SkySoaringMagpie

Plenty of parents on here tho'. In any case, it's not the method per se that I am objecting to - I am not against correction in all circumstances. What I am objecting to is you putting your preferred method at the top of a heirarchy and attempting to discredit other perfectly suitable methods in the process, without any hard data to back it up.

English cocker?

to Asha! Thanks for posting Sighthounder, unfortunately I think you might be the only regular poster with Pharaohs?

I got that one today too as did the Club I'm a Secretary for so I expect a lot of DOLers did too. An obvious scam email IMO, I didn't reply.

Hard to say because we have two breed specialities in Australia and if I pick one I might offend the other club. But, the breed speciality show anyway. Unfortunately the nature of my job is that I can't have any "must attend" shows - I missed the last one, but I usually don't miss the specialities.

The US based Saluki health website I posted earlier in the thread has been revamped and relaunched at this URL: http://www.salukihealthresearch.com/

Even if we accept your assertions* what value do you think talking about competitive trainers of utility/working breeds in the military/police environment has when you're talking about training principles on DOL? This is a serious question by the way, these discussions always seem to cycle back to nostalgia about working and utility dogs that some of us find pretty irritating. That system you are talking about left a lot of casualties in its wake, including breeds that are not soft, but just unsuited to that method. Or dogs just unlucky enough to be handled by Joe Average rather than a top trainer. Those dogs (and people) have found much more success with a broader range of methods being available. What about a pet Basenji being trained in house manners by an 8 y/o girl? Or an elderly lady training a well bred toy poodle in an advanced companion stream at the local obedience club who is there because she likes to work with her dog and catch up with friends? Would you train them the same way you train an 21 y/o male handling a military dog? * and I don't, I think Susan Garrett would give anyone a run for their money

Different clubs have different philosophies but I like ours - which is you can have a gentle leader if you need it to get you out of a hole (ie, dog is stronger than you, is the difference between coming to training/walking or not). However, you can't pass the third level of basic classes with it still on. So it's perceived as a tool, that you have to wean yourself off. I like Aidan's advice.

I just have to post this video link now: (involves a luxury car and Heidi Klum taking the back seat to let another gorgeous blonde ride shotgun)

BMP: most people are so disinterested that they don't even have an opinion. I don't think anyone I work with has a dog or has any interest in dogs. I agree, talking about your dogs to most coworkers is in the same category as talking about babies or weddings. OK if you're talking to another enthusiast, but mostly boring as bat guano. I avoid it unless I'm asked directly, not because I'm ashamed of being a CDL but because I don't want to be a dog bore. I do have a breed calendar in my office, some action shots of my dogs being athletic and a brass sculpture of a Saluki. People who think they should "network" with me ask me about them, I don't put them through much pain - a couple of sentences about the best dogs in the world and that's it. BMP: I have only been showing (conformation) a short time, and have found that positive training methods haven't really caught on in the show world like they have in dog sports, so I can understand why the public could see showing in a bad light, depending on what they had witnessed and heard. I have seen dogs 'punished' and corrected harshly in the ring and outside the ring, and am amazed that it is allowed . I have also seen two dogs 'belted' for annoying their owners/handlers . I think showing is more agricultural in attitude than dog sports, and in general , the dogs are seen as more of a commodity. I haven't seen this attitude in agility though I think the difficulty we face is that takes only one person man-handling their dog (showing it who is boss ) to cancel out the efforts of 15 people doing the right thing. It makes me particularly angry because some of us make a big effort to behave properly, engage with consultation processes, encourage newbies, educate the public, blah blah blah and then someone who doesn't have basic self-management skills bags out a competitor, throws a tantrum ringside or hurls their dog into a crate and all that hard work flies out the window. I know at this point someone may say "oh, it's like that in all sports and hobbies" but all sports and hobbies don't involve animals and all sports and hobbies aren't under attack like ours is. We are being watched very carefully, and I think the days of tolerating other showies' behaviour because "that's just how they are" or "he loves his dogs" or "she's a breed expert" or whatever other rubbish excuse we can think of are long gone. If it's going to bring us all down, it has to stop.

For recall "Really Reliable Recall". Also, I have heard good things about "Control Unleashed"

I have been pondering whether to wade in here and so now I will - bearing in mind that like all generalisations there are exceptions I was talking about this with a Saluki breeder a few days ago. She commented that they are actually very resilient. And they are, a well bred Saluki is stoic and they have high pain tolerance. However, they have a very low tolerance for human bullshit and inconsistency, and will simply shut down on you if you don't treat them with respect and if you don't "make sense". Unlike breeds bred to work directly with humans, they don't bother making up the gap if you haven't got your stuff together. It's not so much a matter of weak nerves - tho' there are weak nerved Salukis out there, and it's incorrect temperament - as it is a matter of knowing what makes them tick. Precision, consistency and patience are key. I know that unless I apply strong limits to the positive punishment tools I use I risk a near permanent shut down - which, it should go without saying, would totally ruin my relationship with my dogs. Part of it is actually because to make an impact, you really have to make an impact - further than I want to go personally speaking. I "uh uh" and "OY!" along with every other idiot out there, but most of the time it has a minimal impact and yet again, my new year's resolution for 2010 is to shut up and be more pragmatic about training. Whereas it's enough to say "uh uh" to some dogs and they're mortified. Salukis don't do mortified, but they do respond to firm boundaries of the "whoops, I guess if I want my dinner/pats/attention I really do have to sit" kind. The blog "Living with Infidels" gives a pretty fair if somewhat outrageous rendition of Saluki personality On the other hand, negative punishment doesn't seem to hit my guys as hard, perhaps because they are so self-contained. I've heard people talk about how terrible time outs are, but for one of mine they're perfect when combined with a sufficient credit balance of positive reinforcement for behaviour I want to see. Horses for courses. Edited to make a smiley work properly And again to put a link in that I couldn't put in earlier

I've done this before too, with a not so friendly "friendly" off lead fat golden retriever - in an on lead area as it happens but in critical situations you do what works. It worked really well, but what bothers me is that to an inexperienced eye it looks like I'm letting my dog off to play. Interestingly enough, once she was off lead, the GR thought the better of it and trotted the 100 yards back to his owner.

I've seen a lot of different approaches to teaching heeling, a few really outstanding trainers but mostly it's been slow and painful. What I'm after the best way is to teach novice handlers and dogs to heel because I have no idea!! I nearly always come unstuck because I've been super fussy about foundation (ie, particularly getting the correct position) and I end up having them all behind in the syllabus and bored witless. So, lecture me please. What are your building blocks and how do you string them together? What are you prepared to compromise on accuracy wise so that people and dogs don't lose focus? What are the key messages, the things an experienced person might assume but which are fundamental to success? I'm talking here about formal heeling, not loose lead walking. I find teaching loose lead walking is a doddle compared to heeling...

Rip out the carpet and put impermeable hard flooring of some kind in. It's the only long term solution in my experience. Also, the less fabric you have in your interior furnishings the better as well - so venetians instead of curtains, leather or vinyl lounges etc etc. Nothing gets bought in our house unless you can wash it or wipe it clean. Once a carpet is really filthy, no amount of cleaning will help, especially if the staining has gone through the underlay, and/or through the underlay onto the floor beneath.

...and that they aren't reacting out of emotion. I've seen too many people use punishment out of frustration, without having thought it through. I've seen people mis-use/mis-time reinforcements as an expression of their emotional state too, and that's also bad training, but it's not as hard on the dog. I acknowledge positive punishment has its place in training but I am very careful of it as a tool both because of it's potential to damage and because I think it calls to the worst part of our natures. As a species we love to punish and blame even when it's counter to our long term aspirations, and many people will escalate punishment even when it's clearly not working. This, exactly. The debates often focus on the damage to the dog. Less often do you hear about the ways in which it reinforces the deliverer of the punishment tho' Karen Pryor examines it in her most recent book. It's the "why am I really doing this and is there a better way?" questions that should really give cause for pause.

I think it has a limited place in training mainly because I think people don't understand its limitations and until they do I'm disinclined to recommend it given the ways in which it can go wrong (for the deliverer of the punishment, not just the recipient). Perhaps I'm agreeing with both of you, I don't know. Fairly early on in my dog career someone put me through that teaching exercise where they loop a slip leash around your wrist and try to get you to follow what is required without using any verbal cues. I had a bit of a jump start on it as I'd already done a fair amount of push hands in tai chi class, but still, with my bigger brain, I didn't get it all the time and the person was an experienced dog person so gave much clearer physical cues than your average member of the GP. It's a humbling experience, and I recommend it for a dog's eye view of the experience. PF notes the importance of not punishing when it's unclear what is required. Most of the time what the GP gives a dog is a mish mash of contradictory information - how many of us would be prepared to have a choke chain around our necks administered by one of our entry level students? Not me, that's for sure. I agree with Pax that I think it's astonishing that some dogs learn at all when you look at how their owners behave.

We took the bins to the tip yesterday and I had squished down the rubbish after cleaning out the pantry. Unfortunately one consequence of forcing the bags in is that you can get a bag splitting at the bottom. There was "matter" at the bottom of one of the bins, and the matter was heaving with maggots and well, squishing. OH, who is usually pretty tuff, started dry heaving and backed away. I tried smashing the bin against the wall of the dump area to dislodge the matter and the maggots but it didn't work very well. After my third attempt at bashing the bin against the side of the dump area I lost my grip, and the bin sailed into the pile of rubbish. I decided on the spot that it wasn't worth $25 for me to walk into the dump to retrieve the bin and the stuck on squirming maggots and we returned home via the hardware shop and bought another bin. Yes I know, we're effete urbanites still....

Dova's OH!! Love the viking oarsmen description tho' Edited because it's Dova's OH posting

I've already whinged about fat in this thread but I don't think it's going to go away unfortunately. I still find it puzzling but it's easier to keep a dog fat than to keep it in hard working condition I suppose.

The alternative is to form partnerships with people who have expertise. You breed, someone else works them. At the risk of being a show line wankair, the bitch I described in my post above is a half sister to one that went to the middle east and became a very successful hunting dog. That generated the kind of partnership I'm talking about between a breeder and a hunter. I agree with Nekkers tho', there are very limited opportunities to work here, tho' most people I know with sighthounds on rural blocks know the answer for their dogs. That's much less complex matter than trying to prove working ability in a GSD tho' especially with the current ban on Schutzhund.

Thanks Poodlefan, that is an excellent link, very interesting. I was surprised the Labrador only had just over 12%, I always imagined it would be higher. Just a note that Salukis and Pharaohs are not for the faint hearted. Beautiful dogs, but not "easy" for most people. I'd consider a Whippie or a rescue greyhound obtained through a reputable rescue service.

I had a similar experience with my first Saluki - she saw the lure move away and she was off like a rocket, I had never seen her that "on" before in her life. It was like someone flicked a switch and she was All Business. Likewise the first time she was in a paddock when a hare came up. I think if you've got a breed that has got a lot of working/hunting breeding in its history it's worth letting them get the opportunity if you can. I shed a small tear when I first saw her go, it's quite an amazing experience watching, as you say, the world snap into place for them.

I think the first principle of good manners in these situations is to understand that on someone's home turf, their rules apply. If you're not keen on those rules, you don't have to go/stay. Trying to characterise your personal views about kids and dogs as a universal truths doesn't make them so. Other people see the world differently and it doesn't mean they are nasty or rude. I negotiated something like this with a friend recently. It was a sighthound play date with a few friends at our place. She also has some SWFs and we discussed whether she would bring them and mutually agreed best not to. Didn't cause either of us any drama to have the conversation.

Critical advice for anyone showing a fast moving breed. Also, make sure it's doing the job it's supposed to - I've had some that are supposed to be those super-dooper Berlei anti-bounce models and they weren't doing what they needed to (as I discovered when I viewed video of myself a little while ago..)