Rom

NDTF offer their course through distance ed/learning now, but its not through TAFE. Shmoo, hang on and save up. Its really not worth doing any of the cheaper courses around except for K9's short courses.

Which is often where we 'humanise' them. :p Great post, Rom. I love phylosophy Thanks Erny :-) Thanks too for pointing me in the right direction as to the spelling of phylosophy! Plenty of things could cause the 'sluncking'.... How do we know that it was actually the dog displaying this body language that actually ate the meat? Maybe it was actually one of the other dogs, and the other dog was giving the slunking dog the 'eye' to stay away from the 'treasure' and the slunking dog is offering appeasement? Maybe there had been a challenge over the meat or licking rights to the left over packaging? My dog slinks...bridging, tail btn legs etc when she's been bitten by a green ant. Perhaps the meat ended up behind the bush instead of being eaten in the kitchen because the dog that originally took it was trying to keep it away from the other dogs and there was a bit of a chase? Or maybe the meat was eaten in the kitchen, and another dog carried the packaging out to give it a good licking over? Too many possibilities for me to attribute the dogs actions to reasoning. EFS

Go the Hounds!

Pinnacle, not doubting anything you say.....but I think you replied in the wrong thread

Dogdude, I think you're doing something along the lines of what I was talking about. Thanks Tony, I was hoping a horsey person would come in and clarify for me

I think we sometimes set our dogs up for failure in the loose lead walking stakes from the time we actually introduce them to the lead and by not understanding why a dog pulls on lead. I know that this was certainly the case with me and my dog If you think about many materials that you read on introducing a pup to a lead they often suggest that you put the lead on the pup and let it drag it around while it goes through other activities to teach it that the lead is a not a scary thing.....or some variation on that theme. But what I believe is happening here is that we are setting a pattern up that lets the dog know that it gets to go where it wants by dragging on the lead....or it gets what it wants by dragging on the lead....in other words, it gets to self reward....on a continuous schedule of reinforcement. Later on, we often give the dog mixed messages without realising it. While we think we're actively working to try and train the dog to not pull on lead, we might sometimes allow the dog to gain a reward by pulling on lead. Some examples: -After class, or during a break in class, we let our dog play on lead or meet another dog. During this activity there is tension on the lead....the dog is getting rewarded for pulling on the lead. -We're out on a walk, the dog pulls towards a tree, we think 'perhaps he might need to pee' so we go with him to the tree....we've just rewarded the dog for the tension on the lead...and sent him the message that if he pulls, we might go where he wants to go. -We are walking down the street and we see someone that we know and that the dog really likes. The dog pulls on the lead as the person is coming closer and they give the dog a hearty greeting and a pat....the dog has just been rewarded for pulling on the lead. -We're in a hurry to get somewhere, and the dog is pulling, but we just keep going..... So now we've put leash pulling on an intermittent schedule of reinforcement and we've gone through a similar pattern as we would have if we were teaching the behaviours that we want. At the same time, we might be also rewarding the dog for not pulling on lead to try and get the message across.....no wonder so many dogs have issues with leash pulling. I believe this is where my girls leash pulling problems originated. There was another off topic event that helped cement her leash pulling problems, but the foundation was laid with the above. So I guess that part of fixing the problem is ensuring that reinforcement of any form is never delivered while there is tension on the lead. So when your dog is pulling on the lead, ask yourself 'what does he want?', and 'is he getting it?'

An acquaintance of mine trains horses for western eventing and he uses a 7 inch curb bit when training his horses. I never used one on my horses so I don't know that much about them, but I understand that they can be quite a harsh bit in the wrong hands. The way he explains it is that he uses really heavy reins during the training and he teaches the horse to respond to the change in weight in the reins rather than the pressure of the bit in the horses mouth. So, while the 7 inch curb bit could be seen as some as cruel, he is basically setting his horse up for life to have a soft mouth and avoid any pressure from a bit. But thats a little off topic and getting away from my point Once the horse is trained he gradually reduces the weight of the reins that he uses then goes back to using an ordinary snaffle bit. So as well as luring and rewarding a dog when teaching the heel, I wonder if using a heavy lead and also rewarding the correct responses to the change in the weight of the lead as you move with the dog would help some dogs gain understanding of the exercise, or maybe help to tidy up some heeling issues? Then you could reduce the weight of the lead gradually right down to a thin cord if necessary.... Whaddya think?

Hey Dogdude, do you see this as a problem? If so, how? I'm not doubting, just wondering cuz its a subject that I've been giving some thought to. I've been thinking about it along these lines..... When we teach something new to the dog, we break it down and introduce it in its simplest form and then gradually increase the criteria that we ask for or add new steps. So I've been wondering if it wouldn't be easier to teach a loose lead walk first and to move from that to the more formal heel? ETA: I'd be thankful for any if you can point out any faults in my reasoning The thing that got me thinking about it is the number of dogs that I've seen that can heel in class or trial ring, but they pull like a steam train outside of class or the ring.

:D :D ;) doesn't help when the OP forgets what point she was trying to get at Ok - so what of the type of dog that tends to 'tiptoe' around the exercises when the handler is confused.... is it sensitive to how the handler is feeling or is it just something that all dogs do??? ROM: I *think* you are on the right track.... and I *think* I have completely lost the plot Ok - so for my examples, the consensus tends to be 'confusion'..... so.... what would define a truly sensitive dog?? Sensitive: 1. open to, acutely affected by, external impressions 2. easily affected or altered 3. easily upset by criticism 4. responsive to slight changes (Oxford pocket reference)

;) ;) ;) I think I should clarify here. When I said 'mate my girl' I meant with another dog...... ;)

I'm trying to get on the same page....I think I might know what you're getting at. But in the above examples is it an improvement in speed or an increase in distance that is a new criteria to the dog? Because if it is, I don't think its so much sensitivity as it is confusion....same exercise but new criteria for earning the reward...the dog slows down while they figure out what you want. Am I on the same page?

Here's an interesting twist on the pack hierarchy thing. Only the alpha pair have breeding rights....I'm single at the moment and not engaging in any 'breeding' activities So, if I were to mate my girl, would she see that as an elevation in her rank in the pack? :tongue in cheek icon:

Ok, if you really want to be bored by some phylisophical wanderings of an idle mind (I don't have T.V. :D ), I'll take us a little off topic but I promise I'll wander back on track. When many people ponder on dog behaviour, they cite references from wolf behaviours or as I've learned recently from DOL, Jackal behaviours. Sometimes I think its easier to understand the mind of a dog if you go back way further than that. The single celled amoeba (here in after referred to as SCA) that mutated and started crawling out of the pond at the dawn of time. (Did I just hear some chuckles of disbelief ) By the way, I hope the Creationists on DOL don't take offense at this post. So....dogs and humans have a common ancestor. One of the things that I find interesting is that while dogs and humans have both grown brains and developed central nervous systems, psychologically dogs have remained similar to the SCA in that they survived by being reactive to the environment and how changes in the environment affected the pressure for survival. The mind of the dog is similarly reactive today. While humans have developed an analytical mind, they still have the remnants of the primitive reactive mind. This is evident in modern day humans who still live in primitive human tribes and is evidenced by their highly suspicous nature. One story I remember reading was of a tribe that ventured to the sea for the very first time and caught and ate fish. At the same time there was an outbreak of leprosy in the tribe. To them, the fish caused the leprosy. To a reactive mind, all the things that happen together are equal. So to this tribe fish = leprosy=threat to survival. Humans that live in modern societies who have had the benefit of education to help develop the analytical mind would question the above and test their theories. However, educated humans in modern societies are not totally free of the effects of the primitive reactive mind. We revert to the reactive mind during times of great stress, shock or trauma. Its a survival mechanism. To a child that is abused by someone wearing a particular scent, the reactive mind might record scent=abuse=threat to survival to memory and they may have stressed reactions to the scent alone because all the elements are equal in the reactive mind. The analytical mind can separate the elements and deal with them individually, but the analytical mind is like a powerful and fragile super computer and the reactive mind is its protection or safety cut off switch during traumatic times. The reactive mind can work in the positive sense too in that all things that promote survival and that happen at the same time can be recorded as being equal. I think that understanding how the reactive mind works really helps to understand the mind of the dog. Not only that, but since humans have remnants of the reactive mind, perhaps thats is why we are so attracted to dogs as well as the fact that they have similar social behaviours and like similar pack structures to us? Perhaps we see something of ourselves in them? Maybe somewhere deep in our genetic code there are memories of times when our mind was just as primitive and we only had a reactive mind too? I wonder if dogs and our human ancestors started to come together when we were more of a similar mind so to speak? And while we have developed in the mental sense, they have stayed the same? I wonder if the point at which man stops being dogs best friend is when we mistakenly believe or expect that somewhere in there is an analytical mind?

I'm no behaviourist, but I wonder if the answer is the UTI and kenneling combined? I don't know if its the same for dogs as it is for us, but I know when I had an UTI I had to pee more frequently and it hurt. Does she normally pee in the kennel? If not, when she had the UTI and she was locked away, maybe she was getting anxious about the more insistent urge to go but feeling that she couldn't...then when she finally did it really hurt. Do you think that this could account for the days that she's fine? Maybe on those days she doesn't get the urge to go?

Joypod, despite all that's been said, I don't think you need to discount all of Jan Fennells stuff. As has been said before, there is no harm and some benefit to be gained from her basic four step Amichien Bonding process. A lot about that is not new, it has just been repackaged for market.

Exactly, Am. However, to her credit she does admit: "My method cannot remove these basic instincts from any dog, what ever its breed. What it can do, however, is allow people to manage their pets so that the confrontations that bring out this aggressive nature never take place." (pg 170 "The Dog Listener") Even though I wouldn't yet feel confident in my knowledge to take on a seriously dangerous or aggressive dog, I know that there are those that do get excellent result with them so the above admission really displays, I feel, her lack of knowledge.

You've got me thinking DW. Good onya, I like that The more I think the more I learn. What you're saying here is basically supported by the stuff that I've learned from K9 Force about drives. There is an area or part of the drive progression of behaviours where little learning occurs. What happens immediately before and after that part of the drive is where you get the best learning out of the dog. I think this is right because:.... But is this really a low prey drive dog? Is it just that since he gets prey drive satisfaction during the retrieve that he has little need to display the drive under other circumstances? If he wasn't being trained in the retrieve, would he otherwise be expressing high prey drive characteristics in perhaps unwanted ways? And is this bleeding over into other unwanted destructive or stress based behaviours. I know of a border collie who is not worked who is a nuisance barker and a kelpie that is not worked who paces the owners backyard obsessively and they complain that he has worn a track in the lawn. These are otherwise socially well behaved and obedient dogs. So have the drives really been repressed? Or are they just being expressed in other ways? They are trying to train him in the wrong part of the drive then I think.

BTW Erny, I hopefully have one or 2 submissions coming to you by snail mail. The second oeron I only just caught up with yesterday.

Even though I've really overstepped my budget this year (its not all bad...I learned how to make a can of braised steak and onions last for 3 meals ) I'll be happy to help where I can. I'm looking to an improvement soon so count me in!

An observation of mine that some might find helpful on this subject. I did have two instances where the prong come undone on my girl. I didn't really draw the connection to the cause straight away.... What had happened during her leash lunging and tension on the lead days was that she'd built up extra muscle in her neck. After a period on the prong, her neck took on a much more feminine appearance and I failed to see that I needed to adjust the size of the prong to accomodate this change in her neck measurements.

This is the way I would have preferred that they show the exercise for the benefit of the safety of the audience. But no, thats not how they handled the situation. However, there were still some problems in that what they showed, the distance that they kept the dog from the stimuli meant that its reaction was fairly mild and could indicate that at this level, flooding may have been appropriate (which is basically what you're talking about I think? ), but there was no explaination of this either which leaves far too much open to the interpretation of the viewer. BTW, I didn't mean to infer by my post that I thought that the application of a physcial correction or punisher would have been appropriate in this situation for this dog. Just that I'd detected faults in the methodologies.

I think thresholds can be manipulated too...isn't that basically part of what you do in both desensitisation and sensitisation work? I've got a handle on desensitisation, I still need to know more about sensitisation before I could answer this confidently. This would seem to be true of my dog. While she has good prey drive, it doesn't seem to be something that she can maintain in strange environments. I'm not fully convinced about it yet though because I'm such a novice at working with drives that I realise the possibility that there is something that I've missed in drive training. I know I could get the question answered if I knew what to ask

I've a number of observations that I'd like to make about both Milan and Fennell. Milans program involves inducing a level of fatigue in the dog before he tries for compliance. Behavioural science seems to support the statement that learning comprises all processes of adaption to the environment which cannot be traced back to instinct, maturing or fatigue. So, while fatiguing the dog may help you gain some control, does it really help the dog to learn self control when its not fatigued? You see it all the time at dog clubs. Those dogs that are uncontrollable and bouncing of the end of the lead at the beginning of the class but show an improvement in the degree of compliance by the end of the class have not necessarily learned anything of value for the next class because they behave exactly the same way. So Milan needs to apply some aversives to get the message across to the dog. In saying the above, I don't mean to devalue the importance of an exercise program for the dog. Fennell cites Monty Roberts (the Horse Whisperer) as a mentor and the inspiration behind the Dog Listening program that she has developed. While her program relies on avoiding all applications of aversives/punishment and simply ignoring bad behaviour, she seems to have overlooked one very important aspect of Monty Roberts 'Joining up' process which is the cornerstone of everything he does with horses. That is that during the joining up process Monty Roberts applies a very powerful aversive/punishment to the horse by mimicking a herd behaviour that makes the horse believe that its very survival could be under threat. I'm not about to call what Monty Roberts does cruel though because he has otherwise gently and efficiently rehabilitated many horses for whom he was the last hope. Even in the movie the Horse Whisperer, the rehabilitation of the horse in question did not show much improvement until after the application of a powerfully aversive event for that horse. I'm not trying to say that you would apply the same aversives/punishers to dogs as you do to horses or that aversives would work in the same situations. The point I am trying to make is that Jan Fennell didn't recongnise the aversive/punishment in Monty Roberts work when she saw it. That is the foundation of her beliefs that they are not needed. There is also one segment I remember seeing on one of Jan Fennells DVD's that I was concerned about. It was about a dog that had shown people aggressive behaviours. Her method of treatment involved having the handler with the dog on lead bring the dog into a room with a person that the dog was reactive to. When the dog reacted by growling, they simply took the dog out of the room, waited for a while and bought it back in again to repeat the process. I'll admit that during this segment that you did see some improvement in the reaction of the dog. However, what they failed to point out is that they were effectively negatively reinforcing the dog for displaying the behaviour that they were trying to modify by removing it from the presence of something that it found stressful after it displayed the behaviour. We know that reinforcers, both positive and negative increase the intensity or regularity of a behaviour. So that segment is potentially very dangerous in the hands of the unitiated. It could be just one of those things where too much footage was left on the cutting room floor. But if Jan Fennell really understood what she was doing, why would she let a DVD be released that so mistakenly represented behavioural science?

I agree. Excellent topic For my dog, group training didn't work. There are a number of reasons that I think I can put this down to. -the distraction levels were too high. -the pace of the lesson was a one size fits all. In a class situation it was hard to both keep up, but also take the time I needed with my dog. I couldn't focus both on what the instructor was saying and give my dog the focus and attention that she needed in order to help her with the distraction problem...then if I did, I became a distraction for the rest of the class. On a personal level, I'm a fairly brisk walker. My slow pace is equivalent to most peoples normal pace and my normal to their fast. But there are many walking styles that seem to be a hinderance to the block heeling patterns in a class environment. I found that borderline annoying and a distraction that I didn't really want to be dealing with. But the instructors need to keep some semblance of order so that they can watch all dogs and handlers so that they can give advice where needed. I found that those with walking difficulties often missed much of what was going on while they were catching up to everyone else. While my dog did obtain a degree of obedience, her performance was....lack lustre to say the least. This probably won't be as much of a problem for someone who is a pet owner as opposed to a competition owner. However, since I attend clubs now mainly as an observer, I note that many pet owners are struggling with similar issues. I don't think I'd put another dog of mine into a class environment, even if they didn't have similar issues with distractions. I just feel that its fairer on the dog to gradually add distractions and that the class environment is too much too soon. I still train my dog on club nights, but I do it off to the side on my own and not in a class. If there is ring runout practice on, I take part in this and also the group stay exercises. My dog still gets to socialise with other dogs before classes start. I think I would opt for personal training if issues arised with what I was doing, but my standards have become higher than my financial budget since I started TID and personal training would necessitate interstate travel For clubs though, it may not have to be an either or situation. Perhaps an option of personal training could be added in those areas where resources allow? Could be an additional source of income for clubs and for qualified trainers......a win/win.

:D I've seen a mini dachy track. Judge commented that it was the first dog that he judged that could get his tracking line tangled on a cow pat