Mary Jo, How does a herding competition work? Where trying to find a competition for MacGregor, our Great Pyr. I'm not sure if herding is the right road, he's a livestock guardian dog.. he may just dig a hole, lay in it and wait for something to happen :)
-- Scott Stewart ColdFusion Developer SSTWebworks 4405 Oakshyre Way Raleigh, NC. 27616 (703) 220-2835 http://www.sstwebworks.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/sstwebworks -----Original Message----- From: Mary Jo Sminkey [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2007 11:08 PM To: CF-Community Subject: Re: Dog questions >I am going off of personal experience here. Well, I am coming from 20 years of experience and training dogs to the top levels of obedience and multiple championships in other canine sports. My dogs have won Nationals, taken medals events like the Great Outdoor Games, won awards in their breed for versatility. I do have a fair amount of more than personal experience. >We have two bird dogs that spent 3 months each in hunting school (they are Labs) and were not trained with treats at any time. You would never use treats for any kind of hunt work of course, I don't use any rewards when I do herding work with my dogs. Anything the dog is doing where their breed instincts are involved, there's no point in using food (if there is, you don't have a dog with much instinct!) Also, most people that train retrievers are not into reward-based training. These dogs have been bred for many years to stand up to correction and you can use things like shock collars very effectively to get good results. There's no doubt it is a fast way to get results. But it simply does not apply to other breeds....and many of us prefer less punitive methods as long as we can get similar results. My shelties for instance are *highly* sensitive. We get many in rescue that are extremely fearful and easily shut down due to not having been handled properly. Force methods simply do not work well with them in general. >My sister's dog on the other hand (another lab from the same father, different mother) was sent to "obedience" training. I cannot tell much based on what you said here exactly what the situation was, but it's absurd regardless to judge an entire way of training as harshly as you did based on such minimal experience with it. And most people don't "send" their dogs to training. They take classes with them. One of the main reasons such classes tend to be reward-based is that these inexperienced owners are far less likely to go overboard and cause problems in their dogs using treats, than using force and punishment. >Meanwhile, the two dogs we have here come to you when you say here, heel when told, sit when told, does not go after birds until you tell them OK, brings them back, heels and sits, and gently holds the bird until you say give. All that tells me is that whomever trained them was a far more experienced and talented trainer. Means nothing about the method being the only one to use. My dogs are as obedient and well-behaved as any you will find. They have never once had a pinch or prong collar on or been harshly punished for anything and do everything I ask them to...and then some. For instance, I once was at a herding trial and put my dog on a stay while I used the porta-potty. While I was in there I swore I hear a sheep 'baa', and when I came out someone near by told me that the whole flock of sheep had just been taken up to the other arena right behind my dog. And he never budged from the spot (he did have a disgusted look on his face for me though, guess he thought I planned it!) Many force trainers will tell you that it's not possible to get that level of reliability with positive methods...it simply is not true. Basically, my point is that you should not be giving out such advice as "don't waste time with schools that use treat training" when your experience with it is so limited and based solely on your own breed. Share your own experiences certainly. But allow other people to judge for themselves which is the right method for their *own* dog. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| ColdFusion 8 - Build next generation apps today, with easy PDF and Ajax features - download now http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/coldfusion/cf8_beta_whatsnew_052907.pdf Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:244102 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
