Tarka

Thanks for the comments everyone. I agree, 7 isn't that old for a well-cared-for GSD; I'd estimate that she'd got another 7-8 years of life in her. Most people think she's an adolescent when they meet her. The reason I mention the age is context just to see how difficult it is to rehome a dog of that age. The main reason for not wanting to bring her with us is that I've met several people who've taken their pets too-and-from Europe and the US who have said that they'd never do it again. One person brought his staffy from the UK to Australia, but rehomed him here rather than put him through the return flight. We honestly believe that if we can find a good family for her she will be much better off than being dragged with us.

Do you know how long the dog was in quarantine on return?

Yep, desexed; I'll update the post.

Hi, Ruby is our 7yr-old pure-bred GSD, who we love dearly. She's a particularly beautiful dog, with a friendly personality who loves people, and is in good health. However my job has now opened-up the possibility of working out of Amsterdam for a few years, something I've always wanted to do, starting later this year. After much discussion we've decided we'd rather not put Ruby through the ordeal of flights and quarantine (the latter especially on the return trip), so we're considering whether we should re-home her, preferably to a family who could give her the attention she deserves. I'd like to ask the DOL regulars how realistic finding a good home for a mid-life dog is? And does anyone have any tips for the best way to go about this? Some additional info: * Desexed * Pedigree (sire is a show-champion) * Location is NSW Thanks, Steve

She's 20 months. So still a pup for a Shepherd.

Yes, sorta. I over-socialised Ruby when she was younger so she places a high-value on other dogs. But I can usually get her focus back to the prey. Then you should have a ball of your own that Kovu wants even more

It's not really a day, it's every day. I've been doing this since last september so it's not overnight. But if you've got a dog with a lot of drive you can get results very quickly. I trained a Border-Collie to sit and stay in drive in a few minutes down at a local park. Blew the owner away :D You will see Ruby's concentration start to go after about fifteen minutes so I stop then rather than push it, but she's still a pup, at least in her head.

Is this 'hyper' all the time? Another advantage to training in drive is that it tires the dog out in a way physical exercise alone doesn't ...

I can't say how important it is, but I do still use sit, stay, etc. when not in drive. For instance, when walking I use 'close' for a casual heel in the street, 'sit' and 'down' at home as 'payment' for food rewards, etc. I rarely use 'fuss' (more correctly 'fuß' I believe) outside of drive training, and then mainly when I expect a fast, immediate response. I try and make sure that a drive-based command always gets a drive reward, whereas as non-drive command may get nothing more than a 'good dog' or a pat on the head, but compliance is not as immediate. I don't have a particular reason for any of this other than I don't want to 'use up' her drive, if that makes any sense. And I can't say that it's necessarily the best method, I'd be interested to see what other think. Cheers, Steve

Oh great, now I'm going to get beaten up with the playground after school for being a teacher's pet I actually learned about prey-drive at the workshop last September when I saw K9 try some prey-drive with Ruby and get immediate results. I hadn't had much luck before but seeing a pro do it helped a lot, so K9 deserves some credit. The trick, BTW, is to wind the dog up first; snapping the prey item in front of her, letting her know that it's desirable before showing her how to get it.

It's here:

There's low-quality copies available on bittorrent if you want to try before you buy.

There's some fairly detailed articles online here: http://www.dobbsdogs.com/library/obedience/ Cheers, Steve

Is that anything like stage-diving?

I'd be interested to see if the DVDs play in your player. Do you have a multi-region one?

With these things it usually easiest to just use a credit-card and let the CC company sort it out. If you can't do that you should be able to use an international money order; Auspost do them through Western Union. Of course, he may not want to take your money, you may be one of those genetically inferior French people... (See the page about "foreign orders".)

Also, I gather "Schutzhund Obedience: Training In Drive" by Gottfreid Dildei & Sheila Booth is considered one of the definitive works on this. (Anyone read this?)

If you need something for visual reference I believe the Leerburg videos do a lot of work in drive, but I haven't seen them personally.

While we're on it, does anyone know of any Sydney clubs other than the Western Sydney Sportdog Club? Horsley Park is a bit far from Newtown. Cheers, Steve

OK, I've pulled all the video off and encoded it into a downloadable format. For those I've already sent directions to the videos are in a directory under the URL I sent before. Regarding DVDs, there's too much footage to fit on a single one, and I can't really see how I can edit it down to a reasonable size without losing information. One alternative is to make the encoded videos available as two CDRom images, including the player software, which can be downloaded and burned. Thoughts anyone?

After playing around with alternative encoding software I've managed to get a reasonable 16-min video to under 100Meg. People who've already downloaded it can get it from the same place. BTW, if anyone has problems playing the video try using VLC: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

The sound quality isn't up to much I'm afraid, especially being outside. Hopefully it will be better with the inside shots, but I haven't pulled them off the tapes yet.

OK, there's a 300Meg 50Min segment available online, can you PM me if you attended and I'll send you the address. K9Force, are you happy for me to use the honour system on who attended?

Ooops, it's actually 50 minutes worth so the 120Meg version will be very low res. I'll make a cdrom size version available for the hardcore, but that will be next week.

I actually have a short (~15 min) clip of the first demonstration I can make available online. However it's about 120MB, so it's mainly of interest to people with fast connections at home, or who are seriously into abuse of work facilities. I can make it available to anyone who was there with Steve's permission. Anyone interested?