corvus

My dogs locked my brother out of the house, once. The deadlock is at ground level and they only need to lean on it to lock the door so you can't open it even with the key. Stupid design! I did lock myself out and my dog in one time when I was a student. A strange dog wandered into the front yard and Penny went ballistic. I went out to investigate and she was trying to push through the door. I accidentally closed it on my hand, snatched my hand back, and the door closed and locked. Bugger. Fortunately my housemate was working in the city just a 10 minute walk away. The look on Penny's face when she realised she was in and I was out was hysterical, though. She was very glad to see me when I finally got back in!

Hope he's okay. My mum has a little dog a bit like that. He is also 8. He cannot be left in the yard when no one is home or he will get out one way or another. Inside he will jump on the table, open bags, and pull all the contents out and chew on them. He jumps the barrier on the family room door so he can get into the rest of the house where he recently found a packet of Neurofen Plus in a handbag on the dining table and ate it. If he sees a mouse he will spend all day digging whatever wall or skirting board he saw it near to pieces. Anything remotely of interest to him that goes in the garbage now goes into a small bin on the kitchen counter because it's the only place he can't get to. The kitchen tidy has no liner because he will pull it out and spread garbage all over the floor and pick through it. He does what he pleases and only does what he's asked when he knows there's something in it for him. He is wily as a fox, smart as a whip, and very opportunistic. He can't be fed near the other dogs or he'll bully them and take their food. So no one gets bones or chews that take a while to eat. He is a slippery little bugger and wriggles out doors and gates and then he takes off and decides to become deaf (although his recall is finally coming good. Hooray!). Basically, he is a liability. My parents have shifted their lives and routines around to manage him. He is annoying as hell, but he's also an impossibly charming little man. You learn not to leave anything out. It's like living in bear country. Lucky he's only little.

So glad to hear you are doing well and healing. All the best for a speedy recovery.

Perhaps my view will be unpopular, but to be honest I think my dogs know better than I do what is appropriate for each dog. If it's a dog they don't know they usually approach it slowly and pause before they go into the dog's space, sometimes waiting for the other dog to give them a sign, I guess. Dogs they know they run right up to. Occasionally they meet a new dog and run up to them instead of being polite. The dog in question is usually some confident Lab or Staffy that thinks all dogs should be joyfully greeted at a dead run. Sometimes they get a bit over-excited and I call them back because it looks like they are intimidating a dog with all the butt sniffing. I haven't found inappropriate greetings to be much of a problem. People told me dog parks would teach my dogs to charge up to any dog they see, but I haven't seen that in either of mine. I was totally paranoid about it, but even when they were puppies they didn't do it much. The occasional puppy brain moment. If I had a more exuberant breed I'd be working on whiplash turns and rock solid recalls, maybe a solid distance down. I haven't found any to be necessary with my guys, though. They have good recalls and that seems to serve us well.

Just a suggestion.... It's probably best not to shout at a dog that is behaving aggressively and/or dominantly. By shouting at the male it looks to the female like you are taking her part. She may have run over as a response to the boost in confidence that came with your disciplining of the male. My last dog was a shocker with this. I think it's worthwhile being careful that you're not making an ongoing social contest more prolonged/worse by in a sense boosting the subordinate dog's resource holding potential through social support. It could be promoting instability rather than encouraging it.

If you let your dogs sniff things on walks, I think they can be quite mentally stimulating. And if you do training as you go. Erik thinks he could train all day. I've seen him manically clicker training for an hour and still up for more, and clicker training is about as hard as it gets. He loves free shaping. I invariably get tired before he does. But let him play off leash with Kivi for an hour and he's happy to sleep for the rest of the day. I could take him somewhere new and keep him on leash and do no training and the sheer effort of processing all the information will wear him out. Personally, I think it's natural for dogs to want to greet their owners when they get home. It's a pretty strong compulsion. My boys are given the opportunity to give greeting kisses and cuddles once they have downed/sat nicely at the door. That's what they are working so hard for, after all. I should probably deliver! It doesn't have to be crazy, though. We have, like, 20 seconds of loving on each other and then they will go outside to toilet or whatever and I don't engage with them much for the next half an hour or so. Sometimes they are feeling particularly lovey dovey and come back for seconds and thirds of cuddles. I'm fine with that as long as they ask nicely (sit quietly, or down). Erik gives some pretty fun cuddles. Think weak at the knees, throwing his head back, flopping out of my arms backwards onto his back on the ground so I can give him tummy rubs. I have to be careful to catch him or he will land on his head! I wouldn't give those up for the world. It's not a big deal to indulge greeting rituals as long as they are taught calm greeting rituals.

From Karen Pryor's website:

The more the merrier. Erik is on guard until he knows you, too. Kivi is never on guard. A dozen Lappies hanging out together is hard to miss. I think parking out there is a cinch. If it's where I think it is there's a big carpark just next to the park. I think if you give Codi a little time and space he'd calm down. Kivi and Erik are just over a year apart in age.

CWEW was gonna come with her JS You'll know all the lappie people from the spitz breeds thread. I have to drive out on my own as well, as OH is working. :D It's at Olympic Park, though, which is easy to get to as it's right off Metroad 3. Kivi is pretty good with puppies. If they are worried he lies down and ignores them. They come over soon enough and he lets them do anything to him. He's a big teddy bear. I don't really remember our first trip to the beach with our boys. We probably kept them on a long line. Ours had been out and about quite a bit before we made a beach trip, though. So they seemed not too insane and kept close. It was handy having a good recall on Kivi. Erik wouldn't have gone anywhere without Kivi when he was a baby. He was like Kivi's satellite. I'm sure they both dug in the sand and wouldn't go anywhere near the water. They love the beach.

Good ones, SSM. I don't have much to add. I just try to treat people how I would want to be treated. What people want to do with their dogs is their business, not mine. If they've bought a DD I shut up and listen to what they have to say about the experience. I consider every dog owner I befriend to be part of a network of people that will hopefully pick my dogs up off the road if they ever find their way out there. It's not that hard to be nice to people, especially if you consider what they would do if they ever saw you or your dogs needing help. If people know you and your dogs and you've been nice to them, they'll go out of their way to help you come the day you need it. That's what community is all about. That alone is a good reason to me to just be very nice to people.

I have always thought of it as a hydra. The pet shop front is just one aspect. I think regulating is a better solution than banning, but that's me. I seem to always be fighting on the dark side. It's hard going.

We got a card, which really impressed me because we got to a quite large practice. Despite the fact they have about 5 vets working there and we don't always see the same one, they always ask all the right questions about my dogs. They always seem to know where we're at and ask quite specific things that show they are abreast of what's going on with our pets. The message in the card was very thoughtful. My mum's vet cleared his surgery for an hour when she had to put our old cat to sleep. He booked her as the sole appointment for a whole hour so she didn't have to deal with other people and pets and could take as long as she liked with him. She said they darkened the surgery and left her for as long as she wanted. They sent a card a week later.

OMG! Why?? How weird, and RUDE! I was so flabbergasted I just stared at him. He was admiring Erik and asking me lots of questions. I do not know what he was thinking, and I should have said something, but I was too busy being alarmed and trying to give Erik an escape route. I was so proud of E for the passive way he handled that! I am so glad every kid in the store asked before they patted. Hopefully this means a new generation of people that don't do outrageous things like grabbing a strange dog's muzzle. Shortstep, that is why counter-conditioning and desensitisation are so great. You can address the underlying cause of the aggression while keeping safe.

Argh! That's where people go wrong! Introducing puppies to dog parks is always a bit tense, I think. For my two I kept them on a short leash to begin with, and basically crouched beside puppy at the edge of the park and stayed close while dogs came to visit him. If puppy looks distressed I would block the other dogs. It took a few visits for them to relax. I keep them on a short leash at first so they can't bolt if they get frightened. You should totally bring him to the Lappie picnic on the weekend. There'll be lots of nice dogs and puppies for him to meet.

Leslie Nelson's DVD "Really Reliable Recall". :p It's a great method. Where abouts in Sydney are you? Some of us get together and go to the beach down in Wollongong every 2 months or so. We haven't been for a while because my life got too busy to organise one, but I will get around to it eventually. I have a copy of RRR that I deeply cherish, but I could maybe lend it to you. Because you are a fellow spitz lover. Kivi and Erik are testament to the fact that it works on spitzes. :D My boys don't go in the water at the beach and that's fine by me. They like to splash in the shallow rock pools. My last dog got dumped a couple of times, but being a corgi she was a very bouyant shape and just bobbed to the surface like a cork. She learnt to stay out of the waves.

This is what I did with Kivi and it worked like a charm. He had stopped lunging in a matter of about 3 or 4 trials over about a week. I didn't do any setups, just worked on our normal walks. It helped that he wasn't wildly aroused when he was lunging and he was already pretty excited about his marker. I didn't have to use distance particularly, but I did with Erik, who gets more aroused than Kivi. Ha, this is where I'm STILL at. Kivi will sit or he'll be okay on a loose leash until the very last moment when the owner is bringing the other dog to him and he is within range of greeting. Then he pulls and he gets rewarded EVERY time because the owner of the other dog keeps coming on. It's so annoying! It takes too long to try to tell a person nicely to please wait where they are and we'll come to them. I've changed tactics and am working on a really solid "come to heel" instead. If he's in heel he is quite good about staying there, but I never used to ask for him to come back to heel from a position ahead of me, so that's what I'm teaching him. Anyway, if I can get him in heel before the dog gets in range I've got his attention and he'll actually forget about the other dog until it noses him and then he's like "Oh! Other dog. Where did he come from?"

My little excitable guy is asked to down whenever I come home. I don't even get the key out until he's in a down. I cue it if he's jumping around like an idiot, but otherwise I don't need to cue it because if I just wait he'll remember and go into a down on his own. If he breaks it I freeze until he corrects himself and goes back into a down. We are working on strengthening this. At the moment he can hold his down when I open the door wide enough for him to go through, but it's not especially reliable. He still jumps on the door once or twice most of the time, but I've never tried to address it. He gets himself under control pretty quickly. If you want your guys to sit at the door instead of jumping around manically then cue them to sit at the door and don't open it unless they are sitting. I like the release word because then they learn to hold the position regardless of what the door is doing until you release them. Of course, don't just leap in and ask for a sit in the most outrageously arousing scenario possible (owner coming home or something) but build them up to it by cueing sits in less exciting situations and then ask for it in more and more situations until they are likely to be able to do it when they are extremely excited.

Afaik arousal is intrinsically linked to increased physical activity. But there are a lot of things that could cause that. For example, frustration if reward rate is suddenly lower than usual, or just the sensual stimulation of being in a different environment, drastic change in routine (at a trial instead of snoozing??), as well as the arousal level of the handler and other dogs in the vicinity. You know, thinking about it, I can't think of any behaviour my dogs have been taught that are simply 'maintained'. I do find that if I don't practise Kivi's recall regularly it weakens very quickly, but if I practise it more it becomes stronger. It doesn't ever seem to just sit there at the same level.

Here's a video from Sophia Yin about counter-conditioning as described by Mrs Rusty Bucket. When Erik was 4 months old and getting vaccinations the vet tried to look at his teeth and he got all growly and "you will NOT touch my mouth!" The vet got some chicken out and quickly had him allowing her to look for a piece of chicken. At that point we had done a lot of practise looking at his mouth already, but only when he was relaxed. We'd never tried it when he was aroused. We worked on it a lot and put teeth checking on cue and had him allowing it for his dinner. He still hates it, but will let you prod around in there quite passively. It's super useful. A little while ago he got a dried treat stuck in the roof of his mouth and he didn't fight at all when I opened his mouth and put my fingers right in to yank the treat out. Last time at the vets we had the vet check his teeth and reward him with liver treats and he was fine with it. On the weekend a strange man suddenly grabbed his muzzle and lifted his foot. Somewhat miraculously, Erik did nothing. Just looked uncomfortable. It's amazing what counter-conditioning can do. I think Kikopup on YouTube has a video on teaching a dog the "grab the collar" game.

I don't see how that is so different to what is being lamented on this thread. I would never say something rude about someone else's dog no matter how misguided or rude they were themselves. There's no call for it. It only makes you enemies. It doesn't change anything, or make that person suddenly realise how wrong they have been. It doesn't result in fewer DDs, or fewer people that decide to get one. It doesn't make the owner decide to never get another one, and it won't stop them from calling their dog by the made-up breed they believe it is. So why do it. One can only assume you think it's amusing to make someone upset. As for the question, most people are too distracted about trying to remember what breed my dogs are to be snobby about it. My old boss used to say why would anyone pay so much for a pedigree rather than just getting a dog from the RSPCA. He never changed his mind about that, but he accepted and respected my reasons for doing it. I find it interesting to hear people's reasons for getting a DD. IME they are most interested in the temperament of the dog.

I still don't get why a dog should care if their owner is happy or cranky. It weirds me out. For happy sounds, they are usually paired with affection, which would be a reinforcer for most dogs, but what if cranky owners never do anything other than grumble and look cranky? Erik responds to a cranky owner by putting his tail down and his ears down and lots of displacement behaviour. But if I'm cranky with anything other than him he doesn't respond at all. I've never followed up looking cranky with an aversive towards him, but he still acts like it is an aversive. Kivi despite being a softer dog in general is much less sensitive to human emotional states. Sorry, that was off topic. I used to show a cow in high school that was a beast to handle anywhere but in a show ring. For some reason she would turn into an angel the moment she went into the ring. There were no rewards involved in training the cows, really. It was odd that her whole demeanor would change in the ring. It's not like she didn't push you around at the show outside the ring.

IMO it's about what the dog expects more than anything. If you reward with a lot of different things, sometimes jackpot, sometimes give something little, sometimes nothing at all, then what is the dog to expect? You've pretty much short-circuited their reward expectations and introduced a whole lot of "maybe", which does some cool things to dopamine reward systems if you keep dropping in great rewards. On the other hand, take clicker training for example. I pretty much always deliver the same reward, but the behaviour only gets stronger. What's going on here? Lindsay briefly touched on this when he was in Sydney, pointing out that the clicker serves as a surprise every time purely because of the sharp noise it makes. So they get surprise, treat, which is practically the same thing as OMG, that was better than I expected! And in yet another confusing scenario, I reward recalls with the best treats I can get my hands on. My dogs come galloping when they are recalled because they anticipate something awesome. This is IMO different to strengthening, weakening or maintaining behaviour. It's creating anticipation for a highly valued reward. Again, kicking that dopamine reward system into gear.

Well, that's a fact, is it? Breeders know best. Alpha bet, I don't have the paper on this computer, so not sure how many puppies were involved. I'll check it on the other computer tomorrow, assuming I remember.

Aww, how cute! See, GSPs are gorgeous and I love meeting them, but I don't think I could ever live with one. I like steady, independent breeds. I seem to be in a Nordic herder phase, with a Vallhund and a Lapphund. I love these northern herding breeds. They are tough and easy to train and moderately biddable, very affectionate and friendly, but not especially clingy. I think my Vall has a bit too much herder in him (I just don't get dogs that like to hang around with you just because), but he certainly has his charm. And he's wildly fun to train. I don't like the velcro thing, but I love that my dogs like to lie on me for cuddles about once a day. It's perfect. I can enjoy cuddling them without constantly tripping over them when I'm not cuddling. I also like that they are both spitz breeds and have that little spark of mischief and independence. They aren't terribly sensitive so if I am having a bad day and shouting at some inanimate object they don't care. Basically, they suit me. I don't like many of the herding breeds much. I find them a bit too intense and needy. These guys aren't like that. My next dog is going to be a Basenji, I think. They appeal to me. Crazy smart, very independent, a little on the wild side, but still quite affectionate.

Bitter spray usually works. Also tobasco sauce was my best friend when I was renting with house bunnies.