fickla
Experienced Member
Jean, I originally joined this forum almost 3 years ago because I was excited about the focus on tricks. I occasionally visit every few weeks but no longer actively participate as the forum has morphed into a more general dog training/behavior forum instead of tricks and specialized training. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, I just personally prefer being on lists that have a narrow focus related to my interests.
What would draw me back would be challenges. The challenges motivate me to train my dog. Since my dogs know a lot of tricks (but there are SO many more we still want to learn!) I realize that many challenges would be ones we already have. However there are many ways to put variations on the trick to make it harder or to work on proofing them in fun ways.
I don't think they would all have to be moderator generated, but I don't know how it would work with user submitted challenges. Perhaps if it had to be approved by a moderator first it would be ok, but I would worry about an excited user with their brand new puppy posting a challenge to teach shake, and this occurring every few weeks with the next new user and puppy.
Perhaps a way to do it would be to have levels. Kind've like teaching your dog and posting videos of a shake, rollover, beg, spin, etc gets you past level 1. Teaching x,y,z, etc gets you past level 2. And then the challenges are user submitted of those in level 3. Anybody at any level could participate, but only those at a certain level could generate ideas of a challenge. That way those at the baby tricks could still have a constant challenge of trying to get past level 1 and 2 and proving it, but there could still be varied challenges offered every 1-2 months.
As for the blog question- I do have a training blog and at one point I was copying and pasting my entries over to the DTA blogs. But it was a pain to do so I stopped. if you still want to keep the blog section perhaps you can set it up so that one could enter the RSS feed of another site as an option. Or just have a blogroll list of members blogs and the link to their latest entry.
What would draw me back would be challenges. The challenges motivate me to train my dog. Since my dogs know a lot of tricks (but there are SO many more we still want to learn!) I realize that many challenges would be ones we already have. However there are many ways to put variations on the trick to make it harder or to work on proofing them in fun ways.
I don't think they would all have to be moderator generated, but I don't know how it would work with user submitted challenges. Perhaps if it had to be approved by a moderator first it would be ok, but I would worry about an excited user with their brand new puppy posting a challenge to teach shake, and this occurring every few weeks with the next new user and puppy.
Perhaps a way to do it would be to have levels. Kind've like teaching your dog and posting videos of a shake, rollover, beg, spin, etc gets you past level 1. Teaching x,y,z, etc gets you past level 2. And then the challenges are user submitted of those in level 3. Anybody at any level could participate, but only those at a certain level could generate ideas of a challenge. That way those at the baby tricks could still have a constant challenge of trying to get past level 1 and 2 and proving it, but there could still be varied challenges offered every 1-2 months.
As for the blog question- I do have a training blog and at one point I was copying and pasting my entries over to the DTA blogs. But it was a pain to do so I stopped. if you still want to keep the blog section perhaps you can set it up so that one could enter the RSS feed of another site as an option. Or just have a blogroll list of members blogs and the link to their latest entry.