Nice post. And some pretty good information.

I am carpet mill guy at heart. But with that said, it all about the individual dog. The tall and long dog that can just about breathe underwater most of the time benefits from the muscular endurance work of the carpet mill. But his block built square brother, as tall as he is long, normally does not naturally breathe like his brother. This dog would benefit from the endurance/air type work of a slat mill.

Most dogs fall somewhere in between and can benefit from both. The biggest mistake made is having one plan with one piece of equipment and blanket all your dogs with the one plan and one piece of equipment.

It is some principles involved in conditioning and one of the biggest mistakes is digging a hole with a hammer. I can do it, but there are other tools much more suited for the job I need done. Same with the dogs. Not all the dogs are the same and in turn all of them have different needs. The best tool in the shed is simple honesty. Don't lie to yourself about your dog's strengths and weaknesses and don't he so hard headed as to not be willing to try a different approach.

Basically no one piece of equipment is better than any other. The successes depend on the dog first and how the conditioner chooses to use said equipment. This will hurt some feelings and step on some toes but most can't effectively use a mill much less read a dog working a mill-regardless of which type of mill.

I am believe in personal experience of theories and what "joe" down the road said, unless I know for a fact Joe has road up and down the road. A perfect example is if someone on this board who I do not know posts some workout plans with their dogs and mills. I will enjoy them as I read and will be hard pressed to try them if they differ substantially from how I think things should be done. On the other hand if CYJ says anything about a turn table I drop what I am doing, pull up a chair, open my mental notebook and soak up every syllable. So much so when I get back home I go to my book and write down everything I remember he said. Why? Everything he said made sense, so much so, I built one for myself. And it is simply a different dog coming off a table.

I worked CH Li Man for his fourth on the carpet mill and the turn table. The carpet mill I build mimics the dog running on the ground. No piece of equipment will out perform a dog all out sprinting on the ground propelling his weight forward against the earth's gravitational pull. None. My carpet mill mimics this gait. He does not look like he is chasing/trying to catch the belt and he does not lug along like he is pulling a boat. On my mill he pretty much looks like he is running on the ground. I built a 18 foot table. I wish it had been somewhat bigger but it was fit into the space I had. The dog was a freak natural athlete and piece of equipment would have made a pretty good dog. The two of them made him strong as a bull and that bull could breathe underwater.

DTA's CH Charlie (4XW) conditioned himself. if he could drive and count money, he could have gone out solo. The bulk of his keep consisted of sitting on a five-gallon bucket inside the chain space of another dog. Charlie would go into a dead sprint so fast most of his chain was off the ground. He turned his chain and chain spot into a jenny. He would go all out for three-four-five minutes, stop, bark two or three times and then go in the other direction. Propelling himself on the ground, with the added resistance of the chain made this dog freak strong, but more importantly he had muscular endurance, so he was 'stronger-longer. We could have honestly said 'we are coming off the chain' and I believe in better shape than 90% of the match dogs out there. And he did it to himself.

Multiple ways to get there and no one piece of equipment is really any better than another. Us getting the warm fuzzies is more important than anything else.

These are my favorite posts.

EWO