J...

She is gorgeous DiscoDobe - how old is she? I really love the smooth coated BC's, but have also kind of considered the idea of a smaller dog for agility. If a boy version of Elsie came along here in Vic I'd have a very hard time saying no Good luck for your first trial :D

I know you're looking at purebred Labs, but I have a Lab x Kelpie who is my very first dog and we do agility. Darce has been mistaken as a working line Lab more than once. Despite my early shitty training and handling of her she does an awesome job in agility. She's very capable of mixing it with the fastest dogs in Vic at Masters level, yet has the best off-switch where she will fall asleep in my lap in between trialling runs. I keep her lean and fit - she sits around 21 kg. I am very conscious that she is carrying that extra weight and I don't do any repetitive work for fitness such as ball throwing unless there is water involved. There is also a pure yellow lab here in Vic who is a very drivey young dog, he is doing a great job in Excellent/Masters level.

To earn a MACH you have to earn so many what they call QQ's - I have no idea what exactly constitutes a double Q. In Aus we have the old Agility Champion (Ag Ch) which was 10 x 1sts and 10 x placings in Agility and Jumping respectively. Now we have the new Ag Ch (height) which means that every height competes against itself for points. 1st in your height being 25 points, 2nd being 20 and 3rd being 15, with 10 points for a pass. You need 500 points in each Agility and Jumping to qualify. Each new Agility Champion also has their height noted - so Ag Ch (500). The new one is an attempt to make it fair for the steady but consistent dogs who rarely win but get plenty of passes, as well as the dogs in other height categories other than the 500 dogs. Unfortunately it's now become a bit lopsided when we have a lot of 500 dogs and a small handful of other height categories. It's made it much harder for the 500 dogs to earn their Ag Ch, but far easier for the other height categories. Edited to add: Out of curiosity I took a look at the MACH qually - to me it sounds like qualifying in Masters Agility and Masters Jumping at the same trial would be a QQ, and you need 20 of them for a MACH, plus 750 points which you earn for being under course time (1 point per 1 second under SCT).

Mock trials are fine for training, that's what they are for. SA is lucky in that they seem to do a few, we only get them every few years Most people do the occasional training in the ring, just as long as you don't push it - especially with the wrong judges. A judge yelling at a Novice handler is poor form, ask some seasoned triallers who the more understanding judges are to enter under - some are far more tolerant than others. Sadly your instructor isn't on their own not taking in the latest information, even in regards to simple good dog training. The negative attitude towards anything like that shits me to tears so I train on my own these days 95% of the time, and I don't have the backyard for it either. Most of my training is done on the flat or by carting my gear in and out which is bloody time consuming, but if I want to train that's what I have to do.

This - you need to be working on your transitions so there is no faffing around in front of the start line obstacle. Your dog should know what her start line procedure is, and when you ask for it she should give it now - no matter what you are sitting her in front of. To be honest if you can't do this then you probably shouldn't be trialling, because you're allowing your dog to practise stuff she shouldn't be practising. Yes Novice dogs make mistakes here and there but it sounds to me like this is far more than the occasional mistake. If you are genuinely doing this for training purposes then it shouldn't matter if you get DQ'd or not, but don't take judges for granted in order to train your dog in the ring because the ring is not the place to train them. If you do it as a once off, that's fine - let the judge know out of courtesy, don't waste their time and don't take any more than SCT in the ring. Having not long gone through Novice again with my second dog, it shocked me to see what judges were expected to put up with in Novice. Even more so that many tolerated it

You are not a bad owner - you're chosing to do something about it ;) Give yourself a break on this one, it will take time :)

While you're allowing him to practise his recall being crap then it's not going to get better. Your dog is telling you where the value is, and while there is other more fun things to do, it's not with you. Blunt, but dogs don't lie. A good recall under a dog's biggest distractions takes a lot of time and work to fix, especially when you've now got a history of him failing. At home in the kitchen is probably a 1 out of 10 on the distraction scale. A dog park with dogs he seems to target is probably a 9 or 10 out of 10. You say you've got your at home recall under control, have a think about a 2/10 distraction and work on that. Make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard, so put him on a long line if you have any doubt he could fail. Every time he manages to fail is putting you back weeks of work to fix this. Once you're completely confident that he will come 100% of the time, start working on your 3/10 distractions and so on. You might get to a point where you're happy with him recalling from a 7/10 distraction and that's as far as you'll go - and that's fine. But don't blame the dog for it, and be prepared to keep working on it throughout his entire life to keep him at that level. I wouldn't be taking him to a dog park at all - you're just building an even higher value for not coming when called and getting in the face of other dogs. As the owner of a dog who hates strange dogs getting in her face, it wouldn't be her you'd need to worry about, it would be me.

Awesome - sooner than I thought. Might hold off a little longer on retraining that dogwalk contact. Cost will depend on what everyone said they'd pay for it in the survey :laugh:

Given where you're located Nekhbet, do you have the ability and any plans to rent out the equipment/space at all and is it competition standard gear? I'm possibly on the lookout for a different training location that's closer than heading to Melbourne but I'm not interested in classes.

I didn't get a PM, just seen their status when I seen some random had added me as a friend. Just went to see if the status was still there and they've since been deleted. Went into the greyhound shop today, brilliant that she has the bigger range of cat food Means I only need to go to her now. :D They also have dynameat which Mum was very happy about since it's quite hard to find regular stockists. tlc - I wish Kepala was closer! Hadn't been there for ages but dropped in on the way to an agility seminar recently so I could tire the girls out (yeah right!). :laugh:

Don't be too hard on yourself aussielover - trust me, you'll make hundreds more mistakes in agility. Be happy with the good stuff that you and your dog did yesterday :D I tend to classify all my training/trialling into 3 things that went really well, and 3 things I need to work on. That way it's not about things that went wrong, it's about developing my next training plan in a positive way and recognising the progress. Don't feel too bad about not being graded up either, there is always something you can work on even when you think you're being held back. There isn't too many dogs out there suffering from foundation overload ;)

I had the same thing, added as a friend and the status was there for anyone to read. I've now changed my settings so that random people can't add me as a friend without my approval. What I wrote was honest feedback and I won't be changing it. Others might think it was harsh, and that's fine. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, sharing it in here might be more constructive than random "friendings" ;) Haven't been into the new Prime store, might duck in there Monday while I'm getting my car serviced.

Fingers crossed from some good news for Den, Smisch :) I'm kind of struggling with the sentiment in this thread about dogs competing. My dogs are pets/part of my family first and foremost - they just happen to do agility as well. Big picture, while they both love agility they probably wouldn't give a stuff if they didn't do it again because we do so much other stuff that they enjoy. Swims at the lake, big runs on the beach; Zee starts yodelling the moment we turn out of my street when we're heading to the lake, you can't say she doesn't love it! More than anything they are happiest when they are with me. Agility doesn't define what my dogs do or who they are, and in reality they spend maybe 15 mins a week doing actual agility. I'd still do what I'm doing now even if dog forbid one of my dogs was permanently retired - because fitness and strength and balance and shaping tricks is good for any dog, agility or not, and it's fun as well. :D Yes I'd be disappointed, because I love running my dogs and seeing what we can achieve together as a team, but my dog's lives are not revolved around competition.

You've got holes in your dog's understanding of 2x2 that you are already band-aiding 1) that you need to move with her to avoid the head turn and 2) that you're struggling with angled entries. Go back to one step before them and fix them, they won't resolve themselves. ;) Go back and watch the DVD again - I find that even now I miss or forget something despite having trained 2x2s with both my dogs, my first several times. Print out the notes that go with it and keep them handy for every training session. You are going to need to find at least one or two different environments that you can use safely to work on those angled entries and help build understanding through proofing. I know it's not that easy, trust me I know, but you're going to have to.

From what you've written here, I would be finding a good all round sports vet and finding out what you're really dealing with. It could be something like a weakness or imbalance which needs some attention and could be assisted greatly by some stretching or strengthening work. If I had any doubts at all about my dogs soundness they would not be training or trialling, no matter how major the trial, until I had their sports vets ok. I trust her opinion 100% and follow her suggestions to the letter and more. They see her at the start of each season change (so 3 monthly) as well as any sign of soreness or injury. Like Janba - my two get a substantial rest at the end of each season, while they are kept very fit, they do next to no work at all for nearly 2 months. They also do a core strength and balance work using a balance disc or gym ball/peanut. Their fitness & strength is always a priority over training.

If the dog is weaving fine at home, fine at training then you need to up the ante into proofing. Fix the gaps, don't band aid them. Trying to handle a weave pole entry is band-aiding. Apply band-aids on more band-aids and soon you have no idea what lies underneath. I had an issue with Darcy popping the 10th weave pole about every 5 agility runs. Drove me nuts because she only ever did it at a trial level. How do you fix it when they do it only at a trial? You proof the sh*t out of it is how. Can you send the dog from 50 metres away into the poles in any direction, run at a 90 degree angle, run in the totally opposite direction while they are half way through, throw their favourite toys in their direction while they weave, nail seemingly impossible entries from every direction, while you're sitting, falling, standing, kneeling. And that's exactly what I did. She's missed one weave entry in 2 years and not popped a weave pole since, and that's with some pretty appalling weave poles here in Vic.

I don't think it's anything to do with handling, pressure or the like - looks like a straight out lack of value for the weave poles, and a lack of arousal as a result. If she had sufficient value for the weave poles, it wouldn't matter what your handling looked like, even if you tripped over and landed on your butt, she should still hit those poles correctly when they are right in front like that. Go back to SG's One Jump DVD where she refers to the training challenge at a camp. One group of students had to get their dogs to drive into a PVC box with the students in as many body positions as they possibly could. The other group had to be able to send their dogs from as far away as possible. The students who could get their dogs in the box while sitting, standing, one leg up, kneeling etc where able to send their dogs from twice the distance as the second group - because they built a heap of value for the PVC box.

Far out - $10 each :eek: How awesome would it be to find someone doing that! Thanks for the recommendation, I don't eat seafood at all so definitely no cray connoisseur here either. Will give them a try Monday. If I wasn't heading to Bob Bailey this weekend I'd catch him a feed of yabbies, but I think he'll survive with cray. ;)

I need some local knowledge where's the best place to buy a fresh cooked cray? It Dad's birthday next week and given he's not that easy to buy for, I thought I'd get him a big feed of cray for his birthday. Prefer not to pay through the nose for it, they were $60/kg at Port Mac over NY which wasn't too bad... pity Port Mac is so far, be worth the drive to spend time on that beach again Edited to add: Willing to travel if I need to :)

I doubt it - too easy for people to burn copies and pass them onto others. Oooohhhh behave ! And stop posting when I'm drinking coffee, my computer is sick of wearing it Don't you mean 'back up their copies'?

Sounds like it's a month's hard core groundwork/homework, a 3 day workshop at Say Yes and 12 months background support from SG herself. The method sounds interesting, especially for people like me who have very limited access to contact gear, but be stuffed if I'd pay $5000 for it.

I doubt it - too easy for people to burn copies and pass them onto others. The course format is worth far more $$ wise and she regains some control over what people do with her methods. Take a look at her 2x2 weaving - someone tries to use it, stuffs it up and then the method gets the blame.

It's been on the board for years but sounds like it might actually get somewhere this time. SG recently posted a survey to those on her mailing list on running contacts, she did the same thing before she did the first recallers. Wonder how much access to equipment you need? That will be the biggest factor for me, and the cost obviously. SKG DiscoDobe was referring to online courses, it doesn't surprise me that SG would charge that to train with her in person, especially given this is likely to be the first time she's ever offered it (running contacts).

As someone who has a choice of Colac or Warrnambool Petstock, Colac will get my $$ every time. IMHO Warrnambool Petstock finally lost the plot when they decided they wanted to play in the aquarium market and got rid of half their other stock. I would've thought cats, dogs & horses would've been the main market in Warrnambool, and with a very good aquarium and equine supplies store - why the hell wouldn't you focus on cats and dogs like every other Petstock store? Especially since the other cat/dog store is next to useless? I find the Colac staff friendly, helpful and the range over there is far better than Warrnambool has ever had. He can't be that bad. ;)

Anyone got any thoughts or experience on dogs travelling in the rear of a small wagon behind a cargo barrier vs harnesses in the back seat? My old car had plenty of space behind the cargo barrier, my new car has just enough space for both dogs to lay down and that's it. From a heavy braking perspective they are better off but it really concerns me that if I get rear ended they don't have a lot of space if the tail gate is caved in Unfortunately said vehicle is a company car so I can't make any modification by way of bolting crates in if I was to fold the seats down permanently.