corvus

I could try it, but I think the ball's a bit too satisfying for the moment. It's a hard choice for him whether to come for a tug or keep away with his ball. I figure retrieve would be easier for him to learn if he didn't have that hard choice to make. He can catch a tug toy and I think it will be much easier for him to bring that one back to me and we can have a tug as a reward. Once I have him habitually bringing it back or have a cue for it then I think he'll be more easily convinced about the ball.

Yeah, but I'm not going to cue a recall and then change the rules on him so he doesn't get rewarded. My recalls are sacred! I liked Susan Garrett's approach and I think I'll go that way. I just wanted a clue on how to shape it with toy rewards when he's got the toy and doesn't want another ball toss as much as he wants to parade the ball. I'm not trying to be argumentative or difficult, just that it's not gonna work if I just walk away or "not reward" him because he's being rewarded as long as he's got the ball. It's not hard to get Erik to do something for any reward, usually, so I don't often have to think beyond "mark-reward with whatever's handy". But it looks like possibly tug is at least equal to parading a ball and I think I just need to take the ball out of the equation and teach retrieve with a tug instead. I can bring the ball in again once he's got the idea and see how he goes.

He has an ace recall. But I don't want him to recall. I want him to retrieve. If I recall him he'll dump the toy and come running because he is expected to abandon everything and come running when I recall him. I am happy with this state of affairs and would like him to continue doing that.

Yeah, I remember that. Both my boys went through the "OMG, we're halfway 'round the block, I'M FREAKING OUT!" stage where their brains would break sometimes. Usually just when you were commenting how good your puppy was being. I always carried a tug toy when they were going through that stage. If they lost it I let them play tug until they had got it out of their system. When we got Erik he'd fling himself at Kivi whenever he got the crazies. He'd be determined he was going to do it, poor Kivi. Glad I had OH to walk Kivi away from us so Erik couldn't get him. Then I'd break out the treats or the tug and just reward for any glances in my direction. He came good. I wouldn't assume that because he does this he's got lots of tug drive. Kivi did it as a puppy and he's a mellow stoner these days. It's just over-arousal. No consequences is not the same as using mostly rewards. I could count the number of times I've punished Erik with P+ on one hand. But he's had plenty of P- and extinction and there are always consequences to his actions. I just don't make them particularly aversive. I give him choices. You can act like an idiot and jump all over me and get ignored or you can lie down as instructed and get a treat. He likes the choices that get him rewards.

It was suggested to me recently that when they are puppies they imprint on their mum, so later in life when they see a dog that looks like their mum they gravitate towards them. This was fascinatingly supported by my mother's Boxer/Kelpie cross, who had a Kelpie mother and will act like a damn fool around Kelpies, but any other breed gets told to stay away.

Yaaay! OH will be so happy to hear as well.

More importantly, how is the other puppy interpreting it? I pay attention to the other dog. If in doubt, hold the one on top back and see if the other one comes bouncing back for more when it's not being pinned to the ground by a growly puppy. My boys play so rough the little guy makes the big guy yelp. He's a big wuss, but if he's yelping for more than a second or does it several times in a short period I declare that the game is too rough and everyone needs to lie down and calm down.

My guys don't get to meet many other Vallhunds or Lapphunds. Except for agility where there's another Vallhund. Erik embarrassed the heck out of me last week by taking his release word to mean "go run across the circle to jump all over a Vallhund". Wicked child! He always goes for the reward he's anticipating when I release him. Guess he was anticipating a rumble with a fellow Vall. He is normally much more polite and sensible about other dogs! They both go nutty for other spitz breeds, though. There's a Mal that sometimes comes to the park and they both fawn all over him. They like Huskies, too.

How old is he? Erik was beyond anything I'd ever seen before when he was around 6 months old. He would get wound up at the drop of a hat and stay up for hours. You could see it in his eyes. He'd be darting glances every which way and if he heard a noise he'd be up and off barking. He couldn't be still for more than 5 seconds. It was madness. I can't believe we lived through that. We had to teach him how to lie down and be calm. The massage REALLY helped. I swear by it. And Kongs. And figuring out what was the trigger and changing his routine so he did something else when he was triggered. He still gets this way every Monday when the Home Ice Cream truck comes around. He hates the bell it rings. He'll bark as long as he can hear it unless I can get him to do something else. I get him to practice lying down on his mat with the Manners Minder. I love that thing. Shut the door so he can't hear it as clearly, and reward like hell when it makes a noise and he doesn't get up. He is improving each week. Sometimes he just needs a little help to calm down.

I dunno... I've been doing the bark-bark, okay, now come inside and lie quietly on your bed thing with Erik. I find it's been working well for what I wanted, which was to teach him to bark briefly rather than not bark at all or bark for ten minutes non-stop, for example. It's not a fool-proof approach. If he's bored he will certainly go and bark and then run inside and sit on his bed and then bark at me if I should happen to fail to notice he just cued me to reward him. Furthermore, if I'm not in my study he doesn't know what to do and just goes back to barking a lot more and getting himself wound up. I need to remember to produce somewhere for him to go to be quiet when I'm cooking. There's more to it than just rewarding and then letting him do what he likes, though. He has to be calm to earn his treat as well. He has to be lying down, his tail has to be relaxed, and his eyes should be soft rather than bright and sparkly if that makes sense. And he absolutely must be silent and have been silent for at least the last ten seconds. He gets a high reward rate if he stays on his bed quietly rather than running back outside to bark. I use a lot of massage and a calm signal to lower his arousal and make it easier for him to choose to stay on his bed. He often falls asleep while he's waiting for a treat. Ideally, I would be paying more attention and shaping the behaviour I want more precisely. But I'm working and just need him to be less distracting. Ted Turner uses a shaping approach to things like this, where he'll reward a less aroused response, and then even less and work it down to nothing.

I dunno. I often say that Kivi would happily be rehomed with anyone that would feed him and give him cuddles, but when it comes down to it we're the ones that feed him and train him and take him places. He gives the appearance of loving everyone the same, but we are a little bit special. If he was getting cuddles and we walked away, he'd come after us. We're his family after all. He'll let anyone cuddle him and will approach anyone and give them the same happy look that we get from him, but he won't follow them anywhere we're not going.

You could always reward yourself. Chocolate for every time you tug and forgot to feel self-conscious. But then, it should be rewarding in itself. A good tug session is so much fun! I love it when Erik hurls himself at his tug toy and swings around on it. When it gets that fun I'm all like "Who was watching?? Did you see that!"

Yeah, but the game's not over, is it? He's got the ball and he's playing a single-player game. He doesn't need me to make it fun, that's what I'm getting at. Thanks for the vid Mrs RB. That looks like what I'm after. I think I'll try to shape it with tug and use the ball as a jackpot for the moment. I have a feeling that ball is about as good as it gets for him at the moment.

Erik looooves tug. I tried today tossing him a tug toy instead of a ball. He got all confused. He wasn't sure if he wanted to do a victory lap or bring it to me for a tug. He ended up going with tug. Yay! Might be onto something, there. If I can put in on cue with the tug maybe then I can generalise it to the ball. He doesn't care if I turn my back on him. The urge to parade that ball seems to be very strong, and he doesn't need an audience to bask in his glory. I should put the other dog away for his own safety. But I keep starting these games/training sessions spontaneously. It's very sloppy of me. I'm only teaching Erik to use Kivi as his punching bag instead of working through an itsy bit of frustration.

Agreed. Proficient positive training doesn't result in the nasty kind of frustration I was talking about. But maybe that's what huski was picturing. I should learn to finish typing my thoughts. One of these days I'm going to get through to OH that he ought to buy me Bob Bailey's dvd for my birthday/Christmas. I think most people agree that no-pull harnesses are a good tool to try if one wishes to try a tool to stop pulling. The head collars are a bit of a red herring.

I was agreeing with you. And simultaneously trying to offer an acceptable reason to others for why you would want to spend more time fixing a problem than less time. Because some problems are symptoms of a deeper problem.

Although there sometimes is a powerful frustration aspect to extinction that isn't very nice. But hey, sometimes a little frustration is good as well. I deliberately put a little pressure on Erik to get him thinking outside the square. I'm a lot more careful about frustrating Kivi, though. Lindsay would argue that when the dog doesn't get what he expects his experience is aversive, which is perhaps what huski is getting at? At any rate HollyE merely said that this method was more positive, which doesn't imply that there are no aversives involved however they are defined. Holly, I like to fix the root of the problem rather than fixing symptoms. It tends to take longer, but the effects are more far-reaching. I had an argument with OH this morning because Erik has decided he hateshateshates having his harness put on or taken off (doesn't care about actually wearing it) and OH wanted to fix it by not giving him anywhere to run to when the harness came out. But I wanted to change the way he feels about getting his harness on. My way would take a lot longer, but my dog would be happier. OH's way has merit in the short-term, though, and should be incorporated into how we end up treating the problem.

I have never had a heart dog. I loved Penny dearly. She was my girl and my oldest friend. I adore Kivi. He's just so sweet and special and makes me feel like he needs extra special care (although he doesn't). I think Erik is an awesome dog and I treat him like my prodigious child. But Kit my hare has my heart and always will. There's a grown-up quality to the relationship we have. He doesn't need me and we both know it. He's an adult in a way that domestic companion animals will never really be. He is not cuddly, or affectionate, or easy to get along with. He is not social. He is skittish, solitary, and extremely difficult to do anything with. But he's my baby. I raised him from such an early age, and he has repaid every sleepless night, every moment of panic or anxiety, every minute I have spent worrying about how to do the best I can by him tenfold. One day I'm going to write a book about what he has taught me. There's a book's worth of it.

I imagine that's an individual dog thing whether they are "kinder" or not. If the dog is happy and not pulling the potential for injury is not much worse than a flat collar, which also has just one point of contact at the sensitive trachea... It is to control the dog, but that doesn't mean the dog pulls when it's on. The leash and harnesses I use are to control my dog as well. Oddly enough, I rarely have to use them. The boys are pretty good with voice control. It's no different. What controls the dog is having the cue there that they can't pull i.e. the feeling of the equipment on them. Let's face it, a lot of of folks are going to struggle weaning them off the head collar. I don't think that's a big deal at all. Whatever means their dog will get regular walks.

Why is that so sad? Provided the dog doesn't pull and is still enjoying their walks and doesn't compete in anything where a halti is not allowed, why do they need to be trained not to pull? Why can't they just be managed? I know people that have a Halti permanently attatched to the dog's leash. There is never a reason for those people not to use it. Their dogs don't lean into the head collar. They walk on a loose leash, bright-eyed and tail wagging. Good for them. Management works fine for a lot of people as a permanent fix.

For some reason I only recently tried playing with a ball with Erik. Previously Kivi always jumped him as soon as he went after it, so I taught him to catch a small toss on the full. Problem is, he REALLY likes catching and he's so freaking proud of himself he has to parade around with the ball for ages before he will eventually bring it back for another toss. I figured this would be simple enough to fix. I'd just get two balls and as soon as he caught the first one allow him a moment to bask in his own glory and then cue him to catch the next one. Yeah, wasn't that simple. He very much doesn't want to leave his parading activities, even if I'm tossing a ball to Kivi in the meantime. He's like "Good, toss Kivi the ball. That way I can enjoy a little more time alone with my ball that I caught like some kind of amazing athlete." I tried interrupting the parading before it started with another ball toss and he's decided he'd rather parade, thanks. When this dude parades, the satisfaction emanating from him is enough to make you sick! He struts like he's god's gift to dogdom. No one cares that you can catch, Erik! Lots of dogs can catch! I know I could shape it with a clicker and food, but I kinda want to shape it with a toy instead. Because I'm still working on getting him to transition from play rewards to food rewards smoothly, and I'm too lazy to fade food rewards. Blah, tedious. I wanted to use the ball at the park where he's often too aroused to be particularly interested in food, but will happily work for a more active reward. Can I teach him to bring his ball back with toys, or should I just get off my butt and get the treats out of the fridge?

Definitely love everyone. Kivi would go home with anyone that made eye contact with him. He'd probably be happy, too, provided they spent time with him and fed him. Erik is completely different. He doesn't really want to be petted by strangers and avoids it. Once he knows someone he's pretty friendly. It's kinda nice having the contrast. On the weekend we met some little kids and they wanted to pat the dogs, so I had Kivi who was happy to sit down and let a small boy he'd never met play with his face and make weird noises at him, and Erik, who at first stayed clear but presently decided small boys were very interesting and he should try to figure them out. I like that I've got a bombproof dog for the people to be distracted by, giving Erik the time he needs to decide whether he wants to be social or not. I wouldn't mind if I didn't have any social dogs, but it makes life easier to have one, especially when he's so pretty and cuddly.

I hear you. If Erik was as big as a GSD I'm pretty sure that's what we would have been facing! He's too small to counter surf or attack the bin, but he has tried jumping on the coffee table, jumping on us when we are eating, pulling dvds off the shelves and chewing them up, pulling books off shelves and chewing them, opening cupboard doors in the kitchen, pulling out plastic containers and chewing them up, busting into the spare bedroom where we were keeping baby magpies for WIRES for a short period, digging into visitor's bags to pull out slippers and food, and busting into my study to get to slippers, my bag, a toy, or anything else in there he feels he wants. He needs a lot of structure indoors. Structure and management. Closed doors, suitcases across doors that don't latch, baby gates across openings that don't have doors, folding chairs resting precariously against cupboard doors he can open so they fall down if he opens them, and a general framework for how he should behave around things he wants. Jumping never gets him anything, but lying down quietly gets him most anything he wants. If we can't prevent him from doing something self-rewarding (example, chasing the cat or in our case the pet rabbit) then we put up barriers so he can't. After a while he stops trying. It just has to be a good barrier, because if he conquers a barrier we're looking at a budding obsession. I think you can teach him to be calm indoors. Get him a mat or a bed or rug or just use his crate and dedicate some time to teaching him that when he's on that bed or in that crate it is quiet time. Rewards for being quiet and staying in a down, Kongs, bones, just quiet things to do like Persephone suggests. Massages, maybe some of Karen Overall's Protocol for Relaxation. It didn't take Erik long and it made a difference to his demeanor in general. He spends less time running around being hyper alert and more time lying on my legs on the couch. I think he's a happier dog for being able to switch off. I don't think it's good for him to be so alert that he needs to get up every couple of minutes to bark at something.

The first step I did with Erik was to create a corridor with the end blocked off. I lured him into the blind end and then clicked when he backed out, which he had to do because there wasn't enough room for him to turn around. I did the same sort of thing when I was teaching him to reverse in a circle.

That anticipation is a dopamine reward system. Dopamine seems to go hand-in-hand with arousal.