stephenb

With the dwindling number of entries around here, I am prepared to put up with this as long as they do progress and go on to higher levels. A short polite note to the obedience comittee of the canine control body possibly would have been in order without stirring up too much fuss.

I agree with you entirely that once a dog does a stay it is neccessary to proof it. In our advanced classes we return past our dogs, walk over them, have the instructor walk around them, all handlers go for a walk around the other dogs at the same time. In a trial I don't see any point in pushing your luck but training should be about finding and extending the limits. If obedience is getting a bit of a bore, keep it up but give agility a go as well. It is great fun for you and your dog if you don't take yourself too seriously.

I have seen seen prong collars brought to our club and advice given on their use but they are not allowed to be used during club training sessions. I would not use one on my staff, not because I have any aversion to them but because she would probably injure herself. She tried to jump up onto a park bench one day when I wasn't looking and was flipped into a backwards summersault in mid air when she reached the end of the lead. She had a check chain on and wasn't fazed a bit, just got up and kept walking. :cool:

Off topic but this could be a good agility dog. Has a lot of drive, willingness to please, focus on handler and plenty of intelligence.

Why use the collar at all? You are teaching new behaviours so I would be using rewards and possibly clicker training depending on what I wanted to teach. I believe collars are best for stopping behaviours. Stephen

We use the command "leave it" to tell our dogs to ignore other dogs, trees and various distractions. We use the dog's name in a variety of tones if we need to get their attention and then try calling them again.

A staffy would be one of my last choices for a dog to protect anything. Despite their looks, in general they are too people friendly. We have a staffy and a border collie and it is the border collie that is protective. He will not let anyone into the yard until we let them in. He is quite friendly once we let any visitors in. I have heard that most of the herding dogs have similar traits.

If you only want equipment to use at home you can make jumps to the standards yourself quite cheaply. I recently made a set of 5 from timber for about $120. I have heard though that the standard heights are about to change to allow for the smaller breeds. Weaving poles can be made fairly easily also. Although we do have some other equipment at home I have found that these are the most important ones (particularly the jumps) to have as most training is done with them.