corvus

Sometimes time outs and all good things go away can have the opposite effect than the one you want, or just fail to address the issue at all. For example, if the dog growls at an approaching dog and then loses access to everything, they might become pretty sure that was the other dog's fault, and get even more proactive about heading them off in future. Much of the time, this is an emotionally driven behaviour. They are stressed out. Counter-conditioning is therefore a good approach. Dog approaches, you get stacks of attention, dog leaves, attention ceases.

You know, this idea that dogs are always aware of what their owners are doing and asking of them and can always choose how to behave in response is so problematic that I actually wrote a paper about it and got it published in a journal. My volatile dogs classes pretty much start with an explanation for why people's dogs don't respond to them very well when they are aroused, because this is such a prevalent and damaging belief that the dog should listen and be obedient regardless of what is happening to them. The dog CAN'T respond to you. Even if they can hear you, you are asking them to do something that runs counter to their needs and goals. It's VERY hard for them, like asking you to sit down and work on a maths problem when you are pacing around fretting about a loved one in hospital. You're not going to do it. Who cares about maths right now? And you wouldn't be able to concentrate anyway! If the waiting room then goes dark and a fire breaks out and I'm yelling "I said sit down here and do this maths problem!", you probably won't even hear me. Blaming your inability to do a maths problem when you're sick with worry or outright panicked on your selective hearing is unfair and inaccurate. The very fact that Kivi could respond to the heel cue once his arousal had decreased is a pretty good testament to this phenomenon as a likely explanation. There's a saying that goes, if a dead dog can do it, it's not a behaviour. Can a dead dog ignore you? Hell yes. "Ignoring corvus" is not a behaviour, therefore, it cannot be decreased. Particularly in the case at the river where Kivi was not actually given a cue from corvus at all. He wasn't "suddenly obedient", because he hadn't been given any specific instructions to follow obediently in the first place. Saying his name is not a recall. I can help you, here. You're wrong. I might not be right, but you are definitely wrong. Hope that clears a few things up that a collection of evidence apparently did not. Not going to restate the evidence, because you ignored most of it the first time. Discussions that depend on an alternative interpretation of a dog's behaviour by someone that was not there and does not know the dog and can't produce a cohesive argument that is consistent with theory or even logical pretty quickly become a waste of time. I have a lot of more important and constructive things to do. The paper has a ridiculous title I can never remember, but if you Google "conceptualising operant conditioning arousal starling", you should get it as the first hit. It's free and has funky interactive graphs.

All right, I'll humour you. "The heel" was specifically "heel with corvus". "Heel with whoever has my leash" is a DIFFERENT BEHAVIOUR that has NOT been negatively reinforced in THIS SCENARIO OR ANY LIKE IT. When he's with the OH, the cue is present, but the behaviour is not possible. So he gets a bit confused trying to figure out how he should handle this. You know, because he's a dog. They are commonly crap at that kind of generalisation. Positive punishment results in a DECREASE IN BEHAVIOURAL FREQUENCY, DURATION, OR INTENSITY. If Kivi is pinned by a dog at the river, what behaviour do we see decreased? If we see an increase in a behaviour, what does that tell us about the salient consequence? If you are arguing that we see an increase in heeling because the dog punished Kivi, then the mechanism can only be negative reinforcement. Kivi escapes the aversive dog by heeling. That is exactly what I'm arguing happened. The question is, is the scary dog a consequence or an antecedent? I would usually argue both, but in this case, the consequence is unimportant because Kivi didn't see the dog change its behaviour, so he didn't know what caused the tackle and pin. The aggressive behaviour was therefore uninformative for him and it is doubtful he learned anything from it. He knew how best to respond, though. Seek safety. Not a secure base (attachment figure), although that is a strategy he would often adopt, but a very specific safe behaviour. Kivi is a big cry baby and certainly comes looking for cuddles when he gets upset. Often. That is not heeling. There are a LOT of ways Kivi gets close to us, and it's not hard to tell the difference between "I'm scared, hold me" and "Eeek, scary dog. Oh! I can fix this!" It's harder to tell the difference between "I would like treats, now" and "That dog is kinda stressing me out", but the latter has a different quality to it if you watch closely. He comes faster and sticks tighter and he's not as relaxed. A safety behaviour doesn't cure a dog of being scared. It just gives them a way to handle it (calmly).

Exactly! :) And, as mentioned, Kivi wasn't much interested in coming close. I would walk him past while holding him tight against me, so he got that closeness anyway, but he wasn't in a state to particularly notice. The eye opening moment was when he accidentally triggered another dog at the river one day and the dog forced him to the ground and pinned him there. He yelped and struggled, and when the dog let him up, all I said was "Kivi..." and he trotted into heel and stayed there until I was able to get us clear of the other dog. It was a very different scenario to the dog-behind-a-fence scenario, but I guess he perceived it as the same. It's quite cool when you have behaviours triggered by how the dog perceives the environment. You learn a lot about how they see the world and what happens to them. The only downside is he's stopped helping Erik when Erik is having a problem with another dog. He used to intervene on Erik's behalf, but now he falls into a heel instead and it's on Erik to get himself to safety between my feet.

Kivi would probably struggle to make the generalisation. He does when my partner walks him. He responds to the heel cue, but not as well. The behaviour was trained with me as the handler all the time, so he needs more practice to generalise to other handlers. It's a different behaviour with someone new. My other dog, Erik, is a different story. His preference is to direct his safety behaviours at me, but he's crazy good at generalisation and has in the past directed them at other people if I'm not close by. He has also run about 20m to find me so he can start some kind of safety behaviour. Safety behaviours are good if they bring the dog close to you, so it's hard to tell what role closeness plays.

sorry, but that sounds a little bit weird for me :) ...the natural response to the threat was that he wanted to stay close to safety which was only possible - due to Corvus interference - in heel. ...'a behaviour he could choose'... that would be a very conscious approach, I doubt that this was the case. ETA: in other words: for Kivi the heel was the only door open to safety (to be close to Corvus)...of course he took it, and then he calmed down, not because he used this door, but because he could stay close to Corvus... Right. Not real sure how it's possible for an on leash dog to only achieve closeness via a heel. Kivi is a super pro-social dog. I suspect he was so upset because the dogs were out of sight and inaccessible. His usual means of dealing with scary dogs (engage with them in a friendly manner) was not available to him. He was reacting by trying to rush to the fence and sniff the dog or see it. Lots of barking and bouncing. If he wanted to be close to me I wouldn't have had a problem. All I wanted was for him to stay close to me. Instead, he had no clue I was even there. He couldn't respond to the heel cue until he was calm enough to process it and act on it - i.e. once he was already starting to calm down after passing the dog.

Dopamine is heavily implicated in reward, but it's a bit more complicated than that, and even more heavily implicated in anticipation. The dopaminergic system is almost certainly involved, but it's involved with an awful lot of normal brain functioning. I pretty much cringe whenever dog people start talking about neuroscience. It's incredibly complicated. A simpler and more observable explanation is just that she gets aroused by dogs. Arousal narrows focus, so the higher it gets, the less a dog can even detect peripheral stimuli like food or a verbal cue. If a dog is able to process competing stimuli, you don't have to have a reward that is better than the environmental reward. You just need a conditioned signal for reward. It's largely down to practice. Practice calming themselves, practice switching between reward types, practice building behaviours to fluency so the dog responds when highly aroused or distracted, practice thinking through their arousal. Leslie McDevitt's Control Unleashed book deals with this kind of thing better than anyone else IMO. FWIW, my Kivi learned his safety behaviour of a heel when HIGHLY aroused. Exclusively. Not remotely ideal, but it worked, and only took a few weeks. He would get hysterical when certain dogs behind fences barked at him. I just kept cueing a heel until he was able to do it. He evidently associated the heel with his decreasing arousal and increasing sense of safety, and started doing it as soon as he detected the dog rather than after he'd gone mental and I'd frog-marched him past. Arousal aids learning, but you have to pick the right consequence sometimes.

Yeah, I teach my clients the fixed stare is bad. The longer the stare, the more likely they are to explode. If they go still or you see those worry wrinkles on their forehead or their ears go forward, priority one is more space. Setups definitely help. You can install the behavioural response in a controlled environment so you don't go too far. Ha. That's interesting. That would lead me to hypothesise she's a bit worried herself. You should figure out what she's on about. Dogs like that I start by asking for sits and figuring out whether more distance reinforces it or less distance. It is not always clear. Some of these dogs get themselves into a bit of a state and they like dogs but they hate the frustration that comes with them.

You can use the same principle to teach useful safety behaviours. One of my dogs has been taught to walk between my legs when another dog is worrying him. It puts him nice and close to me where I can best block that dog if it tries to come and interfere with him, and I can walk him away from the dog. He can tell me he is worried and wants to leave and at the same time he is out of the way and protected from the other dog. My other dog falls into a heel, complete with autosit, it turns out. Occasionally, we meet a scary dog that upsets both of them and I walk away with one between my legs and the other one wrapped around my knee. Our retreats are kind of slow, but the dogs are right by me, calm, and totally focused on me. It's the safest they can be, and they are much calmer and happier than they would have been before they learned safety behaviours. Negative reinforcement does not have to be bad. It can be very subtle and it can actually improve welfare.

Hmm. So this is for a dog that is stressed by approaching another dog... So the pressure is approaching the other dog and the release is to move away if they provide the right behaviour? Where as when my dog is stressed by the sight of another dog - I move her away so she can calm down. If there is room to do that, if not - I just try to contain the outburst and praise any attention on me or calm behaviour. Not quite. At first there is no pressure, and the dog moves forward because they are seeking information. The pressure builds as they get closer or as they continue to watch, but if you keep the dog calm and move very slowly, they are better able to decide when the pressure is getting too intense for them. If they retreat then, we avoid a scene. Most of these dogs are conflicted, because they want to both approach and avoid. The goal is to help them achieve their goals, and that means letting them get information they would get from approaching, and also letting them get the safety and relief they want by avoiding. Approach and avoidance are in constant flux as the dog tries to meet opposing goals. BAT and similar methods bring structure and control to this process so the dog can stay calm while they both keep themselves safe and collect information. The safer they realise they are, the closer they choose to go. There's more going on than just R-, but that's what reinforces choices to disengage. If we created distance before the dog wanted it, the distance wouldn't be a good reinforcer. They usually learn pretty fast. :) We don't let them make stupid decisions. Direct, aroused approaches are going to go badly, and are usually a big part of why the dog has ended up reactive. They do it all the time and can't understand why dogs are always having a go at them, but the more it happens, the more tense they get at greetings, and the more they feel like they should probably tell the other dog off first. The 3-second greeting is a good tool IMO. Some of these frustrated greeters are complicated creatures. They can get really ambivalent. I love working with them! The approach is not aversive or the dog would not choose to do it. And some don't, so we do other things with them until they are ready for it. Some are never going to want to approach other dogs. Most of them do want to approach, though.Sometimes we can even reward behaviours with approach. As I said, the longer/closer they are with another dog, the more intense the stimulus gets. Sooner or later, it gets to be intense enough that they don't want to be there anymore. I want to give them a way to tell their handler when they are approaching that point so the handler can move them away BEFORE the dog feels like they need to do something dramatic. When they can communicate this to their owner, they will do it before the owner is likely to detect any signs of discomfort. But, the fact that the dog is performing the behaviour that gets them distance tells us that they want to escape from the stimulus. But this does not mean that they won't want to turn around and approach again 20 seconds later. I like this better than counter-conditioning precisely because you can let the dog tell you when to move away and when to come back again. A lot of their anxiety is around a lack of control, so if you give them control of their exposure, they tend to drive their own rehabilitation.

That's how I saw it used... safety is with the trainer, pressure (from the collar) is released when the dog comes to the trainer. So the dog starts to see the trainer as a safe place. Despite the trainer being the one that applied the pressure in the first place. One part I do like is if the dog does decide to have a go at another dog while under this system - the pressure / aversive is self inflicted. But they were under aversive from the sight of the other dog anyway. I don't use any leash pressure. We just teach them that some behaviours result in more distance, and some less distance (although that one only with frustrated greeters, really). And other behaviours result in treats/rubs/attention. Say they are looking at the other dog and on a loose leash are walking forwards. The handler walks forward with them until either I say close enough or the dog stops moving. We wait for the dog to disengage (e.g. looks away, sniffs the ground, looks at handler) and then say "Okay" and turn around and walk away. The dog willingly comes with most times. The dog learns they can look as much as they want if they are relaxed, and can go forward at a pace they are comfortable with, and if they want more space, they disengage or look to the handler. LAT works nicely in conjunction with this. It's basically BAT 1.0. The new BAT 2.0 doesn't use this negative reinforcement so much. It can be very subtle. We go where they want to go. Usually they are interested in other dogs, and if they can approach slowly, or watch quietly, they will. The discomfort occurs when their interest intensifies and arousal goes up a bit. They may start to get a bit uncertain of themselves. If they have the option to disengage, get some distance, have a break, they will typically take it. Once they learn that their handler will respond to certain behaviours by giving them more space, they tend to start using that behaviour to ask for more space before they even show much sign of discomfort. It's just like when you're checking out a snake or something and you get a little closer and a little closer and then you want to back off and collect yourself before having another look. I'm not real concerned about ethics, here. The dogs are in control. As long as they are excited about coming to classes and are making steady improvements, I'm happy. They usually become a lot more responsive to their handlers as well, and the handlers get a lot better at recognising when their dog is uneasy and needs support. Everyone gets happier, and that's the whole point. Loose leash as much as possible and lots of stopping to see what the dog wants to do.

I use it in my classes for reactive dogs a fair bit. If you know what the dog wants, you can use it to teach them to be calm and use new coping skills instead of the volatile behaviour they usually use. A lot of them want to move away from the other dog. It's really cool when you can teach a dog a "forward" and "back/hold" behaviour and they start to tell you where they want to go and when. It makes rehab a lot easier when you're listening to them and they know it.

I think what willem is trying to say is that he doesn't distinguish or recognize positive or negative punishment as separate entities because both result in a negative consequence (and hopefully subsequent extinction of behaviour) thanks for giving my layman thoughts some credit :D ...however it is more that I differ between the phase when you start positive reinforcement training rewarding your dog and the later phase when he is used (conditioned) to it. It is the later phase, where he is used to this kind of training and expects earning the reward that I believe the current terms are limited, actually the subject matter experts seem to ignore the difference. Refusing the treat / reward at the start: I wouldn't call it punishment at all as I believe that it doesn't have a big impact on the dog's behaviour (also a lot of experts would call it a form of negative punishment)...it is just the reward that affects the behaviour (IMO). The later stage is totally different - the dog is now used or even addicted to the reward and refusing the treat becomes a very powerful form of punishment; holding the reward back will trigger now negative feelings / perhaps frustration ...and I'm the one who triggers it, I'm the one who gives / adds frustration to the dog...so yes, IMO punishment, but it doesn't fit smoothly in the existing quadrants. Many domestic dogs IME have rubbish resilience in learning. They quit as soon as something doesn't work the way they thought it would. As someone who spent 3 years watching this in minute detail and examining emotional states and behaviour in different dogs doing the same task, I will say that there is something going on there and I think for some dogs, it's a big deal when they don't get rewarded. I have seen dogs hide under furniture and get weirdly avoidant because they didn't get rewarded, presumably when they expected they would. When you see that kind of thing, you have to start wondering if there is some punishment occurring, although it's hard to separate it out from emotional states. However, this is not all dogs, thank goodness. It's probably about 20% of the population or so if my experiences are anything to go by. I would also be quite shocked if training style didn't have something to do with it at least in some cases. Even a dog with a little resilience will brush it off and try again. If you are giving more failed trials than successful trials, there's a good chance the dog will walk out on you because your training session is not fun no matter how resilient they are. And some dogs need a very high success rate to keep their interest. But unless we can document some avoidance of behaviours that have not been rewarded, I'm not willing to call no reward a punishment. It's really unlikely to be accurate.

Not really. For that to be the case, you would see a reduction across the board of that behaviour that failed to be rewarded. This usually results in general behavioural suppression, which is a pain in the arse for training. Rather, the behaviours that are not rewarded are abandoned through extinction. ...I made a second attempt to digest this, but na, I don't get it...???... I think she is saying that punishment/corrections can result in general behavioural suppression (dog unwilling to try new things/offer new behaviours) which makes training through positive reinforcement more difficult (especially if you like shaping). Withholding rewards leads to behaviours which are not rewarded not being repeated/going away through extinction. Pretty much. Punishment suppresses behaviour. Whenever you use it, you create some avoidance, and unless the dog knows exactly what results in punishment, they could associate it with several things. For example, if I am in the middle of shaping a paw target, and I punish an attempt that doesn't meet criteria, how does my dog know that he's been punished for not lifting his paw high enough rather than, say, lifting his paw at all? How does he know it was about his paw lift and not about him turning his head slightly, or the appearance of another dog, or a slight shuffle before he lifted his paw? In contrast, by reinforcing only the behaviour that is closer to what you want, the dog learns what is rewarding, and they naturally do more of it and therefore less of everything else. No punishment required, and this is better, because if you punished everything that you didn't reinforce, then it would be really hard to get any of those behaviours you didn't reinforce later on. I don't want my dog to sit when I am trying to get a down, but I still want him to sit at other times, so I should not punish sits.

Not really. For that to be the case, you would see a reduction across the board of that behaviour that failed to be rewarded. This usually results in general behavioural suppression, which is a pain in the arse for training. Rather, the behaviours that are not rewarded are abandoned through extinction.

I know the work of the Bristol group pretty well, and have met some of the scientists there. They are heavyweights in the canine science world for good reason. I am not aware of any of their work that has been discredited, except for perhaps the dominance study, which hasn't been discredited so much as generated some disagreement and robust discussion. The general aim with positive training is to avoid needing to correct the dog. If you control the environment and step the dog up with their behaviour so they know what to do, there's not much to correct. Plenty of incorrect responses you can easily afford to ignore and they will just go away because they are not being reinforced. There are levels of precision and reliability that are challenging to create with rewards alone, unless you are Bob Bailey (who rewarded his open ocean working dolphins with sex toys on their return, as it happens - they were able to hunt and eat while working). And most people don't need that. They just need their dog to come when called and behave nicely in public. That is easy to get with rewards alone for the vast majority of dogs. There's no way I would consider positive reinforcement remotely as risky as punishment or negative reinforcement. Aversive control is far more likely to be associated with aggression than rewards are, and there is science to support that. I am extremely cautious with punishment and pretty blasé with positive reinforcement. Because that's the nature of aversive and appetitive stimuli. They are not just as potentially bad as each other. Not by a long shot. If I could convince all of my clients of one thing only, it would be to stop correcting their dogs. Never needed to instruct anyone on how to punish, because it's not yet been necessary and often makes things worse.

Although I feel compelled to defend myself. I said peaceful conflict resolution was the norm between two dogs and in free ranging dogs. I never said it was common in multiple dog homes. I was drawing attention to the disconnect between ethology and multiple dog homes. Because time and time again, it is a valuable exercise in figuring out why things occur and persist. I know lots of people that have more dogs than I ever would, and some of them run a very tight ship, which IMO is a great way to minimise the times that dogs may come into conflict. But problems still arise.

Whoa, smackdown. All right, I'll stop trying to make the point that is not successfully being made. Sorry for piping up. I will return to my ivory tower.

Incidentally, I am not actually sure what people mean exactly when they say "boundaries" and "rules", so I probably should have asked for definitions before raising an eyebrow and expressing my disbelief. I jumped the gun because competition is a fact of life with any species, and the degree to which dogs compete is at least partially beyond human influence in the short-term. We have Scott and Fuller to show us that. Dogs that have a problem behaviour are usually doing something that makes a whole lot of sense to them, and that includes inter-dog household aggression. Some dogs are just very agreeable, but the rest of them will keep doing things that make a whole lot of sense to them and there's nothing you can do short of physically preventing them until you address the function of the behaviour.

This is one of the reasons I specifically asked in my first post for the experiences of those who own more than two dogs. Anedotally no issues between two dogs is common. Triple that number and things can be very different, especially as dogs age or are introduced and when they are entire. Boundaries and rules keep dogs safe in households where there is a pack and where you run breeds where dog to dog issues are not uncommon. "Being a dog" as you see it can mean maiming and killing other dogs. THAT is also "conflict resolution". Best not to forget that when reviewing the experiences of households outside your own. "Let them work it out" is not an option for many households any more than it is down the dog park. I think you missed the point I was trying to make. From an ethological perspective, killing other dogs is not common as far as any data published on the issue in free ranging dogs goes. It may be more common in households with multiple dogs, but you have to ask yourself why that is if it's not that common in free ranging dogs. I expect that free ranging dogs can move out and hide and successfully avoid other dogs if need be. Not so easy in a multi-dog household. I was not suggesting dogs should be allowed to work it out. I was suggesting it is common for them to do so peacefully if the conditions allow it. If the conditions do not allow it, or the dogs are not inclined to pursue this, the likelihood of escalation and injury dramatically rises. Zoos face this kind of problem all the time. In a natural setting, animals can escape and this can be a huge contributor to peaceful relations. In a zoo enclosure, they can't, and animals die, sometimes out of the blue. In the case of two dogs in a household, often there is enough room for those two dogs to adopt measures that avoid trouble. There is nothing like tight spaces in a house to highlight this. Equally, yards at least are big open spaces, but if there are no obstacles to break it up, the only place a dog can go for refuge is into a fence where they are cornered. I'm not saying it is everything because household aggression is a notoriously difficult problem in behaviour. My only brush with it (two dogs, several vet visits, large house and yard) suggests that even when you have an environment that facilitates good relations you don't necessarily have dogs that want or are particularly good at that.

I do love it when "boundaries" and "rules" somehow override something as essential to being a dog as competition with conspecifics and conflict resolution. My two dogs have never done more than shout at each other, and it has nothing to do with how I manage them. They are just motivated to avoid confrontations, as many dogs blessedly are. They negotiate their way out of most confrontations before they even get started, because they have the opportunity to, and it helps that my older dog is a lover, not a fighter. He will bend over backwards to avoid a confrontation. As such, they are together 24/7 and often not supervised. I go out of my way to give them autonomy because it is good for their wellbeing. If I happened to have dogs that were not prepared to defer or compromise, the best boundaries and rules could do would be to structure resource-related situations so that there is more conditioning and less anxiety and uncertainty about access. It's important to acknowledge that dominance in dogs is best predicted by the dog that defers. In other words, a "weak" dog gives priority access to other dogs, and in that way, determines who is more dominant. If dogs are picking on a supposed weak member of the group, it is likely more complicated, e.g. that dog is unpredictable or disturbs the other dogs in some way, or other dogs are stressed out and redirecting on the safe target. There was a video doing the rounds a month or two ago with a couple of wolves attacking a hunting dog in Sweden. The dog was wearing a GoPro, so you see a lot of the buildup to the attack and the attack itself. It's harrowing, but really highlights how far our dogs are from typical wolf behaviour (thank heavens). Wolves kill interlopers. The dog survived thanks to a protective vest, but was badly injured. Wolves are intensely good at conflict resolution within their own groups. Aggression is rare and highly ritualised in most cases. Dogs vary at conflict resolution, but are generally nowhere near as good at it.

Depends on the dog. :) The muzzle rule is there primarily to protect carcasses from bruising. Not all dogs will bite, but there are some that will and will bite hard enough to bruise. The environment is challenging from a training perspective. I feel for the handlers, who basically have to train dogs when they have their own work responsibilities as well.

If the dog is getting aggravated when you pass in front, the knee jerk ethologist's question is are you introducing visual stimuli that are highly relevant to him, yet he can't figure out what they mean? From a purely behavioural perspective, just break it down. Form a hypothesis and test it. Isolate the possibilities and test if they provoke biting one at a time. If it's predictable, then you can form a plan of attack that directly addresses the triggers. Of course, it could be your entire handling system, and going through the process of fixing this problem will just result in it manifesting in another way, but it might be simpler than that, too. Incidentally, I have been observing working dogs on sheep all year for work, and I am becoming increasingly disbelieving of this assertion I hear all the time that good dogs won't bite sheep. Hmmm. But any that are working off the farm will be muzzled, and having seen what they do when they get excited, that seems warranted to me. Some are good at generating excitement when no one is looking. Cheeky beggars!

Corvus, would a carefully selected sheltie that you keep clipped fit your bill? Not a chance in hell. :)

To me, it's a compromise a lot of the time. I like a lot of traits about vallhunds, for example, but I could live without the default to driving, and have indeed committed a lot of time and effort to bringing this under as much control as possible - i.e. just DON'T DO IT, buddy. It's threatening and there are few contexts where it is appropriate for him to embrace this behaviour. I have been reasonably successful, but I think it has taken a toll on him in terms of internal conflict, and in future I will be more careful about how I do this kind of thing. I would have another vall in a heartbeat, but I'd rather one that doesn't have powerful driving instincts. It's a bit of a liability. Dog #3 is on the way for us, and it was absolutely an exercise in compromise. Turns out there are no little herding breeds in Australia that could make good little endurance runners without adding significantly to my grooming commitments. What's more, anything like that coming up in rescue vanishes overnight. So, we are getting a hunting dog, despite me being really not cool with critter killing. The way I see it, it was a necessary compromise.