Yes, more or less

Wow, stunning photos! Love the face off ones!b competition winning quality!

Sounds like he is doing everything you want him to do

Helen

Thanks Helen. I was/am really pleased with him

great photos thanks for sharing them xx

Ẁow look at him go.

He looks right at home doing all that doesn't he!!

I love the enquisitive Tup!!

Thanks Steph

Haha Berger, he does seem extremely relaxed around them - and they around him too.

Re: send away

You must hold the position at the marker (or however far you get the dog out, judges will give marks out of 10 for how close you get the dog out to the chosen marker, normally a cone or electric fence pole, at lower stakes this tends to be at a boundary)

An experienced judge told me to shout 'wait' instead of sit. I.e. if you command sit at the marker and the dog stands, you may lose marks. If you command wait, then as long the dog stays still you get the marks.

You will then say to the judge something like 'thank you' to indicate you are happy with where the dog got to.

Keep it all about enthusiasm in training, you need your dog really confident to go out straight. I am training Max with cones, but not to a boundary; have seen a lot of dogs in trials go straight to the nearest boundary even when the marker is in the middle of the field.. So, it's good to mix the positions of the markers and different fields so the dog is learning to go straight out.

Most dogs will go out in a curve btw, this is where you find out if your dog is right or left handed

Thank you Nick, that is all REALLY helpful. As you can see I am teaching Zak to go out to an electric fence post, but I haven't yet put it on a boundary - I will do that sometimes, and not others then.

That is particularly useful about the "wait" command. At the moment I am just saying stop (as he knows this command from the sheep training). He will usually just stand at that command, but if he is unsure he will sometimes sit down. He has remained standing every time so far at the marker post, so I won't change the command to try to make him sit or stand, if the actual position doesn't matter.

The only little niggle I can see at the moment with the sendaway is that he sets off with purpose the first couple of times, but by perhaps the third time he is anticipating the stop command and so is slowing down and turning to look at me. How can I fix that?

This is a HUGE thank you to Moobli for posting the link to that amazing site!! I've just had another quick browze in my lunchbreak at work, and read some fascinating stuff. It seems to me that the GSDs are ace at boundary patrol, guarding the flock from predators - guess we don't have too many natural predators of sheep here in the UK, apart from domestic dogs - but it is so lovely to see the dog working in this way. They are an amazing breed, thanx Moobli!!

Aww you are more than welcome Gnasher. I found it a really interesting and informative website too