I am wondering if anyone has a Koolie like Chester - a blue merle Koolie rocket - who is an escape artist and very active. It's very amusing - you can see him thinking "what am I going to do next?... and then he is off and racing. He is originally from the pound and must have developed the habit of chasing birds in his past life because this is his main interest - he gets a buzz from the movement of the birds and will run and run. He was probably confined to a backyard where there was little else to do. Anyway I take the dogs for a walk morning and night and they stay within sight - not Chester. Nothing stops Chester once he gets going - he runs through fences and out of sight over hills - he does come back but in the meantime he explores every part of the countryside. As a result he is very fit but also thin.

Lately I am trying to teach him to stay in the same paddock as the rest of us by walking him on a lead and then letting him run then calling him back and praising him. So far he seems to be responding but I think it will take time. When we go out with the horse Chester doesn't listen to me and will not come when called. As a result I have decided that I won't take him out with the horse until he settles down a bit.

I leave the dogs in the backyard during the day but Chester jumps over the 6 foot fence and takes himself for a walk to a paddock where there are lots of tussocks and rabbits. The problem is that in summer there will also be snakes. I have never tied my dogs up but he is leaving me no option because the fences are not Chester proof nor could they ever be because he will always find a way out. I built a covered run for him with mesh and he was out of it within 10 mins. He frets in the run and seems to prefer to be on a running wire with his kennel at one end.

Chester attends sheep dog training once a week where he is learning to behave around sheep. In fact he can be quite relaxed. I do agility training at home which he is starting to understand and enjoy. He seems to be a dog who wants to please and he can learn but in some areas he is a bit "over the top" and I perhaps I am giving him too much freedom to be that way.

Does anyone have a koolie like Chester and can you share what works for you.

Hi Flying dog, I do not have that problem at the moment. But my last dog Zorro was an escape artist. Some people will disagree with what I did, and I am sorry I did not continue this system when I moved to our new place because not having it killed him, hit by a truck. I had a doggy electric wire running around the inside perimeter of the fence. I set it up about 1 metre from the fence at the base, he got zapped twice and then would not go near it. I got zapped by the sucker too, gives you a jolt. After a while we turned it off and he never went near the white string, we did put it on every now and again. But when I moved I didn't set it up, stupid, stupid me. There is a few electric containment systems, I know that some people think it is cruel, but I had tried everything else and this was a last resort for me. Including runners, pens etc, he could climb, he snapped chains and wires and could work knots. Very smart and strong (border collie x bull terrier). And coming from someone who has suffered from the loss of a dog, I would use this system again if I had a future dog with escape tendancies.

With the thrill of the chase, Izzy my Kelpie x is the same, ducks, hares and wallabies. I used to have to watch her like a hawk, once I recognised her body signals if I catch her in time she stops, if not full flight over the hills and far away. She is getting better I have done heaps of recall with her. And she comes back when I call her name and whistle, but this has taken a year to get to this stage (she is also a rescue). Just perseverence and lots of things to keep thier interest, which you have started. Another recommendation is trick training. My girls get hyped up sometimes at night, so I start doing the tricks that they know and new ones, and at the end they are tired from the thinking of what does she want me to do now?

About staying close, I have found my Koolie so easy to teach to check-in of his own accord, it seemed really a natural expression of his herding instinct to do so. Perhaps different Koolies with different herding styles would learn this differently though.

When I first did it, I took him on lead to an open area and started reinforcing him when he looked at me. I don't think I actually asked for attention particularly, if I were to do it again I wouldn't, I'd probably actually just click and reward regardless of what the dog did to establish an association of mum=treats, then quickly move to marking and rewarding (definitely with tangible, primary rewards - I don't think praise is a strong enough reward to rely on for such an important behaviour) for deliberate engagement with me offered of the dog's own choice, not cued or prompted.

With Wal I then put him on a long lead for safety and did the same thing again. Now I continue to intermittently reward him for choosing to come back by himself and if I notice that the behaviour is deteriorating then I reinforce him more often and then it improves. Like any learned behaviour it is subject to change - the dog never stops learning the behaviour.

I agree with your decision about the horse - if it is a situation where you know the response from the dog isn't reliable (or is reliably not what you want) and you can't do anything from that situation to either teach the dog or keep it safe, I'd say avoid it, at least until you work out a way to deal with it. I'd be considering mainly 2 possibilities as to why his behaviour is more of a problem when you are on the horse - either that he simply hasn't been trained in this situation, and can't generalise his general response to being called to it or that he is afraid of the horse (which could be because he has not had experience with horses when younger or has been punished around horses either by ppl or by the horses themselves). Wal is very afraid of our horses, and almost any learned response falls apart in their presence.

Thanks KoolieMum and Ceejay for your help and to Tjukurpa who I contacted earlier. I am pleased to say that I gave it a go and Chester is responding well in the paddock when we go on walks. I just needed the resolve to try and I have found that he is very smart. As he was not responding to my voice, I dug out a whistle that I had bought off the net when I trained a young kelpie years ago. Then I got an extendable lead and took away his freedom for a few days as he had to walk on lead rather than run free. He was able to learn him by means of sound and containing him that there are rules:
1. No running through fences to chase anything.
2. No running through gates before me. He has to wait until I open the gate.
3. He must come when I call him.
He is responding well because I have been consistent and vigilant with him. Anyway he is starting to relax now and I can see that he is developing new behavior like running with the rest of the pack and playing close to me as well as coming up to me for a pat. It was interesting yesterday afternoon. It was a lovely warm day and I saw the lambs frolicking in the next paddock then I happened to see two baby rabbits frolicking very close to the fence. Chester went up to the fence and stood there watching and then he turned round and continued following us. In the past he would have been after them, so I am very pleased with his progress.

Hi Flyingdog,

I have had the same problem with one of my dogs.

When I first start training my dogs I first teach then to sit I expect the dog then to sit and stay despite the fact that I keep going.

When my dog took off a couple of times I tried different things to no avail until I told this dog to sit.

Problem solved: the dog sat which took the attention off what he was going to do and I picked him up the first coople of times and then sat him and called him to me. this seemed to work well.

It will if the dog has been used to doing this for some time take time but consistency always wins the day

Jack @ wilja Koolies

That's interesting Jack - I have been doing the same thing as part of the training. Every so often I ask Chester for a stop and he knows that command and then when he comes to me I often ask for a sit. This really takes attention away from what he was deciding to do and he wants to please me anyway so he starts to look for the commands. I then give him the free command so that he knows I have let him go. I will start to do more stays as well and move away, which is probably the hardest command to give so may need to start that one on a long lead. I think that Chester could learn almost anything, even tricks but where to start?