corvus

I nearly ended up with a whippet/kelpie mix earlier in the year on account of looking for something that could keep up on a run and get along well enough with my Swedish vallhund. The vall plays rough with his close friends, but strictly no contact with new friends. He is very conscious of body space and is considerate with dogs that don't want contact. He loves to chase, and he is happy to role switch and do some running away as well. Coincidentally, I decided something smaller would be better and am now getting one of Ping's sisters from one of the current litters. I would not be doing this if I wasn't looking for a pint-sized fitness pal! I'd stick with my portable, clever, robust, biddable vallhund. I have some 10+km bush trails to shred, though, and no dogs that will shred them with me. The hund boys are more casual scrunchers than shredders. :p

I still think this is what Erik consumed a few hours before he became alarmingly pliant and unsteady on his feet, resulting in a late night trip to ARH and an overnight stay. Apparently he made a remarkable recovery after induced vomiting. The staff were evasive about the drug possibility. I am pretty sure they think we had some lying around. Nope, we just visit some parks where we are suspicious some dodgy stuff goes down after dark.

Maybe what I think of as a mock strike is not what others consider one. Maybe what OSo considers a rush is not what others consider one. Who knows? I did have a small snake I almost trod on rear up one time, but I think it was just trying to change directions real fast. I look but don't touch! I had a rattlesnake do a lovely display for me in California before making off with a lot of noise. Doesn't seem to count, though. It was displaying before I even got close enough to locate it visually.

Yeah, but for the association to be made, the snake has to be the salient stimulus. The more stimuli they are aware of when they get the shock, the weaker the association between snake and pain, and the more likely you will get other associations you don't want (e.g. fences and pain, sniffing the ground and pain, a car heard nearby and pain). What the guy in Perth is doing is probably THE most certain way to make sure the snake scent and the visual snake stimulus are the most salient at the time.

OSo, your local snakes are WEIRD. I have never been rushed by a snake in all my years doing field work and actively looking for them. Bar messing with them or approaching a snake that's under attack from the local birds, they always escape if given the opportunity. They don't always leave, because sometimes they need to warm themselves and would REALLY rather not leave the sun. They are slow and vulnerable. So you go around. I was speaking to a snake catcher recently who deals with a lot of irritated snakes, and they said the same thing, which has also been echoed by several herpetologists and snake enthusiasts I have spoken to over the years that spend A LOT of time actively looking for and catching wild snakes. Sometimes they come towards you. They don't have great vision and if you are still, they may not be aware of you. Make a little noise and they go around. I would (and do) approach a startled snake for a closer look and have never considered it particularly dangerous. I've never had one mock strike at me or arc up. Sometimes they puff a little. Only time I've heard them hiss is if the local birds are attacking them or a dog is playing with them (yes, I have seen the latter, and the dog somehow did not get bitten - it was a very annoyed Tiger).

It is interesting that snake avoidance/aversion training is not really available in Australia, whereas it is very much available in, say, the US. The main issue with snake avoidance training is the lack of evidence for efficacy. Would you shock your dog to install an aversion that might save its life? Yeah. But would you do it if you did not know if it would work and there is a risk of making your dog less safe? Would you do it if you knew a positive reinforcement based method was just as effective? Would you do it if you knew a PR method was 90% as effective for some dogs and more effective for others? We need data, and I think it is irresponsible of trainers to offer snake avoidance courses without being able to demonstrate how effective it is likely to be. When people will "do anything", then we as trainers must not exploit this, even inadvertently.

I would be worried about fallout, depending on what form it took. You absolutely can convince a dog they should actively go after something because it frightens them or startled them. It's the exact reason why one of my dogs is not trusted around cats. It would not be difficult for that dog to turn snakes from a neutral curiosity to something he feels needs to be somewhere else. He is pretty proactive about moving threatening stimuli to somewhere they can't threaten him so much, and it's way harder to convince him to leave it alone at this point than it is to convince him to leave it alone before he decides he won't stand for it. You would not necessarily know this about him if you didn't spend a lot of time with him. The response is probably uncommon in pet dogs, which means trainers are unprepared for it. I would have a huge problem on my hands if someone screwed up with him while trying to teach him an aversion. It could conceivably happen with any dog given the right set of conditions, and I as a trainer and behaviourist wouldn't necessarily know what those conditions are for dogs I don't know well.

I say "stories" because I did not actually see the training that was done. I've seen the dogs, though, and heard the accounts. I am not the only one. Well.... I wonder where the ones I am seeing are coming from, then? I didn't say specifically by trainers using e-collars. I said by the industry. There are plenty of ways a professional can screw up a dog with or without an e-collar. It's funny how I've come to yearn for industry regulation since I started doing behavioural consulting. I am not the one claiming that most trainers are using them on low levels when that is quite the opposite to what the only data we have on it suggests. To take this issue seriously, we need to stare it in the face. If most trainers are only using low levels, why do the collars even have the high levels? If it can make a dog vocalise, are you seriously comfortable with that tool being out there and in use, simply trusting that it won't be used to hurt a dog? This is exactly the same as the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" arguments. People aren't known for their good judgement, particularly when emotional. The tool that has the capacity to do harm is what does harm. If they weren't available, they could not be abused. If I wanted to use them regularly, I'd be petitioning the companies to change the design so they just aren't that powerful. If I were a good trainer only using them on low levels, it wouldn't affect me except to possibly make them a more socially accepted tool.

Denis Carthy's latest argument is only relevant to those who are currently using their dogs in a hunting context in Australia, and also have them out of range of a loud whistle or something similar, AND to and have the skills to train them to lay down on the spot for a long period. How many people are we talking about, here? You could just as easily train this with a pager and positive reinforcement, or even a tone. If the problem is you need to issue a signal to a dog that is out of hearing range, that is not a problem that can only be solved by e-collars. There's some really subtle work being done with e-collars in certain circles, but the problem in my mind is it is far outweighed by heavy handedness. I would certainly not believe the assertion that "most trainers" are using it at low levels. Bollocks. Who is "most trainers"? Give me figures. What are they using it for? Let me see what they consider "low levels". That's not what Cooper et al. found in the UK at all, and everyone knows the situation in the US is worse again. You don't have to be an e-collar hater to want regulation, and nor do you have to be ignorant about how they can be used. You don't have to believe they do nothing but cause pain, and you don't have to deny they can ever be a useful tool. Despite their illegal status, they are out there in NSW, and they are creating work for people like me. It's annoying as hell when your own industry is doing half the damage. Proponents are going to have a hard time convincing me trainers are competent enough to be allowed to use these things legally after some of the stories I've heard. It's lovely when someone shows you a video of their dog experiencing a very low level stimulation, but you can bet they are not putting up their videos of using it on higher levels unless they are so incompetent they don't know how obviously distressing it is.

You can find most bird calls in mp3 form on the internet if you know the species. You can use the recordings to counter-condition so you don't have to be ready for the birds to make a sound themselves. Seriously, I would consider teaching this dog a safety behaviour or spot. Sometimes dogs get themselves so worked up with appeasement attempts that they make it worse for themselves. The best thing you can do for them is give them somewhere to be away from you that is safe and rewarding. Giving them directions and a job to do can satisfy their desperate need to connect with you without putting them so close to you that they just get themselves more frantic and aroused. If she is so easily tipped over the edge, I expect you will find this comes in handy more than this once.

I don't think e-collars are necessarily cruel and inhumane, just as punishment is not necessarily cruel and inhumane. When used judiciously, it can save lives and may give a dog a better quality life than they would otherwise have. The question is, IS it necessary? And does it work? Cooper et al.'s recent paper on e-collar use suggested it works no better than positive reinforcement for things like recall and stock chasing. We have little data for aversion training, but the kiwi work suggests it is moderately to highly effective in the short-term and moderately effective in the longer term. Some people do snake avoidance training with positive reinforcement these days, teaching dogs to return to a handler or keep their distance when they find a snake. On the face of it, this is not more dangerous than, say, the bomb detection dogs that must not under any circumstances touch a trip wire even if there is meat hanging off it to tempt them because it will blow them and everyone with them to pieces. Bob Bailey reports that they used a very serious punishment to make sure dogs would not touch trip wires and only applied it a few times. It was bad enough that they would threaten you if you tried to push those dogs towards the wire. Bailey did that because the powers that be insisted, but says he didn't know if it was necessary. He had argued it wasn't. Bailey is a master at conditioning animals, though, and I seriously doubt there are many trainers that could even approach what he has done in the past with perfectly orchestrated environments and stimuli, and many dogs are coming with a history of behaviour that Bailey never would have allowed in the first place. HOWEVER, Cooper gave a talk at the last Canine Science Forum last year about his work. They were originally planning to compare typical e-collar use with positive reinforcement, but discovered that the average person using these devices in the UK were using them like a sledgehammer and causing a fair bit of distress in the dogs, to the point where they probably could have been charged with animal cruelty. At the end of the day, one has to consider the capacity of a tool for misuse and the impact of that misuse. It's all well and good to argue that you are a good driver and therefore it is safe for you to speed, but we have laws there to prevent this because not everyone is a good driver. I think e-collar manufacturers need to seriously consider how potentially damaging they are comfortable with their products being, and we as a community will decide whether we are comfortable with people potentially inflicting that on dogs. If the capacity is there for harm, then you have to assume harm will occur.

Possibly I am misunderstanding this very easy to understand technology, but I am not so sure they are comparable. TENS units use up to about 100mA, but the resistance is 500 ohms, as opposed to as low as 100 ohms (or lower in certain conditions) for e-collars, as reported in the lawsuit document. The electrical engineer expert witness says: "With the current pulses lasting for 600 milli-seconds and with a value in excess of 20 milli-amps the animal would most probably suffer high level of distress ... It is recorded that a dog's heart is disturbed when it is exposed to currents as low as 0.06 to 0.1 milli-amp. This is the lower threshold for heart disturbance. ... Consideration should be given to the possible duration for receiving the electrical shock. With the collar around the neck and the electrodes contacting the skin the dog would be unable to withdraw from the source of the shock. When a human experiences a shock the first reaction is to withdraw and remove the source of the shock. The collar would not enable the dog to reduce the level of the shock. ..." Furthermore, it is consistently stated with TENS units that they specifically NOT be used on the neck. The contraindication is proximity to the carotid artery. And furthermore again, part of the effectiveness of a TENS unit is the shape of the waves. I am not sure what shape the waves emitted by an e-collar are. The bottomline is that TENS units are supposed to be most effective where they can be felt, but it does not cause pain. A dog can't tell us that they don't feel pain, but most e-collars certainly have the capacity to cause pain. I am not sure what the purpose of the settings going that high is, really, unless you intend to cause the dog pain. The RSPCA were successfully sued on the basis of the specificity of a few cases. That is, they claimed e-collars cause burns, seizures, and can make a 60kg dog do a backflip. This was found to be untrue and misleading, so they lost. Similarly, they claimed that 3000V went through the dog from these collars, which the electrical engineer revealed was kind of correct but misleading. The collars can channel nearly 3000V, but that is with no resistance. They can't put that through a dog. However, they can put 20mA through a dog, which is believed to be quite distressing.

The recommendation in the link is not to use flat collars or martingale collars IF A DOG PULLS. They are specific about that and say nothing against general use. It seems they are borrowing a lot from PPG, which is concerning. RSPCA has in the past based their recommendations on science. PPG claims to do the same, but some scrutiny of the science they cite and in what circumstances should raise some eyebrows. Likewise, some of the statements made on this RSPCA page that are supposedly supported by science are not entirely accurate. E.g. Herron et al do not claim that confrontational methods of addressing aggressive behaviour in dogs CAUSES more aggressive behaviour directed towards the trainer. They report a correlation, and I don't recall it being specific to addressing aggression in the first place. Their claims that collars can cause injury to dogs that pull are unsubstantiated as far as I'm aware. PPG cite some sources of evidence for this, but it basically consists of one case study and one expert of dubious quality with no supporting data.

She is a Trisven girl. :) She is really a great dog. Full of enthusiasm and not much phases her. Plus, she is so stinking cute I nearly die every time I visit. Scenthounds aren't really entirely my thing, but I sure can see why you would have a Fauve, and I'll happily take credit for being the one to tell bro he should get one.

My brother is tackling recall with a Fauve pup at the moment. ;) He is finding it very challenging, even with Leslie Nelson's Really Reliable Recall. The main issue is once she's 'busy', she does not care for anything he has to offer. My advice to him was to work on conditioning. With a conditioned recall, the goal is you are not pitting what you can access against what she can access without you. You are building up a response for her to turn on a dime and run to you before she really thinks about it. If you work on building this up where her response is reliable and obvious, you can build on that with more challenging conditions a little at a time. If you can find a reward that taps into the same things she finds so compelling, it's that little bit easier. IME, the reliability of the recall tends to come down to whether the dog hears it or not. Then again, one of my dogs clearly does hear it on occasion, and opts to do his own thing instead of coming. With lots of practice, this has become uncommon. I can't recall him off rabbits, but I can recall him out of a rabbit warren once he's had his first run. I was doing a lot of work on getting him to attend to me around rabbits to work on this, only then the rabbit warren died, so I've got nowhere to practice anymore. I can recall him off roos and birds. He is not wildly prey driven, but chasing rabbits is literally the only thing he throws his whole self into.

The timing of those negative experiences can be really important, though. With my own dogs, there are times when I absolutely do not want them to have a negative experience and will do everything in my power to stop it. One of my dogs is a single-trial learner that tends to respond to threat by trying to drive it off aggressively unless I can remind him to hold off. You can bet I am extremely careful about when he has a negative experience and what it is. He is also prone to anxiety. Most of my anxious dog clients respond well to a truckload of positive experiences.

Hate to butt in and answer a question not addressed to me, but this is a huge question and I think it's important to note just how complicated this can be and that there is theory that may help answer it. I wrote a whole paper on this kind of thing a few years back. The bottom line is it's critical to understand the emotional state of the animal. If you have a dog that is already in a negative state because they are conflicted or afraid or anxious (the vast majority of dogs with behaviour problems), adding another negative stimulus is way more risky than adding something the dog likes. It doesn't mean that it will go bad, but it does mean that there is a higher chance of it going bad. By that I mean the dog becomes more fearful, or associates their fear with other behaviours or stimuli, and there are bigger things afoot than behaviours and stimuli, because it does affect their mood. The more bad things that happen to a dog, the more they expect more bad things to happen to them. This has a big impact on what they are willing to try. For trainers, behaviours are our currency. The easier a dog will offer up new behaviours, the easier it is for us. So suppressing anything should be considered very carefully. Even using negative reinforcement should be considered very carefully, because you are still bringing more negative experiences to the dog in some cases. The bigger picture is that stacking positive experiences into your dog's court makes for a confident, outgoing dog that will happily try new things. It also tends to make for a dog that is more difficult to manage around reinforcers you can't control, but that has always seemed like a morally repugnant reason to keep a dog risk averse to me. Off-setting the positive experiences with negative experiences is not a big deal if it is rare and will lead to even more positive experiences, but you don't want to be making it a regular part of a dog's life or you risk it making an impression on all that good work you have been doing stacking positive experiences.

Incidentally, I don't even consider my own timing to be quite up to scratch for punishment. I do a truckload of clicker training and get some pretty funky tricks that are entirely reliant on sharp eyes and good timing, but man, it has been ages since I trained a bird. ;)

They are a handy tool for aversion learning if you believe that is what you want/must do. I have been kicking around ideas for snake avoidance training lately and considering running a class (obviously not with e-collars, as they are illegal in NSW), but there are so many ifs and buts and variables to take into account. It is really tricky to map out how to approach this for a variety of different dogs to get the safest and most reliable results. I could count the trainers I know personally worldwide I would trust with an e-collar who might actually use one on one hand. This suggests to me the average professional trainer should not have access to them. Some trainers do quite enough damage without these tools, thanks. I am not real bothered by their illegal status in NSW. I am yet to recommend punishment anyway as a) it's generally easy to not use it and b) it runs counter to my goals for nearly every dog and every behaviour, but if I did decide to go that route for whatever reason, I would just have to be a bit more clever about it, wouldn't I? Shucks.

I have never corrected either of my dogs for running off or disengaging. What would be the point? If they disengage, there are a zillion reasons for that and I actually can't think of any off the top of my head where I would consider it the dog deliberately acting up. If they run off, by the time I get to them, it's too late to do anything but leash and move on. So no, I have never done it. I rely on management and giving them really good reasons to hang around. They are very good off leash. Not perfect, but I generally have more trouble convincing them to stop petitioning me for more training than anything. Instead, I used releases and a points system. The game is to release the dog before they run off or disengage. If I achieve that, I get 1 point. If the dog runs off before I dismiss them, I lose 10 points. It took a while, but this is how I got my dogs to work in any environment pretty much the moment I ask them if they want to. It started out dismissing them so they wouldn't dismiss themselves, but became dismissing them so they would stop hanging around begging for more training.

I believe the criterion is just to have four feet on the ground. The dog was doing that, and got rewarded. I don't think there was much wrestling, really, just strategic hand work. You could easily argue that the reduction in jumping alone could stop the arousal heightening and therefore produce calmness and a foot on a leash would achieve the same thing. To which I would answer, a Thundershirt should have the same effect, then. Let's try it. :) Because attention was the reward, not food. Think of the food as an attractor if you like, or an aid to get the correct behaviour. You could give the dog the food, and I have in the past and probably will in the future, but it tends to cloud the issue a bit. It's harder to pick why the dog is behaving this way in the first place if you are rewarding them with something that is reinforcing regardless of your assumptions. And you introduce an added impetus for the dog to approach that you may not want. With dogs that jump, I want to know what they are trying to achieve. Do they want more space or less? Are they impulsive, or are they feeling the intensity of the situation? If you keep food rewards out of the picture as much as possible, it is easier to do an analysis of the function of the behaviour and streamline your training. You can make predictions, e.g. If this dog is trying to make contact, then I should be able to reward 4-feet on the floor with contact. If the dog wants more space, I should be able to reward a sit with more space. Equally, using the treat to capture the dog's attention instead of holding the dog or touching keeps the social intensity of the situation down. There are plenty of dogs that start bopping your face the moment you get a bit touchy feely with them. It's not even that they necessarily want more space. I interpret it as kind of like "Wow, I like you, but this is really intense!" I've seen dogs pretty much lose their composure whenever someone tries to interact with them physically. They love people, but it's so intense for them, they just can't keep themselves together. It's not like it's the only way or even necessarily the best way. Plenty of dogs do fine with food rewards for all feet on the ground. Plenty do fine with simply attention for all feet on the ground. Some dogs are not so easy, though, and this can be a complex issue for them. I am glad to see alternative treatments getting out there. I have met a surprising number of dogs that are handling greetings poorly because their goals are misunderstood. Then again, it can be really hard to figure out their goals sometimes. I gather they are not always clear themselves what they are trying to achieve.

I guess it depends on the dog and how long they have been greeting that way and with how many people, and how consistent the training is. I always tell people to keep the dog away from visitors until they can show they are calm enough to think. I suggest sits or a down by the door or gate. If they can hold that while you are opening the door, they are good to come out when released. In many cases, that alone can solve the problem, but for dogs that are intense, needy greeters, they need some extra management as well, and this is where this kind of thing can be quite useful. Again, I'd advise just don't risk it with a non-savvy visitor. Bring the dog out later when they are calmer if you must, preferably on a leash, and with some treats in your hand so you can call them back and reward if they need a break. If the dog has a long history of jumping on everyone, I would not expect new training to hold with people new to the situation. If they haven't been doing it for long, though, you can get this under control in a session, and if it's a really switched on dog, it will usually be responsive to reminders. I had a dog stay with me briefly that would greet with muzzle punches and bruising nips. It was very conflicted, over-aroused behaviour. The dog learnt a hand touch and the worst of the behaviour was under control in a few days. It transferred to other people very well, even newbies. Just tell them to hold their hand out to the side if the dog comes towards them. That is a simple signal and comes pretty naturally. It may have worked particularly well for that dog because it was quite a new way for him to achieve his goals and it took the conflict away completely. I expect it was the first time in his life he'd been able to greet people without conflict.

I really like Denise Fenzi's method, and have been doing similar things for a while with client dogs. There are a few subtle things going on that are really helpful. 1) By putting the control with the helper, the helper can directly influence the dog's behaviour. It's one thing to get a dog to sit and look at you when visitors come, but it doesn't teach the dog how to interact with the visitor. It's easiest when the visitor does that. It will need to be repeated with other people, but getting the basic skills down can be done in a single session. 2) The dog is being rewarded with what they want most - attention from the visitor. This makes whatever they are learning immediately highly relevant. The treat is there to direct attention away from the person's face, because left to its own devices, the dog will look at the person's face and instantly become over-aroused and want to jump up. This is for dogs that are really conflicted. It is surprising how many of them are out there compulsively jumping, but it's not what I would do with a dog that purely wants any kind of attention and doesn't feel conflicted about it. Well, there are some exceptions. 3) The dog is also learning to be calmer around people and keep a hold of their self-control because they are not routinely getting over-aroused. 4) The treats direct the dog's attention towards hands, which is where they can be rewarded with what they want but are not nearly so tempted to jump. There are situations where finding a comfortable distance and approaching slowly is perfectly effective and makes a lot of sense. And there are situations where it's surprisingly difficult to find that distance, and it all unravels as soon as there is someone at the door because that scenario is so exciting. Getting a dog to do hand touches is a great way to give them an acceptable way to make contact when they are very excited. It is extremely useful and very effective. Willem, I would highly doubt your dog falls into this category of needy, conflicted greeter at this point. It makes more sense for you to use distance because you can. You are also dealing with other dogs, who cannot manage the situation in the same way. I usually encourage people with dogs that badly want to greet to turn sits into a request to go closer. Once they get to greeting distance, just a really quick one for a few seconds and then call the dog away and reward. You're building habits that help the dog manage their arousal and behave appropriately.

The best thing i have read & i so wish puppy schools would teach this at classes inside of the free for all entitlement that every dog should be played with which then seems to pass onto the owners that if they see a dog there dog should interact . Good lord, I don't! My reactive dog classes are full of dogs that don't have terrific social skills. Free-for-all puppy classes make me shudder, and are at least partially responsible for filling up my reactive dog classes, but the answer is not to go the other way and try to prevent dogs from finding out that they like their own species. Dogs are social animals, people. That means many of them inherently want to interact with their own kind, and it takes a lot of practice and experience for them to develop their social skills fully. Heaven forbid that they should have some kind of interest in social objects right when you are trying to train them or something. I promise you, it's not that hard to have a dog that is very well socialised and likes interacting with other dogs, but will still want to play and interact with you when you tell them it's on. You just have to train it. You train them that you could say it's on at any moment, and when you do, they will damn well want to be in on it no matter what they were doing a second ago. You train them that it pays to hold on just that little bit longer until you release them to go play. And you accept that they are social animals and asking them to ignore a dog comes with a cost, so you have to build that skill and be mindful of what you are asking of them and when. I can call my dogs at the off leash beach, on fire trails, in parks, on the street, and have them pop into a heel all eyes on me while a dog passes within a foot of them. I am a hobby trainer at best, and I have one extremely social dog and one busy body that feels he needs to check out everything, but I still get their 100% focus, and that wasn't even what I was aiming to get when I did this training years ago. I just wanted to be able to interrupt them and call them back if I needed to for their own safety. It can certainly be done, and it's very worthwhile to let them develop their social skills as well, particularly if you live somewhere they will encounter strange dogs regularly.

Sounds like a dog that is very stimulated by the environment to me. Dogs can be like that for a few reasons, but the one I see most often is that they are on the vigilant side. They are checking everything out in case it's important - i.e. it's a threat, something to engage with, something that means something else... There's a game from Control Unleashed called Give Me A Break that is designed for dogs that are over-stimulated and/or over-aroused by their environment. You start in a small area, engage the dog with some training, then dismiss them to do what they want. They sniff around the area and check everything out until they get tired of it and come back to you. You are waiting for them to sit to tell you they are ready to engage again. You reward, do a few things with them, then dismiss them again and again wait for them to choose to re-engage. It's kind of counter-intuitive, but this is essentially how I got my very easily aroused dog to work in dog parks even when other dogs would come up to us and get in the way. Of course, his tolerance for that is low and diminishing as he gets older, so we don't train in dog parks anymore. But, it totally worked, and then I got him training at the beach, and then in the bush, and then around dogs playing fetch, which is seriously challenging for him. I focused less on trying to find what he loves and more on patterns of engagement and strategic releases. Sometimes the problem is not motivation so much as they need to learn to split their attention between you and the rest of the world, and to default to coming back to you regularly and waiting for a release before running off. That last one was super important for us.