And right back 'atcha Malpeki, because I have absolutely no idea what this post means.

No, the prize goes to the sponsors, who are laughing all the way to the bank!

Very good egroeg, and I will have more to say when time permits. For now, suffice to say that this is pretty much how I teach and condition

I think somewhere along the line, I've given you a couple of instances.

The dog who was brought, through working through basic training, working the environment and habituation, from killing loose hens around the farmyard to happily being amongst them.

My own dog who had a default down command that was used in emergency situations.

Details of the latter are brief. I'd never taught him distance commands. I wasn't a dog trainer at the time, far from it. Once day out in the field where we walked, a track bike flew out of the bushes without warning. My dog had run out after his ball, turned and was on the homeward path to bring it back to me (his favourite game). Had he continued his run, he'd have been under the wheels of the bike. A recall would have made the situation worse and, thankfully, an instinct kicked in and I yelled a 'down'. He dropped like a stone and the bike went through at exactly the point where my dog would have been had he continued.

I learned a very valuable lesson that day that I used constantly in subsequent training - work with the dog's traits and instincts. To a Border Collie, a down is a natural as breathing.

I don't think we produce different results here. I feel sure there must be trainers? owner in your neck of the woods that are excellent in what they do.

Have you visited any to observe how they work or do you go on the say-so of your clients/friends?

Could I ask, besides hunting with your dogs, what other activities/fun leisure pursuits do you do with them?

I have one final question, what happens when you take the collar off? or are they permanently fixed to your dogs necks? see for me if you have trained the command well enough in the first place, you shouldn't need to reinforce, and please don't presume that my dogs have never been in situations that maybe life threatening, you don't know me, my dogs, or where we go and what we do, i think you'll find that dogs in this country have far more scope to get in to trouble as they have far more freedom in a much more confined area, you're never that far from a main road over here, and yet we do manage to train our dogs to an acceptable standard without an e collar.

Ok thank you, so you don't just use it for sport. That was one of the things i was not sure about, however you have cleared that up now.

To clarify, do you then only use it to "correct" (as I would say, "punish") a failure to obey a command?

One thing that I really dislike using aversives for in this sort of situation is that so often it's handler fault if the dog does not obey - because of inadvertant body language or because the dog cannot hear due to wind direction etc.

Example: Dog is told to Stay in car, owner moves away to put her coat on, but her body language tells the dog to get out of the car; dog jumps out and is yelled at for jumping out and "disobeying".

Example: different type of communication problem but take a dog who has been taught "Down" and the owner tells the dog to get "Down" off the sofa and then wonders why the dog continues to lie there ("But I AM doing a Down mum!") or gets ancy when the collar is grabbed to get the dog off, usually by then in a very grumpy manner, assuming the dog is being disobedient.

I've not found many people who use aversives who understand how important body language can be or how easily owners (humans") can mess up what is going on for the dog.

Seen it even on professional videos.

It's really not easy for our poor dogs sometimes. That's just yet one more reason as to why I so prefer to use non aversive methods.

Wys
x

Ok thanks,

Wys
x

Oh doesn't matter,
surely it's because of my lack of English, I don't mind
certainly I could explain it to you, what I'm meaning, far better in German, but then you just wouldn't understand the same

but I really do not care about, if you can understand me or not, quite enough, that I can understand what you are saying