A lot depends on the temperment and drive level of your dog. Also the focus that the animal has is a big issue. Some dogs can have a load of drive but no focus on the prey item or handler and therefore are disracted or thier intrest in the ob. work. goes down.
A prong is one of the most usefull tools that a trainer could have. A very good trainer from Germany almost always uses the prong from the start; his feeling is the dog must mind him no matter what. Now there is a certain amount of food and help in the first few lessons, so the dog understands the task, but the pressure is applied really from the start. There is no room for error. If the dog lags, takes its eyes off of him, then the pressure comes. Maybe when the dog is in the right postion, the dog gets some food, and after a pattern the ball comes out to release the pressure, but this is it. When a dog was performing well then starts to loose intrest, it is normally a good time to make the dog mind. It sounds like with your dog that the choke chain is not giving you the response you want. The prong is a better choice I feel. It will, when given a quick snap and release, pinch the dogs kneck and the dog should say hey, ok I will heel or sit, or whatever, and thus creating focus on the work. The man in Germany will sharpen a prong and let it loosley fit on the dogs kneck, and attach a leash to both o-rings on the collar and use it this way. There is therefore no pressure or choking on the kneck, just the pinch when the leash is jerked and then it is over, as the collar is loose. These are just some ideas. Good luck.

Hi again!

My goal in all of this is to eventually get her CGC, then her CD. I realize though, that for whatever reason (probably because I am new to all of this and don't know what I'm doing) the obed. routines don't float her boat. I am very interested in agility and rally obed., which I think are closer to what would make her happy, and hope to get into one or the other after we finish the obed. stuff.

I really just don't want her to get board. I would be fine if she just wanted to lay around the house and chew on a kong, but she seems to want to get out and DO something.

Caniche- A fellow Library worker <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> ! Willow is a west german working line shepherd.

Richard Cannon- I try to keep her interested by being happy/upbeat, praising her often, changing pace, making turns, and adding treats when she's not expecting them. If she is board, what more can I do?

Any info/critisism/suggestions are muchly apriciated,

Aimee

Are you training while your dog is in drive, or just doing the obedience and rewarding with food when correct. Perhaps you need to get your dog's drive higher while doing obedience so that the obedience is in itself rewarding. If the dog has decent to high prey, you should be able to use that to really pump her up during obedience.

Aimee,

Most new trainers become predictable, even if you think you are not. I have watched many dogs that "couldn't be trained without a pinch collar" that responed properly to good corrections made with a 2" wide flat collar. One owner that was stating that the dog "had" to have a pinch to be trained found that he couldn't get the dog to work properly with the pinch collar either. He ultimately went to an e-collar at the highest setting, that wasn't working either last I heard.

The problem illustrated by all of this is that the collar made no difference. It is more a function of learning what will work with an individual dog. I have trained Giant Schnauzers for the last 15 years. They are often hard headed and require "hard" corrections. I did use a pinch collar with one of them to start. Once the dog learned what was expected we started training with a slip collar only. At 10 months old you are entering a difficult time with most dogs. They are starting to mature and are often attempting to challange limits, like a teenager. It becomes more dificult to maintain focus in the dog. Like a teenager it often requires some planning and creative solutions to maintain proper focus.

I notice that you refer to the obedience training as "routines". That may be part of the problem. It is an easy trap to fall into. The biggest thing I have found is to pay close attention to the dog when doing the work. It is usually fairly easy to identify when the dogs attention starts to wander. If the dog starts to look away turn and give a correction. The most common reason that the dog fails to respond to corrections it is because they have been telegraphed. There are a couple of methods of correcting this in the handler. The easiest is to video yourself working the dog. See if you can identify when you are going to give a correction from the appearance on the tape. If you can identify it before you do it, then the dog certainly can. If the dog has an opportunity to prepare for the correction, and that makes the correction less effective. The second method is to have an experienced trainer watch and provide direction. Watch other trainers work with dogs that are about the same age. See how they deal with the attention lapses. Train in new area, with new distractions, if the attention wanders make a correction and then move to an exercise that the dog will complete sucessfully. That way you can praise and ultimately end on a positive note. If the dog is not responding to the commands it may be that you have advanced the dog too fast. This is still a puppy. there will be advances and regressions. 99.9% of dogs can complete their entire training with nothing but a slip.

With all due respect Michael, if I had to use a sharpened prong to train a dog I would quit. That is animal abuse not training.

Great Post Rich! I can totally see alot of that in myself.. thanks for making us think. Your a star!

Richard,
A sharp prong is not abuse. I would not recommend it for all dogs. But really the way in which I have used it and I have seen it used is just another form of complusion and an argument can be made to say that a light jerk on a sharp prong with the leash attached to both o-rings, is far less danming then a prong that is tight fitted with the snap attached to only one o-ring. With most dogs I have had little results in teaching and proofing a dog with a choke chain or a nylon collar. Many top trainers in schutzhund use the prong like I have described; Wilferd Lunenburg(spelling?) , Edgar Kaltenbach, Fritz Beihler, just to name a few. These people have all been to the Bundensieger and World Cup and thier dogs looked good, and disiplined. I do think that the sharp prong used wrong could cause damage, and be used to abuse the animal but what tool can't. it is far better to correct the dog one good time then 50 nagging times. The message gets across alot clearer, and anyone that says that they use little complusion to bring a dog to a top level of work, in ob., whatever the work may be, it is normally one of two things, the dog is one in a million, or they are full of it.

 Quote:

Originally posted by Michael Taylor:
and anyone that says that they use little complusion to bring a dog to a top level of work, in ob., whatever the work may be, it is normally one of two things, the dog is one in a million, or they are full of it.

I have never used a sharpened prong collar so I will not comment on that as I'm not too sure that I like the sound of that. Setting that whole argument aside, I like this statement from Michael a lot. Although I like the whole "mostly positive" training movement, I think at times it gets a little goofy. At some point with just about every dog, to train obedience at a very high reliability level, compulsion is necessary. I don't want to knock anyone who believes in positive motivation...I totally believe in positive methods as well. But I don't think a dog can be 100% reliable without compulsion at some point. JMHO.

Michael,

I still disagree. If I had to sharpen prongs to train a dog I would quit. Just because people do it for compition dogs doesn't make it right in my opinion. I would find another way.

What looks good in the final product isn't always good. In addition this training is going to be way too hard for almost all dogs. Some of the stuff done by some of the high level competitors is not that great of training. They will get away with it on some dogs, but you never see the training failures they have. If the dog can't take it they get rid of the dog and start over. There are some stories that have been posted here about some "top" trainers posting dogs and just beating the crap out of the dog to get more aggression. I am not saying these trainers have done this, my point is that just because you see some success with a technique doesn't make it good training. Some of what I have seen in terms of "top" dogs are dogs that have problems based on the way they are trained and have problems being able to interact in a non-working situation. This is not training for a non-hard core trialer.

The other problem with describing these types of techniques is that if you don't already know about it, you probably shouldn't be doing it anyway. In this particular case we are talking about someone with little experience trying to train primarily a companion dog. I doubt a sharpened prong would be necessary for this dog. The other thing I have always felt is that you need to walk before you run. With any increase in compulsion level, you increase the opportunity to create problems with the dog. To little compulsion can be increased, the problems created by too much compulsion is often hard or impossible to undo.

Another great post Rich...I don't beielve there is any room in sport work for this kind of training, posting and beating dogs, sharpend prongs and all that crap, give me a break, that is not sporting that's a mental problem in trainers whom partake in that sort of training to obtain goals IMHO

There is not a dog alive that "needs" this type of training, if it does.. it's the wrong dog for the sport.

There are medications and therapy for this sort of mental psychosis. I don't care how many titles and top ranked dogs they have, they didn't earn them. and This deserves a <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />

Michael Taylor, I am only a novice trainer but if you have to sharpen a prong to get better results then I believe you are doing something wrong. I don't doubt that at top levels in any dog sport training is intense, but a sharpened prong can draw blood and is a lot more painful than compulsion/correction by a regular prong. I knew of a few people who used them when training their long coat GSD in UD. Using a regular prong correctly should get you the desired results as well. Maybe not as fast as using a sharpened prong, but a lot more humanely.