Wobbly

Just an idea, but if she's very sensitive when it's just you and her, can you lie down prone and see if that takes the social pressure off her enough for her to approach you of her own volition and explore you, give some licks and maybe even (might take some time) engage in very gentle play when she seems responsive and confident enough to enjoy it?? You can't force her enjoyment though, only do your best to help her build confidence using whatever techniques seem she finds easiest to respond positively to. NB, all my posts in this forum should come with this disclaimer: Noob trainer alert! Suggestions may be incorrect due to lack of experience. XD

Yes, photos please. What an awesome person you are for giving this girl a chance at a good life. You rock!

Yeah Nekhbet thats what I mean, I need to adjust my criteria and reward the best performances she gives me - I reward some truly shocking stuff, (watch me someday say 'sit" 3 times, then reward a half "sit" :laugh ) I knew I was doing that, but didn't see quite how bad I was with it until the video showed it. XD I am happy with how I rewarded for the burnout hoon distraction though, that was a definite 2 steps forward moment there. She didn't miss a beat there. Good dog! And for mistakes - yep! Absolutely agree with you - that's exactly what I tell myself - mistakes provide the best learning opportunities of all. I have A LOT of learning opportunities to work with it would seem. XD

Oops that vid is from March, sorry! Only just realised. Milo is very handsome, also I ma jealous he is tall enough for pocket hand XD

Hey Paddles! Yes! This is what i am working on, finding the stuff my dog loves most, establishing her order of values - different foods, different toys, and the relative values of these compared to environmental distractions. Ohh my copy just arrived on Friday, it's part of my homework for my Fenzi course. I would first and foremost reccommend Steve K9Pro too! But in the interim, while he has no distance courses going, there are other great online courses. I am doing one at the moment through Denise Fenzi called Obedience problem solving. There are 3 levels, gold level submits videos and Denise gives students second by second feedback on the vids. A lot of current students are working on focus now in that class (including me). She also runs drive and motivation online courses. I think the next round of courses begins Aug 1. These are great, the confidence building course might help Milo? Here is the link http://www.fenzidogsportsacademy.com/index.php/schedule-and-syllabus IMO you are placing a little bit too much pressure on yourself. All I am really aiming for right now is her looking like she's enjoying herself so much that she can keep sustained focus. Its only a little goal, and I have reached it so I am really happy with myself and her. Which makes training much more rewarding for ME, and thus for Jarrah too, as compared to aiming for perfection and falling short of the mark, becoming despondent about it. Just aim for you and Milo enjoying your training time together. After all that's ultimately why we have our dogs, to enjoy their company, sometimes I think people get so goal oriented they forget to enjoy the process, I know I have been guilty of this. What's Milo's favourite reward? Jarrah's favourite is soft toys, she loves tearing them to pieces, the rippability provides a "win" she can't get off a standard tug toy. She adores it, so I went to the Salvos and they were selling 10 fluffy toys for a dollar, I got 20 toys for her (they only last a session each, five reward events per toy since each toy generally has 4 limbs and a head to be torn off). They're making her really love training, even when there's no fluffy toys in the offing in a session, only kibble, training sessions being associated with the fluffy toy destroying has made sits and downs more rewarding in and of themselves for her. I think you are doing excellent, the only way to succeed is to make all the mistakes and learn from them. NB I am a noob trainer, so opinions that conflict with mine are probably more right than mine. XD

I have a history of failure with the 2 toy method, I'd ruined it as an out approach by doing it poorly. But since I started applying Steve's advice, every method I had previously failed with, now works. "D "D 2 toys is definitely something I will incorporate as a reward for her, since giving another toy IS genuinely rewarding for her, unlike giving food. I've only done shaped retrieves on items she has no value for, stuff that she always has access to. I actually got outs even in swim/fetch/tug the other day, which I thought would never happen, huge win! No victory laps now, she brings it to me - interaction trumps possession finally, yay! Once upon a time I would never have believed she'd out in that most high arousal of contexts, but it's like I never had a problem now. Pretty amazing really. I have multi page thread about my troubles with out somewhere on DOL, it was really big problem and I did need lots of help to solve it. Happy to say this issue is not an issue anymore!! It was really the start of me being able to go further with training. I will never take the out for granted though, given the issues I had with it in the past, I'll definitely use the 2 toy method when I need to reward. I seriously have to start scaling back my rewarding though, I am devaluing the rewards with too much use and letting my dog get too comfortable with the notion that half arsed performances are good enough.

There is no right or wrong here. It's just a terrible situation. Big hugs Doggleworth, life can be so unfair sometimes. In these situations I always remind myself that the darker, harder times are neccessary to provide a counterpoint, those times of joy have so much more depth and meaning when they are defined by that contrast. I hope you are OK at this time and have lots of emotional support and people who love you to get you through this time.

Don't the kids adore a really keen dog! Jarrah has kept some kids completely enthralled with her eagerness to perform tricks for treats. XD So lovely to watch.

Raineth did you ever read Control Unleashed by Leslie McDevitt? I was lucky enough to get a copy cheaply from a member here (Danny's Darling, yay thank you DD) and it has really had a huge positive effect, for both me and my dog. It really is an amazing book, and has nice simple procedures to follow, while it's aimed specifically at nervy, anxious, scared dogs, it is applicable to dogs with any kind of overarousal issues. I really would recommend it as a first port of call for your own understanding, it's clear and authoritative and endlessly helpful.

Yeah Rascal, that's what I keep thinking, it just takes one moment of of inattention, a guest doing the wrong thing, older child being forgetful... It could go so wrong, and ther results couldbe so tragic, it's just too great a risk IMO. Sometimes as a parent you have to make huge sacrifices for the wellbeing of your child, this is about the biggest sacrifice we dog lovers could imagine, and ultimately the OPS decision, but I too would PTS in this situation. As others have said have a beautiful goodbye day with the dog, then let him go. You gave him a great life, he will never suffer the pains of old age, no arthritis for his, no disorientation of dementia, none of the sorrows or indignities of ageing. It will be hard for you, you'll miss him terribly, but it will be fine for him, no pain, no fear. Big hugs, OP this is such a hard position to be in.

My apologies for the late reply, I have been rather caught up with medical stuffs the last few days. That's a good idea LBD, My hand target is solid enough, she could follow it in a high arousal state state. I'm not really sure how much adrenalised activity like swim/fetch/tug I will be able to take her out for in the next few months. Looks like I will be having a kidney removed, which I expect will mean I have to keep it all very low key. Crumbly food lecture seconded, I used felafel the other day, very poor choice of treat, much sniffing ensued. :laugh: Dog goes faster I go faster, dog goes even faster, so do i. :laugh: This is me trying to reward in position, after she's broken position, by forcing the dog back into position. I hadn't really consciously realised this but I do this, often. Oh dear. :laugh: Oh yes! You are so right. The other day in swim/fetch/tug, food would not have worked. But her out is very solid now, she knows it's the play cue, she doesn't quite spit it into my hands enthusiatically yet on cue like Steve's dog, but (hoping) we are building to that. I have eliminated most factors that led to her possessiveness, I think. I was using food to shape a retrieve on really low value items, and got into the habit of giving her a treat after she puts an item in my hand, apparently we both got patterned doing that. She'll take the food out of habit from the retrieve shaping, but tends to spit it out in a tug contxt. I am so daft, I should realise how valueless food is in a tug context given she does usually spit it out. You're right, food is not what she wants at all if we're playing tug, though she does love it for our food shaped retrieve practice where we don't tug at all. Yay thank you! That's really cool to hear from you! Makes me very happy. :D :D I am really looking forward to training chickens! Animal behaviour science is fascinating. I was just rereading the breathing section in CU yesterday, Jarrah's always fast asleep when I'm reading and want to try this stuff. I have been lax about "give me a break" lately and offf switch work and the relaxation protocol is a seriously good suggestion. I have a needy greeter, but she has the grovelly Bully thing going on, all wiggles. Chase instinct is what unleashes the juggernaut effect, she rams from behind at knee height, and has sent me flying a few times now, much to the asmusement of onlookers. XD Thank you for your comments everyone, I really appreciate all the insights!

Agree Megan. Don't feel guilty, you gave him a great 10 years, he had a good life and he will never suffer the pains of ageing. You haven't got an alternative here, no matter how hard I juggle it in my head, a 9 month old living with a dog that feels driven to hurt him, it's not an acceptable risk factor. I doubt any behaviourist would take this one anyway, given the child's age. It hurts, but being a good mum is maybe the hardest thing in the world sometimes.

Yay Corvus, I managed to score a trainer spot too! "D "D I am really looking forward to it! All the topics covered are exactly the things I need to learn and improve upon. I have to concentrate on not dropping treats first, never mind throwing them! So today I went to the quarry for swim/fetch/tug, I tried to get her heeling for tug in that environment, and she just can't do it, she can sit and stay and give me eye contact, but heeling still needs too much focus for her to be able to do it in that state of mind. I wished I had a camera to film her in this environment, I think I could work on making her brain more clear in this context, to allow her to control herself well under that level of arousal. I have a procedure for it that Denise & Lisa wrote for me in the course, I'm not sure I grasp all the nuances of it behaviourally yet, but the step by step procedure I can follow well, and real understanding will come as I see the results emerge, as always. She can definitely hold a sit stay, so that's a really good start. Miss Jarrah is one thing, I can only imagine what a really well bred Malinois is like when she's giving it her all!

Normally I would agree powerlegs especially if the child was older, then the child could collude with you to follow a behaviourist's program. But life with a 9 month old is exhausting at the best of times. To add a behavioural program of such serious importance, such serious consequences for failure, in addition to relatively new motherhood would be a very hard call indeed. There is always the behaviourist option, but given your situation - concerned as you are with the time and energy demands of a little baby, I really think you are making the right decision to pts.

haha that's awesome Sheena. XD I am trying to picture a hopping collie, very cute indeed! Hank, I wish I could help, I have the opposite kind of dog, she gets enormous pleasure out of holding and carrying things in her mouth. Here is some stuff you might find useful on it? Blog post by Denise Fenzi on shaped retrieve: http://denisefenzi.com/2012/09/04/training-a-shaped-retrieve/ You tube clips of teaching a shaped retrieve in 6 sessions with an operant clicker savvy dog. Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6

That makes lots of sense Sheena. It is really great to hear everyone's views on this. I am learning lots. I think for myself right now I need to pay more attention to rewarding in position partly because my marker timing can be bad, and partly because I can see Jarrah could easily get into a habit of moving out of position in anticipation of a reward if I always reward out of position. But I am really happy to hear it's not the end of the world when I mess it up occasionally.

O yeah Corvus, I am so coming to chicken camp to learn to teach poultry in motion, I will be at the Penrith one. If you're at that one, come say hello, I am the one with the long hair all over my face. XD

My aim is just sustained focus right now, (I have conditioned lack of focus on me over years, it worked really well for the huge bushwalks when she was younger) but I like to teach new stuff to her, so I thought this one might be cool and useful. New stuff keeps it interesting for us and my trick teaching skills need the practice, I figure the more I teach her the better both Jarrah and I get at all the skills we're missing, I also get the excuse to over reward in teaching new behaviours, which she loves. I like this idea of following the hand without contact!

I just do my best for reward placement. I notice I am getting more competent over time, which I am happy with, as with most of the skills for this kind of work, improving slowly with practise. I try to make the heel work fun for her, you can only see me shuffling in the vid, not enough space to run, but we do some very fast paces as well as very slow, she likes the novelty. I got pretty lucky with Jarrah motivation wise, she really enjoys her training sessions. I am happy with the lower drive you see here for this home environment - both the focus she has to hold before she gets the tug, and the out to stop her building up too much steam both cap her drive at a nice level for me to learn to work with. With the previously frenzied heights she used to reach in frisbee swim/fetch/tug, I could get a great recall but couldn't work with it for more than that, she'd get too over stimulated. I have been learning in Denise's course to make my reinforcement just a notch more attractive than the environment we're in, so she has a choice and chooses work. I'm really happy with her focus here, she's on the job the whole time, didn't even appear to notice the hoons screeching brakes. Way too many rewards for stuff she knows, I am rewarding sits there! That's ridiculous, I am such a sucker. Outside the house I have to ramp it up a bit to match the environment. Put fetch in, let her tug longer and use a nice bitey surface like french linen or leather. Looking at how I have to move in that video, Jarrah just really isn't tall enough to make pocket hand as useful to me as it is to those of you with taller dogs, and a target stick would omit the physical contact aspect. I don't really want her nose pointing straight up like the Shepherds heel, she had a neck injury last winter, and it's a harder position to hold for a dog shaped like her. And bending down is harder position for me to hold too. I do need to give this some more thought.

Yeah I can do position rewarding with food OK (sort of, I am getting better) there are so many mechanical skills to learn! But it's hard with tug for me. i am going to make up some of Sheenas treats, they're healthy so i am happy to use as many as Jarrah can maintain interest in. XD I get such a kick out of how much she enjoys this training. "D Wish I had started it years ago.

I'm so glad you don't reward in position huski, because I can do it with food, but I find it impossible with tug, and tug is a more valuable reward from Jarrah's perspective. I will worry less about that now. XD Yeah Paddles if you do get a chance to get an appt with Steve, he is a genius. I am only still just starting to understand some of the stuff he told me about Jarrah's lack of out and the way she learns (so many months later, I am a bit slow sometimes). Also you get to meet Huski there, and you get to play a little game of tug with Steve's dog Venom, who is beautiful. XD ETA And I really can take ages to understand stuff. When I first saw Steve about dog aggression (along a whole bunch of other problems I had) 5 years ago, he told me how to handle it. And following his advice worked beautifully ofc, but he only had time in that appt to cover the stuff I absolutely needed to do (there was lots), so it's only now, 5 years later, that I have started really looking into operant conditioning and learning theory that I begin to understand the theory behind exactly why all the stuff he told me to do works. I now know I have, used the premack principle to operantly condition Jarrah to be calm and polite around other dogs. XD ETA Again, I may be away for a bit, lots of medical stuff going on, I'm all good, don't worry, but I need to do some stuff to ensure I remain so!

Yeah you're right, there really was no control in the beginning, it was just the dogs that wouldn't back down. Hugely diverse. I think it was the same for many breeds back then, they were mostly types, breed is a rather modern concept. And yes, the ridiculous Gottis being ADBA registered really does devalue the papers. Agree, it's the dogs behind them that matter. The legacy of those dogs who are the base of the breed. I think on some of these things we should agree to disagree amicably, because these are issues with no clear answers, we have differing opinions, but that's good, it means our ideas are all from differing perspectives, which is educational for us all. Ultimately, we all share the same passion, the APBT, and we're under heavy fire right now, sticking together is important, united we stand. Please accept my apolgies if I come off as arrogant, or pigheaded, text only communication can often make things sound harsher than they were meant to sound. We do need to stick together.

Haha yeah, I am a sucker for the seal coloured dogs now. I get excited everytime I see one. It's not really a flashy colour, or as striking as some of the other dilutes, so not really popular, but to me it's just so associated with an awesome Jarrah dog, it is my favourite dog colour now. I had never seen it till I met Jarrah. I remeber when they were microchipping her they called it black and I was kind of thinking, well it's not black, it's not brown, it's not black and tan wth is it? Finally managed to figure it out with google. It seems pretty much specifically restricted to Greyhounds, Boston Terriers, Am Staffs and APBTs, occasionally turning up in Border Collies too. It's the only colour allele that's not fully understood yet AFAIK, which is frustrating because I love to read about all the genetic mapping progress. Some info here, K or A locus supposedly http://www.doggenetics.co.uk/black.htm

I know, I've just had a few too many tough guys asking me to breed their red nose dog with Jarrah, they always express some disappointment she doesn't have a red nose though. Yay for desexing, so these conversations are stopped in their tracks without me having to fulminate on the subject. There has been a big change though, I have noticed that too. Really happy to see it.

Oh Milo is gorgeous! I would be totally delighted to get that performance from Jarrah, she'd be all about winding herself around the judges legs trying to get pats, I would just be an annoyance on the end of the leash obstructing her social aspirations. And duck poo is second only in awesomeness to cat poo in Jarrah's books. If only rolling in duck poo were requirements for trials, we would be champions of the whole world. You may view this as a poor performance, but to me Milo is the very model of a calm gentleman, the fact he hasn't run off to lick the judge and roll in poo is actually rather inspirational from where I am standing. XD Well I have replaced my husband-tripod with a paint tin-tripod, I get far better focus from the paint tin than the husband, so i got a longer vid this time. XD We're doing a little better. I know Nekhbet has her head in her hands in despair at the technique & treat rate - my brain goes out the window on camera, hopefully this effect will recede soon. Fading the hand signal for heeling here, it's kind of working, sort of, a bit, maybe. A shame my hair covers all her nice cheek in hand pocket hand efforts when she's sitting. Big reward there with the tug for maintaining focus while the hoons do burnouts next to our house, I was really happy with that bit at least, sustained focus is my main issue atm really (no lickable judges or duck poo on the balcony to distract her mercifully, or this would be a whole different vid), so I ended it there. "Out" is a new behaviour, Steve K9 pro fixed it for me (taught with no corrections!) I've graduated from an instant tug reward for an out to a more low key food reward now, I could stop rewarding every time now really, over rewarding known behaviours is a really, really bad habit of mine, shamefully on display here, she's good at "out' these days, immediate rewards for it should be random now I think http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dO1QxDtUWk&feature=youtu.be OK dental appt shortly, so no more videos for till my face looks normal again.