Aidan

I guess that depends on whether it is really true or not. I certainly wouldn't say it unless there was clear evidence to suggest that it was true. I haven't said it about this case, for e.g.

I have very good reason to believe that something similar happens with some types of problem barking and also aggression. In some cases the solutions to these problem behaviours are very simple but not acted upon.

Well how is a male dog meant to get testicular cancer if he doesnt have any testicles. Same goes for a bitch with ovarian or uterine cancer. Exactly ..... You can't get cancer of something you don't have. (or does lovemesideways know something we dont?) No-one is arguing that a dog without testicles can get testicular cancer. The myth as stated was "if you don't desex a dog they will get cancer and die", which is most definitely a myth. Not all dogs with testicles will get cancer of any sort. If the myth was stated as "if you don't desex a dog they have a higher risk of some cancers" then I would disagree with that being a myth because it is has been shown to be true, at least for testicular cancer.

After years of staying on top of a similar problem I decided to separate my dogs in the yard when my daughter became old enough to unlock doors and wander outside amongst them (very exciting for my dogs, and being new, not something they had any real rules to follow for). Although separating dogs leads to it's own problems I was surprised at how good it felt not having anything to watch out for if the dogs hadn't had enough exercise, or if I'd been away or whatever. I've noticed my boy hasn't had any hot-spots or ear infections since, there could be other reasons for this but it's worth noting. Not that I would necessarily suggest separating these dogs permanently, but it might be helpful at least early on while you can teach the younger dog exactly what to do in this situation (maybe go to a bed and wait?)

*sheepishly raises hand and admits to taking forever to get out of car without dog dragging me across the field to enthusiastically greet Aidan* Haha, I detect a "conditioned emotional response" to my harsh people training methods here! But W got the picture pretty quickly from memory?

Mondio FTW! I don't think a Mal would suit my current lifestyle though, and I'm glad my GSD is getting a little grey around the muzzle now I got into retrieving with my old Goldie in a big way over summer, that was brilliant fun.

Could you elaborate?

5 hours per week can be done in a crate! Big yards are good for tossing a ball around or doing a bit of heeling or agility work, and you don't have to pick up the poo as often. Proximity to neighbours can be a concern if the dog is prone to barking.

No, they are not a German breed.

I know someone who used to beat his dog after it escaped the yard through a broken gate, so it would cower when it returned from a visit to the neighbours French Poodle. I told him to fix his gate. His argument was that he didn't need to fix the gate because his dog "knew" it was wrong to leave the yard.

I know accredited trainers who would be competent in training these sorts of behaviours (and who evaluate and train dogs for pet assisted therapy, which is similar). I don't know of any organisations down here who are specifically working in the field of service dogs though (other than Guide Dogs). North or South?

Not so in entire bitches. If anything it is believed that female hormones present in entires can help to keep bitches less aggressive. Really? My experience has been the opposite, however that could be individual dogs as well. The jury is out but the weight of the evidence so far leans towards keeping bitches entire if they have shown certain types of aggression.

I thought many parts of your post were excellent, Ken. I do credit Koehler and have even quoted him (and Pearsall) in some of my articles. Koehler didn't cover everything or everyone but he had some very good ideas that we have been able to build on. No doubt that was a motivation for many, but outside of dog training "treat training" was purely a pragmatic approach to training animals that began in laboratories and found it's way very quickly into the training of animals for armed forces, scientific study, service and entertainment. It didn't really become a "reaction" to Koehler methods until the 90s. Gosh, you sound familiar, Ken - do I know you from somewhere?

Patients do things that they know are detrimental to their health all the time, including non-compliance with medication, failing to exercise, and even holding a fag up to their tracheotomy hole after having their throat cancer operated on. A lot of the time medication is prescribed simply to keep the patient functioning while they continue to eat food that is bad for them, continue to live stressful lifestyles, continue to drink to excess, smoke or take drugs, and continue to avoid exercise. These phenomenon are well understood in the field of health psychology but improvements in patient behaviour are probabilistic, i.e we can't make people do something, we can only increase the probability of it happening. The same is true in dog training. Most of my clients have reactive dogs, usually a large breed, usually owned by a small female. These are the ones who tend to seek help because they have no means of controlling the dog. I'm quite happy to recommend a front-attaching harness or head halter to these people where appropriate. An aggressive, powerful dog is not going to be changed completely overnight and there is too much risk in letting them continue with equipment which will not restrain them if something goes wrong. It wouldn't be fair to sequester the dog completely when an option exists that lets the owner continue to safely walk the dog without fear of losing control. Behaviour modification can then be undertaken in safety. So even when the owner is committed to training it is still sometimes appropriate to advise them to use equipment which gives them control.

Friends of the family used to tie a line to a cleat, then coil it up. The dog was trained to toilet on the line, then nudge it over the gunwhales. Self cleaning! I thought that was very practical, at least while at anchor.

My friend weighed 45kg, her dogs each weighed around 40kg. She liked to walk them at the same time. Her choice was entirely pragmatic. For e.g, I do remember her telling me a story about a bunch of drunk guys hassling her while walking the dogs one evening. The dogs were understandably agitated by this, but not protection trained.

The difference could be in your perspective? It seems a bit romantic to me, I may be younger than you but I certainly don't recall things being better then. When I started training dogs, which was not all that long ago relatively speaking but prior to the popularity of head collars, there were a lot of dogs who pulled into a check chain who were not trained or who were left in the back yard to rot. Hooray for the good old days, huh? Cosmolo is one of the best trainers and teachers (of people with dogs) in this country with a proven record of thousands of clients. She is willing to admit that there are some people who just cannot (physically) or will not (behaviourally) "get it". Why condemn their dogs to a life in the back yard for the sake of a trainer's ego or romanticism about the past? That's a wholly unrealistic expectation and not in the best interest of dogs. Now if someone comes to me, as a dog trainer, and says that their dog pulls on the leash then of course I will show them what to do. If they are committed to being consistent then they will get results and I will do my best to get them to understand the importance of this. How effective I am depends on a lot of factors but the tool that I show them how to use is not an important predictor of success. If I showed them how to use a prong collar they would not be in a better position than if I showed them how to do it with a flat collar, head collar or no collar at all. I train by principle, not method.

If the dog pulls, the head collar doesn't allow them to gain any benefit from pulling. As soon as they stop pulling, the head collar does nothing (for the majority of dogs). It shouldn't "correct" pulling by way of positive punishment, but why do dogs pull in the first place? If it is no longer reinforced, it soon extinguishes (at least while the halter is on).

That seems to be the prevailing opinion on head collars here and it may be true in some cases, but it is certainly not the way a head collar should work. Behaviour analysts figure out if something is aversive or not by using functional analysis and overwhelmingly head collars are not "constant aversives" (or non-contingent aversives), nor is that how they work. They leverage the handler so that the dog is not reinforced for pulling and is reinforced for coming back to the handler. The front-attaching harnesses work the same way. Observational bias is a funny thing, if you spend time on a forum where people say these things about head collars you will tend to notice only those dogs who are shut down (or more likely, habituated). The challenge as a critical thinker is to notice all of them. A couple of weeks ago I watched literally hundreds of dogs walk past as my daughter and I waited to use the bike track during the Million Paws Walk, and the biggest problem that I saw was habituation to both check chains and head collars. I didn't see any shut down dogs that I would have attributed to equipment. The majority of dogs on head halters were walking normally, on a loose leash. That is the intuitive assumption that people make and I suspect that this comes from our culture and not science. The fastest learning occurs where the organism is set up for success and reinforced. A head halter sets the dog up for success then the owner can reinforce (usually with food) the behaviour we want. The biggest problem with the head halter is that it is a "discriminating stimulus" - a cue, i.e the dog becomes "collar wise". I get around this by using a double-ended leash attached to a normal flat collar, gradually you reduce dependence on the head collar to set the dog up for success until you don't rely on it at all, and then you remove it entirely. You get the same situation with a prong collar or check chain. There really is no advantage in this regard (in fact, there is a disadvantage if you are not using +R also); but as I said before, each piece of equipment has it's pros and cons.

I've not worked with many horses, but those I have worked with have never been timid. I would say they were "pushy" if anything. I've always had to teach them good manners around food first. I have a young child so I quite like it when we get to go to wildlife parks together. All those tame animals that you are allowed to feed, they pick up simple stuff really quickly even with massive reinforcement histories of mugging people for food.

You don't see any contradiction in that at all? No Aidan, there are training tools and management tools and a difference between the two. Every time someone posts about dogs pulling on leash which I might add isn't a modern trend behaviour, infact leash pulling no doubt would have surfaced way back when the first ever dog was introduced to a leash long before any of posting here were born, but irrespective of that, the harness and head collar suggestions keep flowing. Sure thay can manage the behaviour and lessen the pulling effects, but generally speaking, they don't correct the behaviour, only manage it. Take a harness or head collar off a dog that is managed that way............and it's all over the place most of the time without it. A dog properly trained to walk nicely shouldn't need a leash at all IMHO A prong or check chain can be used as management tools also (and often are). In either case people need to train if they want flat collar or off-leash loose-leash walking, we seem to be in agreement on that. The contradiction is that you are also "resorting to a management device" when you use a prong collar or check chain. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, either way you need to train. All tools have pros and cons.

You don't see any contradiction in that at all?

I believe the person who wrote that was referring to the chickens at Bob Bailey's Chicken Camps (who are not hand-reared). A pet chicken would be a different story.

Welcome to my world! My girl is one who struggled to learn targetting. She is confident and reliable now, but boy did it take a while. I actually had to start with me making the target move to contact her nose and rewarding her for that - otherwise we would just sit there forever. I think that there is a large difference in dogs that have been trained positively, with free-shaping and targeting from the time they were pups and older dogs who haven't had any training at all. Yes, some of the older dogs will still pick up things quickly and think for themselves, but many won't. My "girl" has this attitude of "why bother", I'm quite happy sitting here. The first two animals I had trained to target were cats and they picked it up very quickly, but then I tried it on my adult, traditionally trained Golden and it took me literally two weeks before he got the idea. Since then I've trained a lot of dogs (and cats, horses, rabbits and random animals in petting zoos) to target and worked with all sorts of dogs in various emotional states and levels of drive and motivation. I've since realised that what I do is the most important predictor of success, rather than the animal's learning history or temperament which has only a very minor bearing on the outcome. The reason my Golden took so long to learn to target is because targeting is deceptively simple, but teaching it is a skill which must be learned and practiced. Most importantly the target must not be left 'out there' or you will very quickly teach your dog to just sit there, and then you'll have to use a different target. The next piece of advice is not to click for touching the target at first (unless that is what is offered). If the dog makes any attempt to move, sniff or look at the target you click and treat then, don't ask for any more than that. Given the extreme cases of shut-down, fearful, anxious or aggressive dogs that I have taught to target I really cannot imagine that there is a dog that I could not teach to target now; but I was a slow starter with this particular behaviour! It works very well in classes too, one of the better things you can teach in a class situation (unlike free-shaping).

No, there just isn't recompense if it goes missing. Sending a gift acts on the principle of reciprocity, most people (unless they really hate the sender) will feel at least slightly compelled to do something nice for the sender. It's quite an effective tactic and you can be sure they have marketers who test all sorts of approaches to come up with the most effective campaigns, this would be one of them. It's a pity it wasn't more money, you could have added us all to their mailing list and we all might have got a couple of bucks at PETA's expense!