Giday Bill and company

I remember reading a book that listed a lot of breeds and indicated what they were best at doing.

The Besenji was considered to be poor at barking on comand.

Poodles were identified as the most intelegent (but this may have been a sublective opinion as I have come across some of those culy dogs that did not appear very bright).

From what I have seen in acts over the years many of the mixed breed muts seem to function well as performing dogs.

One of my approaches has also been to develope "patter" that makes some the dog's natural behaviour appear to be part of the training and come across as entertaining when it would have gone unnoticed. For instance "Booma" the now semi retired Golden Retriever does a very simple (and lazy) rollover where he simply lays on his back waging his tail slowly expecting to get a treat.

I put togrther some dialogue that goes like this:
"Has any body senn Booma on TV? (Some one usually says they have and even if not the dialogue runs well). Yes Booma sits on our tv so he can see out the window. Oh you thought I meant on TV like on a show. Well he is training to be in a show where he gets shot and pretends he is dead. (go through the appropriate hand signals and include a bang and finger gun action). Booma rolls over and wags his tail. I then report that he is still having trouble keeping his tail still and I continue to reinforce the tail waging. Children laugh a lot at that and it was there all the time.

See you around the Café.

Troppo Bob