of the time it's just very excrutiating to watch as it can take 5 or even 10 minutes to find some days. And the longer it takes to find the more stressed and tired out she becomes which is not really a good state for her to be in for the rest of the trial. Do you always train it with a start post? I was toying with the idea of setting up a post and training her to go back to it and search from there but I'm possibily to lazy to set up a post most of the time! I was hoping to teach her to search from where we stop back along the track but I'm just not entirely sure of the best way to re-teach this.

Yeh I figured as short as possible, it's just at this stage it sometimes takes quite a few seconds for Ella to lock onto a glove and I'm not going to send her before she's looking at the right one. I was just curious as to how long would be acceptable so I can aim for a certain length! Ok another question, has anyone got any good methods/articles on teaching the seek back. I tried teaching it as a game and Ella definitely does look and sniff for it but I really want her to follow my track a bit closer to help her find it faster as sometimes she spends several very very long minutes searching for it. At the moment I send her and she sort of runs all over the place partially air scenting and partially with her nose on the ground. However I don't think she fully understands how to follow the track as she seems to follow it for a bit and then heads off in a random direction. On top of that she will often go off searching a very long way from where we've previously walked looking for it. I'm looking a bit into how people train dogs to track and trying to adapt that a bit but thought some of you guys might have some good ideas.

can anyone help me?

Hey UD people! Does anyone know how long is acceptable for giving a signal on the directed retrieve? I think my signal is a bit extended still and need to shorten it but I don't know how short I need to aim for. Would 5 seconds be too long?

Huski - Dog world says it starts at 6:45pm until 9pm. Tilly - I'd say that there would still be spaces left, it'll be in the big function room at Durack and a lot of people fit in there!!!

I always pick the naughty ones too! I bring a rag or something like that (a leash works too) along and drag it along the ground to look for puppies who have interest in toys and are keen to play with it or even tug it. I preffer to train dogs with toys and games rather than food so I look for that. Another test that some people recommend is taking the puppy away from the litter, if possible to somewhere that the pup hasn't been before or not often and see what the pups confidence is like away from it's mates and in an unfamiliar environment. See if puppy will play there or show interest in food/toys and you etc. I have a big thing about nerves, I want dogs that have strong nerves and aren't going to freak out about little things so this is pretty important to me. The last pup I had I bred myself so I had an advantage with the testing. But the next pup will be coming from someone else so I'll be putting these things into practice in a few months time myself! I hope it's easy to pick your puppy!!

Thanks for bumping this up! I saw it in the dog world and thought I should go along to that but would have forgotten! Cheque is in the mail now!

That's not boring! At least she makes an effort to stop!!! My girl used to come in so fast and never ever stopped in time. She thought the object of the game was to run as fast as she could and then at the last moment launch herself at my stomach!!! I fell over, and got winded a few times with this stunt! But it's great that she's got such an enthusiastic recall!!!

That's the other reason I do mine on the ground, my dog works them so quickly that if their on a mat she scatters them and they roll all over the place. This doesnt happen as much on the ground. I guess the benefit of the mat (at least here in QLD, you guys probably wouldn't have these issues) would be that the dogs can see the articles clearly and it should act as a barrier from ants and things like that, both of which are issues here in QLD with some of our really terrible grounds! Long grass, lumpy ground etc all make it hard to see the articles and some grounds have real problems with ants. I want to trial on your grounds they sound lovely!!! 10 years ago I was at a club up in North QLD and I think from memory most people used a mat up there, down here in Brissy and after a few years break from trialling it's probably around 50-50. Maybe we're all a bit backwards over here! LOL

WOW the only person who used a mat! That's crazy! We have heaps of people use mats here in QLD, the mat gets put out along with the box and jumps etc as standard in every ring! I'm too lazy to set a mat up for training so the ground it is for me!

you've got to love them for trying occasionally, don't you! Mine are the same, their eyes light up, just in case, . Keisha, I would also add that it is definitely possible to have a high drive, willing dog who only plays on your terms. In fact I would say dogs that understand this tend to have better drives than those who don't. I know lots of people who are worried about losing enthusiasm if they don't play whenever the dogs want, but I don't feel it works that way..at least not with mine & plenty of others I know. Agreed! Just look at working dogs of any kind - police, detector dogs, herding dogs etc, they all get penned/crated/chained etc when not working and only get brought out to work when they owners/handlers say so. Those dogs are all high drive and being treated this way doesn't stop them from doing their jobs well.

I have a dog who is pretty busy. I am much the same as vickie, play/games/training etc happens on my terms only. I never do anything with a dog who is pushing me to do something, whether that's bringing a toy to me, offering me behaviours, barking etc etc. I would ignore the dogs (no eye contact or verbal communication) until they calm down and then praise gentle/quietly, crating them may also help to get the point across. If I walk outside my girl immediately springs to life in hopes that we're doing something, if we're not she quickly calms down and relaxes. She never brings me toys to play with or offers me behaviours when not asked and pretty much just lounges around when I'm not doing something with her.

nah it's not a snatch and grab problem it was a pick up each article and taste it and then put it down and move on to the next one problem. She never really did a snatch sort of thing. She just didn't learn quick enough that the exercise was to sniff each article and bring the right one back, she thought for some time that the object was to taste and test each article to find the right one! Like I said she's past it now and does them properly, I was just curious if anyone else has ever encountered this problem or what they would do to avoid it... I would like to know so that when the time comes to train another dog I won't make the same mistake again!!

Hey on the topic of scent discrimination. Those who have trained the dog scout method (or any other method I guess) do you use food to help scent the articles or not? And if you do how quickly do you phase it out? I used a lot of food to scent both my hands and the articles and created a dog who picked each article up to "test" if it was the right one. I don't think I phased the food out fast enough and it's taken AGES to move past this picking up problem. I think we've pretty much gotten over it now but it's taken sooo long! I'm just curious really!

We have a dog at training who carries on like crazy when his owner is instructing a class. The owner has tried a husher and it certainly stops the dog from barking all the time. The dog lies down and moans and whines instead now which I guess is better than the noise of him barking but not actually solving the problem. If I needed to stop a dog barking I think I would rather use one of the various types of bark collars rather than a mussle.

I just saw in the Feb dog world (I didn't recieve the March one for some reason) at the front in the notices section there was a list of proposed judges training dates at a variety of clubs. The next one is around 24th April by the looks of it.

Not yet, I'll be enrolling in the program this year and I think the intake is around August/September so I don't think anyone will have the pleasure of being judged by me until next year most likely.

Awesome! Perhaps both our dogs will be debuting in their class come May! Although I think you should post a video I won't be doing any day time trials just yet so Southside is out, she was still pretty puffed by the end of the runout last night and it was a reasonably cool night. Perhaps towards the end of winter she'll be right to cope through a day time trial. And sorry no videos at this stage!

Well I decided to test out how fit my girl was tonight by doing as much of a UD run out as she could manage. Turns out she could get through a whole one! And all exercises were quite respectable until she got the wrong glove... So I think with a bit more proofing she'll be heading out into the scary world of UD trials within the next 2 months!!!