I am new to this board, with a growing interest "working dog" sports. My six month old puppy bitch, a Briard I imported from French working/conformation lines, has a pedigree lined with mondioring, tracking, IPO and other assorted European working dog titles. Her temperament is extraordinarily solid, and I feel like her future is an open book.

As I have been reading up and learning about various sports (my older Briard has been trained toward a single goal: competitive agility), I am learning that while there may be a great deal of overlap in various disciplines, there seem to be conflicts as well.

My goal is not to put a SchH III on her, but to showcase the versatility of the Briard via herding, agility, tracking, working, and/or conformation titles.

My question is where to focus while putting my training plans together, and whether there are some things I might absolutely want to avoid as they will make cross-training difficult.

She is pretty much a blank slate at the moment, and rather than reinvent the wheel, I am hoping to get some feedback from people who have worked their own dogs with versatility in mind.

Thanks for your help!
Tracy

A puppy that is taught that learning is a fun and motivating experience will go through his entire life being able to learn new things. The more experience the dog has, it will come around faster.

Tracy the foundation of all dog training has to be in drive and a bond with the handnler. It does notmatter that its agility, competition obedience, or serve work. So with this said you need to focus on building drive and then teching the dog self control in dealing with this drive. In this work you also teach the dog that you are fair, that you love it, that fun things happen when it does whats told - this is all done without corrections. It's what is taught in the BUILDING DRIVE AND FOCUS DVD http://leerburg.com/101e.htm

In my opinion what really comes out of this work is the bond with the handler - yes the dog has had his drive level increades (if done properly its incresed to the level allowed in his genetics) and yes the dog learns self control while in drive. But the bind that the dog acquires with the handler is the key to working together in the future. Teaching a dog that being in your arms is a good thing and not a place to loose his prey item is a huge thing to a dog.

Ed,
Thanks for the recommendation! I've been pouring through your site and was unsure of which DVD to order. I really appreciate the feedback.
Tracy