corvus

Also, some dogs really just don't like shaping. My older dog Kivi was clicker trained right from the start and we did lots of free shaping sessions with boxes and so forth. But as he got older he inexplicably became more and more anxious about shaping. He didn't want to offer anything, he didn't want to try, and he was just wanted to guess what I wanted from watching me. He was often frustrated. I could be clicking every second and still have him throw himself on the ground suddenly and whine and gnaw on my foot. I figured seeing as he so badly wanted direction I may as well give him direction and started target training him. His confidence soared and while it took a long time, it was worth every second to see him so excited by training. He loves it! I have taught him to target with his nose, both front paws, both hips, and now I'm teaching him to move his back feet and to hold two targets at once. His tolerance of shaping is much better, now, but I still have to be careful to stick to baby steps and very, very short sessions. I have to do a lot of what he knows and dot new things in there. In contrast, Erik lives for learning new things and is happy to do heaps of new things with just a few known things sprinkled in to keep him peppy. I say watch very closely for signs of frustration, such as vocalising, defaulting repeatedly to known behviours and refusing to leave them, and displacement behaviours. Increase the criteria very slowly and go back to safe, known things before the dog gets too anxious or frustrated to be really enjoying it anymore. My Erik can totally handle a bit of frustration and I'll just keep working him until he figures it out, but Kivi I don't push much at all. I keep going if he just whines a little or barks once or twice, but if it keeps going and he starts lying down I go back to easy things he knows to keep his confidence high.

And you can always film it and ask for someone to look at what you're doing. I found it VERY helpful to have someone see what I was doing and comment.

Yes, our fluffy, long-haired northern breed has a thing for sneaking off to the swamp at the dog park. The dog park has a mangrove swamp on one side and a storm water drain on the other. He always seems to end up in one or the other, up to his belly in mud. Last weekend he got himself stuck in the mangrove swamp and I thought I'd have to go in after him. I put him under the tap at the park before putting him back in the car and somehow a single speck of water got on Erik, the short-haired one, and he hurriedly shook it off himself with the "ew, ew, it's wet!" look. One time my last dog went for a swim in the lake and then came out and rolled in a firepit of all things. She had so much ash and dirt stuck to her coat that what was a tricolour corgi had become a small, uniformly black dog. She was so profoundly filthy I was speechless. She was told to go for another swim when I caught my breath.

Find her something really really easy to click her for. Like eye contact. ETA: take the cues out and try not to help them see what you want them to do. The click will tell them what you want them to do. Concentrate on clicking a lot in a short space of time. Train for just a minute or two and make sure that whatever you're doing you are clicking and treating every few seconds. If she still gets confused, click for any movement at all. Click for as she gets up from a down. Just be careful she knows what she's being clicked for. I found with Kivi he is much more comfortable with something obvious that he has to think about doing rather than things he does without thinking, if that makes sense. Targeting is another good one to start with.

Poor Sid. I swear, adolescent dogs around 8 or 9 months do weird things to groups of dogs. I have witnessed this myself at the dog park. Dogs I know and trust and are usually great with other dogs of all sizes come on really strong to a dog around that age. It's usually one dog that will get the young dog on the ground and all the others suddenly jump in. I've seen the same thing happen to older or younger dogs over and over and never turn serious, but when it's an adolescent dog it's a whole different story. There's this one dog that is we guess about 8 months old who comes to the dog park and before he can do anything at all another dog will come and push him around. I swear, there is nothing in this dog's body language alone to incite that kind of reaction. He looks to me like he's minding his own business. It is definitely improving over time. Sorry, that's probably not much help. My last dog was attacked a few times by the dog next door, although he never managed to seriously injure her. I don't think she ever quite recovered, but at the same time as that was happening she was engaged in a far more serious "war" with our other dog that did land her at the vets a couple of times. I think that was more traumatic to her. We didn't have dog parks, but over a couple of years she slowly relaxed around larger dogs. The more nice dogs she met the more she relaxed.

My second dog has a very strong down. I LOVE IT! When he was a puppy even at his craziest, I could buy myself a few seconds to decide what to do next by telling him to down. He would always throw himself on the ground no matter what he had been doing a moment before. I used it as my main NILIF behaviour, so anything he wanted he had to down for. I then incorporated it into tug games so I wouldn't play with him until he downed. Down turned into the thing you do if you want something, and the precursor to big rewards. He was quickly able to do a down in all sorts of intense situations where he was very excited. He's 12 months old, now, and I still love the default down. I use it daily. If he ever gets over-excited and starts jumping on me or something I can tell him to down and it will focus him on me, give me a few moments to decide what to tell him to do next, and it does calm him a little. It's worth putting a bit of time into, I think. I started with solid sits because they are easier. I shifted to downs because I'd never had a dog with a strong down before. I think it has benefits over a sit. It is more stable as it's harder to bounce out of. And it's inherently calming, I think. Great to hear you are doing so well, salthegal. Love your work!

You have had some good advice, so I'm just adding what I would do. As others said, I found it so much easier to concentrate on rewarding my dogs for what I wanted them to do. Beyond that, I would also TELL them what I wanted them to do instead and reward it with treats. I forgot about trying to tell them what I didn't want them to do. I didn't need to anyway. I had a positive interruptor. Whenever I said my pup's name and they came over, I showered them with attention, games, or treats. That way whenever they did something I didn't want them to do I could call them over and they'd come racing expecting something good. Then I had their attention and could tell them what I wanted them to do and reward that. Aside from what lovemesideways said, which I think was great, I dn't think that this teaches her much. You want to set her up for success. That means you ask for a down, and the second she does it you RELEASE with a release word like "OK" and then reward. Then you ask for a down and release after 1 second and reward. Then ask for a down and release after 2 seconds. If she ever breaks before you release, then you go back to the beginning and work up again. It's called the 300 peck method. I use a release word because it makes life easier. When I say sit or down I mean they should sit or down until I say otherwise. Anyway, if you get to, like a minute long down you can start jumping forwards by tens rather than ones. Yep, this is where an interruptor is good. You can be like "Hey pup!" and she would desist right then and come over to you. I found that was often enough with puppies to distract them for good, but if it wasn't I would then ask them to do something else, like a string of tricks for example. Don't let her keep doing something you don't want her to do. If you can't distract her from it then you need to physically prevent her from doing it. Yep, it is possible. That's one reason why I concentrate on rewards. You can guard against the doing something bad in order to be cued to do something good and be rewarded by using different rewards and practising things you might ask her to do instead of something else in other contexts. If that makes sense.. You have to be real quick and use a marker! She may never learn to "tell" you when she needs to go. It helps to incorporate a signal to wee and rewards when they do. My younger boy started very loudly and insistently telling me he needed to go out when I started giving him treats for weeing in the yard. I tell him "Water the grass" to get him to toilet on command. It's hard work! Keep at it and in a year or so you will have the model dog and be the envy of all your friends.

We have a skamper ramp, but all the same if no one is home the dogs are locked inside where there is no possible way they can find their way into the pool. Both fell in as puppies and are good at avoiding it, but Erik has gone in an extra two times due to him not always watching where he's running! Our pool is too close to the house to fence. The skamper ramp has never once aided any animal out of our pool. We made an exception for my old girl for various reasons pertaining to her quality of life, but the boys have grown up with the no dogs in the yard when no one is home rule. They even have a yard that is fenced away from the pool, but they say they'd rather be inside.

I got ours from Pet Care 2000 in Caringbah. The concrete one, that is.

Sometimes dogs get startled by someone and act differently. Kivi has a couple of times been surprised by our neighbour coming out of her place early in the morning when we are getting the dogs in the car. The tail comes up, ears go forward and he goes to the end of the lead and gives a mighty alert bark. Kivi has never growled in his life, so I think that's about as defensive as he gets. He is fine with that person and we know she's lovely, but he's never expecting to see her so she surprises him when she appears. Erik is about a thousand times more alert than Kivi and does not alert bark at this perosn. My last dog used to suddenly growl at random people from time to time. I got to know when she did it. Usually when she was somewhere she didn't normally see strangers, particularly if she saw them from a distance. I no longer think that whenever dogs growl at a stranger it is a true indication of that person's character. I think that most of the time the person just doesn't fit into the normal stranger category due to some small detail being different, like they have a slight limp, the dog didn't see them right away, the dog feels they are coming up behind them and can't see what they are doing, it's a place or time when strangers are not normal occurrences, and so on and so on. Given Erik gets upset about the TINIEST of details out of the ordinary, I think the chances are high a dog that is behaving peculiarly is just noticing something out of the ordinary. That is not to say that "something" is not also something in that person's demeanor that is related to them being a shady character.

I find that, too. I almost always do Erik first. He switches on instantly, but Kivi takes a bit of warming up sometimes. By the time I get to Kivi he is very excited and has heaps of energy. Nik, I think I'm just not very good at multi-tasking with training.

When I was a kid my cat went missing. I was convinced for years that she was out there somewhere and would come home one day. I used to dream about her returning. She never did. I agree that you just have to let kids get through at their own pace.

I've learnt things from all my animals, not just the dogs. From Penny I learnt how subtle the fallout from corrections can be. She was a victim of my ignorance and still worshipped the ground I walked on. I let her down and I vowed I would never let that happen to another of my dogs. From Kit the hare I learnt to listen. From Bonnie the rabbit I learnt to compromise. From Kivi Tarro I learnt what spitz moments are. And he started me on clicker training and I discovered a patience for and joy in training that I'd never had before. He has taught me to appreciate the little things, and shown me that there are non-confrontational solutions to every social problem. I need a bracelet that says WWKTD. Erik has been teaching me what "needs mental stimulation" and "too smart for their own good" means. He has opened my eyes to why people love working breeds and taught me a lot about arousal and how to manage it. His quirks have taught me to concentrate on communicating to my dogs what I want them to do and forget about what I don't want them to do. And to be hyper aware of his reactions so I bloody well know when I'm accidentally rewarding him!

That's good to know, Mrsdog. Don't take this the wrong way as I mean it as constructive criticism... When I was looking at Sutherland I was looking at the obedience requirements that are required for the dog to advance a level. There was a lot of mention of corrections, which really turned me off.

I tried Nik's method and gave up. It was too difficult to deliver treats fast enough to two dogs at once and my training suffered as a result. I couldn't be bothered persisting with it. I tried using a remote reward delivering machine that rewards automatically on a schedule for Erik, but Erik REALLY loves training. He would get there if I kept working on it, but I keep forgetting. So I shut the other dog into another room or outside. They generally bark incessantly until I get sick of it and give them a turn. It keeps my training sessions short and sweet. Incidentally, I use two different markers. Erik gets a click and Kivi gets "PING". It helps Kivi, but in the end if I'm training someone he wants in on it quite badly. Erik I'm pretty sure knows all the markers and has probably allocated some all on his own as well (like "shh" apparently, and eye contact). He'll take whatever he can get.

I do not think it's responsible or fair to spread unnecessary rumour and hearsay (or discussions had in confidence, for that matter) on a public forum. Besides which, it's pointless in this case. And probably against forum rules, for that matter.

The group in Austria do a lot of work to basically prove what they already know as long-time dog owners and enthusiasts. The thing is, who is going to believe them unless they can prove it? "Knowing" something through observation is not the same as knowing it through the application of the scientific method. That Austrian group do cop it from some for painting dogs as a smarter species than they are, although obviously not everyone thinks that's what they do. Patricia McConnell was recently talking about the curlyness of identifying mimicry in animals on her blog. http://www.theotherendoftheleash.com/do-do...ou-in-milwaukee There's a part 2 to that blog entry as well. She points out that people can't settle on a definition of mimicry in the first place. Some say it's any form of observational learning, and we know that dogs can do that (although it's currently considered the domain of mammals with higher brain capacities with the exception of the octopus), but some say that the behaviour learnt has to be novel. This link has a good run down if you feel like wading through a lot of words, and the point is made there that observational learning should not be considered true imitation because we don't know if the animal learnt the actual movements required from the demonstrator or how the environment works. So in summary, this kind of research is actually useful and worthwhile. It provides evidence for an idea that is not widely accepted. And not every animal is capable of mimicry, or even observational learning. As it happens, there's a study about human and dog demonstrators and their effect on how quickly dogs learn a task. None of the dogs learnt the task faster after seeing it demonstrated by a human. Some of the dogs learnt it faster after watching a dog. Interestingly, the dogs that didn't learn it faster after watching a dog were generally dogs that had previously been classified as socially dominant animals.

You don't have to be the most exciting thing in your dog's world. You just have to be a really good bet. When I say something to my dogs when we are out walking, they have good reason to believe I have just opened the bar and they now have an opportunity to earn a reward of some kind. I mix up the rewards, sometimes use really great treats, sometimes ordinary treats, sometimes a game, sometimes run down the street with them, sometimes a truck load of praise and affection. Whatever floats their boat at the time. I don't want to compete against all the fascinating things a dog can find in the environment. I don't want to always be more interesting. I just want them to feel like if I make eye contact with them, or if I call them, or say their name, or make a noise like "Oi", they should probably come and check me out just in case I have something for them. It's a conditioned response is all. A history of good things. It doesn't have to be better than anything else they might find. It just has to be a really good bet. In time, they respond to your every whim without actually thinking about it. They've done it before they can wonder if it's what they really want to do. All you have to do is build a reward history. Think of all the times you didn't really want to walk all the way to the top of the hill, but you did it anyway just in case there was something good to see. You want to be that thing that makes you do stuff you can't really be bothered doing just in case there's something good at the end. You don't want to be the thing that wasn't worth walking to the top of the hill for after all. With puppies, I assume that when we are out of the yard they will go mental sooner or later. If it's even possible, I don't have the time to do so much training with them in low distraction environments and then work them up. So whenever puppy loses it, we stop and we wait until puppy notices us again, then we give the puppy heaps of treats for noticing us and then we move on. We go nowhere if the puppy is on a taut leash. I started my last two off on long lines (5m) in the interests of getting somewhere on a loose leash.

NDTF has politics according to everyone who is deliberately not a member of NDTF. M-J, I think Steve will be quite good. I've always wanted to hear Peta Clarke talk, mostly because her bio photo has a quoll in it. I think her talk on emotions in animals will be interesting, though. There are some whisperings about the inadequacy of operant conditioning to explain all behaviour, but people are still a bit scared of talking about animal emotions.

Three words: leash, umbrella, treats.

All organisations, I would say. But that's life. I'm yet to find anything that is free of politics.

My family has. Some people will tell you there are no bad dogs, only bad owners. I beg to differ. Some dogs are just not suited to life with humans and this little guy was one of them. He was brought home at 8 weeks, though, so he had that early socialisation at least. It probably made a difference so that for a little while at least he was manageable, but it only got worse as he matured.

Well, the dog would have ended up somewhere, terrified and biting people and no doubt destined for the needle. It's not your friend's fault people do this to puppies. Your friend was just badly exploited to pay money for it and then have it become her problem instead of some other shmuck's problem. It doesn't change the fact the puppy exists at all.

Poor thing. Sorry, no advice. I've tamed a few animals and it's not crazy hard, but you have to be pretty sensitive to them and I wouldn't have a dog like that with a child. Bad for everyone. Scared animals make me very sad.

That depends on how dedicated you are. I know academics that have the most phenomenal memories. It's like "Oh, there was a paper back in 82, I think it was, would have been by Moaning and Grouch, just give me a moment... There you go, I'll send it to you." Their knowledge is cumulative. Most read a lot because it's interesting rather than because it's particularly relevant to what they are doing. They only fall behind when demands on their time force them to prioritise. That is true, although my experience so far has been that vet scientists in research tend to be pretty good at applied science. I doubt that's all of them, but many are there for the same reasons I am. They want to help people help dogs.