Steve K9Pro

K9: of course....

K9: This is what I wrote in reply to you in my last post? Perhaps just take a moment to see what I actually did write. K9: Me either, thats why I wrote: K9: I didnt write my post to the OP, I wrote in response to the comments I quoted? But I certainly can see the problem when one has a low threshold to defence... K9: & it appears I am not allowed to. K9: This is a public forum, in which people write their thoughts & others reply with their opinions, that's how it works. I didn't agree with what you had written but with some things I did, but it appears your are in a mind set that I will "pick on your posts", you cant see the parts where I did agree with you. Go look at your last ten posts, other than this one & see that I haven't picked on any of them, I think your exaggerating a tad. K9: Show me where I said they do? K9: I actually did say that, try reading what I wrote, here it is again "K9: Medium level drives are good for obedience at a lower competition level, or they can be more suited to a new handler that hasnt worked with drive before." K9: IN YOUR OPINION, which your welcome to.

K9: Then this isnt a "too much drive" problem, its a "lack of stability problem". K9: I have seen one or two like this but it wasn't a "too much drive problem" in the ones I saw, it was weak nerves & poor training. K9: Yes have seen that too, but again its not a "too much drive" problem, its a "too much drive for that training program" problem. K9: Medium level drives are good for obedience at a lower competition level, or they can be more suited to a new handler that hasnt worked with drive before. I dont feel that having a high drive dog, specially if obtained & trained from a pup will mean you will always need to surpress that drive, I think surpressing the drives is most commonly required when something has gone wrong & the dog has learned a behaviour that isnt desireable. I also dont think that owning a high drive dog means that you will have an out of control monster & or one that goes into drive when ever it see's you if it is trained correctly. JMO

K9: The small, any time the item means the dog has to stretch its mouth can add discomfort which will in some manner reduce drive.

K9: No its providing rewards. Depends if you want to be part of the problem or part of the solution as far as the dog is concerned. K9: cant really say, never had a boyfriend that didn't work out, lol so either they all did or I just never had one... You can guess that one. K9: coming too hard is only necessary when you allow high values for distractions to be created.

K9: Thats dependant, you seem to be reading that it removes instincts, when nothing removes instinct. Say you had a LGD with very high prey drive, wanted to chase & down every Lamb it laid eyes on? Not productive either. K9: You need to understand the value of zero compared to an unsociable dog. K9: I never train dogs by breed, but by goal & temperament. The GSD's that we get to work as Patrol dogs can not focus on the handler, yet are neutralised.

K9: I am more concerned about the negative values dogs get meeting new dogs than I am the positive values, positive values are easily degraded whereas negative values can be life long. K9: It isnt possible in the short term, would be like trying to teach an adult that blue is red for example. But you can teach self control. K9: lol no, your dogs drive has just lowered with age.

K9: me too. K9: lol I think its just you. K9: Yes as do I, that would be called motivational training, but try & understand that likes & dislikes are often a learned condition. K9: Harmless is relative to opinion really, what one calls harmless, another may not. K9: lol next you will be telling me they love you & protect you. K9: You might be messing around that is making training harder & safety less providable? K9: cheating is when someone breaks the rules, this isnt breaking anyone's rules? K9: No where did I say that you cant train the perfect reacll without neutralisation? I just said it will be harder, I dont know too many people that like the hard way. K9: Thanks for your reply, but your post is a little all over the place? Its not about being dominant at all, perhaps another quick read through would be of benefit to you.

K9: if by total focus yo mean the dog looking at you all the time then no of course, not, but I mean I would want the dog to be guided by me. K9: the you would aim for a higer value than some others, would, but if your dog doesn't value you leadership you may end up with a dog that acts undesirably when the pressure is on. K9: thanks for the kind words, each discipline that we strive for is trained by polishing a method to suit the application. I would be using my scale to create a dog that has high value for another when the dog ius givem a re;ease command, then also train a gentle command so I could keep the dpog calm. I would also be choosing a certain type of dog that can submit easily without challenge. We dont otther than competition helling dogs to have full focus on us, so we train with certain steps in place to get what we need in each application. I hope that helps..?

K9: Imagine creating a high positive value for people with your dog & turning up to see an elderly person in bed, & your dog jumps all over them? To a degree you may be trying to create a calmer dog around people than some others may be looking for, so this would be your version of neutralisation.

K9: No no of course not, I was agreeing that taking just the written word can lead to problems... k9: Yep of course. K9: I think & hope we all do especially if the topic is aggression. The thing to remember also is what socialisation is "show your dog something new & assign a value to it". Snake proofing is a form of socialisation, show you dog a snake & assign a high negative value to it, meaning your dog will go into avoidance at the sight, sound or scent of a snake. I do socialise, my aim is just a neutral value of socialisation so it has been renamed neutralisation to avoid confusion with the generic plan.

K9: some dogs when going through the periods of fear will really suffer, some wont change much at all, there are many variables that effect this. We do a Puppy raising course to help guide people through this potential mine field. I keep the puppy at home, I practice crate training, TOT, NILIF & some drive work if the pup isn't suffering too badly in this period. But I keep it mainly at home, steer away from anything I cant predict with a good degree of accuracy. Before this period I spend a lot of time getting my neutralisation template in place, like I said, if my dog had a natural fear of anything, I would working at improving that feeling from a negative to a neutral or possibly slightly positive. The first 4 - 4.5 weeks (from 7.5 weeks to fear period one) are the best times to get your ground work done.

K9: be careful with the keep her at home part of the equation, this isnt neutralisation. I have cut & pasted this section (before someone else does). K9: I keep the dog at home due to the Fear period not the neutralisation.

K9: This is true, it is one of the reasons that it can become difficult to offer any advice on any forum for fear of people getting it wrong. There are many forums that as soon as a problem is presented, it is pasted as the standard answer "go see a behaviourist". I am glad were not there yet.

K9: I wonder how she would be now if you had taken her out, something had gone wrong in that fear period, would she have ever been able to recover? As a side note, threads such as this one aren't written as a training guide, this is offering the concept, so I wouldn't advise anyone just read this thread & carry it out as per what is written here, but seek advice that has been designed for their specific dog. Another thing is a dog that has a nerve issue will be afraid of certain things regardless of how you Socialise. Genetics also play a part, I wonder how the Dam & Sire are? There isn't a fine line in reality, it seems you may have taken the "don't allow your pup to gain positive things from strangers" too literally, when it fact the goal is to neutralise. Neutralise means that if I had a pup that already was afraid of people (had a negative value of men) I would be neutralising, which means dissolve that negative value. I am sure that when carried out correctly, without mistakes it produces a sound, stable reliable animal, it wont cover up nerve issues, genetic issues, previously learned events nor will it cause these fore mentioned problems.

K9: locking a dog up & then showing it something exciting is how we build drive, take away the locking up & the things they say aren't that exciting. For example when I was training in Thailand last year, all of the dogs have constant exposure to hundreds of dogs that roam the street, no aggression, no playing & no (zero) interest in each other. Same as when a dog is born into a yard that has chickens running around, they become accustomed to them & dont see the chickens as a trigger to prey drive in many cases. If you exclude the use of segregation for building drive tho, say for your joe blow average pet owner who just wants a dog that is acceptable in society. As I see it in theory, "socialisation" ie to dogs, chickens, etc, should be the same thing as "neutralisation", that is dogs in thailand (and maybe 20 years ago in Oz) are (were) neutralised through flooding which is intense socialisation really. However, "socialisation" in practice in modern Australia mainly due to the restrictions placed on dog ownership etc, means that exposing your dog to strange dogs has too many upredictables outcomes? K9: more or less, but other than unpredictable outcomes, people are encouraging play which ends up positively charging the experience.

K9: locking a dog up & then showing it something exciting is how we build drive, take away the locking up & the things they say aren't that exciting. For example when I was training in Thailand last year, all of the dogs have constant exposure to hundreds of dogs that roam the street, no aggression, no playing & no (zero) interest in each other. Same as when a dog is born into a yard that has chickens running around, they become accustomed to them & dont see the chickens as a trigger to prey drive in many cases.

K9: The dogs in our street didnt pose a great interest as our dogs hadnt been withheld from them behind a locked gate for example, so when they saw them it was daily, there was little excitement from either party which new dogs I guess found un rewarding. K9: Pens, runs, separate yards, thats what we recommend.

K9: It is a reasonable theory but very hard to get right in practice,never has been good for obedience reliability though.. K9: Its all a learning curve, we would never know what was good or bad until we try both I guess, doesn't help you now though...

K9: this is what fear periods are like, the week before she may have been fine... K9: The thread is sort of about avoiding these pitfalls, no so much about diagnosing & rehabilitating, for that I would need to see her so I could assess the level of fear & how we could design a program to alleviate these feelings. This will need to be done with the use of a child though so causing must be exercised to ensure the safety of the child & the dog doesn't get worse. But teaching a coping strategy can be a helpful foundation that can be used when rehab starts.

K9: Think of the negative side of the scale too, she views strangers approaching with a high negative value, this means that she reacts to them over you. When she is working she is triggered into drive & will remain focussed, its more that when there is no trigger just yet, we dont want people to either be a trigger to pack drive > she wants pats from them or a trigger to avoidance . she wants to avoid them. At the time you mention, sounds like she had a bad experience in fear period one.

This article was written as a thread in 2005, for the original click here People often talk about that they have socialised their dogs, now its time to move on to something else. Socialisation is never done, it should continue on as necessary for the life of the dog. There is also a great misunderstanding about what socialisation is? Often people feel that when they have an aggressive or timid dog, it needs to be socialised. This is untrue. When a dog is showing aggression, it is past the point where socialisation can help. Socialisation in its simplest form is: - "introducing your dog to a new item, be it dog, cat, stairs, noise & teaching your dog that it has a value." Some people also believe that you should teach your dog that some items, such as other dogs have a positive value, in other words, are fun to be around. I don't agree with this but nor do I stop people from doing it. I just don't do it. I prefer to neutralise my dogs to everything accept me & what I can give the dog. So that is me, my affection, praise, pats, prey items & food that my dog finds valuable, not anything else nor anybody else (outside my family) This makes every type of training go so much smoother & faster. I don't want my dogs tossing up if they would rather come to me or go play with another dog. Options = unreliable dogs. This opens up a huge can of worms when it comes to dog parks, meeting friends & letting your dogs play etc. Allowing your dog to run free with many other dogs is a huge risk, many temperament defects such as unresolved pack issues, rank issues & fear issues can surface in a heartbeat, resulting in your dog being attacked or attacking another. For those who like to see their dogs play with others, they also should know the risks. I want my dog to see me as #1, there really is no #2. It also removes the possibility of dogs destroying my dog's temperament & my dogs becoming too distracted by other dogs when I need them focussed on me. My plan is to take my dog everywhere I can when it is around 8 - 14 weeks, I run it up stairs platforms & teach it to ignore people & other dogs etc. Certainly I let my dogs know what other people & dogs are, I just don't want my dogs getting anything of value from them. Once I see my dog entering fear period one, see this model http://www.k9force.net/index.html?row2col2=develop.html I keep the dog at home when it's in this first fear period, this enables me to help my pup avoid the pitfalls in public. When I see the dog's temp firm up again, its time to start some serious training, by 10 - 12 months, the dogs training can be 100 % reliable, even though some think you can't get that, you can. So I feel that there are two very good reasons why that people should avoid the generic socialisation model. 1. Is of course that you end up with a dog that is harder to train reliably. 2. Is that in the attempt to socialise a dog with other dogs, it could inadvertently be attacked causing permanent temperament damage To me either one of these are enough reason to avoid it. I have added a scale here, neutralised dog is one that fits into the blue category...

K9: I think you mean How do you deal with a dog that holds a high value for other dogs? If so, this is usually done in a balanced training style where we use corrections & rewards for incorrect & correct response.

K9: People should also know that, this method of socialisation ( neutralisation ) isn't new to working dog people, many of us have been doing this for years, its in the last say five years that I have felt that due to our environment in Australia, I have been prescribing it to pet owners also.

A big thankyou to Troy for bumping this thread so that I could rescurrect it and ask some questions Steve, in your puppy developement sticky, the fear weeks are listed as: Period of fear 12-16 Weeks which is later than the fear period mentioned here. So I thought I'd ask which one you think is most likely. K9: the one in the article is correct, here is too, what I am saying is I work with the pup until fear period one, then I stay at home with the pup for 8 weeks. K9: yes, they don't leave here at all. Thats flexible though, but I stay away from things I cant control. K9: I have older dogs that keeps anyone barging into my back yard... lol K9: thats correct, I am not a fan of puppy classes. K9: Usually when you get your puppy at 8 weeks, by the time you get to first period of fear, you can usually see a reasonable change in the pup, same when it comes out. You might for example drop something on the floor at 11 weeks & the puppy chases it, two weeks later same thing drpped on the floor the puppy runs from it.