corvus

I met a few and loads of Catahoula crosses in Mexico. They are popular on the ranches, right beside ACDs, but more often used for hunting. One of the places I stayed at had a hunting pack for getting the lions out of the Bighorn Sheep enclosure. Apparently mountain lions find Bighorns irresistable and will do anything to get to them. The hunting Catahoulas were not to be messed with. Strict instructions to stay away from them. They didn't get much human contact, although they seemed pretty friendly to me. I covet the Yakutian Laika: It's not really a breed so much as a type, but given there are hardly any breeds way up there in Northern Russia, they are basically what dogs look like in that region. And I have to say that black and white Canaan Dogs are to die for. The cream and yellow ones are pretty gorgeous too, but I just love those black and white dogs.

I used to be a bit skeptical of rewarding dogs for being calm, but then I got a dog that was rarely calm! I don't ever mark calm behaviour, because that just gets him excited, but quietly slipping him treats when he's being calm certainly has increased the frequency of calm behaviour. It wasn't exclusively responsible for the positive changes, but it certainly helped. Thanks for the tips M-J and Aidan.

Erik used to do that one. I can't remember what I did to fix it. Possibly shut him in another room?? I imagine he must have grown out of it, or bored of it. You can always pretend to talk on the phone and then completely ignore her. If she learns that the game doesn't always work, she might give up on it. Oh! I remember. I made the phone ring, picked it up, pretended to talk, ignored Erik, then put the phone down again. I did it several times in a row until Erik decided I was being thoroughly boring and the phone was no longer a predictor of interesting stuff or fun games anymore.

Give me a couple of hours at an evening function (which kept happening a while back, actually) and inevitably I've explained my PhD project at least four times over loud music to people who know nothing about any of the many and convoluted topics my project touches on. It's hardly the explanation I would give on DOL, but it serves. Fact is, even other ethologists wouldn't know half the terminology I should use. So "lay person" ends up being other scientists as often as not. You get good at avoiding terminology. I wouldn't even use learning theory terms at agility training. I'm too used to a varied audience.

This ain't about dog parks or training other people's dogs. It's about what you say to people you meet that don't know much about dogs but ask you on the spot how to fix their dog. I'm a pretty friendly gal. I don't want to fob them off with a "you need professional help" or "take your dog to classes", but obviously I'm not going to explain learning theory to them, either. They just want their dog to do what they tell it to. I'd love to give them something a bit more useful than "be a calm, assertive leader" or some such, but equally easy to remember. The reality is they are not going to take their dog to training or get professional help. I'm not gonna judge them on that and they'll do what they'll do regardless of what I say, but does that mean I shouldn't even try to say something that might help? The world is full of people that have dogs and adore them but know next to nothing about influencing their behaviour. That's life. I'm happy to leave them be. But if one of them actually specifically asks you for advice, it seems like a good opportunity to say something helpful. I was just wondering if anyone had a catchphrase.

Black and tan-ish Swedish Vallhund. He has an itsy bit of sable if you look really hard.

Ha ha, but I would never in a million years interfere with someone who had even the barest amount of control over their dog. It's none of my business and could easily be seen as quite rude. Sometimes I meet a dog that is just brimming with intelligence and all over the shop just begging for someone to give it 5 minutes. I wouldn't do anything without the owner's permission, though, and usually wouldn't ask purely because I don't want them pestering me. This was kind of an exceptional circumstance. The dog was harassing Erik unpredictably and I was trying to leave the park with him while simultaneously protecting him from further harassment. As long as she was thinking about how to earn rewards she wasn't thinking about chasing Erik. Good for everyone. At least once I had her eager attention the owner finally came and got her. I was just using it as an example of people that have trouble figuring out where a behaviour has started and ended.

Well if you used dog parks, you would be missing a lot of excellent opportunities to reinforce good behaviour. It's not begging for a fight if you have some idea what a dog that is ignoring you looks like. I take food and toys to dog parks every time and do about half my training there. The vast majority of the time we have fun unmolested. It's not hard to magic the toys back into the bag and pull the treat pouch shut and send the boys off to play if a dog that's ringing alarm bells heads towards us. I have seen fights break out over sticks, so I don't kid myself that I can control every potentially valuable resource. I would far rather have the means to reward my dogs well when out and about and risk fights. Given we routinely carry very high value food rewards for recalls and have not yet had a fight break out over them, I think the risk is low. Most dogs don't even realise we have them. IME, any dog that hasn't been rewarded much is usually a resource guarder. There was a reason why I wasn't just handing treats out for any and all desirable behaviour. It's a fine line between rewarding a dog starved of rewards and setting the dog up for dangerous frustration, which is why I don't normally reward other people's dogs. It's easy to create a situation where a strange dog starts guarding you from your own dogs, and that's a bit of a slap in the face for most dogs. I wouldn't expect Erik to take it lying down. But when all is said and done, I'd rather walk that line than try to block a dog that's on the attack. I know from experience which one tends to be more effective for me. Even if I'm just buying time, I usually have the OH with me who can take our boys while I keep the strange dog focused until its owner comes to get it. Sure, but you know someone who might go to training and someone who won't. If they ask me on the fly, I have the chance to help some people and their dogs get on better with each other, but if I tell them to go to training and I know they won't, I've lost whatever chance I may have had. My thought is, I'd rather give them one quick suggestion that may or may not help than fob them off. I can always give a suggestion and THEN tell them to go to training. They won't because if they were prepared for that kind of commitment they wouldn't be asking a near stranger for all-encompassing training tips on the fly in the first place, but it doesn't hurt to say it as an additional for anyone listening in.

There are as many approaches to teaching loose leash walking as there are trainers in the world! :D Here's a nice, simple approach that works for most dogs as long as you are consistent: I have never tried tying a puppy to my waist. I do spend a lot of time rewarding my dogs for walking next to me, though, whether they are on leash or not. I try to make it a rewarding place to be regardless of the environment we are in. I'm not very systematic about it, and you can tell because they are not entirely consistent and need the odd reminder. If you want consistency, you need to be very conistent yourself. Make sure you only reward the dog for being in the right place, and be aware that every time you let the dog get where she wants to go by pulling, you reward that pulling. To get a dog to walk nicely in all surroundings rather than just at training you just need to practice in all surroundings. The same rules need to apply to any environment.

I had someone tell me in mortified tones not to reward their dog when I had just popped her a treat for sitting. A moment earlier she had been trying to nip a chunk out of one of my dogs (who at the time was doing his best to avoid her). I tried to say that this sit on cue was a vast improvement on the behaviour before and we should reward her for doing the right thing and her owner just gave me a disbelieving look. I don't normally reward other people's dogs without checking with them, but given the anti-social behaviour that was going on towards my boys, it seemed like someone had to do something. The owner yelling at her wasn't doing much. I guess the owner was lumping and thinking I was rewarding their dog for biting another dog. They weren't much interested in giving me a chance to explain. We see a lot of dogs with bad manners at the dog park, particularly when they find out we have treat pouches. We don't reward them as a general rule, but every now and then we get mugged and it seems appropriate to reward them for sitting or even just keeping all four feet on the ground. With the owner's permission in those cases. My dogs would never dream of helping themselves to other people's treat pouches! They know sitting is the best bet. :D

What do you do when someone asks you for advice about training their dog and you immediately realise that they are really nowhere near ready for the full story and probably never will be? If you give them too much information you risk them dumping it then and there in the too hard basket, but if you don't give them enough, their chances of success with what you might want to suggest kinda drops once the variables of the individual animal come into play. I was talking to a behaviourist about this on the weekend. They said they stick to "reward what you want and ignore what you don't want". I tend to try to encourage people to also look for behaviour they like to reward, but am yet to encounter anyone who believes it's a good idea to reward their dog for having all four feet on the ground, for example. So I'm wondering how other people decide how much information to give out and what they habitually say when people ask for advice when they are really asking for a quick fix?

I love the Look At That game. It is surprising how fast it can make a difference. Sometimes when Erik is all worked up and barking a massage helps him come down again. He only lets me do it because he's been conditioned to accept it, but he does actually come looking for it if he's worked up about something, particularly if he's reacting to a sound rather than something he can see. I put my hands down and he'll come and walk under them, then he turns around and comes back for a longer touch, and pretty soon he is under control and calm again. I am totally disbelieving of how effective massage has been in managing his arousal, but the difference in him is undeniable. It also helped to do self control exercises, like getting him riled, then quickly calming him back down again. He is pretty quick at it. Considering he used to be wired for hours after getting aroused, it's hard to believe he can settle in under a minute, now. I would still go for the LAT game in this case because it's a very specific stimulus, but I have been wondering lately if getting a dog used to massage and using a classically conditioned "calm down" signal is useful in general when it comes to managing a dog's arousal level. It seems to be the case for Erik, but he's just one dog, and he has been maturing as we went along, so it's hard to say how much is massage and how much is maturation.

Sometimes it helps to just break it down into smaller behaviours. If you want him to stand, start clicking for standing, then work up to clicking for shifting his weight forward or something like that. I was always skeptical of microshaping until I tried it with Erik. It does work! Not for Kivi, though. He gets too frustrated by not knowing how to get a click that he doesn't seem to notice he's getting a click every second anyway. We're working on Kivi, though.

We are very happy with Sylvania Vet as well. I was extremely impressed when one of the vets took 5 minutes to get some roast chicken out of the fridge and bribe Erik to allow her to look at his mouth when he was 16 weeks old. She said she'd rather spend a bit of time on it now than have to deal with him trying to bite her for the rest of his life. Of course, we went on to teach him a cue for looking at his teeth, but it was made a lot easier by the fact she sent us down the right path. They were also wonderful when we had our elderly girl. I have heard good things about Sutherland as well. ETA Bundeena is beautiful, but a bit of a pain. It takes 20 minutes just to get out of the park! I used to work there and enjoyed the ride through the park, but sometimes you just wanna be there already. Folks I know that live there avoid going anywhere on the weekend. The roads are full of cyclists and motorcyclists and I hear deaths are not uncommon.

I have never seen that happen! I'd be assuming my timing was out if I were seeing it, but maybe that wouldn't be the case. The OP could do whatever they pleased and it may even help. If it does, then good. I've never experienced the lack of a marker not being enough in a training scenario, but both my dogs have been shaping since they were puppies. I'd video a session and double-check I wasn't somehow reinforcing a sit or provoking one in how I was moving around my dog before I considered a NRM.

That is debatable. Ultimately, if you're communicating "that's not going to be rewarded", then that is technically a conditioned punisher, assuming it actually does suppress behaviour. I heard Ken Ramirez talking about NRMs today at the APDT conference. He says he's seen a small handful of trainers out of hundreds that use NRMs and actually do so effectively. You don't want to be heading off all their attempts at something new if you are remotely interested in them offering new behaviours in the future. I don't use them in shaping because the lack of a marker is plenty information enough. They ought to be throwing things out there until they get a click. If I want to fast track it or help them out in some way because they are struggling, I would fall back on targeting. It's extremely effective IME, and I use it heavily with my dog that isn't entirely comfortable with trying new things.

When I did this with Kivi I hit the same problem, only he wouldn't put either paw on. I tried to lure and he just kept stepping around the phone book. So I shelved it and taught paw targeting instead. Came back to it a while later when Kivi was confidently targeting with both feet on cue and of course that made it quite a bit easier. I think I could have done it as soon as Kivi had grasped the general concept of paw targeting. He just needed prompting to notice the training prop and interact with it. I do find both dogs respond quite well to me just leaning my weight one way or another. They tend to move their weight towards me. It often results in that extra step that you need.

It got to the point in my parents' house that one dog was put to sleep for the other's safety. I will never have two bitches in the same house again unless they are wildly different in size. Granted, the dog that was causing the problems for us was a rescue and apparently didn't know about bite inhibition, which is why she was PTS rather than rehomed, but that was beside the point when it got to critical mass. There is nothing more horrible than seeing an animal you love trying to kill another animal you love. It is the stuff of nightmares and not a risk I am comfortable with now that I've seen it go wrong for myself.

Yes, yes it does. Ravens have been a favourite for many years.

Oh dear, that's all I need. Another list to tick! I've been denying accusations of being a twitcher for years, but no one is fooled at all. Yes, we stopped at a town on our recent holiday specifically to try to see Red Goshawks. Saw them, too! I have a frog field guide, a mammal field guide, a reptile field guide, and a tadpole field guide along with the bird field guides (I have 3 of them). Someone once got me semi-interested in fish, but I managed to pull out before I had to buy a fish field guide. We have a Shiba that lives locally, but haven't had a chance to speak to the owner yet. We nearly bought one, but got a Vallhund instead. We were concerned we wouldn't be able to cope with the busyness. So we end up with Erik, who I expect needs even more mental stimulation and physical acitivity than the average Shiba! I got excited when I was in the States recently and saw a Komondor. In the middle of LA, mind you.

When Erik got neutered we got a bitter-tasting liquid to apply to the skin around the wound. It worked like a charm, and also took care of the other dog, who wanted to lick more than Erik did.

I thought it was interesting because it was so anti-clicker. All of the stuff I've been given/told has always been so pro-clicker so for me it was interesting to hear such strong opposition towards it. I don't agree because I actually like using the clicker but I always do like reading what The Other Side has to say even if I don't agree. I don't really think it is The Other Side. There was a video floating around somewhere with Ian Dunbar making some interesting points against a purely operant conditioning approach to dog training. To me, that's more like The Other Side because they were points that were worth considering, things grounded in observation. IMO there is more to animals and our relationships with them than operant conditioning. There are some vehement anti-Behaviorism people out there, and in all honesty, I have my anti-Behaviorism moments despite basing the vast majority of my training in operant conditioning. I think there's value in discussing the things that operant conditioning doesn't really account for, like emotion, motivation and other learning theories, but there's no value in giving time to arguments that are not even real arguments. Anyone that says that kind of thing has already made up their mind and won't be convinced otherwise. Here's the Dunbar clip: http://www.dogstardaily.com/blogs/science-...learning-theory

That is quite interesting... There have been a few studies looking at things like that, some with an object disappearing behind another object and one where they used visual representations only (shapes on a touchscreen). I don't know much about it, but from what I understand dogs are sometimes confused by that kind of thing. It's interesting the kind of things that set them off. It's like they have a sense of what is normal and get upset when something is almost normal more than when something is completely new.

Even discussing how ridiculous the article is gives it more attention than it deserves.