jacqui835

Hey guys, just heard back from Trevor. He has had a knee operation and is subsequently out of action He actually texted and called because he feels bad but I've reassured him that of course we wouldn't want him to go through any extra pain on our behalf. So no lure coursing this weekend. But if the weather isn't too hot he is more than happy for us to come next weekend. Said he will call on Thursday once we have a better idea of what the weather should be.

Some really beautiful photos... Great way to get through the day at work haha

Beautiful dog

Hi guys just wanted to give everyone an update, although unfortunately at this stage there is not too much to report. On Monday, I spoke to Trevor and at that stage to his knowledge the lure system had still not been fixed - said that parts are the problem. He did say though that he would try to find out though what the situation was. Unfortunately I haven't heard back from him since, I've sent him a text but I don't want to hound him too much but of course if I hear anything I will post it here. I suppose Sunday is not looking great at this stage, but fingers crossed...

Yes, exactly. I think we got off track, the comments below are the contentious ones for me. Well I still stand by those comments, especially now that I've had some exposure to other working dogs. My dog would not be a pleasant dog to own if the only exercise he got was what I could provide from walks on lead. But I've never met this particular GSD and for all I know, it could be one from very relaxed lines and be perfectly content with a walk around the block so my bad for making assumptions based on the breed alone. But your dog isn't aggressive. I don't think leash walks only would cut it for many working breeds, working line or not. Dogs need the opportunity to run around and burn some energy whether they are lap dogs or working line kelpies who can run over 60km a day. I actually don't think hard exercise is necessarily the answer (although obviously adequate stimulation and exercise is required) and can actually make the situation worse- the dog gets fitter and you get into a vicious cycle of the dog needing ever increasing amounts of exercise to keep it satisfied- I know this from experience with my own dog . I don't think many people with working breeds would actually be capable of completely tiring out their dogs However, an aggressive dog should never be let off the leash unless the owner has full control of it- even then it could attack an approaching dog, so on the whole people are trying to say its safer NOT to let DA dogs off leash. It is a catch-22 situation because the less exercise they get the more frustrated they may get which can increase aggression. Then you really have to look at your capabilities and willingness to work with the dog (and a ehaviourist) and perhaps make a hard decision about quality of life for both you and the dog He was at one stage, between 7-9 months he wanted to fight other large males. Broke up with all his male friends and I seriously considered desexing him. It was only the fact that Buddha (do you remember the large aggressive GSD at Centennial Park?) had the same problem, was desexed and months later nothing had changed. So I decided to try other methods and fortunately Sammy is fine today. But totally ot and I do agree with what you're saying, it's not a good situation

Won't argue with that.

Not at all, in fact I wouldn't expect a WL dog to be worn out easily through exercise. At the end of the day, exercise will just make the dogs fitter and stronger which means they will require more and more in order to get tired. I think it's great you are joining a working club, as IMO mental exercise and working our dogs is a far better way to tire them out than physical exercise. Well the dog is working physically though, like there's a lot of running and jumping and playing to build drive. My dog was never tired from obedience classes, maybe if we were learning new stuff all the time... I don't know I never really teach him more than one or two new tricks at a time and from that he doesn't seem to be tired. I had to do exercise before obedience classes otherwise he would play up a bit and everyone could tell when I hadn't. Sammy was either the star performer or a little shit. Now maybe I'm not doing things right but like I said before, when he's well exercised and had a chance to do a couple of crazy sprints and stretch his legs (sometimes he bounds with happiness and throws his front legs around like a baby deer - something that has to be seen to be understood), well we're ready to shoot for the stars.

Yes, exactly. I think we got off track, the comments below are the contentious ones for me. Well I still stand by those comments, especially now that I've had some exposure to other working dogs. My dog would not be a pleasant dog to own if the only exercise he got was what I could provide from walks on lead. But I've never met this particular GSD and for all I know, it could be one from very relaxed lines and be perfectly content with a walk around the block so my bad for making assumptions based on the breed alone.

not weirded out, I just thought I'd share some info that you might not have thought about Oh sorry I must have misinterepreted you. I just thought people were trying to say that I must be doing something wrong if my dog wants a lot of exercise, and that walks on a lead should be enough. I know I'm definitely not doing everything right but I do know that my dog and I seem to have a pretty good thing going when he's satisfied and well exercised. Apologies, I love these forums because of all the new things I learn but it is hard sometimes over the internet to see everything the way the writers intended it to be perceived...

I saw one Malinois... but I also saw a big rottie and as the owner of a dobie cross rottie well you can probably guess who got me more excited lol. When the rottie went for the sleeve the guy had to release it because otherwise the dog would have taken him down - all very exciting for someone who has never seen this sort of thing in the flesh before. The mal was very fast though, and damn could it jump... Will you be down with your new pup??

Hoep I have replied to everyone now - between this, lure coursing and everything else my inbox is a confusing place at the moment. If you haven't received a reply though msg me again and I'll make sure I get back to you. Gosh went to another club last night and had an amazing experience - working high drive dogs and driven competitive people all doing their thing and the dogs were loving it. I don't think there's anyway I could enjoy training my dog if my dog dreaded it and I had to physically hurt him to get results.

Training every day - a couple of short sessions where we practice his growing trick repertoire - he learns new words very quickly, but then also we're almost always in training because we are always asking him to behave in a certain way etc, formal obedience twice a week (Sammy was in grade 5 with the SAODC - the level before trialing) and lure coursing now every 2nd sunday. All the usual stuff like sitting and waiting for food, leash walks around the block to practice heeling daily in addition to actual exercise, and other more abstract training exercises like sitting with me at cafes for breakfast on the weekends - which is great because there are heaps of people and heaps of dogs that bark at him and he just ignores it all. However just last night I joined the dogsports club - and finally I think we have found something that both Sammy and I can really get into. We will now be doing obedience, tracking and maybe even some schutzhund. These other people with working dogs keep them crated like all the time when they're not working because of the high drive and instead of doing that with Sammy, well we just try and keep him occupied all the time. I have a young male dog from a working family and with high drives - he causes no problems so long as he is well exercised and has jobs to do. And I'm a very active, sporty person so I wouldn't want a different sort of a dog, I would be disappointed if I got tired before my dog did... I don't really get why everyone seems to be weirded out by this - at lure coursing we met with a couple of people from these forums who said it was great that we recognised that we owned a working dog who needed to be taken out to these sorts of things to be happy and fulfilled - it's in his blood. I just thought that if the german shepherd was anything like the GSD's I have seen at this new club, or anything like my dog, well walks around the block on lead would not be enough.

I had an amazing time - I finally think I have found my club And the best part, they seem to like Sammy and think he has good potential Great people though, I am just so happy that I finally found something that both Sammy and I can really get excited about. And people as obsessed with their dogs as what I am lol. I mean obedience is great and very important and we'll never stop doing that, but it's awesome to be able to balance it out with some sports and give Sammy an opportunity to utilise his working ability (if he has any haha). And I learned a lot as well. In some of the other threads I've talked about how Sammy responds to me differently sometimes to how a lot of other dogs seem to, and as soon as they saw Sammy they said that we had somehow developed a very strong bond and that Sammy has very high pack drive (I didn't really understand pack drive before and it's something I want to do more research into since it's supposedly no.1 for Sammy). One of the trainers actually said that he was a bit scared to tell me how to do things, because it might ruin what I had with Sammy because right now we were just achieving results without over-thinking everything. So he wants me to watch the other dogs, and then kind of work out how to do it for ourselves to an extent. We were supposed to wait until next introductory day (1st session in Dec) before we could start training, but I think Sammy and I came across as a little keen lol so they now say we can get him out on the field this Saturday and see what we can make of it.

Oh wow, the longest we ever went was when I was unwell, maybe 4 days without a walk and we paid high prices for that - the dog ate the couch that had been in our backyard since we moved to Adelaide (we couldn't get it in the house so it became Sammy's outside bed). And when I say ate, I mean dragged the sitting cushions onto the lawn (and I can barely lift them btw) and completely dismembered them - I have a video of the disaster that was our backyard stored somewhere... So we try to make sure he gets a good run every 2nd or 3rd day. I think the other thing is that my dog is left alone for 8+ hours a day whilst I'm at work - that's probably a key factor right there. But I do notice on weekends and holidays, he is just a much easier dog to manage when he's tired. But his parents work all day every day so we expected him to have high energy levels. Sammy doesn't really seem to notice his backpack, but we love it because now when we go bush walking Sammy carries everything - phones, water, food, keys, weights lol.

I definitely won't be going back, I had nightmares on Sunday night about the schnauzer screaming, maybe I've lived a sheltered life but I've never heard a dog make noises like that before. And the way it was biting the chain and the shoes and looking up at its owner with fear, well it was very distressing. The trainers didn't hold the dogs up by the chains though, it was just some of the people there. The trainers just said that the answer to everything was that you needed to be firmer on your dog and they didn't say anything to the people hurting their dogs. I think it was a private club - if anyone wants to know feel free to message me and I will send you the website link.

This would be impossible for me. For people who own working breeds, even a 2 hour walk on the leash doesn't begin to drain their energy. I could walk all day with my dog on the leash, and when I got home, he would still be rearing to go and probably destroy my house in frustration. I know my sister's papillons are more than satisfied with a walk to the shops and back, but my doberman can do a morning of lure coursing, an afternoon of swimming and running at the beach and an evening of chasing the cat and still have energy to spare - and I imagine that a german shepherd could be similar. I do not walk my dog on the leash to drain his energy, I can't not walk fast enough or for long enough to do that. I do it for training purposes and so that I can take him with me everywhere. This is a difficult situation, but given the dog is still relatively young and subsequently energetic, I don't think leash walking will cut it. hey Jacqui, I have a very energetic dog who would like to work all the time. and I also fostered an even more super energetic dog. Instead of trying to tire and work him out, have you thought about teaching him to relax? Or in effect teaching him that at times the job is to just be chilled out? I have been really focusing on this and its made a huge difference I know she could go and go, and give and give, all day. And some days I do tonnes of stuff with her and that's not a problem. But now 99% of the time she just relaxes when we're not doing anything Just a thought Also I reccommend a backpack which you could use to use up more of his energy when going for a walk He knows how to relax - there are days now when we can skip a walk all together (which is lucky because there were a few days over winter when I could not go out because of a bad cold). But he needs a couple of days a week at least of real exercise or else he starts doing things like chasing his tail, being destructive etc and annoying with us. You know if we go for a long drive it's not like he's throwing himself around the car, he will just sleep for the most part. And he comes with me everywhere - so he can happily sit at my feet in a cafe or whatever and not cause trouble. But we can ask him to do that on those occasions because several times a week, we do drain his energy. If all we did was walk him around the block a few times a week on the lead, we would have a very frustrated and unsatisfied pooch. As you said yourself, you do tonnes of things with your dog and then they relax the rest of the time - they won't relax without that "tonnes of stuff". Also he has a backpack, I once posted photos of him racing along with his backpack carrying over 10kg - which I think is about the most he can safely carry given his weight but he seems unphased. I was wrong though to try and give advice over the internet re aggression. When I corrected my dog he was still far away from the other dog. Once they were actually going at it we weren't correcting, we were just trying to separate. And I was wrong again because in my case, my dog never wanted to kill the shepherd, he just wanted to dominate so it wasn't a real fight as such - ie there were only the accidental puncture wounds (if any) talked about that article, "he just wants to say hi".

Last Sunday I went out to give another dog training club a try, and I don't know if I can post it here so I'll keep the name secret, but I still get shivers down my spine thinking about them. Their motto was that dogs will do things because of 2 reasons. Firstly, so something will happen, and secondly so that something won't happen. So they said they said to teach your dog to lie down, you say down, then when the dog doesn't, step on the lead next to their neck as hard and quick as possible so force the dog down. He demonstrated with an old lab, grey around the muzzle, and when it wouldn't go down, he stepped on the lead so hard the dog collapsed. The lab didn't go down next time, so then they said the problem was that they weren't doing it hard enough :'( He did it about 6 times and the lab still wouldn't go down - I don't think it understood what was being asked of it, given that according to the owners it had never been trained before. But the worst was their corrections. Now I am someone who believes in consequences for dogs for bad behaviour, and have used a check chain to correct my dog many a time, as well as grabbing the side of his neck, talking sternly to him etc. But I do not believe in hurting your dog or abuse for any reason, and this was disgusting. This one woman was holding her dog off the ground with the check chain. The dog would scream once back on the ground (I don't think it was able to make any noise whilst suspended due to choking) and would bite the chain, her shoes everything in an almost delusional state. The dog was a medium sized schnauzer (ie not the toy or the giant). Many other people were swinging their dogs around off the ground also to correct them, rather than just the distracting jerk to the side that I do with my dog (of course they told me I wasn't yanking hard enough, and that I needed to toughen up). People kept saying to me oh it looks bad but they get such great results - obviously they're used to never seeing new people again. And this place was very expensive. First visit was free, but next week they wanted me to bring $160 to join the club and $186 for basic classes, then $160 once he moved into intermediate levels (which they thought would be in about 2 weeks since Sammy knew everything) and god knows how much at advanced. Thing is though I will happily spend more than this on training my dog, but I just did not feel right about this place at all.

Thank you, from your post I discovered they have a facebook page which includes their location so all good. Have to learn to stop leaving things to the last minute haha.

Hey guys, I had planned to attend my first class with these guys tonight however unfortunately, when I went to look up the address just then, it turns out the site is down for maintenance. I can not remember where they were located so hoping that someone here knows. I am hoping the site will be up and running again soon, but just in case I thought I would post here as this was where I first heard of them and I really don't want to miss class tonight.

It's only so they can offset the naughtiness! Awww that is just about the cutest thing I have ever seen!! Dobermans are my breed but I fear that if I ever found myself in a room with rottie puppies, I would be very unlikely to walk out empty handed... I am not trying to promote cross-breeding here because not of all of Sammy's family turned out as good-looking as him, but it will be hard owning a pure doberman that lacks a bit of that cute rottie face - especially the eyes and not to mention the sooky lovey personality. And the adult is beautiful too; to be honest, I am more of an adult dog person, but rottweiler pups are very nearly irresistable.

Correction, you mean he looks all handsome to the non-expert! He is much cuter than a pure doberman. Dobermans are my passion but they are not a cute breed (they look very serious and majestic), rotties on the other hand have very cute faces (look at those cuties in Allerzeit's signature) so luckily for Sammy, he turned out a cute doberman. You know we have only ever had maybe 2-3 people able to pick his breed and they have all been either current or historic doberman owners. When he was a puppy and we told people that he was a doberman, they asked whether he would darken as he aged... Anyway, back to flying, thank you so much everyone for the advice, it is very reassuring to hear that I'm not the only one who gets this worried about their dog/s and I can look forward to my holiday now without feeling guilty about wanting to take poochy with me.

Yep, agree with this Great idea, I'll do this.

Thank you very much, and yes Allerzeit that will be me - I'm probably the one who will need the sedation lol. One other thing as well, do you have to go somewhere particular to collect your dog, and do we have to remove him from the airport in his crate or can we just walk him out on lead?

Thank you so much for the advice, that was a very helpful response especially since you have rotties. I feel much better about taking Sammy with me now on holidays. Oh thank you and yes so long as the crate isn't more than about 10-15kg I'm sure Sammy + crate won't be over 65kg.

This Christmas I am looking to go 'back home' to Sydney to see my friends family for a week or so. Now I could not imagine not having my dog with me, and my mum very generously just assumed that if she wanted me at her Christmas lunch she would have to accomodate Sammy too - and so has offered to fly him there and back as my present. My sister has been looking into it though, and I have some concerns. Just so everyone knows, Sammy is a doberman cross rottweiler cross ridgeback, but red and tan in colour so most people don't recognise him for what he is. I am not sure exactly how heavy he is, but I certainly can not lift him and he was about 35kg at 9 months. I will weigh him at the vet's tonight. If I had to guess for the time being, I would say between 35 and 45kg. On the Virgin website, it says, "Powerful and strong animals including Staffies, Pit Bulls, German Shepards, Dobermans, Rottweilers etc, can break through plastic and would therefore need to be in a metal container." Now I don't think my dog would try to break out of a container, but does anyone know what these metal cages look like? If that will mean he receives different treatment - ie treated as a dangerous animal, I would like to lie about his breed (on our rental lease he is a weimeraner cross chocolate labrador). He is strong and powerful, but has been in crates before and I really don't imagine that he would try to destroy anything. Also, some friends of ours had a puppy shipped in from Canberra, and the puppy had to be at the airport 2 hours before the flight and was not able to be picked up until like 2 hours after the flight had landed - and had to spend all that extra time in a warehouse. The puppy was screaching when they got to it, covered in its own feaces. I do not want this for Sammy - is there a way that I can pick him up straight away? Also for the flight, I was petrified after reading on the Qantas website that, "Air travel can be very stressful to many animals. Although not common there have been occasions when animals have died during a flight as an outcome of becoming highly stressed and anxious. Please discuss the suitability of air travel with your Vet if you think that your pet is likely to become upset in noisy and unfamiliar environments." Should I have him sedated? He would be fine if I was with him, but by himself I have no idea. He is the sort of dog who will follow me up trees and over rocks and out to sea (like no fear if he's with me), but panics a little if he thinks he's lost, or I've left without him or something. He also hates the sensation of changing height - for example in elevators he crouches like he's trying to steady himself and is reluctant to get into one now (but of course fears being left behind more so does). Do people typically recommend sedating their dogs for flying? Sorry for all the questions, I just want to make sure that I'm not putting Sammy at risk for selfish reasons (ie me wanting to have him with me).