Cheers everyone.I go to Shonas (dougiepit) classes,i tend not to listen to people saying not to do both.Its a shame this absurd advice is given,i have heard the same stuff mentioned loads of times.You get loads more out of your dog and it keeps them busy and too tired to chew.

WTF, I would kill you if you took this advice, lucky I know you though the ring cr ap club seem to set folk up to fall, the ejjits that they are, she is only a baby, one with a sensitive gob at the min, I have seen these so called ring cra p trainers at the club you go to and they have not got a clue, they prob went at the poor wee soles mouth like a sledge hammer, :smt021

I would avoid anyone looking in her mouth untill she is more relaxed about it, then only people with some savvy should be asked to check her mouth, :smt023 lets face it in the rotty ring, how often do the judges do the mouths? :smt104 I always seem to find the judge saying " can you show me the bite?" Wonder why that is,

dont see why you cant do both, they are a working breed and very trainable, Royce is the living proof, he has been placed many times at champ shows, is working obed class B and he also tracks with a bit of bite work thrown in, to me there is not enough challenge in show training to keep a snail's brain active never mind a rotty,

tell her to go pinch herslf, she's dreaming.

I had bad advice with one dog was having a real struggle with retrieve & the trainer did a forced retrieve with him & it took 6 months to stop him being hand shy in the ring when judges looked at his teeth.
As for obedience I have always done both but I enclude some breed training in with my obedience with a youngster so every other time we stop I insist on a stand after the halt & on alternate times a sit also do some work where the dog is asked to pull out at the end of the lead as well a heel work so they learn both commands.

could this be "positive training" as they say? i've never forced my dogs when training them, it puts them right off. as for the pinching suggestion, (i'll say no more). you should be able to control your dogs by voice commands, if they ignore you , roar at them ( and i mean LOUD ) it works with mine .

He took the dog from me took him to the dumbell put it in his mouth then held his mouth shut while he came back to me. This was many years ago, nowadays I won't let an obedience trainer take the dog from me.

NEVER let anyone hit or abuse your dog, it's assault. a chap took a swipe at nero with his hand at a dog club i go to. he missed, luckily, he thought nero was going to attack his dog. i took him to one side, where no one could hear me and said " if you ever attempt that again, i'll slacken your jaw " he said i did'nt make contact, i said , you attempted to & that's the same as if you did . i did'nt make a complaint about it, if i had he would probably have been banned from the club.

my dog suffered this too at the hands of my first obed trainer, the problem is that when you start training, you lay your trust in the trainer as your new and are not sure how these things are done, many trainers still use this method, along with the yank the neck off the dog for healwork, they are in the stoneage, poor dogs,

Maybe thats what we should do is to complain to remove these numptys eh?Erm you didn't say about the guy having his dog hiding under the table defending its space though did you.