Aidan

No, because some of them don't have that sort of imagination. They already know their weapon of choice, they don't need to think about it. My face to face experience with other trainers is fairly narrow, and being from a small place I won't go into too much detail, but needless to say trainers who rely mostly on force do exist. Speaking more broadly, my experiences with other trainers on-line suggest that this is not isolated to my locale. The tide has definitely turned though.

Same here, it's obviously used quite differently on DOL.

It's always easier to train each dog individually until you have both well trained - so good idea! Use controlled set-ups. Invite a sympathetic friend over and drill this until you get it in hand. The habituation from repeated exposures will help dull the excitement a little, too. If you have the time and inclination, you can devote a weekend to having visitors who are clued up on what you are trying to achieve, have them come over at set times across the weekend. Your neighbours will think you are a drug dealer.

I think some of the advice above will help with this. I've personally never had any trouble introducing a dog to a head collar, but there do seem to be some dogs who just don't like them. One important rule is to make the collar bit (not the nose loop) very tight, Gentle Leader suggest that you should be able to get just one finger underneath. If it isn't tight enough, the whole collar moves and is very uncomfortable and much less effective.

I've never claimed to be "purely positive", despite the fact that my ezine has "Positive" in the title and I write for Karen Pryor's publications (who I'm pretty sure doesn't claim to be "purely positive" either). In these arenas I discuss positive reinforcement methods mostly because that is what I do best and that is what our readers want to know more about, but in one article for clickertraining.com I wrote a protocol that relied entirely on negative reinforcement - using a clicker what's more! Neither would I claim to be "balanced". I don't like the implication. I wouldn't use an aversive if I didn't need to and I don't think I take a balanced approach. Others may disagree that this is the implication, though. I think Corvus might see it the same way that I do. I think it is completely pointless to avoid any operation because it falls into a particular QUADRANT that you claim not to use. The quadrants are the way we explain something, they do not operate directly on the organism. It is not negative reinforcement that increases a behaviour, it is the reinforcer that increases behaviour. It is not positive punishment that suppresses a behaviour, it is the punisher that suppresses behaviour. We all make our own choices about what we will or won't do. I don't think those choices should be dictated by which quadrant they might fall into, but rather the consequences of our actions. Of course we can only guess at what those might be, and personally I err on the side of caution, choosing and teaching methods that I know are unlikely to have unwanted fall-out. Any effort to be either "balanced" or "purely positive" does not really come into it.

I know, Diablo. I am not questioning your methods.

I use one like that, I have even cut some of the wire away and filed it back smoothly so that I can give treats really quickly. Teach her that she can drink while wearing it, too.

Hmmm, how long for? If it's only while the food is there, separate them. If it's for some amount of time afterwards, that's a whole 'nuther problem. Either way it rings a few alarm bells.

Really? For most people this would mean that the puppy was outside of the crate for only a few hours.... I think most DOLers use the crate for night time. I don't know what most DOLers do, but if it involves leaving an un-housetrained puppy unsupervised in the house for most of the day to pee on the carpet, it's not what I would recommend! Perhaps I am not being clear on "supervised"? That means being in a position to notice if pup needs to go to the toilet. Not necessarily right by you, but able to check often enough to avoid too many accidents. Does that make sense?

My own dog wears one at the vet as she is terribly destructive and she doesn't care (Actually that's not really true, but the vet feels better at least)

Once or twice. Does your dog like to play with balls? Some dogs take to "muzzle soccer" very quickly, if they like playing this then every day take your dog out for a game of muzzle soccer so that putting on the muzzle comes to predict something fun is about to happen. Or go for a walk, whatever you do, make putting on the muzzle predict that something fun will happen next.

Yeah, as I have said I am definitely not making a diagnosis. I can't really tell from what SK has written, and I just had another look and she has reported in another post that he wants to play with other dogs in class, so probably not distance increasing. Either way, whatever he is doing isn't working for him any more. Mission accomplished. ETA I see SK has already replied, definitely seems like he wants to play.

I have a friend who trained her dog to put his bowl in the dishwasher when he was finished with it! More work initially, but in the long term...

Worry about those things if you live in an apartment and it is hard for you to get outside.

Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you with that. You don't sound like the sort of person who would just keep escalating corrections to the point where this sort of damage would occur. But those sorts of people do exist, thankfully a minority these days.

Yes. That is often what dogs do to tell another dog to rack off, lunge and bark. I can't really tell what Kei was doing from what was described, but this is usually what it's all about. It's a very dry description, describing the end result (other dog racks off, or is dragged off, or dog who instigates is removed).

Great, I think you got my point. We just need to be honest about what we're seeing and what we're doing, then we can make informed decisions rather than emotional, philosophical or dogmatic decisions. It's more than a possibility, it's a certainty. If you're seeing it, it has been reinforced! How that has happened has not been determined, but needless to say the behaviour serves some function. What you have described looks to be what behaviourists and ethologists might call "distance increasing behaviour" - it serves to increase the distance between the two dogs.

If not feeding bones, I like to hide or scatter my dog's food, or put it in a toy. My yard is split into two sections so this is easy for me, with two dogs, but you can do the same thing indoors and outdoors also. Or lay a simple track: http://www.clickertraining.com/node/2304 None of these things take much longer than putting the food in a bowl, and your dogs will enjoy the opportunity to work for their food.

http://www.diamondsintheruff.com/healthandbehavior.html (short version) http://iwsthyroidstudy.com/documents/Kenne...dated_02_07.pdf (much more detail) As for the full moon link, who knows? Maybe there is something in it, maybe people just tend to notice or recall aberrant behaviour on the night of a full moon more? http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...21218_moon.html Light does have an effect on brain chemistry, ask anyone who suffers from seasonal affective disorder.

Gosh, that's a real shame. This is a genuine, researched health and behaviour issue that unfortunately is poorly understood by many vets, here and abroad. One of my own dogs has bouts of anxiety, and I've never been able to figure out a trigger. When I approached my vet about testing thyroid function I was practically ridiculed. In the end I didn't pursue the test because her behaviour didn't fit all that well anyway, it was just something I wanted to rule out.

Very interesting, Erny. I knew that Malinois were one of the breeds that had a higher incidence of thyroid-related behaviour problems but I did not know about the seizure link and what you had described did not describe the pattern for thyroid-related aggression that others have reported. I would be interested to hear about the outcome if you don't mind sharing.

But the problem is we're not talking about your dog. We're talking about someone else's dog who has been conditioned, inadvertently, to lunge to the end of the leash when confronted by another dog. Let me make it clear, I am not arguing against your methods. Although I do things differently, I'm not arrogant enough to want to dictate to others how they do things or deny that their methods are valid or effective. My argument is against the claim that the dog is choosing to be "disobedient" and is "correcting himself". If you do things your way, by the time he gets to a threshold with another dog, he has two conditioned behaviours - stay on a loose leash and shut up, or run to the end of the leash lunging and barking. If he does the latter, my argument is that it isn't disobedience, it is that one layer of conditioning was stronger than the other. You effectively acknowledge this when you don't just jump in and ask too much of the dog early on. At what point do you get to decide that the dog is being disobedient, rather than just not being ready? And this is why I make the argument. When the trainer becomes arrogant enough to decide that the dog is being disobedient, a great many misunderstandings occur that do not encourage good, effective training. Some skilled trainers can avoid this, people who get their advice over the internet might not.

I read a great article today where the author brought up the example of a ringing telephone. He asked us (the readers) to imagine we were sitting down in a comfy chair about to enjoy our favourite beverage at the end of a busy day when all of a sudden the telephone rings. The ringing phone is an irritation and the only way to stop it is to get up and answer it. We have been conditioned since our very first experiences with telephones to get up and answer a telephone, almost no matter what we are doing! We don't stop and think - "I wonder if that telephone call is important", we just get up and answer it. It's usually a telemarketer, or a survey, but we still get up and answer it. Very few people of my generation or older have been able to condition themselves to screen telephone calls, even with the technology these days making it easier to do so. The younger generations are even worse, some of them can't even seem to sit through a job interview without responding to a text message! Dogs become conditioned to do certain things. The dog who can experience relief by making other dogs go away will keep doing that, he is conditioned to do it. The point I am trying to make is that he isn't making a decision to be DISOBEDIENT, he is doing what has worked in the past. He is doing what he has been conditioned to do. You may not have commanded him to run to the end of the line, but you KNEW that he would do it and that he would be corrected for it. Otherwise, why would you do it? If you want to put a check chain on him, then you are aiming to condition him to take a different approach. The only person making a decision about whether or not he wears the collar is YOU. That is a fact. All sorts of opinion might follow on from there, but the fact is you put the collar on the dog in an attempt to condition him to do something other than lunge. When we start telling ourselves that the dog is making the DECISION to be disobedient, we are just making an attempt to justify our behaviour and avoid any responsibility for what happens next. When it all goes well, we congratulate ourselves, and when it doesn't - we can blame the dog! We also start to convince ourselves that certain levels of correction are OK because "the dog is making the decision to do it to himself". If a dog hits the end of the leash so hard that he flips over, or collapses his trachea - is that his fault? Or was he just doing what he was conditioned to do and what we had failed to correct because all we had was a hammer and everything started looking like a nail? I believe your intentions are good, but I just can't swallow that whole "the dog corrected himself" line because it doesn't stand up to scrutiny and a lot of harm has been done under that banner. The purely positive crowd are a reaction to this sort of thinking. I became one when I just couldn't swallow it any longer. There are many ironies here, but perhaps the biggest is now the tide is turning the other way! Look at the people in this thread who have been displaced from PP classes!

Use the crate when you cannot either supervise puppy, or leave puppy outside safely. At night, a good idea is to have the crate in your room. Take puppy out to toilet immediately before bedtime, and set your alarm for 2am (you can make this earlier the next night if puppy wakes to toilet before then). The next night, set the alarm for 2:05am. The following night, 2:10am etc until you are confident that pup will sleep through.

Some times that sort of conditioning can be quite strong. It could just be "superstitious learning", he saw dogs who were raw fed with behaviour problems, and others who were fed a commercial diet who did not have the same behaviour problems?