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Have another look at 12-1:30 - Page 1. I see black dog jumping, complete with handler ! How did I miss that? Thanks KC, I was probably distracted at the time.... OT - is your email fixed yet? I haven't had any updates......

None of Darcy at all, and I know he was photographing our ADO run. Black dog strikes again.

Didn't they say something about them being up on the club's website in a week or two at presentations?

Darcy gets rabbit occasionally and she loves them!! She would like them a lot more but at $5.50 each from the pet food shop she doesn't get as many as she would like. These are gutted and skun.

Benson can speak on command. He can't do much else well, but he does this VERY well, and it was so absolutely easy to teach (and we don't use a clicker) that I'm surprised it's a UD exercise. In fact, my 15yo daughter taught him in about 3 minutes. Now we're trying to teach him to "speak softly". Not all dogs are easy to teach to speak though. Darcy is not a natural barker, in fact I never heard her bark until she was well over 12 months old. Even then it is very much a "somethings wrong" behaviour, it's not a behaviour she does for the hell of it. I have trained her to bark on command now, but just because one dog does it easily doesn't mean they all will.

Darcy loves banana but she doesn't get them in her everyday diet. I often buy some to eat at a trial and we generally go halves in one.

Jeez you had an even worse run that I did laffi. I rang about half a dozen local vets - my own, as well as a few within an hour and a half (I have 3 major country cities within that radius). One senior vet I spoke to was so downright rude I nearly hung up on him. Most of the staff did let me speak with a vet which was good. Thankfully my local vet offered to do some costings and was interested enough to go through with it. Must've paid enough attention to it to not send me my usual vaccination reminder either.

That's the good thing about our dogs - they don't really care about pieces of carboard or titles!! Luckily for me, otherwise I'd be in big trouble! Darcy's got her JDM plus a few passes, still a couple to go for her ADM. She does alright considering her biggest handicap is her handler!

Hi all, I visited a farm today that had a litter of 9 week old working bred pups. Being a dairy farm they are feeding quite a lot of fresh milk (straight from the vat) to the pups. I noticed that one pup was slightly bowed and almost starting to knuckle slightly - she was the most obvious (also the runt) but then comparing her to the rest there looked to be a few that were a bit big in the knuckle joint. They are being fed dry puppy food and the milk only. Is it likely to be the milk that's causing the issue? Just curious as I'd read somewhere that calcium from a natural source is not supposed to cause issues. Thanks! Jess

Hey well done LP - I seen you at a distance several times but never crossed paths to say hello We had a good day, two passes in Masters - one agility one jumping. I'm going through a stupid mistake phase - I manage to sqeeze one into every run I do lately. Pity I can't just jam them all into one run for the day and leave the rest clear!! Better still, remove them all together.

They are the same thing They tend to get different names depending on what they are used for I've noticed. I.e corn for humans and maize for cattle. Or corn grain but maize silage. Sometimes maize/corn byproducts take on one name but not the other i.e when I was working in stockfeed corn gluten meal was always corn, never maize gluten meal. Hominy was always corn meal and not maize meal.

Congratulations - what an awesome effort!!

Yes!!

Rain, hail, sun or snow. Unfortunately I end up at training in some not so great weather because it can change so much in an hour and a 1/4 drive north. I.e was borderline sleet yesterday morning, pouring that heavily that the water wasn't able to drain off the road and the windscreen wipers couldn't keep up. Didn't get a drop on me at training! I used to love early classes at obedience in crap weather because the classes were so much smaller and your general joe public doesn't tend to show up when it's raining. Still train in the rain for agility, our ground holds up amazingly well but always much more careful about what I do and ask for. And yes we ended up training in the snow one day... didn't do much other than get wet and bloody cold but we had fun.

Any chance you can borrow or buy a copy of Susan Garrett's book "Shaping Success"? There is some great information in there about how she coped with her over the top BC Buzz and taught him to control himself in some incredibly stimulating environments. She talks about how she couldn't even get him into the puppy school building without him screaming his head off and being totally out of control, and having to work him in the carpark so she could actually get him to listen. Same with his access to agility equipment and even attending his first agility trial. It would be my favourite training book and it's an easy read. I pick something up from it everytime I read it. You sound like you're doing a pretty good job with him already. Good luck with his further training.

I had to email them on something else today so have also let them know that they appear to be late again. I'd say they've outsourced the postage to a mail house or something, Clean Run's store stuff is usually here inside 10 days and often quicker than what I can get gear in Australia.

They ask for the registration certificate so they can re-issue you with a new one including the dog's titles.

Anyone still waiting on June's? Must admit I'm disappointed with whoever is doing their postage these days, normally I should have been receiving July's in a week.

Signs are supposed to be displayed wherever 1080 baits are laid, whether that be on private or public property. Sometimes baits do end up getting carted outside the original target area.

Congratulations TSD - that's an awesome effort!

That's nearly exactly what I went through with Trim. For ages I took what she gave me in the ring, even though she had a perfect 2o2o in training. This year I decided zero tolerance. I don't train in the ring, but if she does not hold her position, I remove her & she doesn't get to continue. She has worked this out really fast. It only took a few times & she has been 100% reliable in trials for a few months now. The big bonus is that she no longer has confusion and her contacts are heaps faster than they have ever been. We still have some striding issue to work through but it was the best thing I ever did, for both of us. Thanks for understanding guys I don't need a lecture on this as I know very well what I've done wrong, so thanks for not giving it to me. I would walk her out of the ring on a blown 2o2o IF I was 110% sure she understood her criteria in the ring. I don't think she does. She still hits her contact, still doesn't release from it until I ask her, it's just not in 2o2o. If she starts blowing them completely, then we'll go right back to day dot and look at another option. Looking on the bright side, I now know what I won't do with my next dog

Go Cash! Congratulations on your second ET! When you said you were doing both dogs I didn't realise you were going nearly back to back. Well done!! Will I see you at Sunbury or Berwick?

Reddii - I'm well aware of how much I've confused my dog. :D Hindsight is a wonderful thing. As a complete novice I got caught up in the 2o2o is good, no running contacts are better, coming to the realisation that running contacts are difficult to teach reliability if you don't have access to equipment and going back to 2o2o. Add to that the mexican stand off (due to the confusion) at the top of the a-frame which meant I used to quick release her once she touched the colour in the ring because it was taking too long. Yes at this stage I should've pulled her out of the ring until she understood it. She does a brilliant 2o2o at the base of any equipment, and does 2o2o at training no issues under distraction, at distance with me in front, behind and jumping around like a twit. Put it in the ring and because I used to quick release it's become a point of confusion. I can't train in the ring, so I tolerate what she gives me. She hasn't not touched a contact since Novice, and she's 3 passes off ADM. She's not overweight BTW. She's 1/2 Lab. And I disagree that weight is not relevant. You have a 22 kg dog who is quite capable with goining head to head speed wise with most of the BC's in the ring in Vic, versus a 16 kg BC. It's a bit like saying that a Jeep should be able to handle a crash at 150 km an hour because it's bigger and stronger built.

Is there any study work done to say that 2o2o is safe? Common sense says to me that a 22 kg high drive dog landing in a 2o2o off an A-frame is not really that desirable. Rear end awareness work is done all the time, but basic laws of motion dictate that a heavier dog will have more trouble pulling up, no matter how much rear end work you put into them. Thus our 2o2o contact work is pretty sloppy, but I'm not interested in drilling it to perfection.

I use them the same as everyone else here - wait for don't move until I say, stay means stay until I come back for you. Agree with TSD - it's up to you what you use, and if that's what you have in your head I wouldn't be changing it unless there is a good reason for it. You'll only confuse yourself and your dog.