Chicks doing helper work? - Page 5

Jeff

I will give you one reason why they should know how to catch a dog.  Someone is going to get hurt.  Whether it is the gal or the dog. 

I think you are right in the fact that a helper must be able to read a dog.  I think there are some people out there that will never get it.  Some people have it somewhat naturally.  To say that they have a lot of time to learn to catch a dog is not right in my mind.  To me this is the easier oart of doing the helper work.  Sure, some people are less athletic and have worse hand eye coordination, but to me there isn't too much to catch, have proper technique and targeting.  I think technique should be taught from the beginning and worked on throughout the remainder of your life.  Most clubs don't have enough retired or practice dogs that you can continually use and I for one, don't want someone with a floppy, loose arm all over the place, while I out my dog.  I also don't want them jamming my dog on a short, long bite.  Nor do I want someone in an escape with the sleeve in front of themselves.  

You are thinking that I am not ever going to emphasize targeting, I will, but it is not like this girl is gonna go and play with 5 dogs and just get it. I find that in this medium if you want to get people headed in the right direction, you just tell them what to do first, and let them start thinking like that, if you give it to them all at once, they get a bit discombobulated and mess the whole thing up.

Imagine having schbabe (what a tardo name by the way) in a couple of years come up to you after really working on what I have said, and asking for some help targeting. Much Much better. She is gonna have a real nice foundation and will be able to do some nice work for you.

No way!  I agree with you on many things, but I'm gonna have to jump off the short bus on this one.  There is no way you can work dogs for two yrs without having technique.   That is even crazier than anything I have ever said. 

I wasn't having them use a sleeve. Plus, how many people are willing to go along with you bouncing around behind a blind trying to elicit a response???  AND with training not being ALL the time, that works out to about a hundred trys, if you can get the dogs to play with.

Too hard for a beginner if they have to elicit responses with a sleeve on. Most dogs don't respond as well.

See?? I am brilliant enough for the both of us.

I wasn't having them use a sleeve. Plus, how many people are willing to go along with you bouncing around behind a blind trying to elicit a response???  AND with training not being ALL the time, that works out to about a hundred trys, if you can get the dogs to play with.

Too hard for a beginner if they have to elicit responses with a sleeve on. Most dogs don't respond as well.

See?? I am brilliant enough for the both of us.

Jeff, your brilliance, as you call it, baffles me!    I would never start a beginner on a beginner dog.  I would start them on an older retired dog that already knows the game better than this newbie.  I would start them out by telling them where they want to be, sleeve presentation, what the dog is doing and why, why they are doing what they are doing, and I would do this all at once.  If they screw up, so what.  I would tell them what they did wrong and we could work on it next time.  If they can't get this all at once, then they need to sit back down under the shade with everyone else.  There is no way presentation doesn't come up until two years down the road.

I agree Don lets not have the newbie decoy screwing up the newbie dog. The old dog knows all the rules by heart and will shrug off a screw up much better than a green dog just learning. I would never let a fresh decoy work my 10month old pup. Recipe for disaster, he is forgiving and recovers before you see a reaction but why chance issues down the road? Old dogs are perfect for decoy training and such experimenting. They will never trial again and have proven their worth already.

OK, young dog, not "new" dog.  Eliciting responses from a distance isn't gonna screw anything up, trust me, I have a bit of experience.

I am talking about the perfect world here. Of course no one has the discipline to actually learn to read a dog, that why so many helpers out there suck.

Old dogs really suck at teaching a new decoy how to read a dog. Their responses are conditioned, and not easy to read, because of this.

I can take a new helper, and your ten month old dog, and have the dog not wanting to leave the field when we are done, and no screwups. There is NO bitework here, no work close to the dog, and no hitting involved. Kinda hard to screw-up the way I like to teach it.

To many new helpers do not have anything to draw from as far as body language to reward the dog while working him. It always goes like this. Dog bites sleeve, helper goes through the motions of the exersize, dog goes along, and the sleeve is dropped. Most of the time I see frontal frontal frontal on new dogs, and pressure, with an occasional turn away, at which time they just walk along, head high, and make no effort to show the dog they were impressed.

However, they can target a dog. <rolls eyes>  LOL

I suggest the learning decoy to start reading dogs by watching another decoy work them. This is what I do while I wait my turn at training. If I don't see why a dog reacted a certain way, or why the decoy is working that one different, I ask, usually my boyfriend sitting next to me. Who is telling me to shut up, because I may offend the dogs owner, by asking questions about their weak or issue having dog.  I cannot fathom this still. If my dog screws up or has a weakness, I like to have it pointed out for myself as well as others. This whole top secret James Bond, shh lets keep that under wraps, isn't doing ANYBODY any favors. The secret squirrel shit is what I hate about Schutzhund not that it doesn't happen in the other dog sports too!

I am the kind of person that has to learn while I am in the moment. Not after training we will discuss... and I try to look back at what dog we are talking about, hoping I understand and get it right. If I see something weird or that I don't understand, I have to point it out and get the answer right then, so we all know we are on the same page and not recalling the wrong moment in question.

I have learned allot in the past year or so. Still I know I have much farther to go, but just how far can you go without honest answers?

Your query is the basis of why we have weak dogs in the first place. There used to be a "thick skinnedness" about dog people. Now they are all sensitive. Yuck.

The reason you need to do it yourself, is that you cannot watch both the decoy and the dog accuratly, and dogs react differently to different people. What I do to make a dog respond in defense, will probably not work for you. That is why you have to do the work.