huski

I'm not an agility person but even I would love to go to this!

I sure am - I booked my flights the other day - I arrive on the 21st October and fly home on the 2nd November. Just not sure which red child I will bring with me Any of them! Just don't let my mum meet whoever you bring, she is so sold on Tollers! Although I'd love to meet Cider :thumbsup:

Yes you are, although in QLD they expect all dogs on trial grounds (even if they aren't competing) to be vetted.

I would love to have come over for the Melbourne Royal this year BUT the accommodation costs go from $155 per night to $295 per night at show time which just makes it unaffordable add to this flights, car hire, dog airfare, food and entries and I could think of 100 other ways to spend $1500 Are you still coming over to Brissy again this year Ptolomy?

I agree, great work! thanks guys! ;) I am very proud of her. I don't think it helped that I had NFI what I was doing before I found help Don't get me wrong - Daisy was never totally disinterested. Although, once I took her outside of the house, it was near impossible to get her nose up off the ground for any length of time. She would be totally switched off to anything but a scent. So it wasn't that she lacked drive or energy or interest, it was just all channeled into scenting, and training her otherwise meant teaching her to get drive satisfaction from another source (me). Probably quite different to a very low drive dog who has little motivation or natural drive, but it was still about increasing her drive and motivation and making what I have super interesting and rewarding.

I'm sure they did - they mackeral made it tastier!

I agree with Greytmate - there is no 'plain old aggression'. Behaviourists and trainers will tell you that the majority of aggressive dogs are fear aggressive. The difference between a fear aggressive dog and a rank aggressive dog is usually what triggers the aggression and what drives it - a fear aggressive dog is under confident, a rank aggressive dog is over confident.

It sounds like they could be being fussy. I don't pander to my dogs, if they don't eat what I've given them within 15 minutes I take it back and don't give them anything until their next meal. It's not like Holly is feeding a low quality kibble and it doesn't hurt a dog to learn to eat it, what if they are kenneled or someone else looks after them or something happens where they need to eat dried food? Mine are fed on a complete raw diet but there are odd occasions where I run out or something and I need to feed them some dried... I never have any problems and my dogs eat what they are given. They've got you worked out Holly - turn their nose up at the dried on it's own and you will give them something better

Cosmolo started a thread on this not long ago - when I'm not on my iPhone I will find the link

Really? I don't know anyone who does really well in competition who let their dogs have access to whatever rewards they want whenever they want. Whether or not it's necessary depends on the handler and the dog and what they want to achieve. I couldn't do what I do with my dog without a little bit of deprivation. I never said it was the only way to train. Once again, what is necessary depends on what the owner wants to achieve.

I do prey drive training with him, almost every day. He's not as seriously prey driven as, say, a Mal, which is what I am referring to when I say I'd like to see what it's like to train a highly prey driven dog. Yes of course Corvus, all dogs who are DA can be completely cured! And you would know this because you have so much experience, right? I've put a lot of work into him, and he's improved massively. I can do things with him now I never thought I could. I don't think I could ever feel 110% comfortable with him doing group stays because I can't trust other peoples dogs not to break and come over to him. At eight years of age, I don't think it's worth putting in the extensive training I would need to purely to get him in the competition ring, when we can both be happy and fulfilled by training purely for fun. But I digress. I wouldn't want to get in the way of giving you a chance to prove how arrogant, condescending and nasty you are once again, would I? Are you saying I don't have that with my dogs? The point, Corvus, was that you were saying it's not ever necessary to "deprive" a dog of anything in order to get what you want with a dog. You used Kivi as an example and I am simply saying, that's not what I would want in a dog, and it's not what I wanted in my dog who also lacked motivation. When you train Kivi to the standard I look for in my dog, THEN you can tell me the way I did it was unnecessary to achieve what we have. And that's great for you, if that's what you want. I'm not saying it's a bad thing by any standards. The owner is happy, the dog is happy, what else do you need? But not everyone is happy with the same standards as you, which means they might need to employ methods that you deem unnecessary and "meh" about and tell everyone are pointless and that they are never needed, to achieve a standard you don't have any desire to work to.

Bub some dogs are more naturally driven to work for us, and if Bitty is more prey driven than food driven that she will still want to tug even if she's had a food treat is not unusual.

I guess it depends on what you want from your dog. If you're happy with Kivi working like that, and that's all you want from him, then you wouldn't need to make any extra effort to increase his value for certain things. He's not working in drive which is what I want with my dog. I want 110% and I couldn't have achieved that had I made high value treats and toys and everything my dog enjoys readily accessible, especially when you couldn't force food down her throat if there was a scent around. I am talking about a dog who, even in a low distraction environment, was very disinterested; Vs now, this was on Monday night. That's the kind of enthusiasm and difference I wanted to see in my dog. We're not talking extreme deprivation, just intentionally making sure she would be more active (because I restricted exercise) and more keen (because I restricted access to high value training food). I wasn't questioning what enriched meant. I was more interested in the level each dog was trained to for the comparison to be drawn. MRB compared working dogs like police dogs and I wanted to know what the more enriched dogs were - were they working dogs too? Besides which, no one has mentioned completely depriving a dog - just limiting it's access it rewards. Did I write that. I meant "easier to train" or "or train better" ie given two dogs, one has a nice home environment (not the same as living at someone's home), and one has one with with nothing but the basics (clean? shelter?). The one that has a nice environment will be easier to train or train with better results or something. I might have to go find the book. Will see if I can find the research. I suppose one possible reason would be that a dog in a boring environment would probably sleep while not training where as the other might play a bit and get fitter. It would also have a more engaged brain, and spend more time thinking which would be good for training too. But that's a big difference between what Bub was saying about simply restricting her dog's access to toys and high value food.

I did the whole restrict my dogs access to things like toys, walks, treats etc when I was first building her drive. It wasn't forever, just once she started getting addicted to the game, and now we can even go for a walk and do a drive session too. I would be interested in how Paul Mcgreevy defines a dog who has a more "enriched" environment as better trained.

Haha I don't know about inspirational but at least we've come through the otherside relatively unscathed ;) I found the hardest thing was not comparing her to other dogs. She'll never be a high drive Malinois and comparing her to other dogs will just make it harder! (I still do it though just not as much)

SecretKei... I have so been there and I completely know how you feel. It is worth it in the end! You guys have come so far!

Daisy used to find obedience very boring and was a real challenge to train. I used to leave obed club in tears after class. This is the same dog who would ignore a piece of steak in favour of scenting. But I found a method of training that works for us and now she loves training and is always keen to work. I slack off with Micha because he is so easy to live with. I wish I had started him younger because he would be a good obed and agility dog, but because he can be DA that also adds extra work to get him to a place where I could trust him 110%. At almost eight years of age training strictly for fun is enough ;) though I do feel like I let him down and wasted his potential.

I love watching Ella work, her enthusiasm is awesome

Personally I wouldn't be forcing him to heel longer - don't ask him to run before he can walk! What do you do now when he loses focus?

Sure, in an ideal world everyone would understand that putting a bandaid over something is not the best option in the long run but in the real world some owners don't have that ability/time/interest no matter how many times you explain it to them. If they need to see results ASAP or the dog will be PTS, what would you tell them? But if you can do things quickly, and it works, what is the problem? Why does taking longer always means it's better? If it takes me one week to train my dog to do a complex exercise, but it takes someone else six months to do the same thing, does that mean that the other persons training was better? Or that their dog will be better at the exercise?

I'm weird, what can i say! LOL! LOL. I am far too impatient. I like to find the quickest and simplest way - I don't want to confuse my dog, I want to communicate to them as clearly as possible. The trouble that dog trainers would find is that a lot of people need to see quick results. Most people prefer to use methods that work quickly, otherwise they will give up, and in the worst case scenario, the dog will be PTS.

That sounds a bit backwards to me. I can teach my youngest dog things pretty quickly, because she's smart, and she generally picks things up in no time. Just because something is quick doesn't mean it's a quick fix If I was training something and wasn't seeing results I would be worried it wasn't working. If you find a training method that works quickly and clearly communicates to the dog, what is the problem? ETA: You are honestly the first person I've ever heard who prefers when training doesn't work straight away

LOL Tiggy, it would take the 'flying beagle ears' to new heights

A flat collar and leash in the wrong hands can be used to abuse a dog just like any tool - there is no danger or cruelty in tools like e-collars, prongs etc when they are used in the right hands. I'm not a fan of head collars by a long shot, but that doesn't mean that every time someone uses a tool they are being cruel to the dog. I hate seeing tools used as a bandaid for training, but in the right hands they aid the training process to provide long term results.

Keeping in mind I know nothing (and I emphasize on nothing) about agility, I find with my dog once I get her 'up' and working in drive she simply doesn't notice distractions lying around. For example last night at training we put an open bag of stinky luncheon roll under a cone. Simply walking her past it Daisy went crazy, she could smell it instantly and went mad trying to sniff it out and had she not been on the leash I am 110% certain she would have tipped the cone over within seconds. I revved her up and got her in drive and walk her around the same cone so close she was touching it and she didn't even glance at it never mind put her nose on the ground to scent out the food. It wasn't a conscious decision to ignore it - but because she was so focused and switched on and aroused, she simply didn't think about it. I can do the same thing walking past people crouching on the ground waving food at her.