Gnasher, thankyou for answering me
Yes of course they get bored - all dogs do
I am working on chase recal with Mia and to do that I am also working on toy motivation with her - by getting her into the ball

When i started with her she would chase the ball once - then if I chucked it again she would wonder off and do something else

So what I did was only chucked it once - then put it away before she was bored of it

I think the problem you are having is your lack of imagination

When rewarding or whatever it is not about doing the same thing again and again and again - its about keeping one step ahead of your dog, being great fun and unpredictable

Recal shouldnt be an ORDER that the dog MUST obay, imo your dog comes streaking back to you because they wanna know what amazing fun thing you might do with them

I think it is Leslie McDeviett (sp) who said the RECAL is the fun - 'come lets work together' and the dismissal to play in the word is the sad bit 'Im sorry the fun is over for just now, afraid you will have to go and entertain yourself for a little while'

No thank you Gnasher.

1. I'd rather take the time to make him prefer coming back to me, rather than him comming back because the environment just became unpleasant/scarey.

2. Storm + electricity + water = no way.

3. Storm finds nothing stressful about launching himself like a NASA space shuttle, into a pond to swim over to see another dog. Which is what happened yesterday. Up until that point, he'd been doing very well.

4. I don't find it particularly stressful, I eccept that it needs some work and that he is an animal, and no matter how well trained, there will always be blips. I just need to address the blip to none blip ratio, so that we have more none blips.

At the end of the day, I think a lot of it comes down to how you view your dogs behaviour.

I view my dogs behaviours as things that can be worked with, shaped, redirected, commands put to and not as things that just have to be stopped.

Tupacs: just read your post about me not liking you any more!!

I neither like nor dislike you - how could I? I have never met you. I was not "friendly to you until I realised you weren't falling for the crap". That is absolutely not true. I could not care less whether you believe me when I say Hal was a wolf cross, or whether you believe me if I told you he was a chihuahua, why should you be bothered or care? I haven't seen pictures of all your dogs I don't think, but I have of Tupacs and he is LUSH!! As I am sure all your northerns are. I agree with a lot of what you say, but not all of it - what DOES bug me I fully admit is that you flatly state that my dogs have no wolf in them, when 1) you have never met them 2) you cannot tell wolf content just from looks and 3) it is as plain as a pikestaff that you want to be the "only wolfdog owner in the village", to borrow an analogy from Little Britain.

Those 3 points bug me! That and the fact that I had to virtually DRAG an apology out of you - in a PM, I don't believe it was on the forum, although if it was, then I apologise profusely!! Either way, I had to drag it out of you, which is really bang bang out of order IMO. That is something that no-one can ever accuse me of - I am the FIRST to hold my hand up and say sorry, I got such and such wrong.

That bugs me too!

Krusewalker: OH met up with a couple of "trainers" and one behaviourist I think, and from memory it was the behaviourist who suggested an e collar! Not prepared to reveal their names at all - what a suggestion!! They are not famous, just local pub and walk acquaintances. We also took advice from the local gamekeeper, several farmers, one who has another of Hal's sons from the first litter, and who trained him using an e collar extremely successfully when all else failed.

Ooo dear KW - watch out, she'll be calling you the f***ing village idiot next!!

Mish - there is nothing "professional" about your slandering, or mine for that matter. It is pure, utter, bitching women, slagging each other off like a couple of old fishwives, if the truth be known!!

However, calling someone "f***ing village idiot", is I am afraid, libellous (wearing my ex legal secretary hat), and it is lucky for you that I am poor and that my house legal insurance does not cover libel.

Oops Claire and Daisy: slight slip there? Has Mish been banned? Not surprised, her language was outrageous even though she used *******'s.

I would be quite amused to see you try to take mish to court for calling you a village idiot, I imagine the judge would either take the same view and laugh you out of court or just be annoyed at someone wasting their time.

Rune: let me explain to you about the laws of libel.

EVEN IF IT IS TRUE, then it can still be libel if by what you said you had malicious intent, malice a forethought. I will give you an example. OH's uncle owed a local business man quite a bit of money. This man espied the uncle in their local town as he was crossing the main high street. He yelled across to him "Oi T****, why don't you pay your bills!" Uncle T sued him, successfully for libel, because the Judge construed that despite the fact T owed this chap money and was very tardy in paying his bills, there was no need to yell out in public for all to hear that this was the case and he demmed this to have been a malicious and spiteful act.

Btw, Claireanddaisy said "well", not "as well"