Aloha from Maui,
I have just found this site and this board. What a god-send. I'm trying to read all of Ed's numerous articles and I am definately ordering his first DVD today.

My husband and I imported a female Belgian Shepherd from Australia 2 months ago. She was 6 months old the day she arrived. She's a sweetheart, but Wow! is she tough to figure out. From my reading of Ed's articles, I'd call her "sharp". She's not quite "hard", but I wouldn't really call her "soft" either. She has absolutely no food or prey drive. I've been taking her to confirmation and obedience classes. She'll do the exercises, but there's no "spark". The instructor says I need to find out what makes her "tick" and what toys she REALLY likes. But there's nothing. The only time we've seen her really "sparkle" is when she saw our neighbors' cows across the street. Her fur poofed up and she went immediately into herding behavior. It was amazing to watch. And she'd never seen a cow before in her life.

The confirmation and obedience instructor is a nice woman and knows her stuff, but she's a "gushy", treat oriented trainer. Which works great with her food-driven Labs, but our BS could care less.

After reading the articles here on this site, I'm starting to realize the mistakes we've unknowingly made with her. We're trying to LOVE her and bribe her (with treats) into trusting and respecting us. And it's so very obvious it's not working.

She's a smart girl and needs direction in her life. We didn't set down the proper ground rules when we first got her and now she doesn't see us as the boss. It's like she's in "survival mode". She likes/loves us, but she doesn't 100% trust or respect us. I can see that.

Thank you very much for allowing me this opportunity to learn from everyone here. I ceratinly would appreciate any words of wisdom.

Do you have any herding classes/trials in your area? Sounds like she's shown quite an interest for that! AKC does hold herding trials, I'm not sure if they do it out on the islands, but it's worth a shot. I just did a brief search and couldn't find anything :\ Hopefully you'll have better luck than me!

Hi Diana,

I'm looking into the subject. Unfortunately, there's no herding here. There used to be a Hawaii Herding Dog Club based on Oahu, but it folded up when the founder moved away to another island. She'll still come back, bring her dogs and do herding demos and let her dogs teach ours, but that's a lot of money for teaching just OUR dog.

I'm trying to find out thru the local 4H about any sheep farmers here. Maybe that'll work out? Folks here use a lot of Heelers and Catahoulas (sp?). Not even many Border Collies here. Bummers.

I think our local Kennel club was thinking about buying agility equipment. That would be fun as our dog is extremely quick and light on her feet. But we need to get her PUMPED UP and excited about stuff first.

We'll get there!

I highly reccomend the Leerburg DVD "Building Drive, Focus & Grip" - even if you're not working your dog in Schutzhund, this DVD taught me alot about getting my dog excited and building his drive beyond what I thought he was even capable of.