Quote: ian bunbury

hey guys , i had a small epiphany yesterday . . .

i just noticed that this thread was posted under " dog videos " and it occurred to me that the OP never actually intended that we offer help , advice or commentary on what he was doing with his dogs . he just wanted to show them off , which is fine by me .

for my part andrew , i respectfully retract any of the advice or comments i have offered in this thread and wish you well in your future with your " pack " .

sorry it took 22 pages to figure it out lol . . .

Sadly, by page 2 or 3 he was demonstrating and defending his pack harassing and dominating "visiting dogs," and then harassing horses out in public, and then teenagers in a park, and more ..,... I don't retract. Irresponsible ownership can't proudly displayed on the board and not challenged. Doesn't that serve as a "It's on LB" stamp?

 Quote: ian bunbury

hey guys , i had a small epiphany yesterday . . .

i just noticed that this thread was posted under " dog videos " and it occurred to me that the OP never actually intended that we offer help , advice or commentary on what he was doing with his dogs . he just wanted to show them off , which is fine by me .

for my part andrew , i respectfully retract any of the advice or comments i have offered in this thread and wish you well in your future with your " pack " .

sorry it took 22 pages to figure it out lol . . .

i'm with connie on this ian. i havent watched all his videos, i admit, but i've seen 10 to 1 more off leash "fascinations" then what i would consider responsible management of very large dogs in public.

The first time our TD saw me work my dog, he tore into me. I was bringing my dog down, instead of motivating her, and he pointed out that I needed to be enthusiastic and act a fool with her. I was reluctant because I didn't want to do that in front of new acquaintances. My point is that, if I wanted to effectively train my dog, I needed to stop worrying about embarassing myself.
This may be where we're at with Andrew.

Andrew truly loves his dogs and is proud of them. It is evident to me that he knows he needs help, because he has solicited outsiders for help even before coming here, and he seems concerned about how people view him and his pack and what they say. A lot of people are telling him different things and it may be overwhelming.

It is possible that he came here for affirmation and was taken aback by the reactions he got (embarassed). I for one hope he does not give up and opens his mind to input from good dog people, and that what we fear for him and his pack never comes to pass.

I tried to recuse myself from this thread, but I can't bring myself to just give up IF ANDREW SINCERELY WANTS THE HELP.

FYI; this post is as much for Andrew's benefit as anyone else's.

"I tried to recuse myself from this thread, but I can't bring myself to just give up IF ANDREW SINCERELY WANTS THE HELP."


I totally understand!

So I had my friends friend come to see me and my dogs today.He trains dogs for the police but used to train dogs in the army.He had been to see my dogs once before a little over a year ago.The first thing he said to me was that after having seen the dogs a year ago he was surprised that firstly I still had them all and even more surprised that they all slept indoors together on the same bed and said that tho he didn’t mention it on his first visit ,because of the breed and the number of them ,he was convinced that there would be some kind of in fighting by now and that I would have had to get rid of one or two of them or have them living separately.At one point he was examining the the dogs very closely and when I asked what he was doing he said he was looking for some sign of residual scarring from fighting,of which he found none .He complimented me on keeping them harmoniusly living together and acknowledge that it must have took alot of time and effort to do this and was even more surprised that they all ate together.Like many on here have already commented he did say the level of obedience could be improved mainly realating to the 2 younger siblings but added that because I had been concentrating on keeping them all together and the time and effort that had to have taken ,I had neglected to do more obedience work with them but did say that in his opinion this would be less time consuming than it had been getting them to behave in the house together and added that the way I had achieved this had “softened” the dogs which wasn’t a bad thing as I wasn’t looking to work them,infact he said out of all 4 only the adult male had any suitable characteristics for work based training which surprised me because I would have thought he would have considered the young female to be more suitable as I had previously mentioned on here.None of them reacted to him throwing a ball past going to sniff the ball then walking away from it and only the older male would play tug of wall with an old pair of jeans and I told him I never do this with any of them ever.At one point he asked me to put the adult male away and then began kind of play fighting with the other 3 and said that his dogs would not allow this sort of interaction from someone they didn’t know and he would have had to control their reactions if he ever did allowit.Regarding having strange dogs mixing with them in their home he advised me that it wasn’t a good idea to allow all 4 of mine to mix together with the dogs,the 2 adult dogs would be fine and or one adult dog and one younger dog but not all together......yet,I need to get the 2 younger dogs to a higher level of basic obedience and had the same comment regarding having them off leash when out together.He said they walked well together on leads as they understood that they had to be at my side or behind me and was obviously deeply instilled in them to do so and he said that because they stopped when I stopped without verbal command they were in sync with me when walking them together on leads and added they didn’t show the same behaviour off leash and that the dogs considered this an activity where they didn’t have to be in sync with me because that’s what I had unknowingly trained them to do.He gave me some good advice on obedience training and said in his opinion all were very food motivated which is a good thing and said that I should take treats with me when I take them out,something I normally don’t do I only occaisionally use treats in the house and said that because in the beginning I would have to use alot of treats I may have to reduce the amount of their normal meals.He did say that love alone wont give me the control I should have and to be a bit firmer,without feeling guilty about it,and showed me the level of correction he considered appropriate for each dog and I was unaware that each dog needed a different level of correction based of them individually.Overall he agreed with some of the comments in the post but added a trained working dog will always be very different in how they react to things compared to pet dogs.Another thing he said was that my dogs were too accepting of strangers and other dogs which is not unusual from someone that only works dogs and I don’t have my dogs as guard dogs.He has given and shown me some good tips and will be coming for another visit soon ,to make sure I’ve done my homework.There are other sorts of training or conditioning I have done with my dogs which aren’t relevant here but I was able to show some things he didn’t know and tho not part of the sort of things he does were a little similar to work done with drug dogs that are used to mix amongst crowds of people in UK train stations and other crowded areas detecting people carrying drugs in their pockets etc.Reagrding taking them out in public together he wasn’t too concerned as long as they were all leashed and added that this isn’t something you do with working dogs thats why you never see a police dog handler with more than one dog and even a well trained police dog sometimes in a real situation getting them off once they have grabbed someone isn’t as easy as in training and whilst the dogs thrive on the training not all working trained dogs would actually be suitable for real situations and it is apparently not easy to get hold of suitable dogs of any breed,in the UK most UK police dogs are GSD’s and spaniels for sniffer dogs and the ones that are successfully trained normally come from specific breeders and not all the dogs from those breeders make the mark but can still be well trained “hobby “ working dogs and added that my breed really weren’t,in his opinion, the most suitable as working dogs and that he didn’t know of any in the UK police force but there were alot of other breeds besides GSD’s just that GSD’s are normally the UK police dog of choice .
So over all a good day for learning and I wasn’t concerned or offended about the comments regarding working suitability of my dogs or the fact he considered them a bit soft in the head thats just how I like them .

^^^Dude, paragraph that!

What Beastly Luck.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOQsl217NgQ

I'd feel exactly the same. Luckily theres 5300 miles of distance.

"Luckily there is 5300 miles of distance."

I feel the same.

Here is what I feel, over and over in this thread: The O.P. could not care less about obedience work or training help.

And he refuses to hear that this is about one man with too many giant breed dogs together at once thinking he can handle them anywhere in public.

If he was at a park with me, I would get the hell away from him. Period.

If I saw him with his pack anywhere in my vicinity, I'd get away so fast I'd look like a cartoon ball of dust zipping away.

I see that pack with one person in public as the height of arrogant irresponsibility.

I'm not reading that block of unparagraphed text; I agree with Tresa, but more than that, the O.P.'s posts are all the same. More smoke.

JMO! All JMO!

PS

And I have nothing but admiration for those, like Duane, who are able to continue trying to help. I should be like that, and I'm falling sadly short.

well connie i did force myself to read that block of text and you know what ? it was exactly what i thought it was going to be , in fact i probably could have written it myself before it was posted .

aside from setting new records for run-on sentences there is nothing in there you aren't familiar with already . he says , and has said all kinds of things about how his dogs are and how he wants them , but i haven't read one sentence about the training he's done to get them there .

i'm not asking anymore , but if these dogs are so great , and his training methods so unique , why aren't we seeing / hearing about them ?