Aidan

Thanks Staranais, I can't begin to express how good it felt. The danger there is that I will want another reactive dog to chase the thrill

It's not a bad thing to also have this on a verbal cue, but ideally we want it to be default behaviour in the presence of a person regardless of our behaviour. But let's not get too bogged down in that - there are a couple of more important things here: 1. Proximity - getting more distance does make things easier for the dog and the best way to begin is with controlled set-ups, either where you invite someone to help you or you find situations where you can stand back from a regular passage of people and take advantage of the opportunities that arise 2. Splitting - reinforcing approximations towards your end goal. It sounds like you are asking for a big piece of pie when you could be slicing it up. If you think of everything that he might do ranging from "lunging" to "ignoring the passer-by and heeling beside you" you can pick virtually any point (even lunging) and start selectively reinforcing from that point provided you are reliably getting that response. This is where the whole "clicker trainers reward bad behaviour" thing comes from, btw. I think of behaviour as having a "direction". We just need to get it moving then keep it moving in the direction we want to go. Putting this into practice, when your dog first notices the person and hasn't yet gone to the end of the leash - that is when you click and treat. Then before he gets to the end of the leash, click and treat again. It doesn't matter if he's winding up to lunge, click THEN, before he lunges. As you start to chip away at the edges you can make the window of opportunity a little bigger - over time. That's when you can start asking for a little more. I actually don't worry about whether the dog is even looking at me or not, I'm not trying to distract him - I'm trying to shape his behaviour. If you can't turn around and walk the other way (and this happens) then you can use a distraction. But I would be surprised if there was not an opportunity to click and make meaningful progress, you'll just need to get in very early. Keep your wits about you. And don't worry too much, you will get better and better at it. With this method it's OK to make mistakes, hell, people pay me to do it and I make a ton of mistakes. All the really good clicker trainers are looking at the video I posted and counting up all my mistimed clicks as we speak

Does this help? http://www.positivepetzine.com/loose_leash_youtube The camera-person has a Toy Poodle by her side as a distraction. Don't use this as a direct example, working a little further away would get much better results but I wanted to demonstrate what to do when the dog DOES pull and had I been a little further away there wouldn't have been as much pulling. It is not obvious from this video, Tess appears to quite like the poodle, but Tess is reactive and had been involved in a fairly serious incident with a neighbour's dog. For you, you would use controlled set-ups with people walking past at an effective distance for control, then bring them in closer.

If they have disobeyed the command they were not under stimulus control, so it is functionally the same thing whether you give the command or not. The difference is that if you do give the command, you are teaching the dog to comply with the command which is counter to the aims expressed earlier of having the dog walk past the other dog at heel without being commanded. Either way, +R only or with the addition of a correction, you're going to have to take the command out of the picture and get this behaviour to generalise or become paired with the other dog regardless of the command. A correction has no advantage here specifically over using +R to meet this aim.

Are we talking about letting a dog go to the end of a long-line for a "self-correction" while running towards another dog with aggressive intent? For far too many reasons I would not attempt that. It isn't safe, it isn't responsible (to either dog), and it isn't good training. It wouldn't even be good Koehler method training. I have used corrections. I don't live in a vaccuum. I had a practical knowledge before a theoretical knowledge With my training I'm not just aiming to be able to walk a dog-aggressive dog past another dog, I have my own dog walking off-leash with other dogs, free to make her own decisions and not under command to do anything specific preventing her from aggression. We were attacked by two dogs recently, she ignored them until she absolutely had to defend herself then she did what she had to do then let it go and we walked off as if nothing had happened. This is a bitch from hard, working lines and in the past she has attacked legs, belly and throat (inhibited bites, but death threats all the same). It takes a lot of positive experiences to turn that around, we're not just talking about overt behaviours but also affective behaviours, emotions, brain chemicals, nervous system activity etc I didn't say that the correction you described wouldn't work (nor am I sure we were talking about the same thing?), but that the probability was low. I don't need to correct her for reaching the end of the line to teach her to come back, I have taught her to come back without doing that. I have used (very judiciously) some collar pops in that process, and they were enough.

Yup, that's what happens. I'm not sure it's such a fine-line but rather a misapplication, a fairly minor one at that and not at all difficult to re-train correctly. In my classes we use the other dog as the cue, not the handler saying "heel". The same discriminating stimuli operate when you use corrections also, had the handler taught the dog to heel using collar corrections and pairing the behaviour with the verbal cue, the same problem would have likely resulted. If you teach a dog to do something on command (or with food in your hand or whatever), that command needs to be there. So let's say the handler teaches the dog to heel with strong distractions using +R. They realise that the food and the command to "heel" needs to be there but they want to generalise so they seek advice. The trainer advises them to walk past the other dog, no command, no food, then issue a swift correction just as the dog begins to lunge. The handler walks away thinking the correction was necessary but in reality all that happened was he re-trained it without the antecedents. He could have just as easily done the same thing with +R only, either from the start or in the proofing phase.

Did you read the parts about self-organising systems? Very relevant I think. So what is her definition of bite inhibition? Good question. The issue is not so much a definition of bite inhibition but that she doesn't consider many of the things we would consider to be aggressive behaviour to be a part of aggression and argues that all of these behaviours (with the exceptions of an uninhibited bite or actually damaging behaviours) are just communication. I agree that they are communication, but find it very cumbersome to not describe them as aggressive behaviours. I'm not sure why she draws a line either. A full, uninhibited bite to the stomach is also communication - "I'm lethal, nice knowing ya, sorry it had to end this way!" Some breeds do have a higher probability of that sub-population which will display pathological aggression. BSL doesn't appear to solve that problem in practice.

Very much so in the dog training world, not so in the scientific literature. There are literally thousands of twin studies (and adoption studies) and we have a pretty good handle on the nature/nurture interplay.

Seymonova is a tricky one. She makes some very good points, she also makes some points that I would strongly disagree with. It is often difficult for people to take her seriously because she is a BSL advocate. It takes a strong commitment to avoiding personal bias and putting emotions aside to read her material but I do think it is worth reading all the same. You also have to consider her definitions; e.g the only aggressive dogs are those that do not demonstrate bite inhibition. Not a definition I would agree with, but in order to interpret some of her work (and especially to have a discussion with her!) you have to temporarily install that definition into your brain (then remember to remove it when you've finished )

There are a few ways but one of the tricks I have used is to teach the pup to "sit" to a cue of folded arms. Assuming pup already knows how to sit on cue, what you do is fold your arms, say "sit", then unfold your arms and reward with food when he sits. Repeat until he is anticipating that you will say "sit" when you fold your arms, then you can start dropping the verbal cue. Get friends and family to do it too, so you're teaching him to sit whenever ANYONE folds their arms. Use food rewards every time at first, then intermittently when it is well learned and he does it reliably for anyone. Do it after he has settled down if you have new visitors, this is the teaching phase so we're making it really easy for him. Do lots of reps with different people, get the idea ingrained that if someone folds their arms, he sits. When you have guests, simply ask them to fold their arms. That way they are less likely to reinforce or encourage his jumping by their actions, and they are also cueing him to 'sit'. When he is sitting, they can give him attention (which is what he really wants when he greets visitors).

The original use was for tracking. The use of a 10m line for Koehler-style training carries an unacceptable risk of injury. No. The assumption would be that she would learn not to go into full defence drive around other dogs through this correction, which is unlikely. Given that she is physically restrained by the leash (she does not need to learn this through strong corrections), the only benefit you might hope for is that if she did learn not to aggress towards other dogs that this might generalise to off-leash conditions. The probability of this is almost nil. If I thought there would be merit in using corrections to address this issue I would use an e-collar where equipment is more easily removed as a discriminating stimulus. I should stress that she does have an outstanding recall. I have called her away when she has been well over threshold in the past without the use of corrections. I also recall her off live prey. It is a matter of probabilities.

I don't completely agree, particularly with possessive aggression. In observations of wild wolves a more submissive wolf will resource guard from a more dominant wolf and this is frequently accepted by the more dominant wolf.

See post #17

You might find some of the information in this thread helpful: http://www.dolforums.com.au/index.php?showtopic=193061

That's an interesting point, Corvus. If I'm to be completely honest (and I do use both "dominance" and "leadership", not interchangeably), I do seem to spend a lot of time repeating myself with clients saying stuff along the lines of "Why are you letting him decide you're going over there to bark at that dog, who is the leader here?" It can take a lot of repetitions for some people to start to understand what it is that they have to do lead the dog down the path they want to follow, there is not some innate understanding that just needs to be pointed out. I suppose with humans we're not just dealing with overt behaviours, but also cognition. So I would not avoid the term "leadership", but I would acknowledge that it does need to have some real meaning attached to it.

Now that's a working Labrador! Off to the office for the day?

It certainly seems to be more the case with Labs than some other breeds. My Goldie is show lines, seems to have the right genetics for field work (despite only beginning the work at nearly 10 years of age), but I've met Goldies who hate water which is perhaps the most fundamental flaw. Most of the popular Spaniels have very disparate lines.

A reinforcer is defined solely by it's effect on behaviour, namely increasing or maintaining it. If praise [alone] is increasing or maintaining behaviour, it is a reinforcer. Food is commonly used because all organisms have evolved to work for food, dogs are not the single exception who get their dinner just for existing (that honour goes to Paris Hilton, who is not particularly well behaved). There need not be an expectation of any particular reinforcer for a behaviour to continue once it has been conditioned. There is a pervasive myth that reinforcers need to be "weaned" which is unsupported by evidence. If you reinforce a behaviour 50 times in a row then skip one time the behaviour does not cease straight away. It is actually quite difficult to extinguish a previously reinforced behaviour, and different schedules of reinforcement can produce extremely persistent behaviours.

If the punisher is clearly linked to the behaviour and the dog does not feel that he cannot control the punisher, typically there is a brief period where salivary cortisol levels increase then they will return to baseline levels very quickly. If the link between punisher and behaviour is even slightly ambiguous or other factors prevent a feeling of being able to avoid the punishing consequence, salivary cortisol levels will remain high in that situation and similar situations.

Retrieving trials are a similar sporting discipline to Field Trials. There are three types of Field Trial, Labs compete in "Spaniel and Retriever Field Trials". Retrievers do flush game, it is part of their work. In Field Trials they are expected to flush and retrieve live game. In Retrieving Trials the game is dead, shot into the air with a catapult and a blank fired at it. http://www.actca.asn.au/Activities/gundogtrials.htm (brief overview of the different disciplines available to gundogs) http://www.vca.org.au/assets/spaniel%20ret...0fieldtrial.pdf (a look at Spaniel and Retriever Field Trials)

A very experienced Field Trialer and hunter told me some of the field-bred Labs could be a bit less leggy and a bit thicker to get through some of the heavier cover he works his dogs in. His ideal [conformation] seemed to be somewhere between show and field lines.

Apart from tracking, you can use them for recalls or for a bit more freedom in areas where a failed recall might put the dog at risk. One of my dogs isn't good with other dogs and if we went "over threshold" a recall would have a much lower probability so she drags a long line when we're out. The idea is that you don't "use" the line. It is just there for back-up. So you would start in a lower-distraction environment and work on your recalls, stops, heeling or whatever control behaviours you use then add distractions, setting your dog up for success. I very rarely secure my grip on the long line, I would cue a recall or stop before I needed to use the line about 95% of the time. A tip for those who want to use one, don't try and keep paying it out and coiling it up. Just let it drag on the ground, let it slide freely in one open hand. If you need to use it to stop or bring back your dog, grab it with both hands. A harness makes life easier as the line is less inclined to get caught under the legs.

Just a tip - you've got to be thinking "reinforcement" and not "bribery". Think "am I reinforcing this calm behaviour? Or just distracting him?" If you get enough distance between yourself and the other dog there will be something to click. I don't even pay too much attention or work too hard to get it, I wait for something. I tell people to keep the hand loaded with food but get your dog used to that, you should be able to leave your hand by your side without your dog trying to get to it or thinking it is for him (Doggy Zen exercises teach this). The behaviour should be cued by the other dog (eventually), so no noises, cues, don't say his name etc Just set him up for success by getting enough distance and let it happen, being ready to mark it with your clicker when it does (and it will, if you've set him up for success). Use a high rate of reinforcement. Don't let him get out to the end of the leash after he has the first treat, click before that happens. You're really just teaching "heel" and providing a distraction. That's all this is.

Good blog entry by Patricia McConnell: http://www.theotherendoftheleash.com/the-d...nships-in-dogs/

You've had some excellent advice. Controlled set-ups are very useful in the early stages.