Seita

All I can say is WOW! Very impressive!

I went to bunnings and bought some materials to make my own stick in the ground type poles and the concept was fantastic until I realised that most of my yard is pretty much rock hard and even with a hammer I can't get the bloody stakes into the ground! LOL I've found one soft patch where I can fit four poles so that's what we're using until I can get around to buying or making some proper ones!

I did see those on ebay and wondered if that was what the person I was talking to today meant and I also wondered about the gap difference? I too would be interested in hearing if people noticed anything from switching between different spacings???

My project for the rest of the year is to teach my dog to weave. I've started her on 2x2 at an agility club but we haven't progressed very far mostly due to my lack of practice! But I have time now and want to get some poles for training at home. I'm not ready to buy the full on metal based 2x2 poles and have been looking around at different inexpensive options. I was told today about some plastic based sets that you can buy but after extensive googling I haven't found them, does anyone know of these?? I would love some options, I will probably start with stakes in the ground but my girl is a little nuts and I forsee problems with knocking these over!

Ella and I did our endurance test at Laidley this morning too and passed with flying colours.

And another not quite so big brag from us but Ella and I did our Endurance Test today. We had the same judge from yesterday who thought that I was being a little greedy getting two titles in one weekend! LOL

wine yes, no bubbles though! LOL OI! Technically there WERE bubbles! :p True true! But I didn't know there was going to be bubbly when I made that comment! LOL ;)

wine yes, no bubbles though! LOL

Well we did it! Ella won the ring and got the final pass towards her OC today at the Border Collie Trial. :D Very pleased with my girlie!

Seita's method doesn't involve any heelwork, but what was the reason for you not wanting to teach her to track? (sorry I only briefly read through the last few pages - lots to catch up on!) It's not that I don't want to teach her to track, I do, I just don't want her walking with me (heelwork or not heelwork). If she's walking with me, she might think it's a new level of sloppy heelwork I would accept in this exercise I want to keep it informal. I am not knocking Seita's method, I just want to try some of the other suggestions first as I feel they would fit me better at the current stage Just thought I'd clarify here, I was suggesting leaving the dog in a stay at the start of the track, then walking it yourself and returning to the dog and then sending the dog so no heeling involved. I haven't done it myself but am seriously considering it as we're having trouble with forward heel work at the moment and I also don't want to encourage less than perfect heeling either. I'm just trying to decide if I keep trying to get my OC and then retrain this or if I just take her out of competition now and fix everything properly and then head back into competition and finish my OC then. I might decide after this weekends trial performance.

I'm about to go back to basics and retrain my seekback completely as I want my dog to track it properly so I would teach the dog to track. Something that might work with your dogs is start out only a short distance, walk forward dropping a treat every step only a few steps to start with and then build up, leave something for them to find and then retrace your steps back to the beginning (doesn't have to be perfect but near enough) and then send your dog. Being a lab she'll check every step for a treat until she gets to the end and then finds the item. It's been suggested to me to use something other than your normal seekback article and mix it up so the dog really learns to use it's nose. Then over time build up to longer distances, decrease how much food you are dropping and then add turns. This is what I'm going to use with Ella when I go back to basics to teach her this properly. I want this exercise to be useful and at the moment it's not, if I dropped my keys in the park she wouldn't have a hope of finding them! There aren't supposed to be and it should be in normal pace but you do get some special judges who like to mix things up. We have one judge here in QLD who always puts a drop in her pattern and then drops the article where you stopped to make it easier for the dog to find but technically it's not allowed.

I practiced this again today and we put the articles out really far apart (not intentionally but it may have helped) and I only sent her from around a metre from the articles again and she didn't mouth any articles at all and was nice a confident on them. I'll try another one during the next week and put them quite spread out to see if that makes any difference. I'll keep experimenting with different set ups for a while and see what makes a difference and what doesn't. But at this stage it looks like we're improving.

Jane Harper is the only person I would recommend

Well I did another one last night on the lounge room floor and again had no picking up of the wrong articles. She was really hyped up and super excited. We did it from less than a metre away and didn't bother with about turns as I was sitting on the couch and didn't want to move LOL! I'll keep doing it from a shorter distance for a while before I increase the distance again.

Is anyone here doing the Ipswich ET on the 31st?? I'm not looking forward to the early start to get there but I think we've done enough training to do it!

We went to the dog club on Monday night and did one (at around a metre from the articles) and had no snatching... although I mucked up the order I normally do the articles in and because she knows I always do metal first she brought me back the wrong article, she had indicated the right one but decided that it must be a metal that I was sending her for and brought me the closest metal, NRM and she went back and picked up the right one. Apparently I need to mix up the order a little more often to keep her guessing and make sure she doesn't try to be clever if I make a mistake. But aside from that one thing she did the rest perfectly, no snatching or picking up wrong ones and she even managed to do nice turns, presents and I did a finish after one of the articles and she nailed that too! I probably won't have time to do another one until the weekend so we'll see how that goes.

Unfortunately for you, there isn't really a choice of clubs in Bundy but that doesn't mean you can't train on your own and do well. I trained Ella at home, in parks etc and only took her to an obedience club a few weeks before her first trial in CCD for some extra proofing. Do lots of research, ask as many questions as you can and above all make training a positive thing so that your dog loves to work for you - this will translate across into the trial ring.

Yep I'll be there... unless she puts things together for me at the border collie trial on the 30th and then maybe I'll take the night off. And if we don't do any good at the border trial or at logan I'm considering a road trip to Rockhampton for their double trial mid August! Wanna join me? LOL

WOOOO HOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THAT"S FANTASTIC KATH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And sooo good that despite you having a brain fade you guys still kept it together! SOOO HAPPY FOR YOU!!!!

I think you need to trust your breeder more, and if you can't trust them, maybe they aren't the breeder for you. The breeder has spent seven or eight weeks with the puppies, seen them every day in a ton of different situations and has likely done temperament testing etc on them (especially if they are a serious sports breeder). They will also have had an extensive chat with you about what you want and expect. I would trust them to pick the right puppy for you given all their experience and time with the pups over the impression you build (even if you go and see them a few times). To add in my 2 cents worth in here... trusting the breeder is one thing if they have proven that they know what their doing with assessing puppies (like if they compete in some sort of sport) but realistically there are some breeders that really have no idea. I have spoken to soo many breeders who have absolutely no idea on temperment and will place a pup in any old home. My current bitch is from such a breeder, she let me pick what ever I wanted first before she simply gave the rest of the puppy buyers have their pick... thankfully I ended up with Ella and not some pet home who wanted a calm friendly dog who would cope in the backyard with a half hour walk! Picking the right breeder is probably as important as picking the right puppy. To the OP - have you considered looking interstate for a good breeder? The right breeder/puppy isn't always in your state.

You might need to go to a park and do all of this again, until she is using her nose right from the word go. And remember BABY Steps all the way. Even though you have moved out to the full distance again, I would still go back in close until she is doing them all with out snatch and grab at least 40 times.. ( and that is not all in one day) I'll take it on the road next week. We're stuck at home at the moment because she's in season!

I love the tail!!! Especially when she leaves the dog for the recall, the tail just didn't stop!

well I tried one in the dark last night really close to the articles and we had no grabbing the wrong one at all... and I just tried again on the lounge room floor in full light from quite close to start with and then by the 3rd article moved it out to full distance and still no grabbing. Clearly my front yard and lounge room aren't exciting enough... I'll test it out with my hubby putting the articles out for me tomorrow and see if we get more/less excitement. Gee I hope it's not just trials where she gets over the top and does silly things... how do I fix that?

This is a hard one as you do not want to kill her confidence. But a few things come to mind to ask you. Is a mat that you send her to? Do you use an exciting voice to encourage her to go out? Are you too close/far away from the pile? Have you used the tie down method (sp?) to see if that helps? And what have you done to help her understand the exercise? I would start all over again, but use only a hand signal if it my voice that was making her too excited..... Standing in close so that there is no speed build up but where you can build up the confidence is good. Baby steps backwards till you get to the 5mtres. Others will have some ideas too.. Yeah I'm struggling with what to do to fix it without killing the exercise! I taught it using the dogscouts method and it's really just an excitement thing as once she grabs the first article and realises that it's not right she spits it out and starts using her nose to find the right one. I don't use a hand signal as she's super reactive to my body movements and I use a very very very calm voice command to send her to the articles. They are not on a mat, I work her on the ground. I like the suggestion about shortening the distance to the articles, I'll give it a try tonight and see if it makes any difference. She very rarely brings the wrong article back but I'm trying to eliminate all the random things we lose points for! 2 points off for grabbing the wrong article because she's excited is bugging me! This is not the only thing we're tidying up, she's completely over the top for alot of a trial and I'm trying to keep the excitement but get it under a bit more control so we stop losing copious amounts of points!

So I'm asking this from a UD Scent Discrimination point of view but I guess it could translate across to any scent work really. I have a very excitable dog who sometimes gets a little over the top on her articles and will rush out to the pile and grab the first article she sees, she then remembers what she's supposed to be doing, spits it out and works the pile like she should. I haven't done anything about it as I wanted to work on her getting her confident on her articles but I think it's time to stop her from doing this alltogether. She's been doing them for almost 2 years now so I think she knows the exercise well enough and is just letting her excitement override her head. So my question is, what would you do to stop her from doing this? I was thinking along the lines of giving her a NRM the moment she picks up the wrong one and calling her away from articles but I'm hesitant to do anything as I don't want to confuse her or cause her to lose some of her confidence. Thanks!!