Believe me if you used an e collar properly she'd improve no end. I see it all the time, including on dogs who react like Mia to physical corrections

Anyway seeing as you won't I would suggest a increase in mat work and find a class that's less stressful which you can incorperate the mat work into it.

Adam

Tried! If there is a clicker their she will offer behaviours at toys but not play with them

She does play sometimes but I cant do too much cos Ben gives a couple of barks when excited so I cant play with them in the house incase the neighbours phone the police

Can you clicker train her to roll a ball and go from there.....I have been working on a ex breeding bitch (scottie) for about 2 years - she is 9 now and had never met toys before her current owner....

We started with a basic nose touch on the floor....then moved to a ball....it has taken about 18 months to get her to put something in her mouth - but now (because we laugh at her) she chucks it in the air and it actually ends up further from her owner!

She is now picking loads of different things up....including the bed we are teaching her to settle on - but it is so nice to see her interacting this way we laugh and she does it more

id click a hold on it, then,when thats strong ...... start to tug. You may need a really long long tuggy, lead length, so shes well away from you. also if you can get one with a loose enough you can put abit of chicken in the tuggy, so the reward actually comes from the tuggy.

Thats is probaley the problem, shes piced up (becos ofthe circumstances that she shouldnt really play i hate your neighbours

Yup, I hate them too!! But yes that wont be helping.

Adam, what is the mental state of the dogs who have been shocked into 'behaiving'?? I cannots see in any way how taking an animal to something it is afraid of and then making the situation even more scary will do anything but make the dog very stressed and only supress the behaviour rather than fix the mental state

I think Leslie would say you have missed the point of 'control unleashed' if you can use her methods alongside E collars, the methods are just not compatible

Hi
Its a shame your trainer isn't more accomadating, she sounds more like a supervisor than a problem solver to me . Good luck with the other one, it would be great to go and use their equipment. It's a shame I'm so far from you as I'm lucky enough to have my own stuff and would happily play around with some different ideas. Hope you're enjoying training again soon.

Bless you, I wish I was closer!

How frustrating and dissappointing for you.

To answer the thread question first of all, I don't think a reactive dog every gets over it, its a constant cycle of positive reinforcement and control. Ziggie was a very reactive dog, he was attacked by two collie brothers in their puppy class when he was about seventeen weeks old, and from then on became a fight first ask questions later type of dog.

It took alot of work to get him interacting and "safe" around my friends dogs in flyball and agility, and even longer to get him comfortable with crossing. We got upto a grand total of about five dogs in all. If I had him now I would have packed in the flyball all together (bit late for that now, but hey i've learnt my lesson!) and only gone to one specific agility class where the trainer totally undertood his and my needs. Interestingly enough thats the class we attend now with the collies .

I'm very proud of the fact that despite Ziggie's extreme aggression he never once caused harm to another dog, because he was never put in that situation. If you don't feel that your trainer will respect your choice on whether or not to let Mia off in the future i'd stop going. Like others have said though maybe she was just having an off day.

I feel that class atmosphere really does affect how productive training is whether an incident occurs or not. Both you and the dog have to feel comfortable. Thats why we have settle into the class we attend, our trainer is very apprachable and adapts things easily. There are a couple of snappy/unpredictable/controlled by raging hormones(!) dogs in the two classes we attend but everyone knows what each dogs issues are and takes the time and space to work with it. Indy has gone from being a nervous and sometimes snappy dog, (which was caused by a few unfortunate incidents at indoor classes, nobodies fault inparticular but not a good atmosphere for my dog - so we left on good terms), to a happy and confident dog who is starting to interact with appropriate class mates.

Maybe see what kind of reaction your trainer has to your email and take it from there? The new club sounds better though if they're prepared to listen to what you want to work on rather than just dictating it.

Oh! and I taught Indy to play by clickering the hold then the tuggy! She had a great start to life but took her initial 'leave' training so seriously we couldnt get her to hold something if she thought we were going to get hold of the other end! Now she's a ferocious tugger!

Oh well
I had decided that I was going to take a break from class and was just about to contact the trainer again
Then finaly she responded to my email

She was very nice but basically saing that I should take Mia out of class until the problems with my neighbours were sorted!!

While I agree that cant be helping things I think far more to the point is the stresses in the class, the mixture of dogs and the level Mia is at right now
Hopefully the other club will be OK! Basicaly I am taking Ben out of his class too because we were in a lower class than he should have been in because we were fitting in with the day that was best for Mia

Hope thats not our agility done before we really got started!