corvus

I wouldn't expect it to ever become an "official" story unless someone claimed responsibility for it. It wasn't fed to me as an official story, but more of an insider's account. It came from a member of the scientific community, although lecturers aren't above feeding their students politics and propaganda. :p You take it or leave it, like anything you hear. I recently sat in on a frog workshop full of experts and the sheer amount of unsupported information that gets spread around is mind-boggling. It is a lot of good, useful stuff, though. These people know the players, are intimately acquainted with opposition of all sorts, and generally have their fingers on the pulse. I should have whacked an "apparently" before I repeated what I had heard. To clarify once and for all, it's not an official story. I took it as a "those of us in the field know what happened and we're really pissed about it" sort of story. It was still breaking news when I heard it, so it's entirely possible the details weren't correct and it's also entirely possible I remembered them incorrectly.

Here's the website: http://www.onqconferences.com.au/events/APDT2010.php

Well, the "evidence" is anecdotal. That's why it's not being taken seriously. Because there is no scientific evidence to support it yet. Scientists did loads of research into it for humans years ago and concluded that the benefits far outweighed the risks.

I was looking at the program for the APDT Conference in October and it looks pretty interesting to me! Anyone thinking of going? Here's the program: http://www.onqconferences.com.au/resources...Programonly.pdf

It always makes me laugh. I mean, it's 50/50, the odds of getting it right by chance alone are not bad, but the number of times I say left when I'm thinking right in my head, or when someone asks me left or right and although I know which way it is, I have to think about it for a moment and even then only say the right one about 60% of the time... I've come to suspect the concept of left and right is a relatively new one that humans have not yet evolved to understand.

Oh, I think they had a fairly good idea who did it, but what I meant is they don't know for sure or else they could have prosecuted.

There's a fellow that sometimes goes to our dog park who has two Labs. They are lean and fit and he practises obedience with them here and there. Just basic stuff like down-stays and come. He has a pup who will turn on a pinhead when he calls her and comes racing back, and he proceeds to shove food in her face. I could cheer. A new owner has also turned up recently with a mixed breed from the pound. He's quite a young dog and his human family take turns walking him down to the park. They often have treats on them to practise recalls. He is at that age where all the other dogs are a bit mean to him and he seems to incite chaos. His dad is always on the ball and dives in to rescue him whenever it gets a bit crazy, but gives him a chance to sort it out himself first. He was telling us recently that they almost got another dog, I think from a foster carer. They took their current dog to meet it first and the meeting went badly. The owner took the foster dog for a walk to calm down and tried again and it was on again, so they decided that dog wasn't for them. I love hearing about this average family looking out for their dog and trying to do the best by him. And just enjoying having him!

Sorry, I didn't make that very clear. It wasn't the folks that released the foxes that hunted them afterwards, but the wildlife protection folks. Not sure of who exactly, which is why I said "they". Unhelpfully. I heard this story back in my early university days from a guest lecturer... I am wracking my brain trying to remember who it was, but I can't remember. It was the year after the foxes were released that I attended that lecture. I think it was in my Australian Wildlife course, which would have been.... in 2002, so that sounds about right. I'm not sure what the legislation was that upset the pro-hunting people. The guest lecturer didn't say. I got the sense it was an "up yours" gesture. They did it because they were trying to hit the greenies where it hurt. It was not an act of ignorance at all, but was painted as a calculated, malicious act. Don't know about the "hundreds of sightings" in the article, but they might have. I was out of the loop after 2002, so didn't hear anything further on it. I don't think you'd find any conclusive evidence to back that story up. I mean, if they knew who did it they would have been able to prosecute them.

I was responding to your "power vacuum" comment. I think it's misleading. That is the reason, but whether that applies to dogs or not is highly debatable, as I'm sure you know. But competition over resources doesn't necessarily translate to one animal being dominant over another in all situations. Animals are always trying to get their way even if being suppressed by a more dominant animal. They just find sneaky ways of doing it. Trish McConnell has used the example of one of her previous BCs, Pip, and Tulip the Pyr. If Pip wanted something Tulip had, she would squirm up to her and thump her tail on the ground and act like a submissive fool until Tulip gave up and left her to it just to get away from the foolish tail thumping and so forth. Pip got what she wanted through submissive behaviour. Does that make her dominant, or submissive? My point about there being no competition between my dogs was one of different priorities eliminating competition. Kivi would certainly like to keep his Kongs and if given the opportunity to work on them away from Erik he will, but if Erik turns up he won't even try to keep his Kong safe. He just lets Erik take it. If it were a bone, Erik wouldn't try to take it because he knows what a Kivi who isn't going to give him the bone looks like. If I had two like Erik, I'd see competition over Kongs. I think leadership in dogs is bollocks. What do they care if someone is following them or they are following someone else? A leader is only a leader if somone follows them, but does that mean a dog that goes off to do something he enjoys on his own is a leader if another dog happens to follow him to see what he's up to? Some dogs can't bear to let someone go off to do something alone because they have such a strong sense of social cohesion, but others are far more independent and couldn't care less what anyone else is doing. Does that make them a leader? Just because they care more about finding something fun to do than hanging out with another dog? To me, dominance is about competition and resource-holding potential. It's about who wants what and how motivated they are to keep it. It's about judging how motivated a dog is to keep what they have before deciding how to behave towards them. I very much enjoyed McConnell's comments on dominance, and the comments on those blog posts represent some the most sensible discussion on dominance in dogs I've ever seen.

A pro-hunting group released 6 foxes in Tasmania back in 2000 as an act of environmental vandalism in response to changed hunting laws. They caught 3 or 4, I think, in that first year, but never got the last ones. No one has seen one since, but there has been fox scats analysed and positively IDed. And Steve Austen has been training dogs to signal on fox scat for work down there.

Life isn't necessarily a constant parade of competetive situations. Social dominance exists as a means to avoid fights, which occur when individuals are in competition over something. What happens if you have two dogs that rarely compete? My boys are very different and have very different priorities, so they rarely come into conflict with one another and therefore there is no NEED for one to be dominant over the other. What happens is one always backs off. Who it is depends on who wants it more. Erik is pushier, bolder, and more likely to think he can get something he wants off Kivi, but if Kivi doesn't want to give it up Erik doesn't pick a fight with him. Erik will try to encourage Kivi to give it up and if Kivi doesn't care that much about it he will, but Erik is a lot smaller than him and can't make him do anything he doesn't want to do. Kivi is highly motivated to avoid conflicts. That's just who he is. So he doesn't want to compete with Erik. And he doesn't. End of story. No vacuum to fill. They make decisions based on what they personally want. Whether the other dog goes along with it or not is neither here nor there. My mother has a dog that defends his right to get whatever he wants whenever he wants. There are three dogs in that house and he is the only one that plays this game. In fact, he's the only dog I've ever met that plays that game. The girls just avoid him. He will pick a fight over something he doesn't really want that much just to make a point, and he'll pick that fight strategically and not just with any dog. He doesn't care for who makes what decisions. No one can make him do anything, and the only thing he's interested in making anyone else do is give way to him when he says the word. He has no desire to control their every move the way an alpha wannabe does. For the most part he couldn't care less where they are and what they are doing. What is "power" to a dog? They just care about getting what they want.

Counter-conditioning is one of the most powerful and useful tools I think anyone working with animals has at their disposal. I have a hare I am limited to desensitising if there is a problem, and believe me, CC is the bees knees! I would give my eye teeth to be able to CC the hare. It's simple and can be applied to pretty much anything. Just follow Nekhbet's instructions. Only thing is I would NOT make it an exciting affair. Personally, when I touch my dogs I don't want them to be excited. I want them to start calming down. I don't want them to be quivering in anticipation. A lot of the time I am wanting them to be sleepy and calm because I'm doing things like grooming them, checking them over, or doing their nails. I want them to be so relaxed they are practically comatose. I seem to be saying this a lot lately, but teach him to target your hand with his nose. It's so useful! Whenever you don't have treats on you you can just hold out your hand and say "touch" and chances are he'll forget about whatever he was going to do and come and put his nose on your hand. It's a great, safe, happy way to get him to move. It's so easy to teach why not get your daughter to teach him?

I could picture that so clearly that I LOL. When Kivi was younger he used to make these social faux pas like running into my old arthritic corgi and he would realise immediately that he was going to get nailed and he'd try to do the "Hey, I was just kiddin' with ya." thing where he'd do a play bow or a silly head toss or something. It worked more often than not and got him out of trouble. I so know that "Crap, I'm in trouble!" look, though. Kivi always has his head in the clouds and he walks into other dogs or thinks he's pouncing on one of his friends only to discover he's pouncing on a dog that doesn't like that kind of thing, or he's playing with another dog and accidentally steps on someone... all bring out the "Crap! Now I've done it." look.

Thanks M-J. For a bit there I was using a different object to target for right paw and left paw, but at the moment I'm teaching him to move towards a touch, so it's not a huge deal to just touch the paw I want him to lift. Having said that, I think it'd be easier if he lifted his front paws on verbal or hand signal because they are kinda hard to reach sometimes and if he sees a target stick around his front somewhere he defaults to nose targeting it. Maybe I should work on that, actually. It sounds like it's not uncommon for dogs to get mixed up between their right and left front paws. That's funny, as it's not uncommon for humans, either!

Teach Elbie to target his nose to your hand. It's super useful and you can use it to take his mind off things that worry him. If he's concentrating on targeting your hand he can't be glancing all around getting stressed about his surroundings. And if you reinforce it enough you can use it to get him to move places he thinks he doesn't want to go to and so forth. I didn't know there was a "happy" wee and a submissive wee. Thought it was all the same.

Agreed. I think they shouldn't even know where (who) it came from. I have enormous tolerance for puppy behaviour and prefer to concentrate on teaching what I want them to do. I have found that if you're constantly looking for things to reward you find them quite a lot and generally don't need to "correct".

To me with my dogs it's more about social cohesion than guilt, per se. Example, I one day looked up to find Erik chewing on my $900 pair of binoculars. Okay, my fault for leaving them in his reach, but I was so very upset that he may have seriously damaged them. I went "Nonononononono". Didn't say his name, didn't look at him, didn't shout or put him out or interact with him at all, but he knew something was wrong and he had an inkling it was something relating to him. The ears went down and he gave me a "Did I do good?" look. It was a good ten minutes after I had ascertained that no serious damage had been done before I could finally bring myself to look at him again. In that time he had repeatedly approached me with ears and tail down and licking his lips, averting his gaze and so on. But he had not tried any of his usual demanding tactics. He had some sense that things weren't right between us and a need to smooth things over. When I finally looked at him again I invited him up for a cuddle and the relief from him was palpable. Loads of yawns and lip licking and all this tension just melted off him. We cuddled for about ten minutes and as far as he was concerned everything was right in his world again. To me, this is about what is important to him. He is a socially sensitive dog. He has a strong sense of pack and he NEEDS things to be cool between him and other family members. He was not guilty that he had been caught chewing on a forbidden item. He sensed that I was upset with him and that caused him to feel unsettled and he sought to mend whatever had gone wrong between us to make himself feel less unsettled. In your example I agree with Schmoo's boss. They don't necessarily know why cranky humans go hand in hand with some of the things they do, but that doesn't mean they can't react to it if they expect it's coming. All that appeasement might look like the dog is unhappy, but it's not necessarily so. I've seen my dogs pouring out appeasement signals purely to convince another dog to play with them. If the need to pump out appeasement signals was aversive, then they wouldn't approach the dogs at all. They do it to avoid getting beaten up, and to encourage social harmony. It's entirely reasonable in my mind to assume that for many dogs appeasement is the default because it does no harm and may well do a lot of good. It probably makes them feel in control as well. Imagine, "here comes the human, they are going to shout at me, but as long as I suck up shouting is as bad as it will be". They have no reason to believe that the appeasement in the past didn't avert disaster for them.

Can't go too far wrong with counter-conditioning.

So the behaviourist removed him from a situation that is his trigger and he calmed down straight away and that is an indication that he's not actually stressed? Funniest thing. A couple of weeks ago one of my dogs encountered the Monster Next Door to my mother's house (dog behind an opaque fence) and he completely and utterly lost it. Worse than I had ever seen him. Trying to run, screaming, barking, struggling, lunging... totally out of control. I had to walk him past the fence with my arms wrapped tightly around him and I could feel his heart pounding in his chest and he was just about hyperventilating. Fifteen metres past the neighbour's yard and he was cool as a cucumber. You wouldn't think he was the same dog. It was as if it had never happened.

After months of practising body part targeting with Kivi, he now does either front foot, his nose, and left and right hip. I only discovered last night that he could do right hip. He showed me a really nice generalisation of the concept by doing that one when I cued it even though I haven't actually taught it to him. So now I'm thinking it's time to generalise some more and do other body parts and start teaching him to target with two body parts at once. I am thinking back feet are next, and maybe chin. I think he also needs some work on his front paws, as he seems to get confused about them. I expect it's just a matter of practise and encouraging thinking outside the box. Kivi loves thinking inside the box, which is why I've been doing all this targeting in the first place. Has anyone else done some body targeting work? Any pearls of wisdom to offer me? I've started using intermediate bridges and stationary targets. All in all, Kivi is a much happier dog and targeting is heaps of fun.

I've wanted to do it with Kivi forever, but I don't know that he'd pass... He's super laid back around people and will happily sit there and let people cuddle and pat him pretty much forever, but he's not so great on the "walking past another dog and showing no more than a passing interest" thing. He is a bit shaky on that one. He can do it right up until the other dog is almost on top of him and then it all falls apart. Everything else on the quick assessment list he can do.

Yep, San Diego zoo is a breath of fresh air. I liked their Coati running wheel. I was like, okay, it's cool, but would a Coati actually use a... Evidently, yes! as one of them hopped in and had a little run right in front of me. Their Polar Bears are about the happiest zoo animals I've ever seen, and they have a lot of really nicely designed enclosures. Taronga is building similar enclosures these days. When my hare was chewing his litter trays to pieces I had to stop it before he ingested half of it. I gave him things he could safely chew up as surrogates, like cardboard. He was no longer stressed like he was when he started the chewing, but I figured he ought to have an outlet for it anyway. I always make sure he's got things he can safely chew on. He has a lot of seagrass mats in his cage, and untreated wicker baskets, and other bits and pieces he can chew on if he wants.

Erik does "flip flops" where he'll throw himself backwards over your lap for a belly rub. Lately he has started doing this in dangerous situations, such as when you're standing up and he's in your arms, or you're sitting in a chair and he's in your lap facing you, or anywhere that does not have a soft landing, really. He expects to be caught when he throws himself backwards. Twice already he has thrown himself backwards when no one was ready to catch him. Once he hit his head on the wall and the other time he was standing on the floor and so just thumped on his back on the ground. He is unphased, but hitting his head on the wall obviously hurt. You have to watch that kid. He's like one of those kids that'll jump off a chair or the stairs when you're not looking, expecting you to catch them. Except normally those kids learn to check that you're watching! Kivi is adorable. When he gets excited he picks something up and walks around with it in his mouth, ears pinned back, tail wafting gently back and forth. I leave him with a cow's ear if I take Erik out to agility. Last week OH came home when I was still out and Kivi picked up the nearest thing to cart around and it was his uneaten cow's ear. After a few moments he suddenly realised he had picked up something that is not only edible, but delicious, and started prancing around, tossing it in the air. When the boys are playing in the dog park Erik will slam into Kivi and make him fall over. Kivi flops on his side and then he'll dig the ground sideways as if he's still trying to run like a wind-up toy. A moment later you'll turn around to see him chasing Erik with Erik's tail in his mouth. They are loons.

Thanks jdavis. When I visited Sea World in San Diego I got to see loads of stereotypies! Most of the marine mammals did lots of barrel rolling, or they swam around and around following the same imaginary dotted line. You could set the camera up to get a shot because you knew exactly where the animal would be. I found it very sad. Thankfully, the next day we went to San Diego Zoo and there was hardly a stereotypy in sight. A few tracks in enclosures here and there, but so much better. I find it interesting that dogs develop them as well. I'd never met a dog before Erik that had developed one. I remember seeing a dog on one of those animal hospital shows that would lick the air obsessively, though. Erik is also a licker, but you can see it's still triggered by a specific situation. Here's a nice little blog article on stereotypies in animals: http://stalecheerios.com/blog/training-tip...t-stereotypies/