Tassie

How's our Moses today, Jules? Grass seeds are a pain in the butt - but if that's all it is, he'll be fine. They sure like to give us a scare, don't they. Fergus and Kirra send good wishes to their friend Moses.

I'm a member of 3 clubs, though only train at 2. I train one dog in obedience at one club in the morning, then teach a puppy class and train agility with my other dog at the other club in the afternoon. Just convenient for me, and I like a lot of things about both those clubs. IMHO, your loyalties lie to yourself and the dog/s first.

Hey, well done. I know how exciting that is. Had the same thing with my previous BC boy in the days when the jumps were too high for him, so I wasn't all that bothered. Anyway - couldn't get him onto the walk - until one day he was tied up, watching my friend's two dogs and then my dog do the dogwalk. Took him off to do something else, and he went right over the dogwalk with now problems - and like PF's Lily with the A frame, the dogwalk became his favourite obstacle. Do you think they sit down and plan how to keep us guessing??

Wow - so many good points here - maybe this should be a sticky. I come from a viewpoint that my dogs are my companions first, and we do the training stuff for fun (- OK, the life stuff is for real, but the competition stuff is for fun). And that I want them to still be enjoying 'stuff' and competing as long as they're physically able. My previous Border Collie competed in his first Jumpers trial in 2001, when the heights changed to make it possible for him to compete at reasonable jump heights. He was 12 years old - and we had a blast. (I caused a 3 refusal DQ by turning him too tightly onto one jump, but he still went under course time - not bad for an oldie.) He was still trialling in UD, so was jumping regularly for that. So I guess I tend to under-push myself and the dogs in terms of major successes - but then that's not what I'm about with my dogs.

Poor little Brock - but sounds like his owners are doing the right thing for him, given his history and the probable progress of the disease. I lost my first Border Collie to acute IMHA at age 12 and 3/4. He went from apparently fit on the Sunday and Monday, to acutely ill on the Thursday. Vet made the diagnosis, but the treatment is so hard on the dog, she wanted to confirm the dx with a pathologist before starting him. I took him home for the night, and he died the next morning. Very hard at the time, but in retrospect, probably the best thing. No apparent connection with vaccs (6 months previously) or h/w - not on it. I didn't have a necropy done, but at his age, it wouldn't be unreasonable to suspect an underlying tumour - maybe in the spleen.

Is there an orthopedic specialist who comes in to Launceston? If not, there is one who comes over to Hobart every 6 weeks or so - to the North Hobart Vet clinic. Might be worth a try.

Here's the quarantine situation for dogs coming into Tasmania, from the Tas Primary Industry Department website DPIW 2.20 Dogs 2.20.1 Dogs must be treated with praziquantel at a dose rate of 5 mg/kg body weight within 14 days before entry to Tasmania with the following documentation: (a) A statement that they have been treated, made in writing by a veterinarian registered in the exporting State or Territory; or (b) A Statutory Declaration that they have been treated, made by the owner in the exporting State or Territory; or 2.20.2 They must be treated with praziquantel at a dose rate of 5 mg/kg body weight after arrival at the direction of an inspector; or 2.20.3 They are returning to Tasmania after no more than 14 days in another State or Territory and the owner provides documentary proof of this. Acceptable documentation is: (a) A statement obtained before leaving Tasmania from the Tasmanian Canine Association, the Department of Primary Industries and Water, or the Tasmanian Greyhound Racing Board that identifies the dog and contains the expected date of departure; or (b) A Statutory Declaration; or © Shipping documents that describe the dog adequately; or 2.20.4 They are exempted from treatment by an inspector because they are: (a) Dogs trained to assist the handicapped; or (b) Greyhounds that will be racing in Tasmania within 6 days of their importation, if this is confirmed by documentation from the Tasmanian Greyhound Racing Board. And oddly - AFAIK dogs resident in Tasmania don't have to be wormed against hydatid tapeworm - I guess on the basis of the ban on feeding offal from possibly infected animals, and the fact that there is apparently no native animal source in Tasmania. Here is a link to a quite useful page on the DPI website about the eradication program for hydatid disease. hydatid disease ET fix typo

Nadine - so sorry to hear your news about Charlie. Hope this post is not tool late. The two dogs I have lost so far, I have had cremated. Many vets have a service which provides a dedicated cremation, and after a week or so, you get your dog's ashes back. I did this, when after having buried a few cats, I realised that without getting in a backhoe, burial for my Border Collies was not an option. Now I wouldn't hesitate about cremation - it's nice to have their ashes, and you know you can take them with you when you move. You're going to have a rough time - make sure you take care of yourself, and get support. Erny wrote what I thought was a wonderful and helpful post for someone else in a similar situation - it's on page 3 of this thread. I hope you find it helpful.

Malamum wrote Just for everyone's information, not all worm tablets target hydatid tapeworm. Only wormers containing praziquantel at the required dose rate will do it. And if you bring a dog into Tasmania, you're required to provide evidence at Quarantine inspection that the dog has been wormed with a praziquantel wormer. I tend to agree about the offal situation (and I don't think chickens are a host, so maybe chicken offal is OK anyway) - but I can also see how Tasmanian authorities can be paranoid about a truly dreadful disease, which they thought for a while they had eradicated. I think their argument is that they can't guarantee that even abbatoir inspection is 100%, and while that doesn't pose a risk to humans directly, it does leave a risk that any cysts could progress through a dog inadvertently fed infected offal.

Sorry - was talking about on course. Martingale while waiting - no problem - easy to slip off.

Do be prepared for the fact that most if not all agility clubs and trainers insist that your dog be on a flat collar or 'nude'. This is for the dog's safety. In fact, the new rules now specify that in competition, the dog must either have on a plain flat collar - NO tags etc., or no collar at all. This is to try to prevent anything catching on the equipment and checking or otherwise hurting the dog. Basically, the dog needs to be under a reasonable degree of control off leash in order to learn agility - so there is no need and no place for a check chain (or any other sort of correction collar.) I would say if you found anywhere that would allow you to learn agility with a dog wearing a check chain, or even a martingale, you should run away very fast. JMO - but as you can tell, a very strongly held one.

Yes - agree with the others - if my vet wasn't willing to discuss something like C5/C7 with me, I'd be changing vets. Apparently the lepto vacc has a significantly higher adverse reaction rates than most of the others, and also, like bordatella, doesn't cover all strains which may be present. One vet I heard speaking about it said he would only use the lepto vacc if there was a real likelihood the dog was going tobe exposed. I would think the same thing would apply to the corona vacc for healthy adults - you'd really want a very good reason for giving it.

After trying a few things without success, I've retrained my fast little girl with a target just off the end of the contact, which I'm pairing with the cue "touch". At a recent dog camp, the trainer had the same thing - but used a 'wait' and then a cued release as the dog touched the contact. In competition, she just dropped the wait, and gave the release cue immediately so that it looked like a running contact. Apart from the fact that it's working for my girl (touch wood, she hasn't missed a contact in competition for the last few months), I like the targeting, as it makes it much easier to get the dog performing the obstacle correcty at speed and at distance - essential for me. Now, if only there was a quick and easy way to teach my brain to remember courses and handle cleanly, so that I didn't waste those lovely contact performances my girl is giving me ...... :rolleyes:

Just in case the OP missed it - I think it's worth repeating the advice about making sure before you enter a trial, that your dog is stable in a stay line with unknown dogs. The distance is approx 1.5 metres - which isn't very far, especially with bigger dogs. There ws a thread late last year about the problems that can happen if dogs are not stable in stays. For my dogs, the worst crime in the trial book would be moving towards another dog in a stay. I do put my boy in even though he has the bad Border Collie habit of going down in a sit, but he wouldn't be going in the ring if he moved to another dog. IOW, what your dog does or doesn't do in his individual work only affects you (asuming he doesn't take off out of the ring), but stability in groups is key, since it affects other dogs - both their safety, but can also affect their attitude to the ring. Oh, and on the 'what they do in SFE' thing - my first boy's best effort was in his first trial - he looked up and waggled and grinned at the judge, who couldn't help smiling - at which point, Sam rolled over to get his tummy tickled. Hmm - think that's a zero. :rolleyes: ET fix typos.

LL, at 3 sheep trials - the traditional ones - the sheep can vary considerably from trial to trial. At some trials they may be 'killers' - making a detour on their way to the abbattoir. Some of those can be really nasty to dogs - guess they figure they've got nothing to lose! Ideally, they would be an even mob of sheep who would have been worked - maybe by dogs - as part of normal farm operations - so maybe about 4 or 5 times a year. They are likely only to have been worked as a large mob, so being 3 sheep alone with a dog would be totally new to them. They will usually not have seen the obstacles - although they will have been yarded and put through a race as part of farming operations. Sheep used for training novice dogs, and maybe for demonstrations, are more likely to be 'dog-broke' to a greater or lesser extent. With a novice dog and a novice hadnler, it's useful if at least the sheep know what they're supposed to be doing. Really dog-broke training sheep are likely to be "knee-knockers" - they will head for the handler, thus making it easy for the trainee dog to hold sheep to the handler.

I had a pet sheep too - called Lambsie of course - what else. He actually thought he was a dog, since he spent most of his life with my previous dogs. He liked to ride in the car too - he rode in the back of the station wagon when we went to a friend's place to get him shorn - used to get some funny looks from other motorists when they saw him in the wagon with the two dogs! My sheep dog trainer friend used to do sheep dog trials - she explained one of the problems with 3 sheep trials is that sheep have 3 possible responses to threat - fight, flight or freeze - and if you get really unlucky, your 3 trial sheep will give you all three responses!

Hey CTD Hope you guys had a good Christmas/New Year. I'm of the same sort of mind as Vickie. Unlike all the other dog activities that I've done, 'herding' (working stock) involves other animals, whose welfare IMHO is absolutely paramount. For that reason, I feel uncomfortable about thinking of stock work as something to do 'for fun'. I know you didn't mean anything bad by that - just had to get on my soap box for a moment. As far as methods - you know I'm a user of positive methods - but when it comes to the welfare of stock, there may have to be immediate unpleasant consequences for the dog. As far as possible, in a good training situation, there will be sufficient control that the dog does not get into too much trouble - the old 'set up for success', and as Vickie says - as far as possible a good trainer will use negative punishment (withdrawal of stock), with appropriate behaviour being rewarded by access to stock. I had the opportunity to do some sheep work with Kirra, and she passed her HIT. At first she was getting into some bad habits, but then I went to train with a friend on her sheep farm, and we did a lot of learning through work. As a result, Kirra and I became handy enough to be useful as assistant farm hands. I absolutely loved the opportunity to learn about sheep, and to work sheep with my dog - but, partly as a result of that, and partly because of the amount of training pressure I would have to exert on her to do herding trial work, I've stayed right away from any sort of herding trials. Best advice I could give you if you want to do some stock work - is learn as much about sheep as you can, and if you get the opportunity, go and watch or even help someone who has sheep. The more you can learn about sheep, their flight zones, how they move, how they react to pressure etc., the more you'll be able to help your dog to be in the right place and do the right thing. I'll PM you the name of a guy I had the chance to have a lesson with that I really liked. Cheers

The boy is a credit to his own spirit, and to your loving care and attention. Have a good Christmas all of you - and I'll look forward to seeing Christmas Ollie pics. Ollie, Ollie, Ollie, Oy, Oy, Oy!

Yep - we've had a good year. My two Border Collies both got their ET, and my girl got AD and JDX. And my boy passed his Tracking Test 1. Gotta be happy with that for a year. Onwards and upwards next year.

I wonder if she'd be happier with it cooked? That's my standby for upset tums - I just lightly cook some chicken breast fillet in the microwave, and give it with a little plain steamed/boiled rice.

Have used ivermectin safely with a KelpiexBorder Collie many years ago (althogh it turned out she was hypothyroid, not demodex another story.) That said, I would probably look at getting your dog tested for the MDR1 gene problem which makes particular dogs problematic for ivermectin among a number of other drugs. Here's a link to information about the test from Washington State university gene test. If you look on that site, you'll also find general information about their drug sensitivity study. I'd certainly be discussing this with my vet - and maybe checking up whether youcan get the test done fom here, and how long it would take etc.etc. Maremmas are not on the list of affected breeds so far - but maybe because they haven't been tested.

Good point SnT. That was another of the (many) things we were reminded of at the Mary Ray seminar - end all your training sessions with a formal ending - something like "All done" - some sign to the dog that that session is over. As far as the throwing behaviours thing goes, she said - just ignore when you don't want it.

Many well-made points here. IMHO the welfare of the stock is absolutely paramount - no ifs, buts, or maybes. Yes, a young and crazy dog may chase, and grip a bit, until it learns the error of its ways. Instructors need to be well experienced, and dogs need to be started on well-dogged sheep that are less likely to stimulate the dogs' craziness. If would-be handlers cannot appreciate that any sort of stock abuse is unacceptable, and be willing to deal with it, then they should be advised to try some other avenue for their dogs. Stock are not dog toys. I started with my show-bred Border Collie bitch in ANKC herding, then was lucky enough to have lessons with an experienced dog handler, who had well-schooled training sheep. I was already reasonably stock savvy, but worked hard on learning what made sheep tick, and how I could help my dog to get them relatively steadily where I wanted them. With the opportunities for real-work (and pretend real-work) learning that I had, my dog and I ended up being reasonably useful farm hands, able to help my trainer out with jobs on her sheep farm. Doing that, and watching real working Border Collies work, made me realize that while she was reasonable as a farm dog doing chores, my girl was unlikely to make a 3 sheep trial dog, so we gave up the idea of ANKC herding too, and now enjoy having fun and chasing titles in agility. I really enjoyed the opportunity of learning to work stock with my girl - nothing quite like walking with your dog driving a mob of sheep several hundred metres and then yarding them - or having brought them to an area of their paddock we wanted eating out, settling down and shepherding them to make sure they stayed in that area. That's what it's all about for me. I already had some reservations about ANKC 'herding' - having read what's reported in some of these posts, I don't feel much more comfortable about it. Having said that, I was very interested to read Andrea's post - and couldn't agree more with what she says about handlers needing to be prepared to learn as much as they can about stock.

In pure free shaping, behaviour comes from the dog - i.e. without luring or targeting. That said, you can introduce objects, like you've done, and as the dog experiments, you can shape different interactions with the objects. I've seeen some cute stuff done with a kid's shopping trolley. If I wanted a particular behaviour, I'd probably lure it and shape it up - i.e. click for a good try, then refine the criteria the dog has to meet for a C/T - similar to free shaping, but you're using lure and/or target to give the dog a head start. (That's 'cos I'm impatient.) A couple of things from the recent Mary Ray camp that CTD and I (and others?) were at .. try throwing the treat, rather than just delivering it by hand - gets the dog more active. And try different positions yourself. Mary saya she gets different behaviours from the dog in free time depending on whether she's sitting, standing or lying down on the floor - and she demonstrated it. In free shaping, try to get a reasonably rapid rate of reinforcement happening, so that you don't get frustration on either the dog's part, or yours. Haven't got time to look, but there's probably some good articles on Karen Pryor or Melissa Alexander's sites www.clickertraining.com or www.clickersolutions.com - or have a look at the clicker training links on www.k9events.com Have fun! ETfix the links so they'd show up properly. Blinking BB code!

Hey roody - great to get an update on Jackson's progress. Sounds like you're doing a really good job with him. As far as the lead goes, I totally agree with Kaffy Magee - light lead trailing first - round the house, in the back yard (supervised) - and really high value treats - roast chicken or soft liver for example. For a while, only use the super high value treats when the lead is around - you're trying to say to Jackson - lead = SUPER treats. Then you can ask for a sit while you put the lead on and off - reward with the super treats and/or a quick game of ball. Are you practising recalls in the yard with Jackson? Again, I'd be using hig value treats, and each time before he gets the treat, make sure you touch him gently under the chin - and then progress to holding his collar briefly. Reward with the treats and/or game of ball. the logic of having him get used to you touching the collar as part of his recall, is that there's less drama about putting the lead on. Rewarding the collar hold with a game of ball shows him that having his collar held/lead put on doesn't necessarily end the game - it may be the start of a new one. As he progresses, just before meal time is a good time for a little lead training. He's more likely to be paying attention then, and the dinner can be part of his reward for cooperating. Let's know how you get on.