WoofnHoof

Couldn't find the TB group looks like they don't have a website but here is the link for the standardbreds: http://www.spphav.org/index.php?p=1_6 Looks like they have a performance card system with designated eligible shows/events, they have a points award and an award for eligible endurance rides as well. Shouldn't be too hard to set up I wouldn't think?

If the ANKC is difficult about certain sports perhaps the breed clubs could kick it off for each breed and if it does grow then some pressure could be put on the ANKC to take over? There is a thoroughbred performance club here in qld that has an awards night with a point system for heaps of different sports, from memory they have an award for best performed TB in each sport/discipline and then an overall award for highest pointscore TB for the state. If the breed clubs follow that principle it could also encourage more memberships for the club as it would attract people who might otherwise not get as much out of the club as showies or breeders might get? I know the lure coursing has a point thing for the best performed of each breed so it would be good if that could go even further and count towards something recognised by the breed club

I wonder if some sort of points system could be set up where titles/championships or whatever gained by progeny can be credited to the sire/dam? So instead of breeders going out and trying their dogs at all sports, they can get any results from pet owners and credit them to their lines. I guess at the moment the breeder could do it manually but it would be good if there were a centralised system where people could upload their dogs' achievements and have them credited to whatever sire/dam? I think it's the hanovarians that have a sire of the year competition where the achievements of the progeny go towards an award for the sire which has the best performed progeny? No doubt a logistical nightmare but it could potentially be a new avenue for people to promote their lines? You could have an awards night with best performed progeny for each breed in which achievements in both showing and sporting/working are collated and awarded? Perhaps the sports could be weighted according to the origins of the breed? Something like that could begin to reconcile the two worlds IMO. Plus who doesn't love a good awards night

Looks to me like the fundamental problem is the lack of a comprehensive testing system that incorporates both conformation and performance based testing. I've said it before but it really does seem like this divide is not good for purebred dogs and there needs to be some sort of reconciliation? I'm pretty sure warmblood stallions have a conformation assessment as well as performance testing which tests ability in a number of disciplines as well as temperament and rideability. Surely there is something similar able to be set up for dogs?

As far as I'm aware most animal scientists accept the concept of the co-evolution of dogs and humans as pretty much fact, however I think Midol is getting at the breed-specific differences which impact on training. I think that this is where evolution leaves off and artificial selection takes up. Artificial selection can be an extremely strong selection pressure on a species and it would be difficult to say at which point of canine evolution the environmental forces made less of an impact than the artifical selection forces (ie those made by humans in selective breeding processes). It would be logical to say that many of our breeds are not just the result of artificial selection but were also shaped by regional differences, that is not to say that the species itself has changed at it's most fundamental aspect (skeletal, muscular etc) but there have been sufficient changes for their to be logically a different approach needed towards different breeds. I have often argued that something like recall in a sibe has never been selected for as there has never been a need for it, the musher never required his dog to come towards him, only left right go and stop were required. Sibes also do not rely on the visual cues that many other breeds have been developed to utilise, they are not required to watch the musher for every direction but more to listen for those basic cues and handle the rest themselves. In training I think that the development of the breed and it's original purpose should always be at the forefront of the trainer's mind, I wouldn't say that evolution in the truest sense is as signficant a factor in this as artificial selection though.

Based on what parameters? Based on my view that racing is a sport. Yes, I know, people make a living on it. I don't care. It's a sport. If someone uses a horse on their farm, to work, then that horse is a working horse. If someone uses a horse to pull a cart and offers cart rides then that horse is a working horse. A horse racing around a track? Nah. That's not a parameter, galloping around a track is no different to mustering cattle, different skills required, different form but essentially the same purpose, carrying a human being (even a shrunken one) is the essential 'work' performed by horses since the beginning of equine domestication. Given that many musters in this country are done with trailbikes or choppers horses are more used for the enjoyment and 'tradition' factor these days anyway rather than purely economic purposes, especially with the cost of feed more often than not it is uneconomical to keep horses on larger stations. The horse is still doing work by your definition but the need for it is not present and therefore the work they do is no more valid than the work a racehorse does. Then stop complaining it is pointless The majority of discussions are I'm not complaining, I'm pointing out the pointlessness.

Based on what parameters? If I want to participate in a pointless discussion I will thanks.

So basically you just want people do validate your somewhat confused viewpoint that a working dog is whatever you say it is and sporting dogs aren't classed as working dogs? It makes no difference, the GSD thread was about form following function in the original sense, the standard is a construct following from the original shepherding form of the dog, it matters not whether the dog does other jobs because the standard only refers to a shepherding dog, and the current debate centers around whether the dog reflects the standard accurately and therefore is it able to perform it's original function adequately. Here's an analogy that makes more sense to me - a thoroughbred is bred for a sport - racing, this also earns people a living and some economies even rely on it, is it considered 'work'? Is the hobby trainer's horse a sport horse or a working horse compared to the professional trainer's horse? Drawing disctinctions is useless because it's just a human obsession for classifying and justifying and dare I say it - pontificatng! Has nothing whatsoever to do with the intrinsic value of a working dog or a companion dog either.

I don't understand this conversation, if you leave the dog's perception of his job out of it who really cares whether someone thinks their dog is a working dog or not? I could say my lap dog is a working dog, he serves the purpose I got him for, same goes for my husky who serves the purpose I got him for, any dog which is serving it's purpose can be called a working dog. If you try to draw lines and create distinctions you are really just pontificating IMO.

Anything that's not a lap dog is a working dog, the rest is just petty details

My dogs loooooove lure coursing poor quality vid but you can see they are having a ball, mind you the husky chases the lure and the chi chases the husky There is a club at Warwick meets every month. From what I was told much of the work involved is to do with fitness training, it's essentially a sprint so ideally you would train for optimum fitness over short distances.

Stoopid Victoria why does it have to be so far away? This would be really interesting hope everyone takes some good notes :D

Is there a possiblility of getting someone to do a temp test on her? A professional trainer would be able to see potential problems and let you know whether it would be worth pursuing (obviously has to be an ethical trainer not just one who will tell you to get the dog and pay them lots to fix it), I'm probably being a bit sentimental in thinking that this dog is better off in a proper home rather than somewhere less desirable but it is also important that you are happy with your decision as well. It's better to get a suitable dog first up than to put yourselves and the animal through the trauma of being unsuitable if you know what I mean. ETA I've heard people refer to brindle as a mix of shades of brown hair so it may depend on what your description of brindle is.

Tell me about it, subject of my faeces, oops I mean thesis. I can imagine. Sometimes I wonder if this line covers most. Simply put, animals (or anything with more than two brain cells) behave for one of two reasons: to acquire desirable outcomes or to avoid undesirable outcomes. I agree, the complexity arises when we try to figure out what the animal percieves as desirable/undesirable, as well as when we try to infuence that perception as we do when training.

I agree with Kelpie-i re the anthropomorphism, Midol why not take a step back and have a look at what you have written objectively? If you feel that a dog needs to be 'put in it's place' because you feel it has ignored you then it's fairly obvious that there is some emotional projection going on. I'm sure that no one is ignoring half the things you say, more that only half of what you are saying is eliciting a response, people don't need to respond to everything you've said in order to discuss one or two points. My only comment re animal choices is that there are many many factors which influence the choices an animal makes, not just "will I or wont I do what is asked of me?" The ability of an animal to obey a trained command is reliant on many things, including breed factors, so it is important to remember that a dog's point of view is completely different to our own and the signals they receive both from us and the world around them are totally foreign to our own senses. Of course I am going way off topic but animal choices are as contentious as the issue of dominance IMO. Back to dominance though, lilli with your experiences with breeds that are less dependent on human interaction, what sort of behaviour would have to be exhibited before you would consider that dog to be a 'dominant' dog? I'm interested because I think the picture of a dominant type of behaivour would be much clearer without the human influence that other breeds can have, even sibes who are considered to be an independent breed, I don't think they are entirely because from a working dog perspective they still work under the direction of their handler, and in the presence of the handler, while guardian dogs are less used to human direction?

That's what I said earlier tkay.....totally agree! Lol Kelpie-i! I'm starting to see what the behaviourists are always going on about ;)

;) Wow how did I miss that pearl from JM?! The dog knows! And chooses to ignore! Anthropomorphising much?

I don't know much about competitive dog events but I go to dressage competitions and pencil for the judge as a really good learning tool (pencilling is where you write down the judges comments as they watch the horse). While it's not hands-on experience it is a very good perspective to learn from other people's mistakes as well as their acheivements, particularly from a competitive standpoint it's really useful information. Fence-sitting at clinics is another really good way to pick up lots of cheap info and get an insight into how to handle different horses (or dogs as the case may be), you get to see a lot of behaviours you wouldn't see with your own animals and get a good perspective on the behaviour of both the animal and the handler. I find that I am able to get heaps of information just from watching others being taught, or being judged! Hope that helps

Ethics are personal though, and not relevant to a discussion on dominance. Of course ethics is relevant, what someone considers to be abuse is different to what someone else considers to be abuse and that is related to their ethical standpoint. If someone believes their dog is being dominant they are likely to become defensive as opposed to objective, they think the animal is defying them, disobeying them, ignoring them - all of these terms are loaded with human emotions and highly unlikely to accurately represent the emotional state of the animal at the time. An animal does not ponder who is the boss, or why they should have to do what someone tells them to do, they simply exist in a world of powerful sights, sounds and smells and to assign a loaded term like dominance to a behaviour or series of behaviours is quite strange given that most people are opposed to anthropomorphism. If we don't know how a dog behaves without human influence how do we know which factors we are influencing and which factors we aren't? ie are we influencing the dog to behave in a dominant or submissive manner? If so what are we doing to influence it's behaviour? What are we doing which might be influencing a dog's ability to be dominant or indeed defiant of our instructions? Without knowing this how can you say whether a dog is behaving in a dominant manner or whether we have influenced the dog in some way to make it behave in a way which appears to us to be dominant? At the end of the day a perception of dominance is only perception and a human construct at that. The village dog = protodog = intermediate between early wolves and domestic dogs.

The semantics is important from an ethical point of view. Is it ethical to punish a dog for not controlling it's instincts? How realistic is it to expect a dog to control it's instincts? And by instincts I don't only mean drives I mean natural aversions to things, even something as simple as running into the rain can go against the very basic instincts an animal has. I don't know enough about the top dog trainers to know whether or not their methods are ethical to me, but an example of someone who most people consider to be a top horse trainer is Guy McLean, he does fantastic work with horses but his methods are to keep working the horse until it stops resisting, is this entirely ethical? Is it fair on a prey animal to wear down it's natural aversion to having tarps tied to it's tail? I don't know and I'm not saying that it is or it isn't but it's an imporant question that should be asked when we are talking about obtaining high levels of obedience and expecting/asking animals to disobey the instincts that have been built into them. The village dog is relevant because we need to know how dogs would normally interact without our influence, that is the only way we can understand the essential nature of the animal. If your pack structure at home is determined by your behaviour, then it becomes largely irrelevant because you can alter your behaviour and ulitimately change the pack structure. We know we can do this because we can change how we behave towards one dog and it influences how the dogs interact between themselves.

What is training other than the harnessing of an instinct for our own purposes? As such can the animal be truly said to be disobedient when it follows that instinct (even though it is not at our direction)? Not seeing your point. My point is that although we utilise instincts and direct them, do we really have that much control over them? Do does the dog have enough control over instincts? Say you have your high prey drive dog who you train in drive, a prey comes along and the dog's instinct kicks in to chase the prey, the dog is not necessarily choosing the prey over your wishes, since you are essentially triggering the same instinctive response. I question whether it is really fair to expect a dog to be able to determine which instinct it should follow when they are equal or almost equal in strength. As far as human intervention in dominance theory goes in my opinon it means everything, since we influence the behaviour how can it be truly the 'dog's' behaviour? I would not use a wolf pack structure as a model since the village dog structure (or lack thereof) appears to be a closer model to the behaviour of dogs devoid of human influence. We have to look beyond the human influence because of course that will vary so much depending on who is influencing the pack and their own behaviour towards it. Far too many variables to really be able to objectively identify dominance IMO.

What is training other than the harnessing of an instinct for our own purposes? As such can the animal be truly said to be disobedient when it follows that instinct (even though it is not at our direction)?

But is Gizmo letting Lily do some things first because he is not interested in doing it at the time or are there other factors in play? I think that the influence of humans is far stronger in determining the presence of a hierarchy than first thought, and because of this I think that the hierarchies we see are not necessarily interactions between the dogs themselves but behaviours which are influenced by an external factor (ie us). As a result I don't think any perception of dominance can really ever be accurate. This paper suggests that the only strict hierarchies are found in captive environments which to me screams that they are nothing more than a by-product of human intervention and as such will not be understood until we understand exactly what the effects of our intervention are.

From my perspective, nothing. But you've lost control of him which is the key. It might not directly be because the dog is dominant, but it is a dominant action in my opinion, as he is ignoring the control you have. Subordinate dogs should do what the Dominant dog tells it to do - that's how a social hierarchy works. If the dog doesn't listen to the pack leader then it isn't a Subordinate dog, if the dog fails to do so, then it is no longer a subordinate dog imo. Is there neutral territory where the dog is neither subordinate or dominant? IMO, yes, and that's a stage where the dog is fighting for the dominant position which is just as bad if not worse than being the dominant dog. This is all assuming the dog has learnt that there are consequences for ignoring the directions of the pack leader or dominant figure in the hierarchy. I think that you are working off the perception that the social hierarchy is finite and clear, I don't believe it is. It has been shown that the social structures of wild animals are not as finite and strucutred as first thought, in fact many question whether any true hierarchy exists in the wild. It could quite feasibly be a human construct. In that we have decided that there is a hierarchy and it must be enforced, even the dog-dog interactions we observe are influenced by our own behaviours which the dog's interpret and incorporate into their behaviour.

If I try and call my dog off a hare in the back paddock and he doesn't respond, it's 3,000 years of breeding to hunt independently kicking in. IOW, the answer to your question is no, it's not personal. He does not give a shit about controlling me in that moment, he is only focused on the hare darting through the grass. That is more than fine with me. I don't try to control things I don't wish to control and I certainly don't attempt to fight 3,000 years worth of desert Bedouin breeding. If I wanted perfect control and a dog that didn't hunt independently, I would not have selected a Saluki. I'd have a Cocker or something similar. If I have a brain tho', I will have dog wire or chain wire fenced the paddock in question so that my Saluki's ability to control his environment is limited to what I am happy with. I agree with this, the breed of dog is incredibly important because just observing herding breeds you can see that they are significantly more focused on their handler than other breeds, while toys are focued on their owners but not looking for instructions as the herding breeds are. The more independent the breed has been bred to be the more independently they will be inclined to behave.