Gayle.

My two play like that ALL day. When Dusty was very little, I'd supervise and keep the sessions short. Now she's bigger and just as rough as her "brother" they spend all day together. When she's had enough she snoozes in her bed and he snoozes in the garden. Once they're rested, they go right back into it!

Yeah, what a pity the judges didn't acknowledge the amazing TEAM effort happening there. I would love to be able to do something like that with one of my dogs. The closest we come is when the dog steals my lunch of the bench and I run after him...we're in perfect synch then! LOL!

My 14yo daughter started agility with Benson this year and she absolutely loves it! Her friends just don't get that she'd rather be doing that than playing "proper" sports and they don't get the excitement when they learn something new. But I do!

Yes, they do. In the puppy food, the kibble is very small...in fact it's smaller than the kibble I give my cats!

Well, Benson thought they were there purely to dispense little grass flavoured goodies out their bums, just for him to eat. He showed NO interest in the sheep........until..........SUPERPUPPY!!!!! was let loose and she showed them ALL how to herd the woolly wallies! Dusty saved the bacon (or would that be lamb chop?) and showed her doofus brother what sheep herding dogs are supposed to do with sheep. She rounded 'em up, cut one loose, chased it around, brought it back then rounded 'em up again. She was AMAZING! And Benson will be a long time living down that little failure.

We made some headway today in the tandem walking lessons. I tried short leads....and it worked much better than giving either or both of them some length. I have a leather lead called a "traffic lead" for Benson that I use when I want him walking close by my side. He had that on and Dusty had a slightly longer one. With her between Benson and I, we soon had it sorted and by the time we were on the home stretch of our very slow walk (shuffle??) around the block, they were walking quite well together and I even picked up the pace from extremely slow (almost snail pace) to near normal.

Saturday, 10.30am for obedience (get there a bit earlier to settle your dog). It's about $75 per year but that would be for a family.....a single is cheaper. They do obedience, agility, tracking and I've heard they are looking at introducing flyball at some stage in the future. Agility is 8.30am, it doesn't cost extra but you're expected to be there to help set up and pack away the gear. They have a 6 week course for beginners, plenty of one-on-one instruction......you and your dog are taught how to use the equipment....then it all comes together for the course. My daughter is doing agility and having a ball! Obedience classes are fun, they have 4 graduations a year. There are lots of experienced people, including a qualified obedience judge. I find it all very friendly and helpful and try not to miss a Saturday. The training is mostly positive and each instructor has their preferences (I currently have an instructor that prefers correction chains and doesn't like food rewards). Mostly it's about doing stuff with your dog and enjoying it.

My dogs training treats and "snacks" are Nutrience or Eagle Pack kibble, which is then removed from their daily allowance of meal food. Benson doesn't usually like kibble in a bowl all that much but he'll eat it all day if I feed him one piece at a time from my hand! But keep in mind that the snacks have to be deducted from the overall daily food allowance, so if you're allowing 400g of food per day and doggie gets 100g of snacks, she then only gets 300g in her bowl.

My local Coles supermarket have just got chicken frames in stock for the first time and one is enough for a meal for a small/medium dog....they would work out to be less than $1.00 each. Feed a whole frame raw and that takes care of the bone/calcium/clean teeth portion of the diet. Other raw chicken parts are cheap....necks especially. And excellent for the dogs health. Raw grated or pulverised veges (carrots, choy, zucchini, cauliflower and whatever the greengrocer is getting rid of cheap. Not onions though.) The occasional raw egg, some grated cheese, some homebrand sardines. Supplement with a good quality kibble.....you will feed a lot less of a premium brand than you will a cheap supermarket brand. Look out for a 2 for 1 offer in pet supply places or any specials that are happening. That should work out to be way less than $20 a week.

If she's getting casserole steak every day, she's getting plenty of red meat. I'd be inclined to alternate the steak/veges combo with raw chicken necks, raw eggs (maybe one a week), grated cheese, sardines, natural yoghurt, grated fruit (apples and pears).....just add some variety to her diet. Also, instead of a marrow bone, give her a couple of brisket bones, as she can chew up the bones and eat them. They are soft bones (not hard weight bearing ones) and are a good source of calcium and great for cleaning teeth. I have a puppy who would probably walk over hot coals for roast chook! I have to put her outside when I buy a bbq chicken or am dishing up a roast because she's a pest to the point of being dangerous.

Hahaha....my dogs make a massive effort to reach the "out of reach" cat food bowl to tip it over and eat the contents! It can't be THAT demeaning! LOL!

For small dogs, I wonder how dry cat food such as Hills Oral Care, or Royal Canin Oral Sensitive would do as a treat a few times a week? The stuff defiitely keeps cats teeth clean....my cats all have beautiful teeth as this type of food forms the basis of their diet. The pieces, especially the Hills, are quite large and small dogs would have to crunch them up. Might be worth a shot as a training treat.

Well, on the beach yesterday I figured out how to walk my two together so they walk perfectly! I just took Dusty's lead off. Wherever Benson is, she wants to be right beside him so while we were walking along the beach, she went leadless and it made for a perfect walk! Can't do that on the street though, so we're back to untangling the puppy every two paces.

Leo is a rocket! LOL! Love the seesaw trick! Benson isn't ever gonna get to any trial-able standard. Hell, in grade 1 obedience, he can't focus long enough to do a simple drop stay! And it's only for one minute. Poor little dude got stung by a bee on Saturday though, so I can't say I blame him for not wanting to lie down where the bees were. But that was only ONE class......he doesn't have that excuse for the rest of them.

I walked Benson and Dusty today.....not far and certainly not very fast! LOL! Eventually they got the idea but oh boy, did they make a chore out of it! I think it will be easier when Dusty gets closer in size to Benson....and grows a slightly bigger brain than the one she's got now. Cos she was on the left, on the right, under him, behind him, under my feet, around my ankles....... I think to the left and slightly ahead of me would have worked nicely if I could have got the dogs to do it both at the same time!

Oh dear. Poor Leo....I think he really wants to come and live at my house. We don't do anything quite so important as obedience trials and we probably never will because Benson develops a combination of ADHD and Alzheimers when we get to obedience class. Yesterday the instructor was looking to pass some dogs up to the next class and Benson forgot every single SIMPLE command, stood in the sit stay and sat in the drop stay. We'll be in grade one forever, I fear.

I found that being unpredictable made my dog concetrate more on me than the surrounds and consequently stopped him pulling. Turn abruptly left or right, about turn and walk the other way. Stop and give the sit command and expect him to obey it. Walk 5-10 paces and stop abruptly again and make him sit. Do that a few times combined with turns, about turns....mix them up so he doesn't know what's coming next. Eventually he will focus on you because YOU are the one setting the walk, not him.

Hear, hear! It took months of patience and perserverance to get my boy to walk reliably on a loose leash and in the early days a check chain was useless as it required the chain to be loose for a brief moment to "pop" it to give the correction....but it was never loose. He pulled so hard it was permanantly tight and did nothing to teach him to walk beside me. I found the various no-pull devices a godsend because once he had one on, he wouldn't pull and I could start some positive reinforcement and praise for walking nicely. The Sporn harness was my personal favourite as it's comfortable for the dog and effective as a no-pull/correction device. My new favourite is the Sporn Pack Leader....it's a lot more comfortable than the Halti or Gentle Leader head collars and more effective in giving a correction because if the dog isn't pulling, it simply hangs loose and doesn't give a constant slight correction like the others do. Plus it has a padded nose band so doesn't leave a mark across the dogs nose. And it really only takes a very slight correction to be effective. Now he's great. I can walk him with a flat collar or a correction chain and he doesn't pull. And if he starts to forge ahead, I just need to say "Back here" and he comes back. In all honesty, I think it's down to personal preference. I've now been through three levels of obedience with my boy at our local club and had a variety of instructors and they all have different opinions. Two of them recommended limited slip collars, one says they are totally useless. One recommended a head collar, another says he wouldn't pass a dog wearing a head collar in graduation if it was up to him. Harnesses are not allowed on dogs at training; prong collars are illegal here. Whatever works for the dog and handler is the best tool to use at the time. Overall, I prefer my voice and a pocketful of treats, but to get to the point where either of them were effective, I needed the right tool for the job.

I agree with AkitaSam. While DSLR's appear to be complicated, they are actually far easier to use than a high end compact cam, due to almost all of the controls being driven by dials and buttons on the body of the camera, rather than menus accessed via the LCD screen. My husband started out with a Canon S1 IS which in it's day was a lovely big zoom compact cam. But it drove him nuts cos he was continually having to access menu's to change such simple things as white balance or ISO. I bought a second hand 10D and taught him to use that and after a 10 minute lesson, he was away! And rapt cos it was so much easier to navigate than his compact cam, and the pics were a hundred times better even though he didn't have a clue what he was doing. The lenses you mention are similar to the lenses I started out with. They are not bad for bright daylight and with a bit of patience the 18-55mm lens can be quite useful indoors, but there are much better lenses available when you want to upgrade. They do come at a cost though, and you'll find eventually that the camera was the cheap part of the bundle!

The price is not bad at all....I am paying $87 for 15kg of Eagle Pack. Supplemented with chicken frames, necks or whatever you can get cheap, it sounds like a great diet for dogs.

Not sure if you still want to see pics from that lens (it's an excellent standard lens as well as macro) but I always use Pbase for looking at pics taken by certain lenses and cameras. Click on "more" to see more pics. http://www.pbase.com/cameras/canon/ef_50_25_macro

Meg, my 14yo daughter takes our Australian Shepherd male to agility training each Saturday morning and soon she'll be taking our puppy to obedience training as well. She spends a few minutes each day giving the dogs some "formal" training, and lots of time playing with them. Although I take the boy dog for obedience, he's very mindful of my daughter and he absolutely loves his agility classes with her. It doesn't really take a lot of time for training each day, just a few minutes here and there, and it doesn't even have to be in any special place. It can even be in your bedroom, and she often takes the puppy to her room and goes through a few commands with her. Once your puppy has formed a bond with you, training comes naturally as he will want to please you.

My favourite book for Aussie photograpahers, especially if you love the great outdoors, animals, candid people shots etc. is Steve Parish's "Photograph Australia". The full colour, full text/photos one (there's a cheaper condensed version with most of the pics missing). For understanding basic photography concepts, artistic composition and general exposure info, this book is excellent....but more so are the ideas you'll get from his photos. He shows so many incredible ways to photograh subjects most of us would not give a second glance to. And they at the doorstep of all of us.

Why not? I got my most recent addition at 8 weeks of age, and the breeder deemed her old enough and stable enough to travel interstate.

Try adding water to the meals by whisking it into the meat or vege mixture, make up a low salt thin gravy and pour that over her meals or freeze treats in water for her to lick. Also for dogs that bolt down chicken pieces, freezing larger pieces slows them down. Our puppy gets a frozen drumstick every morning when she's left in her run...it keeps her occupied for ages while we all leave for work and school.