Aidan

Excuse me, are you saying that some of the trainers on this thread are incapable of working with GSDs on the basis of tools they may or may not use depending on the individual dog and/or client? OK, I sometimes use harnesses. Are you saying that I am incompetent with GSDs because of this and that I misrepresent myself as a trainer? Have you got any evidence to prove this?

The dog didn't look too bad to me, he responded very appropriately to what I'm sure he considered to be a threat to his life and his only real problem appeared to be on-leash aggression? I don't recall the whole episode though. Look at Cesar's right foot at 2:08, he was looking for confrontation. This is my take on it, and I don't have any experience with this method so take it for what it is worth. In a way, Cesar is right - the dog did accept his "dominance". He went without air for quite a while but I'm not convinced that he was semi-conscious. Behaviourally, nothing else had worked for him. Growling didn't help, biting didn't help, so he just gave up which is when he got his air back. You can imagine the outcome if the trainer hadn't been prepared to take the bite, biting would have worked. Is he any safer? I don't know how anyone could draw that conclusion without some weird, convoluted linguistics like "he wasn't aggressive, he was just dominant". He was aggressive, and now we don't know what he is or what warning he will use, or who he will be suppressed around or for how long. And certainly his trust in the world and ability to feel safe and in control of his environment hasn't improved at all. Ticking time-bomb...

I think if you want to gain an insight into his behaviour you will need to stop thinking about dominance, not because it doesn't exist but because it is confusing the issue for you. A dominant dog does not do what you have described in this thread, in these contexts. It is quite common for dogs to want their own personal space. There is nothing wrong with that until the dog is forced to defend his personal space. I am fairly similar in this regard. Dogs will do what works for them, so if aggressive behaviour gets other dogs out of his personal space, that is what he will repeat, he can't ask them to back off any other way. Given that you cannot afford a behaviourist to work with you at this point, my best advice would be for you to defend his space for him. Keep him away from off-leash dogs, ask people to keep their dog away from yours. Continue to socialise him with dogs he knows and accepts in his personal space, and of course, continue with his training. Make training a fun, positive experience so that he does not experience any anxiety about what you might do next and this will give him a safe, reliable leader (you) who has demonstrated that you will keep the dogs he doesn't want in his space, out of his space for him. His trust in you will then continue to grow, and if you're lucky and consistent, he might even just leave it all to you.

This guy uses them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh9YOyM2TAk Probably a bad example because he gets bitten quite a lot, probably doesn't have much experience though. Oh well, at least that dog is now safe. I can't imagine that dog would ever bite anyone else after that experience, no sir. Actually, it wasn't clear if he had ever bitten anyone before either. But what reason would he have to bite someone now? People are definitely "alpha" over him and he knows it!

I wouldn't buy a dog from any breeder who wasn't willing to admit that all dogs, regardless of breed, purpose or type, carry genes that bring a probability of health issues. If they aren't willing to acknowledge that, they aren't willing to manage it within their breeding program either.

It's because we all got picked on for being nerds at school. I really don't care that much that people make spelling mistakes and as I said every single one of us will make one soon, unintentionally, and hopefully we'll be able to laugh at ourselves when it happens. If we were to put every person who makes a spelling mistake on 'ignore' there would be no-one left to talk to. On the other hand, if you really hate this sort of thread and have an emotional reaction, it would probably be kinder on yourself if you just ignored it and didn't put yourself through it.

Would you say I had alot of hair?

This is me right now:

As you've noted, thunder is a special class because it is not just thunder, other things become paired with the fear. For noises such as hammering, doors slamming etc you will have more success. A tip is to look for a conditioned response before you increase the volume. So do as many repetitions at low volume as it takes - sound, food, sound, food etc until playing the sound at that volume will whip your dog's head around for a treat. You should get this response at any time, not just when you've been working on it.

Which dictionary's?

I've not read McDevitt's book so I can't give an opinion on that directly, but what I was originally trying to achieve and what I believe LAT tries to achieve is a short-cut to a "normal" dog, even if at first it appears to be the long way around The clicker is a scalpel so you can get in first and reinforce something reasonably calm while the dog is looking at another dog. He sees the dog, click, treat. He looks again, perhaps a little curious, click, treat; and so on. No cues are used, we're just capturing something a "normal" dog would do - look at another dog without having a hissy fit. Learning has a direction, and outward behaviours influence internal behaviours, so we're heading remarkably quickly towards a calm dog while we do this. If you can understand that last sentence it will make more sense. The idea is not to teach the dog to look at you. I must state that with emphasis. It is easy to teach a dog to look at you with distractions. It is easy to correct or shape or capture or interrupt or distract or whatever a dog into looking at your face while the dog is still freaking out (internally) about the other dog. You might even do a pretty good job of maintaining it, and you might even change the dog's emotional state (eventually) but unless you're vigilant or go to extraordinary lengths to control the environment things will probably come unstuck eventually.

Cool

Who said that it was? Hands up, did anyone think that I said that it was?

The problem with this thread is that it's only people who have used them who are making the assumptions. I was fairly certain that you and Shell were not using them as described by others in this thread and your most recent post confirms it. Neither you or I rely on distraction or finding a "better"/"stronger" reinforcer, yet the assumption is that this is how it is done, and a whole bunch of other assumptions follow on from that.

And some of us don't even try to distract the dog any which way.

They are already here, DOL member lilli can tell you more.

I don't think anyone here was saying it was a big deal, although in some circles it is. I was just pointing out that which behaviour the dog chooses is more important than which reinforcer he would choose. Your argument that it was common sense to use a correction in that situation was based on which reinforcer he would choose.

I think a lot of people have trouble believing that the above is not necessarily true until they have seen someone do otherwise effectively. Dogs do weigh up reinforcers based on their value, but this does not always determine their behaviour if they are conditioned to emit one response over another (by someone competent). Whether we would choose to do that without corrections is another matter entirely, but what appears to be common sense is not always that simple.

You don't seem to be making the distinction between "competence" and "incompetence". The dogs who come to me have seen someone else first, and in many cases they have been to an obedience club or breed club who uses the methods you describe. I only take referrals from other trainers or veterinary behaviourists, so in every case someone who is competent at whatever they do has referred that person to me as someone competent at what I do. We could trade examples going back and forth all day but that would achieve nothing other than further evidence that people can become competent using different methods, and I already knew that.

Dogs were used (and probably still are) as animal models in some of the early experimental research into depression. They certainly can suffer depression, and it's actually not particularly difficult to induce it in dogs. They don't have to suffer a major trauma.

Some dogs should be PTS, but assuming these dogs were not in that category (and I'm not sure that you are in a position to judge this) then those trainers were incompetent and should refer. They are not representative of every "purely positive" trainer in the world. Putting all the divisive "us and them" political nonsense aside, a competent trainer is one who can solve that client's problem. That's it. Competent defines itself to a large extent and doesn't need sub-cultures to add their bit. I think I could train dogs for another 100 years and still not train "enough" dogs, or at least someone would be able to level that criticism at me and what defence could I put up? There is always a new and different dog around the corner, and perhaps more relevant - new and different clients with new and different needs. This point is driven home when you actually train someone else's dog and not just a string of your own dogs, for which the point of difference is mostly in the dog because you stay more or less the same. It is, in fact, impossible not to use aversives with fearful or aggressive dogs. They wouldn't be that way if there wasn't some aversive stimulus in the environment. But putting that aside, I have not used a prong collar, check chain, e-collar or otherwise on an aggressive dog in one of my classes simply because they do not fit with what I do in classes and what I do consistently works and has done with a statistically significant sample. There are very few exceptions, and these are dogs for whom either classes aren't the best environment or the owner is grossly non-compliant. No doubt there are purely positive trainers who could work even with these clients, but I am not that patient nor do I see the benefit in being purely positive for the sake of it.

I wonder if he rolls in dead things. From what I can gather he does pretty much everything they do, so it's very likely I think he is fascinating, I would love to know what he is actually trying to achieve though. That I've never been sure of.

Given your sensitivity to your hare I think you would be able to use "access to his nesting box" as a reinforcer. So you might teach him to do something specific (nose target and holding would be good beginnings for other husbandry behaviours), then mark it and open the door. Working in very small increments where he is always succeeding I don't think there would be any ethical concerns to controlling access to his nesting box.

That would depend on how you went about it. It is your responsibility to look after yourself and your family, but you are not primarily responsible for your neighbour's dogs barking or their wellbeing. If your neighbours were more responsive the collective experience on this forum would come up with some sort of satisfactory solution. If not, then other steps need to be taken. I didn't want to make any assumptions about the OP or their neighbours, but little information was given. I think you will be disappointed with the ultra-sonic bark silencer but my experience is limited. I would follow local government advice first.

Yes, but of course the more propensity towards aggression the more care you need to take which probably accounts for some of the widely varying opinions on things like dog parks (different people have different experiences with different dogs that they own and different dogs that they meet). With the benefit of hindsight I can see some of the things I had done wrong with my GSD girl, a couple of things in particular. Those are the sort of mistakes I would not make again, whether or not things might turn out differently I can't really say for sure, probably not. You mentioned safety signals before. It is amazing that more research hasn't been done on those, we've known about conditioned inhibitors since Pavlov noticed them in 1929. The data we do have supports the hypothesis that "high anxious" individuals aren't more anxious about things that should cause fear or anxiety, but have deficiencies in learning safety signals - i.e they respond inappropriately to stuff that shouldn't, rationally, frighten them. This can be learned (e.g veterans with PTSD) or innate (or both). It is very difficult to teach those populations an explicit safety signal, and if you do, it is less likely to generalise to other stimuli. So for those who are innately "high anxious", you could be pushing it uphill no matter how much you control the environment. Whether that results in aggression or not depends on other innate factors, and I think it is possible to take an innately anxious and aggressive temperament and not end up with a dog who resorts to aggression. My GSD does not resort to aggression in most situations, I have been able to condition her to find other coping mechanisms, and she has never hurt another dog (traumatised them permanently, yes, actually caused damage, no). She is both innately anxious and innately aggressive.