Kavik

Not a good start I would try AWDRI

If obedience was my thing that would be very tempting!

Also remember that socialise does not mean only playing/roughhousing. You want your girl to be able to pay attention to you with other dogs around as well.

Just got word on Facebook that Springwood Agility Trial this sunday is cancelled due to the bushfires.

You can also try a pen which has a lid that 'clicks' when you push it down. I-clicks are softer than normal clickers as well.

Not at the GP, next trial is Springwood, then ADC! I rarely get footage of me competing, when I had people video me it made me nervous

Great videos everyone!

He is adorable!

It is so unfair to lose two at the same time Hugs to you

I had a few different breeds growing up - Cocker Spaniel, Schipperke, Cocker cross, then my current dogs Kelpie X, GSD, and 2 working line Kelpies. Like CBD I find many breeds of dog adorable and interesting, but considering where my interests lie at the moment (agility), I think my next dogs will continue to be working breeds - I like short coat so probably continue to be Kelpies, or perhaps a Koolie or if I find one I like short haired BC. Also like CBD I adore Malinois, love their drive and how they work, and would love to give one a go, but wonder if they may be too much dog for me!

I don't do either sport but like watching the Crufts performances. Here are this years winners: HTM: Freestyle: I haven't seen anything of this standard in Australia yet.

The only dog of mine I did puppy preschool with ended up being dog aggressive! I don't do puppy preschool anymore. I take puppies with me to training classes when I train the other dog and take the puppy out for some socialising and puppy training, and to trials to do the same thing, and visit friends with dogs.

I have shaped a retrieve two different ways. The first one I tried was Shirley Chong's retrieve http://www.shirleychong.com/keepers/retrieve.html That worked reasonably well with Diesel to a point, struggled to get speed or enthusiasm for going out to it, but he will hold it well and walk around and bring it back and sit in front etc. With Kaos I got stuck when using this method, so I decided to try a different approach. The second one I tried just recently with my pup and Kaos is using a hand touch similar to kikopup's video Here is the video of my retrieve with my puppy at the moment

Beagles adapt extremely well to food reward and are generally high in food drive being the method used in the detector dogs......so I could imagine a Beagle well trainable in obedience using the drives they have? That's a very simple thing to determine how much focus a dog has in the face of high distraction and many professional trainers wash dogs out that don't measure up.....they even sell their washouts to Australians who don't know the real reason they are for sale. Commercial trainers always make out their champion dog was crap by nature and their training program made a silk purse out of sows ear...it's how they sell training programs, didn't you know that When the training program purchased doesn't work because the dog doesn't have the right drives to support it, they tell the owner they are not applying the program properly :laugh: Back to the OP's original question above........IMHO success depends on the dog's genetic aptitude to adapt to handler induced reward above all else :D Swagger (SG's dog) is a singleton BC pup whelped in her home. I don't think she would have gotten rid of him! She doesn't make out that he was 'crap by nature', rather that he is a pup which provided challenges, just like everybody's puppy, an average BC puppy, not a special, superstar perfect puppy from the time he was born. And you get to see video proof of the challenges and how she deals with them. As the majority of us are not professionals nor do our dogs 'work' for a living, we don't 'wash out' or rehome dogs which prove more challenging, or don't have as much drive, or are independent, or more easily distracted, or motion sensitive etc. Sure I try to do my research on breeders, bloodlines etc but in the end you work with the dog you have, they all provide challenges.

There are some pretty awesome Beagle's out there in scent detection roles trained in food drive, but like all working roles, the dogs are individually selected based on the drives best suited in these roles and adaptability to the training that achieves it :) She is not talking about Beagles in scent detection roles She has had great success with her own pet Beagle in obedience, great job!

I have just enrolled in Puppy Peaks. This is following Susan's progress with her young dog Swagger from a young pup of 3 weeks to about 2 years when he is competing in agility. Videos of everyday training sessions and how she deals with challenges. She stresses and the videos show that Swagger was not an automatically perfect puppy, she had challenges with him. You get to see good sessions and sessions where things went wrong, and how she dealt with that. That is what I like about her, she stresses that even professional trainers have challenges with their dogs, the same challenges that everybody else faces. They do not automatically have perfect tugging dogs which give them focus in the face of high distractions.

Your foundation work in engagement has helped your newer dog to seek to engage in the handler. While having good drive makes this easier, having high drive is not what has done this, the training is. A high drive dog without such training would not automatically seek engagement with the handler. You still have to put in the work. While Susan Garrett has Border Collies, she also has JRT, and has a journal of how she transformed a rescue JRT that showed no interest in a ball or toy of any kind and no interest in engaging with the handler into a flyball champion. Not all of her students have super high drive Border Collies either. She is committed to helping students bring out the best in their dogs. I think everybody understands that high drive dogs, and dogs with certain temperaments are easier to train up to higher levels. Why else would we choose certain breeds and research breeders and bloodlines and look carefully at individual pups? Nobody is disputing that. But understanding how to build value for working with you, how to get the dog to engage with you, and play with you for whatever reward, is also very beneficial to dogs without high drive. You may have to work harder for it and experiment more and have some lateral thinking, which you may not have to do with a dog that has high drive and biddable temperament. But that does not mean it can't be done.

Some trainers that I have found inspirational in regards to engagement and building value for the handler are Susan Garrett and Michael Ellis. Susan Garrett often has online courses (Puppy Peaks has just closed, this time it includes Recallers as well, which is the best of her courses for engagement/relationship building stuff) and she also has DVDs, books, and useful videos on her YouTube channel. Michael Ellis has some free videos on YouTube which are really great as well as DVDs through Leerburg.

I find it interesting Santo that you keep wanting to blame the dog. The dog is what it is. Our job is to get us working well as a team and work towards whatever our goal is. All of your training problems will not be fixed by having a high drive dog lol.

My Kelpies are MUCH higher drive than my GSD, and of course are easier to motivate, but I still struggled for a long time with focus and getting the performance in agility that I wanted and knew the dog was capable of. I had issues with Kaos running out of the ring, leaving to visit friends or just to wander. It was only when I learned more about engagement/relationship building and how to build value for me that I started getting the kind of focus I wanted, and our performance improved dramatically. This has made me believe that I could have improved the performance of my now retired dogs if I had known what I do now.

Of course he would have failed police dog training, I don't doubt that :laugh:. That sort of level was never my aim, simply I wanted to get the best out of my dog, and wanted to try my hand at competing. In the end you have to work with the dog you have. I think one of my problems is simply that he works differently to the Kelpies, and this was my first ever attempt to train a dog up for competition. I got too caught up in training behaviours, and didn't pay enough attention to building value for working with me. I didn't know enough about transitioning from training to competition. I also got very nervous and stressed in any trial like run throughs. While he never would have been a SchH dog, I think he had enough go in him to at least get the lower level obedience titles (Rally would have suited us better, as you can talk to them, at least as much for my benefit as his, it helps me to stay upbeat and not nervous, still a long way for me to go before I am ready to tackle ob trials!). Any title in a field is an achievement :) .

My GSD doesn't have a lot of drive, I struggled a lot with motivation with him (he also has health problems which doesn't help). I wish I had known what I do now about engagement, and how to make myself and my rewards more interesting, and how to be more fun (and have more fun in my training) when he was younger, as my aim had been to do competition obedience with him but we never quite got there.

I'm so sorry Perse

My understanding as to why they haven't had vests is that they may impede movement.

I certainly need to learn to trust my dog more!