How ‘hard’ are you on your dog?

[Thistle]

It is a huge no no doing agility or flyball with a gundog as they need to be so calm and self controlled when working, in what is not doubt a high stress environment - loud, over stimulated etc. Now lots of poeple will tell me they do both.
I agree that life is stressful and you have to enable them to cope.

I disagree, it all depends on the agility group. I take Barley to a small local group. All very quiet. Noise and hyperactivity is discouraged, dogs are encouraged to go for it when it's there turn but all wait quietly and are rewarded quietly.There are only ever up to 5 or 6 in the group. Each dog works individually. Lots of turn taking, sit waits, turn, voice and hand signals (no whistles though) all very similar to the gundog stuff I do with the other boys. Barley is too yappy for the gundog classes but agility is really helping him to focus and remain calm.

 

[blackcob]

Training is one thing, agility competition is invariably high stress. As above, some dogs will thrive on this, some will redirect and cope, some lose the plot. You can see both the best and the worst of dog and owner behaviour at a big agility show.

I gave KCIAF a miss this week partly because one of mine would have had the screaming heebie jeebies.

 

[Clodagh]

I disagree, it all depends on the agility group. I take Barley to a small local group. All very quiet. Noise and hyperactivity is discouraged, dogs are encouraged to go for it when it's there turn but all wait quietly and are rewarded quietly.There are only ever up to 5 or 6 in the group. Each dog works individually. Lots of turn taking, sit waits, turn, voice and hand signals (no whistles though) all very similar to the gundog stuff I do with the other boys. Barley is too yappy for the gundog classes but agility is really helping him to focus and remain calm.

But really that is agreeing - you don'ttake the gundogs and you go to an 'alternative' agility group where they don't run around and scream. I am glad Barley is flourishing.

 

[BBP]

Wow. Because of course everybody knows collies are basically stupid/slow to learn!

This was a professional shepherd who trains working collies, but because mine is a show line collie the trainer was telling me they don’t deserve to be called border collies as all the best traits are bred out and you are left with a pretty dog with a badly wired brain. And that they have never met one (or a Merle) that they liked. This may all be true, maybe show line breeding is ruining the collie breed as you arent breeding for the best working traits, I’m sure that argument is made a lot, but I see just as many people having issues with farm bred dogs. It’s not the dogs fault that I’m a learner dog owner, I just need to find him a job that suits him.