Aidan

Yep. Just one other thing, I had been saying earlier that a variable schedule would produce stronger responses, which generally it will regardless of any differential reinforcement, but I think someone will shoot me if I go down that path I just wanted to point it out because it looked like I was contradicting myself. Honestly, I'm not too clear on the exercise, can only go off what little Corvus has written about it. She has also said that this clip was just demonstrating play with the flirt pole. I would suggest to Corvus that once you put a behaviour into an animal's repertoire, be careful using it two different ways if the antecedents haven't changed. I'd be putting that barking on cue, too.

That's the one I'm referring to, I just used a different name - Continuous Reinforcement [Differential] They are synonymous. I'm not sure how widely used that term is, but it's what I learned first We veered away from that, I suggested that some wins could make chasing a stronger behaviour, you suggested that more wins rather than fewer would make it stronger again, I agreed but added that making the wins coincide with the strongest responses would be the way to do it. In a nutshell. My personal opinion on this is that whatever Corvus does, whether her dog ever wins or not, probably won't matter much for the purposes of the exercise that she is doing (if I am to understand it correctly), which is teaching "on" and "off", switching the dog in and out of drive into a default down, then reinforcing that with more play in an almost continuous loop.

Yes, well sort of. The more times you reinforce something, the more probable that something becomes (up to a point). The question is - what is that "something" that you are reinforcing? If you reinforce a range of responses (from low to high intensity) you will get a similar range of responses. If you reinforce the strongest responses only, and ignore all weaker responses (put them on an extinction procedure, i.e withold the reinforcer) you will get stronger responses (this is known as Continuous Reinforcement [Differential]). Here's the thing - once you start extinguishing the weaker responses, you hit an extinction curve which will produce stronger responses. If you reinforce those responses, you will get more of them. Once you have a very high rate of strong responses, you can switch to an intermittent schedule. In this case (being a duration behaviour) you would use a Variable Interval Schedule of Reinforcement which would give you a very high rate of responding that is resistant to extinction. ETA: I will not take any responsibility for any brain explosions that may result from reading my post. Sorry if I sucked all the fun out of it! Bottom-line - let your dog win when he's putting the most effort in!

Interesting stuff! Working from first principles, chasing is an operant. Therefore it must be maintained by reinforcement. Let's say a dog does reliably chase wallabies, but has never caught one. What is the reinforcer? It is possible that other learning events are reinforcing this behaviour - e.g chasing a ball is a similar activity in which the dog does win. However I would posit that chasing wallabies must be innately reinforcing alone, otherwise the dog would quickly learn that he does catch tennis balls but never catches wallabies (two different discriminating stimuli) and the behaviour of chasing wallabies would extinguish eventually (it hasn't in 9 years with my boy, but maybe will with Erny's). Anecdotal reports from owners of dogs who have hunted for several years unsuccessfully, then do eventually catch something, suggest that chasing often becomes stronger when the dog has had success. So I would consider the possibility that a schedule of "wins" would create stronger chasing behaviour (hence it's apparent use in training greyhounds). It would follow that, in theory, a variable schedule of reinforcement through wins should produce the strongest chasing behaviour. At the end of the day, from a practical viewpoint, if you can increase or maintain other behaviour by giving the opportunity to chase then it is a reinforcing consequence. If letting the dog win every so often makes it even more valuable, why wouldn't you do it?

No doubt wins are always going to be part of any game like this (even accidental, it's still a schedule), but rarely are when it comes to chasing wallabies or possums. I remember a young wallaby hopped across our path once, Django went to chase and the wallaby got caught in some fallen tree branches. Django pretended like he couldn't find the wallaby, hahaha Even when given a golden opportunity to actually catch one, he didn't take it. He really just wanted to chase. I think it was Nina Bondarenko who told me she would never let her working Rotts catch a "thong on a string" she used to use as a really big reward (this is why I think it was Nina Bondarenko, an American would have called it a "flip-flop on a string" for obvious reasons). Obviously, the dogs got to 'win' a lot in their SchH training, but never this particular toy.

That's pretty fancy, actually ;-)

Seems to work for greyhounds. No doubt the chase itself is very rewarding. I prefer dogs to be able to tug and release on cue though.

Some people become a little bit self-conscious outside the privacy of their own home. This can affect their enthusiasm in getting their dog to play tug.

A couple of things in there suggest to me that it might be worth experimenting with diet. If he is able to learn new behaviours and responds well to behavioural training, but has a low-level background of nervousness, anxiety and a little hyperactivity then he may respond to some tryptophan supplementation (e.g "Good as Gold" for horses, or "Behave" paste by Troy). Add it to his breakfast each day and see if the whining reduces after a couple of weeks. A little porridge for breakfast, cooked with some eggs may enhance the effect, or even achieve the effect without tryptophan supplementation. I'll keep it brief, try the tryptophan supplementation first. Don't go overboard, too much is as bad as not enough.

How is he at home? Specifically, I would like to know how much he whines (it can be for a reason) and how much he sleeps when you are home and awake?

You must use an enzyme based cleaner specifically for pet urine exactly according to the instructions given, using no other cleaners.

From my time running an email list specifically for house-training I would have to say one of the most common causes of problems is owners who look for signals rather than utilising a sensible schedule to take their pup out to toilet. It's not that the pups don't give signals, it's just that often a novice puppy raiser will miss them, or only pick them up when it's too late. If you want to teach a signal, wait until your pup is housetrained FIRST. There are several practical reasons for this, but perhaps the best is that you need to keep things simple until he is house-trained.

There's no particular recipe or diet, just a home-prepared or Raw diet seems to do the trick. I suspect the preservatives in processed food make the poo somewhat edible (to an opportunist scavenger with no airs and graces!) Google "BARF diet" for some ideas.

http://www.dragonflyllama.com/%20DOGS/Leve...vel/2Level.html ^ second exercise down, one of the many good ways you can start off on the right foot. BTW, my GSD uses 90x60cm crates, they fit nicely in the back of the Commodore wagon too.

I've heard many reports from other dog owners similar to my own experience, a high-quality home prepared diet often stops coprophagia (poo eating). It's worth a try if you're not doing it already. There are additives which can make the taste of poo unattractive, your vet or pet shop might stock them. Putting poo in a hole only stops the dog digging in that spot. It doesn't stop him digging nearby. I give my dogs LEGAL places to dig, then encourage them to dig there by hiding food, toys under the surface. I have fenced off my veggie patch.

My Goldie is hard to wake up when he's being groomed, which only presents a problem when it's time to groom his other side! My GSD, otoh, is a different kettle of fish. I just toss bits of kibble on the ground in front of her when I strip her coat, as Sandra777 has suggested, a few short sessions is better than a long one. Although recently a friend told me to just dab some peanut butter on the fridge door at nose height so that she can lick it off. Clever! I'll have to try that next time.

Clicker trainers call it "Doggy Zen", the "Triangle of Temptation" protocol which is popular here has similarities in principle. Basically we teach the dog that to get what he wants he musn't just go for it until given permission, which is earned. You can start off by doing the basic doggy zen exercise - food in the closed hand, open the hand when the dog backs off and stops trying to get it. The Training Levels program has some good progressions based on this exercise: http://www.dragonflyllama.com Long downs are another good impulse control exercise. There are a number of ways people do them, this is my preferred method - tether the dog in your house, have him "drop", take a step away, return. Take two steps, return. When you return each time, give the dog some attention. Take three steps, return etc If he gets up, ask him to "drop", resume the exercise from a smaller number of steps away ("let me explain it to you again, more simply this time") and start building distance again. The aim is to be able to go about your business while your dog waits, RELAXED, in the drop position. Relaxed is the key.

Good work Tony, it's nice to make progress with dogs like this. Building a specific response to other dogs which is correlated with good things happening is an excellent strategy for dealing with reactive dogs.

That's completely different and you know it. This is not a performance dog it's a pet. They're all dogs. The laws of learning apply to all of them equally, pet or performance. What the OP is doing right now is a cop-out. What I have offered is a compromise, he can take it or leave it. We can't force him to deal with loose leash walking, he has been conditioned to believe that "this dog is special" and until someone proves otherwise that's what he'll continue to believe. Here's the thing: if he can get his dog walking on a loose leash for 1 minute, then 2 minutes, he'll believe that 2 minutes is possible. If going from 1 minute to 2 minutes was possible, maybe 3 minutes is possible and so on. It's just applying the laws of learning to the human end of the leash. You can't collar pop someone over the internet and force them to follow you, but you can break things down and make it simple for them.

I can think of millions of examples where this is a perfectly acceptable, normal thing to do. Do you think a personal protection dog should ALWAYS engage a person, even if that person is not attacking? Should a dog who has been taught to heel never do anything but heel again any time you have a collar and leash on it? What about mushing dogs, can we never teach them to walk on a loose leash because we can't allow them to sometimes pull and sometimes not? It's a good, CLEAR discriminating stimulus. Much better than starting off with good intentions then getting a little bit lax when everything is going well. We all do it to some extent. And who's saying the process is slow and tedious? Only the OP. Once he gets on with it consistently he might be surprised.

OP is struggling with the belief that he can even teach this dog to walk on a loose leash for more than a few minutes and that, due to the short duration of this exercise, his dog won't be getting enough walks. He doesn't mind his dog pulling into the harness, it is front attaching so the dog self-corrects to some extent. I'm giving him an option where he can walk his dog this way for as long as he wants, but at the same time he can build up duration of good, consistent loose leash walking on a collar at whatever pace he can manage. No pressure, when he can't maintain the consistency required to keep walking on a loose leash he can just clip the leash to the harness and go back to bad habits in that equipment, without stuffing up the loose leash walking he has worked so hard to achieve on the collar. I did that for a while, I found it really difficult to walk with other people having to stop and back up or change direction every time the leash went tight so I would use a head halter. When she became reliable walking on a loose leash on a collar, I stopped using the head halter. It can become a crutch if you let it, but even abused it's still progress.

You've missed the point. C&S expressed concern that his dog wasn't getting enough exercise when being trained to walk on a loose leash, this gives him an option for walking and working on his loose leash walking. It does not directly address his excitement around other dogs, but C&S will no doubt see the difference between his "loose leash dog" and his "harness dog" and make his own decisions, having had some success and hopefully a boost to his confidence. The collar and harness become discriminating stimuli for both of them. It's a bit like having a SchH dog in front of a helper and then off the field. Not a problem at all.

Yeah, you tend to get two types who have problems - those who forget to keep raising the criteria or move to a different schedule, and those who want to stop using it too soon to get what they want out of it (or who don't use a high enough rate of reinforcement early on). I just focus on teaching both types how and when to go to a different schedule or to pay attention to criteria. Like I've said a couple of times already, I don't think method matters nearly so much as execution so I just work on getting the best execution I can out of the method that I personally prefer to teach.

Here's an approach you can try: - put a well-fitted martingale or whippet collar on him (not a sloppy fit) - put his harness on him - clip the leash to the harness and walk for 10 minutes, find somewhere quiet and without too many distractions - clip the leash to the collar and work on loose leash walking for 2-5 minutes - go back to the harness and walk how you normally walk - repeat daily, building up the amount of time you do loose leash walking on the collar Make a rule for the rest of his life - if the leash is clipped to the collar, you are going to do consistent loose leash walking training. At all other times, use the harness instead.

This is the problem with it: "My dog jack/pom gets really excited when approaching other dogs, he barks, pulls on his lead and now will even nip at the other dogs feet" Pulling on the lead is one of the behaviours that you wish to correct, and I'm telling you it will be hard to correct ANY of those behaviours if he is still pulling on the leash. Just being completely honest with you, perhaps not as diplomatic as I could be but that's really hard on a text-based forum That's why I want you to start at the point where he is not pulling on the leash, then close the distance over how ever many sessions it takes for him to do it without falling back into bad habits. Or you can use leash pops exactly in the manner that Nekhbet describes, it doesn't really matter but you have to be consistent either way.