Herr Rottweiler

1 hour of solid training is stupid and it clearly reflects the lack of understanding any trainer has for dredging a dog through that.

Amazing what poeple will spend on marketing and hype

$800!!! WTF! Do you get a dog with that!!! That's rediculous

Count me in on that school of thought please HR. Will do Erny. I will scribe your application to join the Elite trainers inner sanctum

Boyd and I have always agreed that it's not reaction that concerns us, it's the recovery time.

The whole purpose behind Schutzhund was to produce strong nerve working dogs as the GSD club realised in the early 1900's that their dogs were losing their drive and becoming thin nerved. There is no test in schutzhund that tests for defensive drives, as they find this undesirable trait in the dogs that they want to breed from. The courage test is designed to test the dogs fight drive and the ability to cope with the decoy advancing at the dog. More points are scored the harder the dog hits as this is an indicator that the dog is not afraid. This is why it is so important to select from good bloodlines to begin with and socialise our puppies during the critical period to develop pups with thickened nerves so they can cope with any environmental factor. A good security dog on the otherhand may be required to be a little thinner in nerve as the handler may want the dog to react by showing aggression to an oncomming threat. Even though a dog with defense drive, (Reactive Aggressive) may be more suitable in this type of work, there is a chance that the dog may choose to flee if the threat becomes to much. In my experience, strong confident dogs, (Active aggressive) are not great security dogs as they will not show any visual cues to inbound agressors as they have no desire to scare them away as it is there goal to draw them in so they can bite.

Looks like you're knocking on the wrong doors

The point of this "method" being? Accoding to Katz, when an Alpha eats he covers the kill with his saliva and being that he is the first one to eat, all the subordinates who eat afterwards will smell and taste his saliva. In his opinion, this is one of his methods to ensure dominance over your dogs. I don't know about you Erny, but I find spitting in my dogs food quite unsavoury It has certainly never been anything i have had to recommend to any of my clients to establish pack dominance

I thought advising clients to spit in their dogs food was one of the funniest, (and stupidest) things i've ever read! As far as private lessons go, there's a few good trainers on here that should be close by to you that could teach you plenty. A good demonstration speaks a thousand words. Many people who have had dog issues have tried advise through books only to find that they are still appliying techniques through their own perspective which tend to lead to failure and frustration until they learn from someone who can give valuable pointers

There's nothing revolutionary about Adam Katz. He just depends on marketing hype from his web site to help him sell books. He was on a forum I was on in the USA and for a guy that claims to have all the answers he didn't appear to know all that much when push came to shove. There are trainers in Australia that you could learn more from. Save your money and go and get a few good private lessons

You dirty girls are corrupting my thread with your potty talk :D

You can fix that, just put a different colour sticker on each shoulder

So what is it that your dogs are doing that is costing you in trial? I'm sorry if i'm appearing vague but I'm not following your post

It's funny you brought this up Feral Pup. I had a good talk to several of the Advanced groups at training and I told them that it's impossible to be bored in class if you're doing what needs to be done. There is so much to do in classes. I know some instructors are as painful as going to a dentist, don't worry I've seen them. I often go around to schools to have a look at what there doing and somtimes I would be more engaged by watching grass grow, however in a class with a good instructor, there's no excuse.

Herr R, May I ask a question, have you ever been to a retrieving trial? Are you talking about game retrieving? If so, yes.

If that's where you're having trouble then you should do everything you can to set up a mock trial so your not failing on field in front of the judge

Hi Baja, Dogs don't have the same intelligence level as Killer Whales. Anyone stupid enough to get in a tank and use positive punishment on a whale would be asking to be thrown up against the tank and crushed, hense why they use clickers and reward based training, plus the whales get it a lot quicker. Not to mention, not many people own whales and have them threaten the neighbours, get into the bins, attack the other animals around the house. Like you Baja, I own several large dogs and I would rarely punish them these days as they understand their place in the pack, are very happy that i'm the Alpha and lifes good. I train my parrot using positive methods with great results, however with dogs, I have always found that using a combination of any required method is the essence of a smart trainer, a satisfied owner and a happy dog. I'm not opposed to people training positive methods at all. If they have the time and are willing to not turn away the excessively naughty dogs as well, great.

Nope 100% is awsome. 95% is ordinary

Indeed

Unfortunately, we are living in a world gone mad! People are lazier and more stupid then ever before. That's not really the part that bothers me though, the issue that I have is that any animal that you take into your home, you are responsible for the well being, both physically and mentally of that life. For people that get the animal and THEN figure out their too busy or it doesn't suit their life style, they should be forced to do community service at the local pound for a month where they intend to dump the dog!!!

The most important thing here is to go back to basic with him and start improving the focus under distraction. If he is stimulated externally he wont give you the attention you need therefore he will always stray wide as he can't see the turns comming up. You need to stimulate your dog to be more motivated to you and what you have on offer. Once you have this under control during heavy distraction then start doing your figure 8's again. There's no point in training him to do something that he's doing poorly

Well far be it from me to be modest Don't forget LL that a lot of dogs that are in Schutzhund clubs are screened prior to entry to determine whether it's a waste of everyone's time. If the dogs showed signs of potential we would allow the member to join as a probation member for 3 months, if the dog improved we would allow them to join, if not, well need I say more. I've been doing this a hell of a long time and I've had the opportunity to work with many thousands of dogs so I've picked up a trick or two in my time. One of the ladies who trains with me at the Rotty Club just scored 195 out of 200 in her Novice trial and won the trial. Not all dogs will exceed in drive work, it's heavily based on a pre assessment prior to beginning

Yes Erny! That's right on the money

After reading some of these examples, now you know why I frown so much on Anthropomorphism. When I hear the positive crowds wailing on about correction chains and how cruel they are etc. There are plenty of problems like these occuring right under every ones noses. ignorance used to be biss but there are no excuses anymore

Best thing I have done in situations like this is as Jefe's owner said, relax with her for a few day. More is not better it's just more. Tie her up when you're ready to have another go and get one of you other dogs out and do some high prey drive right in front of the pup. When you're pup is jumping out of it's skin, get her of the tie out and see if she wants to work then. With my own dogs and dogs at the Schutzhund club I was training director for I would get a 95% hit rate with the young dogs by just letting them watch and waiting for the right responses. No response or lack of response ment no training and the dogs hated it and learned quite quickly.