Aidan

I don't make any claims to be purely positive, but it's exactly this sort of dog I'm more likely to approach "purely positive" with. Not for any philosophical reason though, it's just pragmatic.

It's just the purely positive trainers, is it?

I think it was Lorenz who coined the term "ritualised aggression" and I don't have his definition, but my understanding is that it is aggressive displays of behaviour intended to avoid actual, harmful conflict. There might be physical contact but no immediate intention of damage. The submissive dog will usually end up offering his submission and I think a lot of people mistake those interactions and see it as one dog pushing another dog over (for e.g), which has not happened physically. There isn't a measured increase in salivary cortisol levels involved in all learning The stress that I am concerned with is the sort of stress that leads to impeded learning (very common), unwanted behaviours (common and largely unnoticed) and in extreme cases physical disease or psychological trauma. So if we considered the range of all possible stress on a scale beginning with "relaxed or contented" and ending somewhere around "heart attack" I'd start putting the threshold somewhere around "causing impeded learning" or "causing unwanted behaviours" and certainly not all learning with positive reinforcement would step over that threshold, but a lot of learning involving aversives would.

I would dispute that assertion. It is not considered a fact in behaviourism, nor any other field of psychology or biology. On the flip-side, I might add as an item of interest, nor is it considered that punishment necessarily brings an enduring stress even in similar situations (although it can). They are common, I don't know about the "norm". There are legal issues in the states (of Australia) where field-trialling is most popular.

Yes, other senses of course play a huge role in all of this, and a 'smell-o-mirror' might give a very different result than the regular old mirrors we use now. If anyone has any idea of how to make a 'smell-o-mirror' (or what that would even be), by the way, I'd love to chat! hehe My dog is the same with cats, too. If there's a cat in the house, she's fine with it -- she grew up with cats in my parents' home but I don't have cats -- but any cats outside seem to activate that prey drive! The cats are actually still inside, I think the problem is that she doesn't even recognise them! It's a territorial bark. Her perceptions appear to be skewed beyond the point of recognition. I remember once coming home very late and three sheets to the wind, it was the only time the dogs barked at me as I came down the side of the house to the kitchen door. They are pretty good at recognising people by their footsteps (I assume?) If I ever invent a smell-o-mirror I will let you know. There probably aren't many commercial applications, but they said that about computers once too!

VIP roll is what I use almost exclusively. Most dogs will take it, many prefer it. If you freeze it then only partially thaw it makes it much easier to handle and the dogs seem to like it just as much that way.

Honestly, it doesn't smell great, in fact it smells "offal". And this is coming from an offal-eater.

Guy response here - in an oven? I think she cuts it into small cubes first, then bakes on a low temp.

Right. I think I need to get my dictionary out. Antecedent - a preceding thing or circumstance. Its great to learn something everyday, in my case lots of things. Thanks, I think I know what you mean. I will give it my best shot of not letting her get anywhere on a tight leash while in harness. Cheers Haha, well you got full marks!

One of my dogs will bark at our cats if she sees them through the bevelled-edged glass in our doors. At all other times, the cats are her babies. I suspect many dogs (but possibly there are some individual and breed related differences) just haven't evolved to use visual information very effectively. If mirrors also gave "smell information" dogs would recognise themselves pretty easily (but I realise there is much more to the argument than just this).

It may last, if you never, ever let her get anywhere on a tight leash while in harness. All voluntary behaviour works like this: Antecedent > Behaviour > Consequence ...right now the harness is not a cue to pull and there is no reinforcing consequence for pulling attached to it.

Baked beef-heart seems to be the most universally potent food reward I've seen. In an ideal situation every dog would work for dry kibble so it's worth spending a bit of time working out what you need to do, maybe train the basics at home first, or skip a meal, or work apart from the group for a little bit.

If you had someone qualified in Amish Bounding from the University of Dubiosity your dogs might be doing your ironing and mowing the lawns by now, just saying... :D

and join the ranks of those with dubious qualification that charge $300 an hour :D I have a degree in Amish Bounding from the University of Dubiosity :p Sorry Aidan but you need TV show to charge the big bucks. My life is a soap-opera at the moment *rubs greedy hands together with delight*

See my understanding of resource guarding is pretty limited. I would say that feeding separately may cause resource guarding because if a dog has never had to share that particular resource before (food) and all of a sudden their housemate is in their space, they may feel the need to guard... That's a good line of thought. Resource guarding happens when a dog learns that aggressive or threatening behaviours prevent others from taking a resource. The "overt" behaviours don't keep happening (unchanged) unless it works. But what we also need to consider is what causes him to feel that someone else is going to attempt to take the resource. Certainly, having another dog in your face while you are eating would be one driver. I would think that you are right, if two dogs never learn to share resources and are suddenly faced with a situation where they are put together with food (particularly at a time of scarcity) you might see them quickly learn the overt behaviours of aggression or threat that are characteristic of resource guarding. So teaching dogs that they don't need to guard resources is very good preventative behaviour management. But I wouldn't say that feeding them separately actually causes resource guarding. If the owner isn't confident that they can manage two dogs with highly desirable resources under their noses they should feed separately. Start any resource guarding preventative exercises with less desirable resources that are more easily managed and work your way up.

and join the ranks of those with dubious qualification that charge $300 an hour :D I have a degree in Amish Bounding from the University of Dubiosity :p

By what mechanism do you think that feeding your dogs separately might cause resource guarding? Or flip it around, by what mechanism do you think that feeding dogs together might cause resource guarding? Most dogs can be taught to eat together, but feeding them apart is fool-proof.

I think I need to put up my prices.

I'm more concerned that there are Delta accredited trainers who can't make meaningful, if not overly laborious progress using the methods that they teach.

Puggerup, I think you two are going to smoke it once you figure out the kinks. The clicker was originally called a "Bridging Stimulus" because it "bridges" the gap between Response and Reinforcer. When they used to study rats in boxes in the old days they waited until the rat did something (Response), then they dropped food into a hopper (Reinforcer). They figured out that the sound of the hopper was actually pretty useful because it appeared to "mark" the response, "bridging" the gap between Response and Reinforcer so the rat could figure out why he was earning the food. Without it, you just got a lot of "rat standing near the hopper". So it's a very powerful, useful, practical tool to have.

She's a princess, and lots of fun. Lots of work too! Her father was Asa and her mother a Von Forell bitch but she was actually born in Tassie.

Certainly the guys who use e-collars to teach dogs to avoid prey are using the correction at the very beginning of the predatory sequence these days. Same with doing it using +R. There have been experiments that got quick results using a high-level correction through an e-collar further in the sequence. Recovery of the punished response some time in the future is an issue, as is generalisation (animals avoided other things in the environment).

A huge achievement! Is this with dogs she knows or any dogs???. Not necessarily dogs she knows but I am careful in my selection as you can imagine. I have clients with dogs who are good with a broader selection of dogs and even multiple dogs, it depends a lot on temperament. I think you can get very reliable behaviours under command using corrections but there needs to be a lot of classical conditioning and implicit trust that nothing bad is going to happen to get the dog comfortable emotionally. If a correction is ambiguous or the dog feels that he might get one regardless of his behaviour (external locus of control) then his salivary cortisol levels will remain elevated in those situations, we don't have this issue if we keep any corrections to a minimum and make sure they are unambiguous and that the dog can avoid them easily having learned.

GSD, you can see her here: (muzzle and long-line, it's an off-leash area) She is a DDR, I found this video of her stunning grand-sire last night: I did wonder if we were talking about the same thing, I use the long-line in my classes and when a dog goes over-threshold we try to catch them before they get any momentum and even then I shudder every time!

Now I feel like my dog doesn't love me because he won't hold my hand