[Sharon Blakeney-McDonald]

Yes, I understand what you mean. Graham (dog Trainer) is better at the eye contact. He has worked Tazer (sitting in a chair) and slipping the sleeve (private lessons).Tazer spits it out straight away and focus back onto Graham who is now using the look away eye contact. If Graham moves Tazer is ready to go again. I have to move Tazer away from him until Graham is ready and has the sleeve back on. Tazer seems more focus on the person then the sleeve. I’ll ask Graham if we can go back to doing the slips. Thanks for your advice. I’m going to your video section now to watch the Nikko series in the personal protection.

[Sharon Blakeney-McDonald]

Sorry, don’t have a video of Tazer working. This training is being done through a club and the dog trainer doesn’t have the capablity to be the decoy any more due to both of his knees have had it and his age. He generally has a member that interested in learning to be the decoy. ( Not many dog trainers in WA, Australia do protection training). We have not reach the stage of doing any defense and we have never been able to get him to hold on to be able to move to the next stage with him. What his learned is to come back to me when I call him, otherwise he will just stands there focus on the decoy waiting to see what his next move will be… like he does when I’m playing tug with him except he will hang onto his toy. This doesn’t happen with the other dogs as they will hang on until told to out. I don’t think he a very high prey dog and I’m working on that by playing tug games and him chasing a ball on a rope with me. I have just recently taught him what the out word means with food as he won’t let his toys go when we are playing. I don’t know very much about protection training and I have only just recently came across a company spatanspecialforces.com.au that is providing a course in Property and Family Guardian Training that I’m hoping I can do if Tazer passes the temperament test. I’m not sure he will as I have had some issues with him resource guarding me and being defensive of strangers when he was maturing. Tazer became physically stronger then me and I had to be taught how to use e-collar and the prong collar to put me back into control and to stop his resource guarding of me where nobody could enter our personal space. He is not a very dominant dog but he as always been wary of strangers. Apart from the vet he has come along way.