I have a question for the board. A dog in our Schutzhund club was taught the suplatz(spelling?)using the e-collar. The male was about 3 when he was taught this command away from the track. During a training accident last year he was accidentally shocked heavily while on the track and now has an avoidance for articles(the trainer didn't check the level on the handset). He will do everything in his power not to down on an article. We have tried putting bait under the article and he still avoids it. We have thought about having the handler reteach the suplatz over from another angle(i.e. sitting for the article). Does anyone have any ideas on how to overcome this one?

Corrections are much harder than teaching but here goes.
Go back to the begining. Off track, differant type articals. If necessary leave the articals in your hand at first dont put them on the ground. And tuns of animated praise evan just when he looks at the artical.
You have to get him to liking it and you cant do that if he wont let you do it, so come in the back door so to speak. Go very, very slow with this. You are going to get other answers. start trying them if they make sense to you, you wil find one that works. Good luck.
Ron

Unfortunate incident while working with the collar, but could happen otherwise as well when teaching the such & platz.
If you really do have avoidance to the article then you have two choices. Change the behavior immensely (retrieval...though not widely seen is acceptable) or to use a HIGHER LEVEL of pressure so that the article once again becomes a safe haven.
Now, that said, the technique was not done well in the first place on this dog or it would have sucked its nose into the article when hit with high levels of force regardless of the source.
Force tracking is just like a forced retrieve. To work the dog has to understand that there is one way and only one way to eliminate the force or avoid force being applied. If the dog had understood this it would have sunk itself into the article so hard you couldn't not have pulled it off if you tried when a mistake was made...you would have seen problems elswhere (like not wanting to get out of the crate at the tracking field, or too speedy of a track, etc.)
Maybe you need to look at the whole process again.

I agree with Kevin that the process was probably done incorrectly to start with; however, that said, you can still make the article indication a safe place for the dog without taking the stress higher. That way will work, no doubt - if all other behaviors are WORSE than indicating, he'll choose indicating, but you can countercondition him to not be afraid of the article. Take the article off the track and make all good things in life conditional upon the article - getting dinner, going outside to play, going inside with you, etc etc. You would probably have to use successive approximations if he refuses to indicate at all, but he can relearn that it is a safe place to be. Happens all the time with things like horses who are injured in trailer accidents - they think the trailer is a horrible place to be, but you can't change the trailer, and you don't want to fight a 2000lb animal, so you make his meals contigent upon approaching, then stepping up with one foot, etc etc. It works.

I agree with Lee. I would start over with the articles. First platz for food, then introduce the platz with article. In the past when I used some force with the articles and my dogs showed avoidence, I would have to make the reward worth more then the correction. I hope this makes some sense, hard to explain over the net.

Brad

I understand.I figured you would have to start over, I just didn't know if you could take him in the same direction again or if you would have to teach a different way of indicating article.

Question: does the dog have to platz for the article or can he setz?

A dog can indicate by a sitz as well.

You just have to let the judge know how the dog is going to indicate before you start.

But don't tell the judge specifically that he will sit or down or stand; just say "my dog will point out". That's all he needs to know - then if your dog has a brain fart that day and just stands there looking at the article, you're still ok, no deduction.