Billand

Does anyone know what the results are for the Scottish Breeds judging?

Thought I might share my experience from last nights Open obedience competition at the Adelaide Royal - I have never been so embarrassed by one of my dogs before! I have smooth coat collies and they are not perfect at obedience nor are they that reliable. They like to do their own thing and they think that they know the best way to do everything. To set the scene for our spectacular performance, we had a full audience around the ring, among them a number of experienced handlers, some with OC dogs, and my sister. During the healing exercise Jazz ran out of the ring to say hi to my sister and she cut through the figure 8 not once but twice so needless to say we failed that. She moved all but one foot on the stand for exam. For the retrieve on the flat, she placed her dumb-bell ever so neatly on the floor at my feet. For the retrieve over the jump, she ran around the jump, looked at her dumb-bell, came back and sat beside me. And finally for the broad jump, she walked around the jump and sat in front of me, she didn't even attempt to jump it. BUT we did pass the drop on recall with a score of 28! As she failed each exercise I could feel my face getting redder and redder! Jazz was enormously pleased with herself and the crowd thought she was great. I was feeling so confident heading into the royal, she has been doing so well in training and had recently got her first open passes - I think the worst part of the night was when I had to do the walk of shame past the applauding spectators and the other competitors to get back to our seat. Jazz's tail my not have been tucked between her legs but mine certainly was. I will back tonight for 3 rounds of agility humliation - wish me luck.

BARF feeders seem to be under the wrong impression that dogs are omnivores when it has been scientifically proven that they are carnivores and their digestive systems are too short to digest veggies. All literature 'against it' seems to focus on the 'dogs are omnivores' thing. Yes - would a wolf (dog) look at a deer and think 'Whoah! Look at all that bone!'...of course not it would be 'Look at all that MEAT!'. Plus most large prey animals have bones that are too large or hard to eat, so bone does take up only around 10% of the overall diet (with 80% meat and 10% offal (half of which should be liver). We have always fed our dogs using the diet set out by Juliette De Bairacli Levy in her book as a base. It includes a small amount of cereal and raw veggies which are mixed into the meat. This is to help act as "roughage" since the domestic dog rarely gets his meat with the fur still attached. But the diet does includes/reccomends a breakfast of cereal/milk/water mix and a day of no meat (cereal meal instead) and then a day of fasting, and of course bones are to be included with the meat meals. My family have always followed this diet for our dogs and they have thrived on it. Cheers.

We get our meat from a wholesaler, I think it's called pet chef?, anyway it is across the road from the animal welfare shelter in Elizabeth - just off peachy road. Not open every day of the week though but there is a pet food store in the Elizabeth shopping centre (near woollies and donut king) they stock the same meat that you can get from the wholesaler. As for bones, we just keep an eye out in the local supermarkets and butchers. We ususally get chicken wings or necks, sometimes turkey. There used to be a pet shop at Angle vale that sold meat and bones. I found the meat to not be very fresh but the bones were better qaulity - often could get whole cicken frames and venison flaps from them. My dogs love chicken feet but they are hard to get now in my area. Cheers.

Take her new places so she hears new sounds, meets new people. Socialisation is not just with other dogs but with people and learning not to be afraid of what is on the otherside of the fence. Take her on lots of walks, to obedience or agility classes, anything that the two of you can enjoy together. Agility it great for confidence building and lots of fun. Cheers.

I clicker trained/back chained the retrieve. Very similar to what most people have done. This worked for one of my dogs but I came across a problem with 1 of my other dogs. I still could not get her to pick up the DB and bring it back to me. If I dropped the DB at my feet she would not pick it up, only touch it or if i threw it she would run out and touch it or pick it up, drop it and then come back to me for a treat. So I had to change my approach. I have one dog who is a very reliable retriever so I took him and Jazz the dog I was trying to teach the retrieve to, 2 DB, a clicker and lots of treats. Every time I threw the 2 DB, both dogs would run out to them but only one, Guy, would bring one back. When he gave it to me I would click/treat and make a huge fuss of him. This eventually woke the little green monster up in Jazz. It only took her 2 training sessions to figure out that Guy was getting a click/treat/praise because he brought the DB to me. She now brings it back every time. This has only worked for me because I have 4 collies that tend to get a bit jealous of each other - you should hear the noise coming from my place when I am training in the backyard - you wouldn't want to be my neighbour! Cheers.

Not us - we haven't started competing yet. Good luck at the national. CHeers, Tania

I have always been of the theory that you should teach your dogs all the available optional exercises, then on the day of the trial, you do the one that they are best at. I have found this approach best for the breed of dogs that I have as they tend to get bored if they keep doing the same thing all the time. I am currently training one of my dogs for CDX and she is learning both the COP and the broad jump but it is most likely that in competition she will be doing the COP. I have been training the broad jump with a target to get the straight jump - all my dogs think that this is a fantastic game and helps to break up some of the excersises that are boring for them. Cheers, TA Remember to keep it fun!

My club started flyball training mid last year. So far we've got a dalmatian, cattle dog x, Bearded collie, staffy x, a ridgeback x something, and my 2 smooth collies - notice how we have none of those black and white dogs! (no offence intended to any border collie owners ). We are getting really close to being ready for competition and are hoping that that will be mid this year. Our biggest problem at the moment though is not a training one but coming up with a team name that every one agrees on! Cheers, TA.