JulesP

i guess i buggered up by adding too many things back in. She has been having the 4legs rolls though the whole time that I was getting her tummy clear. Her tummy can go from itchy to clear and back again within a couple of days. She had a handful of kibble all of last week. 3 days of 4Legs for breakfast. Chicken necks for 2 dinners. So the only thing she had new for a period of 7 days would be the kibble.

Yep chicken had better be the next thing to test for. I am not going to be able to test a heap of different kibbles anyhow as she pretty much will not eat kibble. She has been eating a small amount of Holistic Lamb & Rice (same as Black Hawk). She had 3 different things last week and got a rash in days - the kibble, chicken necks & chicken & rice 4legs.

She ate a decent sized dinner and had quite a decent amount of training treats (4legs) but would not eat this morning. God it drives me mad. For some reason animals not eating always totally flips me out.

Can you fence the front yard Kirty? And have Pia out there?

I use a release word too. With my class I usually teach the release in the second week so the pups have a week with just being treated for the sit & drop. If you treat after the release it seems to be that you are rewarding the release. So it is Sit, Yes (treat), free. After the free they might get a game, treat or pat.

This is how I tackle it - http://www.shirleychong.com/keepers/retrieve.html

Puppies are supposed to be carried into the room. The room is sterilized prior to the class. Owners have to remove their shoes at the door. Are you worried about the pups or your dog? Our grounds are public so I guess a dog with parvo could walk on it every day of the week. A dog with up to date vaccinations or titre tests should be ok though.

First you need to work out if the behavior is really herding. Or is it just chasing? Then you do need to train the dog on the stock. Give them encouragement etc. I've seen heaps of dogs now have their first go on sheep and they don't always switch on in the first go or the second or the third. If they have been told off for chasing cats, chickens, horses etc that may make them think they aren't allowed to work the sheep. They might be a bit scared of the big sheepies.

She gets 2 feeds a day. I tried a lunchtime feed but she would often refuse that.

3 out of my 5 borders have gotten more drive satisfaction from chasing the dog that is playing with the toy. lol. Border collie 1 did chase balls but he was my first border and so didn't have a dog to chase. The other border is just special, lol. ETA: All 5 borders have had a high work ethic and do work very nicely anyway.

I've been doing an elimination diet with Amber. All is going well. She is ok with beef & rice, lamb seems ok too. How do you tackle the ingredients in dry food? Something over the last couple of days has upset her. It could either be chicken which will be easy to test or it could be an ingredient in commercially prepared foods. Do you tackle the dry food as a whole and not feed it if you get a reaction? Or do you try and break it down into the individual ingredients?

If you are looking to put weight on a dog would you let it eat as much as it wanted or would you regulate the food intake? Amber just scoffed 1kg of chopped steak plus a quarter of a cup of Holistic Lamb and Rice. I didn't mean for her to have so much meat but ummm I put the meat container on the ground whilst feeding the other 2 dogs and then got distracted, lol. It was interesting that she ate it all as she usually only eats tiny amounts. Food allergies combined with fussiness combined with hormone issues meant she lost a heap of weight. I've been doing an elimination diet with her.

K9Pro can a dogs modified prey drive (ie herding) be so strong that playing with toys is meaningless to a dog? Both my girls have very strong herding drives.

Greg is pretty cute. Were did he come from? I saw a very similar puppy yesterday at Croydon. Interesting that you mark touching but not sitting?

This has got pretty off topic. Zug Zug I think the handler needs to suck it up a bit. Slight handler boredom in the lower levels is normal for an advanced handler. The puppy hasn't done it before though You can be giving the handler more advanced things to do in the class. I do this if I see that a handler is quite a bit more advanced then the others. Whilst I might have found it boring to listen to the same instruction for the third time in as many years (I kept getting puppies just as I had finished going through our levels) I never found training the dog boring.

I've used Natures Gift as part of my dog's diet for about 20 years. Moss & Fern both lived to 15.5 years. I've just been using NG with good results to put weight on a skinny youngster. I think the water argument is a bit dopey as raw foods have high water content too. NG is the only tinned food I have been happy with. I've tried the Eagle Pack tins and didn't like them.

I don't think toy drive is prey drive but I think prey drive is nearest to it. Bitty has a modified prey drive Bub. Lots of breeding for a long time to enable you to call her off a bird 2 of my current dogs have a strong prey drive for what they have been developed for - herding. My dogs aren't super foody either Ness. The strongest drive they show is a pack drive. I think that is the drive I have most encouraged. The only one of my dogs that has received a correction when showing interest in a toy is Brock and it wasn't me that did the correcting! It was my old border, Fern. She wasn't telling him off but her thing was to chase the animal chasing the toy. Brock is so soft that he took that as a negative.

The black hawk should be balanced for its own ingredients so you can't count that. Do you have a reason for needing extra fish oil? The main reason that I feed dry in the morning and raw at night is so I don't have to add any vitamins etc to the raw. The person that had the vit e problem was feeding a pretty high dose of the fish oil.

Brock failed the SC method Tassie! Which is why I get so stressed about it I guess. Deep breaths, so far 3 out of the 5 borders I've owned have done a formal retrieve. I can do this again.....

Sitting in the same storm as Cosmolo, lol. Brock tend to run around the garden looking at the sky. The girls then practice their herding techniques on him. They girls are currently watching him waiting for him to run. They are all panting, more from running I think and look super alert rather then worried or stressed. The only real problem this behavior has caused is Brock has pulled up lame a couple of times. Bad rainy/windy weather and Brock and Amber look to hide under their trampoline beds and are happy to come in. Poppy will sit out in it and not care.

I know bedazzledx2 but it would be nice to just umm chuck a item and have the dog merrily go after it for once. I did SC with Poppy and she does a formal retrieve quite merrily. She thinks that is a good game now. Her retrieving is restricted to dumbells though. If I don't watch her she will also pinch other people's dumbells!!

Retrieving a named toy from a pile of toys. So you name a pig toy err 'pig'. Do lots of 'get pig' when pig is alone. Then put pig in pile of toys and ask for the dog to get the particular toy.

In your opinion what are the things that could squash/kill a dogs natural prey/toy drive? Environmental things? Things an owner does? Other?

Just kill me now - another border that doesn't want to retrieve! arrrrrrrrrrrrrr Doing the SC but it is going to be slow and she is showing no inclination to run after any thrown toy. Not sure I have the drive to go through this again! Next time I get a puppy please remind me to take some toys along to puppy picking! Her brother got returned as he went to a home for doing frisbee and wouldn't play with toys so I am not sure if it is my fault or not. Might start a thread on it.

I can happily walk my 3 border collies on lead. Off lead I prefer to walk them one at a time, it is more relaxing.