Game On Dogs

16/12/2024

Harley's Raffle Giveaway results are in!! Winners please post your selection of prize under this post only (first come first serve) 😊 & email us at [email protected] with your address. Congratulations to all the WINNERS & MERRY CHRISTMAS!

13/12/2024

Stick in the ground weaves are here! I LOVE them😍❤️❤️ - they turned out better than i had dreamed!
Channel weaves & Tyres have arrived as well🥳🥳🥳

02/12/2024

We were not going to do it again but Raffle King Harley insisted....at over 14 1/2 yrs, what Harley wants, he gets ❤❤❤ So for one FINAL time, he is going to preside over our annual RAFFLE GIVEAWAY ❤.
To enter, please comment under this, what you love most about your dog, the one defining characteristic that sets him above all else.😍 .
Thirty entrants with the most likes will go into a draw to win one of six prizes. ONE ENTRY per person. Raffle WINNERS will be announced on Monday 16th December.

30/11/2024

Even after successfully bringing up 6 working border collies and 2 Siberians, I still find her books a fascinating and educational read! Starting my 2nd read...I thoroughly recommend her books for owners of all dogs especially working breeds - https://www.facebook.com/share/19cX9p8A74/

TODAY OUR BREED EXPERT Carol Price is looking at:

BORDER COLLIE TRAINING - WHAT GOES WRONG AND WHY?

One of the greatest myths expounded about Border collies is that are always 'easy to train'. When what they really are, instead, is exceptionally fast learners. This means they can learn all the 'wrong' things just as rapidly as the 'right' ones, unless we more skilfully take control of this whole learning process in our dogs from as early on in their lives as possible.

Collies are also very speedy 'ingrainers'. In that once they have learned or discovered a particular type of behaviour that brings some reward for them, they may more stubbornly wish to retain it, or find it harder to abandon this preferred behaviour in favour of some newer one you may later want them to learn.

BREED VARIETY
Of course collies, as in all aspects of their behaviour, can vary greatly in how responsive they are to different types of training - and genetics can certainly play a part in this. In that dogs from some more classic Obedience, or other working lines, can often have a higher capacity for learning, or undertaking specific tasks, or just greater handler responsiveness in general. As well as a keener desire to both please and co-operate with a handler or owner.

But you can still never take this as a given when you get your own dog. Or imagine they will automatically be like any collie you have had before. Because some collies – as outlined in this feature – definitely can be more challenging to train, and if you have had this experience with a dog, it can help to try to better understand why.

SUPER-SENSITIVE DOGS
Some collies, for instance, can be exceptionally sensitive to any kind of mental pressure exerted by an owner - even if you may just class this yourself as 'encouragement' . The super sensitive dog is motivated predominantly by a desire to remain within a specific sensory comfort zone, and cannot cope too well when pushed too far beyond it.

Thus any form of louder, harsher or more pressurising voice tone or body language in training, or even just some more obvious sense of disapproval or disappointment displayed by you about their behaviour, may crush them or make them mentally shut down and withdraw from further interaction with you.

This is a reaction that so often gets interpreted by an owner as the dog just being 'stubborn' or ‘disobedient’. At which point they may try exerting even more pressure on them until the ‘shut down’ problem gets ever worse or more ingrained.

Dogs like these really need the lightest of touches in training, and the calmest and most sympathetic forms of handling. Everything they do is right, and clever, and gets your approval. It is just that some things - i.e. the things you want them to do most - are always more clever than others, and bring them the highest rewards. Dogs like these may also always thrive most being trained one-to-one, rather in a group training environment. But once you get the approach right, they really can be a joy to train.

CONTROL RESISTANT DOGS
One of the hardest type of collie to train – and which I have written about before on this page -is the dog more psychologically resistant to being controlled. I.e. dogs who are predominantly motivated by a desire to both exert and retain control, and never surrender this feeling of control, over their own actions or movements, to others.

For this reason, it always tends to be the exercises that require a dog to surrender control – to you - of their actions, movements or more personal agenda or space that cause the greatest levels of resistance; like down and stay or recall on command, or walking beside you more slowly on the lead. And the more you push, the more they may try to resist. They may also respond less well to being groomed or physically restrained in some way.

It is easy to get more frustrated with dogs like these. But often the problems you experience with them in later life date back to the very early basic building blocks of your training with them. Where you teach all puppies that responses like focus and co-operation will consistently bring them the highest rewards in life, and they are also given the opportunity to more actively choose these responses for themselves, rather than have them imposed on them with some greater sense of pressure. It is also important to realise that control resistant dogs cannot help the way they are psychologically wired, and are thus not acting from any more conscious sense of 'defiance' or refusal to 'respect' you.

They will always need a higher level of patience and persistence to train, as well as a constant reminding that whatever you ask them to do will carry far higher rewards for them than not doing it. Ultimately you just have to learn to think more like them, and work out what would most motivate you to do what someone else asked you to do if you had their kind of psychology. Which is actually a basic principle you should apply to the training of all dogs.

‘BAGGAGE’
Another really common reason for poorer responses to training in our dogs is the reality that we too often bring our own emotional/psychological baggage into the whole training process – often without realising it.

Things like our own lower sense of confidence, or – as previously outlined – a sense that our dog does not ‘respect’ us enough, or we may just be too impatient, unrealistic or too quickly frustrated, when it comes to what we expect from our dogs, given the quality of guidance we are giving them, or what they are more individually capable of delivering.

Either way, all these things can cause a more hostile or negative energy or ‘fog’ to build up around us, whenever we are trying to teach or get our dog to do something for us. Which can then lead to the dog also making far more negative associations themselves with the whole training process.

ALL ABOUT THE DOG
The greatest lesson I ever learned about training dogs is that it is all about what THE DOG needs, not YOU. So the more you can take all your own ego and baggage out of the equation, and just focus entirely on what your dog needs from you, to not only learn new things, but also LOVE doing them, the more successful your training will be. Because dogs will never love doing things that bring them little reward.

Also, never, ever assume that a dog should always ‘know’ what you want them to do. Some dogs will always take longer not just to learn things, but also retain what has been learned, so that their later responses to specific commands or exercises can become more reliable.

This feature has just given you some common examples of how a collie's innate psychology may clash with the way they are being trained. But there are so many other quirks of collie personality, or thought process, that can make your training fail for the same reason. These are all covered in far greater depth - along with more extensive advice on what to do about it - in BOOKS TWO (Essential Life Skills & Learning) and THREE (on Behaviour) of my BREED APART trilogy: :
All text ©Carol Price 2024
Carol Price collie books: In the UK from: https://performancedog.co.uk/?s=carol+price In the USA from: https://www.dogwise.com/ # and https://www.cleanrun.com/product/border_collies_a_breed_apart_book_1_secrets_of_the_working_mind/index.cfm In Canada from https://4mymerles.com/collections/books In Australia from: https://gameondogs.com.au/ And in the Netherlands and Belgium from: https://mediaboek.nl/border-collies-a-breed-apart-book-1.html

24/11/2024

Time to kick back & improve our understanding & bond with our dogs...

24/11/2024

When senior sheepdog, Sage came for a holiday, we gave her a "fitness bootcamp" experience😅
Applying the "Train Smart" philosophy of Flexiness, in just 2 weeks, here is what she achieved...

17/11/2024

13/11/2024

Dogs' Chrissy presents, sorted!

14/09/2024

Hmmm..mm..which one?

28/08/2024

Game on dogs, where our passion for dogs is reflected in our products. We have the largest selection of quality dog toys, training gear, books and dvds for performance dogs in Australasia.

22/08/2024

There's a untapped goldmine....

01/08/2024

PRE ORDERS are now open for:
Channel Weaves - _https://gameondogs.com.au/collections/agility-gear/products/portable-channel-weaves-12-pole-metal-base
Agility tyre - https://gameondogs.com.au/products/agility-tyre
Due to the exorbitant costs of shipping, we will not be carrying the same amount of stock of agility gear for home use as per previous years.
Please email [email protected] if you like to pre order any of the above. An email is required. Pre orders will be accepted up to 18th August. Stock will arrive in time for summer training.😊

30/07/2024

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/sw52MZSfjxrD73dK/

TODAY OUR BREED EXPERT CAROL PRICE LOOKS AT:

THE FEARUL MIND
Better understanding fear and its fallout in Border collies

It has taken me many, many years of my life to better understand how collies think, and respond to their surrounding world – usually, so very differently to ourselves. And also that in trying to transplant our own human brains, and thought processes, into a collie’s head is where so many of our problems with these dogs begin.

Human beings, in the main, can just be so bizarrely inconsistent. In that we will invariably view ourselves as mentally superior to all other animals in every way. Then still expect them to think and react to their surrounding world just like us, whenever some problem crops up for them in their environment. And that includes the experience and sensation of fear. An emotion at the heart of so many more challenging issues in collies.

We often do not understand our dogs’ fear, only because we cannot share it or know where it comes from.

A DIFFERENT MIND
Humans process fear or threat according to a pretty complex mental alert system. Involving a wealth of accumulated personal memory and experience; what or who has been proven to be safe or less safe in the past, and what is more novel or unfamiliar in their immediate environment.

Dogs may have the same basic system, but on a far more primal level. They cannot, for instance, rationalise their world like we can; know what a plane is, for instance, and why it exists or what it does, or the true function and purpose of umpteen different noises they get exposed to daily in the home or outside environment.

And they never live long enough to amass the level of social or environmental knowledge we typically acquire in our lifetimes. So they are creatures who primarily have to rely on instinct, instead, to rapidly process what is going on around them. They either trust that something they experience is safe, or they suspect that it is not. And then suitably respond either way.

Sometimes this more 'primal' system in collies – at least to our eyes - doesn’t work so efficiently, in terms of what a dog’s mind chooses to mount a more fearful response to. I have a dog for instance who doesn’t blink an eyelid in heavy traffic, or when a plane screeches over her head, but immediately runs off to hide when you take a loaf of bread out the freezer, because of the ‘cracklier’ noise it makes. This is the nature of instinct. It is never going to be 100% accurate in its assessments or responses, but it’s all dogs have got.

THREAT AND FEAR RESPONSES
Collies can vary greatly in how readily they will both perceive or react to any sudden sense of threat – i.e. with a milder or more extreme physical response. Such as freezing (or refusing to budge from a particular spot), fleeing, hiding, barking, whining, lunging out defensively, panting, shaking or shivering. And because all these responses emanate from more primal survival programming in dogs’ heads, it can be hard for them to exert any more conscious control over them, or even focus on anything else.

This is also why your dog may seem completely unable to listen to you, or take in any attempt you may make to try to soothe them or calm them down when they are in the height of a fear response, because their brain is now totally locked into survival mode, screening out anything other than what their instincts tell them they must do at that moment.

FEAR & RECOVERY
Something I have always found highly relevant in a dog is not that they become fearful when suddenly exposed to something newer or more potentially threatening – which, along with natural caution, is in fact a pretty healthy survival response – but how long they take to recover from that fear response once it has been launched.

For some it can be minutes, for others hours or even days. Depending on how quickly the dog decides that the thing they first thought was unsafe is safe, or be trained (of which more later) to accept this. Being prepared to recover quickly from a fear experience is always a good sign in dogs. You will also never get a better chance to turn a fear response in a dog around than the very first time it happens. Rather than long after it has become a far more ingrained behaviour in them, through constant past repetition.

WHEN FEAR LINGERS
Some dogs have a much bigger struggle overcoming their fears. Either because they have not been given a better chance, or better training, to overcome them or because this is a more intrinsic part of their whole nature, or personality.

If your own dog is like this, there is nothing to be gained from wishing your dog was more 'normal' or able to see their world more like you can or behave like other dogs do. Your dog can only think like your dog thinks, and then behave accordingly.

Dogs like these will always need more help and support in guiding them through the sensory and social minefield of our human world. With the right training – in teaching them to build more positive associations with things they previously once found frightening – so many of them can be helped and moved on to a happier place, but you can only progress at the speed each individual dog is prepared to go, when it comes to change.

MORE OVERWHELMING FEARS
Mostly the best approach to fearful perceptions and responses in collies is to teach them to feel more positive about the thing, or things, that once frightened them. But I do not think this applies to everything. Sometimes fear triggers are so overwhelming, as well as more scarily unpredictable – as in the case of thunderstorms, say, or fireworks – that finding an immediate place of safety for the dog to go to, or hide in, is a better strategy. Especially if other options – like noise CDs to better familiarise dogs with these sounds – have not worked for you.

Due to the more supreme sensitivity of dogs’ hearing, compared to our own, the noise of things like fireworks and thunder can also actually cause them physical pain, and thus it is harder to persuade a dog that something is actually ‘safe’ when it has this kind of physical effect on them.

The biggest assets you can, ultimately, give any fearful dog are your patience and greater insight into their problem. Fear is not something a dog can help, or always control in themselves. But we can control the ways in which we to choose to better understand them, and help them.

Meanwhile, a far more comprehensive look at fear in Border collies, its fallout on their behaviour, and how you can train dogs to be less fearful about different things, appears in BOOK THREE (green cover) of my BORDER COLLIES: A BREED APART trilogy: BEHAVIOUR - INSIGHTS, ISSUES AND SOLUTIONS:
All text © Carol Price 2024
Carol Price collie books: In the UK from: https://performancedog.co.uk/product-category/books-and-dvds/authors/carol-price/ In the USA from: https://www.dogwise.com/ # and https://www.cleanrun.com/product/border_collies_a_breed_apart_book_1_secrets_of_the_working_mind/index.cfm In Canada from https://4mymerles.com/collections/books In Australia from: https://gameondogs.com.au/ And in the Netherlands and Belgium from: https://mediaboek.nl/border-collies-a-breed-apart-book-1.html

17/07/2024

Some photos of the Agility Nationals 🙂
****So I am told, ever so publicly 😜 that Agility Nationals would like to everyone to get their photos from their photographers instead. **** So sorry to disappoint!

15/07/2024

Last week was MASSIVE - 5 days at the long awaited Agility Nationals, 4 as a competitor with 3 dogs and 2 days hosting our Game On Dogs stall.
It was heartwarming to feel the love from our loyal customers and especially special to meet & chat with many of our interstate customers who have supported me for so many years - you guys ROCK!!
Busy week ahead, updating our website to include the stall stock again but not too busy to express my gratitude to all our customers not only from last week but also all our online customers - we would not survive without your continued support!

09/07/2024

FINAL CALL for special requests of stock for the Agility Nationals - especially bulky items as these will not be featured in our stall. DOUBLE your savings - Save $$ on shipping, save 15% on all cash purchases!!

08/07/2024

Due to our attendance at the Agility Nationals this week and as we are a one-man show, the dispatch of online orders received this week may be delayed. Thanks so much for your understanding and patience 😘