Seita

I normally don't train for a day or two before a trial but I've been soo busy these last few weeks that I just didn't get a chance to do much with Ella. As for your question... nope, I would probably do very little training aside from basic reminding the dogs of the rules of the house etc and maybe some tricks. There's no way I would train this regularly and to this sort of level if I wasn't doing it for competition.

Sooo... it's been a while since I was here, and on the weekend I discovered what happens when I don't train for 2 weeks and then turn up at a trial! I MAKE MISTAKES but my dog actually nails everything!!! I stupidly gave her a really dodgy finish command after the seekback which looked suspiciously like a distance control drop signal and well she did the drop! We then discovered ants nests while doing scent discrim which resulted in some lost points for not sitting after a finish... but she actually did it all for the first time in like 4/5 trials! We ran out of points for even a quallie in the end (169) mostly cos of the 10 points I lost us for that blasted finish/drop signal! Note to self - if I decide not to train my dog I should ensure that I do train myself!

Ella used to do this when I was training for UD! If she heard even someone in the ring next to us say drop she would start to anticipate it! I can stir you a little here and say I've got a working UDX change of positions with Ella, however that's all I have for UDX I'm too scared to try and train the rest while still polishing up our UD stuff!!

try contacting Jane Harper from Dogsontrack she's the only person here in QLD who I would recommend.

Sorry to pick out your comment corvus, but I can't see why anyone "NEEDS" the flexibility to mix up the rewards. If a dog clearly works best for reward A why does reward B NEED to be just as good? I think this is just us humans wanting to control things to the nth degree; honestly what difference does it make to the dogs training to have it accept all rewards equally?

why do you need the dog to take both in the same session? Why can't you simply use one or the other in a certain session? I'd just use whatever makes the dog tick best... My girl is very very very tug motivated and moderately food motivated, I use food for situations where I want her to remain a bit calmer or when teaching a behaviour and tug when I want her giving her absolute best with loads of enthusiasm.

ok a shaping question, how long before you add a cue to a behaviour? I started shaping hand touches last night with Mack and also did some more work on getting him to pick up an article. At the moment there are no cues, I hold my hand out and he comes over and puts his nose on my palm or I hold the article and he will usually put his mouth around it (we're not at the holding it stage yet) - would you put cues on these behaviours now or wait longer?

Here you go guys!!! Wish away! :D My goals will depend on whether I breed a litter from Ella or not... if yes then I hope to actually make it to a trial next year, if no then I bloody well want my OC!

Goodness, I've still got one trial left for the year and haven't got a clue what my goals are for next year but cos you guys asked I'll start a new one up for you!

Some plans but who knows how much will actually happen! I want to do some tidying up of our UD work and some basic agility stuff (maybe weaves) with Ella... and with Mack all I want to work on is teaching him heel (he hasn't been taught it at all yet!)

You should come for a drive to Sydney and do some trialling I hope to do this some day, or at least some trials in northern NSW for something a bit different. Most likely won't happen next year though....

you should enter sunny coast's trial at the end of the month! I think they're still taking late entries!!! That's gonna be my last one and then there's nothing until the end of January boo hoo

And then there's the other one that says that you always have to win a game of tug so your dog doesn't think it's in charge.... I don't believe any of it. My dog likes to tug so I reward her with that, like RubyStar said earlier as long as you teach the retrieve correctly you shouldn't have a problem.

I was 10 and persuaded/coerced/argued etc my way into getting a puppy for my 11th birthday. We already had leo a 9 year old Ridgeback but there was no way he was going to be trained! LOL So Lilly entered the scene as an 8 week old from a local farm where their GSDXMastiff girl had had an affair with the ACD down the road! I wanted a dog like Lassie that did what it was told and was clever and obedient etc so off to dog school we went. Lilly was a superstar and flew threw the classes quickly but it wasn't meant to be and at 8 months she ventured onto the road and was hit by a car. Next up was Buddy who came along pretty quickly after Lilly, he was a border collie/kelpie mix of a local dairy farm... and boy was he a pain! We progressed SLOWLY through obedience classes till we finally reached trialling classes and were able to start competeing. Back in those days here in QLD you weren't allowed to compete with a crossbred or non-papered dog but all the clubs up in far north QLD ran seperate comps at each trial just for the non-peds, there were quite a few of us doing it. Needless to say Buddy never gained a pass in obedience but agility on the other hand was his forte! He gained his AD and JD (JD was still a new comp when we started) easily and I think he got a few passes in either/both ADX and JDX before he was retired with a shoulder injury at 8 years old. By the time Buddy was 3/4 I was kind of hooked on this dog sports thing and in came Seita (the girl in my avatar) my first pure border collie. In comparison to Buddy, Seita was a dream to train and own! She had little trouble getting her CD, AD, JD and ET and had begun trialling in Open but kept blowing something different at each trial. Her trialling career kind of ended when I moved to Brisbane for uni, and even though she tagged along with me I had no car and no means of joining a club. Tragically I lost her at 5 years old to a tick while on a holiday back up north with her. Ella came along a few years after Seita had passed away and from day dot she was in preparations for becoming a competition dog. I had learnt alot about training with the previous dogs, both Lilly and Buddy were trained with check chains, Seita was trained with most praise and very little correction due to her soft nature... Ella was trained to be insane! With a tug toy of course! Ella stormed into the rings at just under 2 years old and flew through CCD, CD and CDX within 6 months and with straight passes. Then we had 18 months off while completeing our show title and training for UD and she hit the UD rings this year and has in the few short months we've been trialling completed her UD title and has come SOOOOO close to getting an OC twice now! Needless to say I think I might be hooked!

Up in North Qld we had an american bulldog doing agility which I'd have to say would be one of the hardest breeds to do agility with due to their size and shape. I've also seen afghans in obedience. There's a guy here in brissie who trains pomeranians - one has it's UD the other has just started in CCD. We've got a guy at our obedience club who is planning to start trialling his greyhound in obedience next year. And I recently saw someone with Dachounds (sorry it's early and I can't get the spelling) trialling in obedience.

Stitch, she's located up near Caboolture somewhere and tends to do a lot of consults at Redcliffe but I know she will do her best to meet you somewhere suitable for both of you. I also highly recommend her!

Boo Hoo for me tonight! Ella decided that dropping the box was the go yet again so lost 10 points there between the 2 send aways and then could not for the life her find her wood article, she went over it several times and it obviously did not smell right tonight, no trouble with the others. She ended up with 170NQ as everything else she did was sensational!!!

What date is the seminar in Feb? 11th - 13th Oh ok. I won't be going then as I want to save my money for the Mia Skogster seminar held in Brisbane end of Feb. Can't beat training with the current world champ! http://www.metrodogsport.com/metro_2010_005.htm do both!!! I'm planning to!

just got home from a training session and am pleased that Ella was able to find her seekback despite the ground being nearly completely covered in water! I now know that if I ever have to trial in puddles she should be able to find her article! She has so far had to work in ankle deep mud, gale force winds, torrential rain and on grounds that smelt overpoweringly like fertilizer (to me, I can only imagine how strong it was for her!)!!!

woo hoo!!!! well done LP!!!

This talk on fitness is really interesting. I've never put much thought into it and focussed mostly on mental fitness but after Ella had her tick last year and then we started trialling in UD this year I've realised that I need to do more work with her on her fitness. I've been doing bike work mostly with her but I only get out about once a week (I'm trying to increase that) and we probably do maybe 3kms at the moment with the view of increasing that up to maybe 6kms over time. My previous dogs did agilty as well as obedience so there was a bigger focus on fitness with them and they got daily walks every morning.

no luck for us tonight, she seems to have broken her articles again....

This is UNACCEPTABLE!!! LOL Hope you can make it I need a vidoe taker-er!! Cos we're gonna get an OC leg tonight!!!

As huski said it works alot on leadership and that bond you build with your dog but that said there is no reason why you can't train a dog while it's learning to work in drive that it has to work for anyone who uses the right commands etc. Schutzhund people do it all the time with dogs that are trained over in Europe being exported to other places and be expected to work with other people. I just don't have the need to teach my dog to work for others in drive, my OH has less than zero interest in dogs but if he was keen I'd work on teaching my dogs to work for him the same way they work for me. Well my dogs are usually not fit, I do little in the way of phsyical exercise with them and focus more on brain work and training and fun games etc. It was never an issue until I hit UD which conincidentally for me was also after Ella had a tick which really knocked her around. I have no idea if she would have had the stamina to do a whole UD run out pre tick as she wasn't ready yet for that but she certainly didn't have the fitness to do a full run out at the start of this year after the tick. I never thought fitness was a huge thing but I'm beginning to think that a dog who is fit will have an advantage in the ring... this is something I am trying to improve on with Ella and it'll be interesting to see how her improving fitness affects her performance in the ring :-) Either with a friend or in a small group but only if they train similarly to me, it's more fun than training alone, it's nice to have someone watch what you might be doing wrong/right etc, it's easier to work with another person or a small group when you're training for distractions etc etc. I hate training in big classes as it's a pain to watch out for where everyone else is. But I mostly train on my own as I don't have the ability to train with one or more others who are like minded with training.

Touching on the showing comment you made Ptolomy, yes I would let someone else show my dogs even Ella but using different commands but that's different to my obedience work where alot of what I get out of Ella I think is due to both the drive training I've done but also the bond I have with her. But you've got me curious now... I want to know what she'd do if someone else took her! LOL