corvus

Yeah, I understand that not everyone needs to know where they are going to be able to do something. Most people in my class seem to cope fine just knowing the first step. I'm the oddball that thinks differently and needs to picture where the stairs are going and what each step looks like. It's my responsibility to get for myself the information I need to be confident in what I'm doing, but I'm not the only person in class and so I ask most of my questions by email. I would also quite happily just say "I don't want to do that, do you mind if I did this instead" and the trainer has the option of saying "go ahead" if they want to keep the class moving. It's kinda rude to put them on the spot, though, so that's why I make compromises. That and IME they take it personally if I want to do something differently. I get that they care a lot about me ending up with a dog that doesn't do what I want it to do and they don't know whether I'm going to blame them or blame the dog and have it rehomed or worse. But would it kill them to say "If you don't want to you don't have to but talk to me after class" for example? I would happily sit it out if that's what it took to gain flexibility on things I deem important. I hate it when I want to do something differently. It means I'll have to talk to the trainer about it and that always comes back to bite me no matter how well I think it went at the time. I have researched, which is how I ended up at the club I'm at, but I can't assume that where I think we're heading is where we are heading without having that confirmed. I learnt that in the first week.

Full time and two dogs. Recently I've started working from home 3 days a week and will soon be working from home 5 days a week. If I'm working in the city I am usually away for about 10 hours. OH is away for 12+. We would take our dogs everywhere if we could, but unfortunately supermarkets, shopping centres, cafes and cinemas are not very dog friendly places. We do have a life outside of dogs, but we still spend a lot of time with them. Love taking them places for a run. They need lots of off leash play.

Haha, I hear you futuredogtrainer. I always go into training classes with the best intentions. I keep my head down, I do what I'm told, I pretend I don't know much and try to be a good student. I'll compromise on signals so I'm doing the same thing as everyone else even though it means my dog has to learn a new signal, and I'll ask the instructor before I do anything differently. Inevitably, at some point I draw a line and say I don't want to do that with my dog and I'll give a detailed explanation why and what I would like to do instead and I get a "troublemaker" stamp on my forehead and that's the end of that. They take it as a challenge, and it's not at all. I'm not challenging their methods, their knowledge, or their experience. I'm just saying there's more than one way to do this and I'd rather do it my way because I know my dog and I'm more comfortable with this method. I now travel almost an hour to go to a dog training club where I am very comfortable with the methods, approaches and tools used. I am still scared of the instructors, though. Once bitten twice shy. I ask lots of questions. I need to know exactly what the end product should be to be comfortable practising an exercise. With agility I find I struggle most just trying to understand what this foundation behaviour is supposed to be teaching and where it will be applied in the bigger picture. I can't just follow orders. I really need to know where I'm going with them, and that is the case no matter what I'm doing in life. Most people don't seem to need to know. They just train the foundation behaviours and build on them and retrospectively go "Oh, I see how that was a good idea". But if I don't know where I'm heading I lack confidence and direction and then my dog goes the same way.

My Manners Minder ran out of little bits of puppy Science Diet kibbley treats that I got as a sample somewhere. It was the only thing remotely like kibble I had in the house. The MM works best with kibble, so what kind of highly tasty kibble should I get for it? Because they are just training treats it doesn't really matter what they have in them as long as they are tasty and solid, but I usually try to stick to natural ingredients as much as possible. Recommendations?

Ah yes, Kivi does this. He especially does it when I've just turned the light off and am trying to negotiate through a dark kitchen. Inevitably I walk into Kivi, who has taken a step or two or three and then randomly parked himself. Yesterday I trod on both his front paws because he was sprawled across the kitchen floor while I was cooking breakfast. If I step on Erik I'm like "Yeah, you'll live." but if I step on Kivi he cries and looks hurt and I feel like I've beaten up a disabled child. I nearly fell down the stairs one day trying to avoid making Kivi cry.

Erik goes so far as to push his chest into my heels and rest his chin on my calves with each step. I do not know what goes on back there, but he switches from heel to heel so fast I just get this general sense of being pushed along. If I step over something he tends to cop my heel in his jaw. It does not seem to bother him. My corgi used to do the same, only she wouldn't push me, just be so close I'd hear "clop clop" as each step had my heel tipping her chin. She did it the whole 13 years I had her.

Slippers. Erik cannot resist ripping the wool out of sheepskin slippers. You only need leave them in his reach for a few minutes and he will find them and there will be wool all over the floor in a matter of seconds. OH's parents were here a couple of weeks ago and I kid you not, 5 minutes after they got all the bags inside Erik proudly dropped a slipper at the door of my study. The other one had already been taken outside. He had rumaged through bags to find them. Fortunately, he was just kinda trying them out and deciding which bit to rip into first and so they did survive his attention.

I have never seen a fight break out because a dog is on leash... but I've seen fights occur because a dog on leash was unable to get away and felt defensive as a consequence. I always approach a dog park with the dog on leash and don't let them off until we are in the park and I have asked them to sit and they are doing it and I am confident they are listening and won't just bolt off or something. If it's a park I don't know with dogs I don't know I like to walk them around on leash to keep them at the edge of things until I've made an assessment of the dogs in the park. I've never ever had a dog come up to us while we've been walking the perimeter of an unfenced park. Fenced is a different matter.

Hey, I've already got a conditioned safety signal! Great minds think alike. The problem is he has a couple of safe spots in his cage where he can hide. He got into the habit of going into his safe spots whenever someone came into his cage. It coincided with me being away a lot and he doesn't like strangers coming into his space. So while he used to come out and talk to me he got into the habit of hiding when someone comes in and now he has to be in a hidey place to feel safe when I come in as well. He is quite relaxed when I'm in the cage with him as long as he's in his safe spot, but won't budge from it until I leave. I don't want to push him because at the moment he's VERY skittish when caught out of his safe spot and that just perpetuates the intense attractiveness of being in the safe spot. Now that I'm home during the day a lot I've started feeding him small amounts multiple times during the day. That started out well, but he quickly got used to the new routine and just went back to hiding in his safe spot. So now when I feed him I leave (with the safety signal) and because he's hungry he'll come out to eat quite quickly and is more motivated to stay there, then I sneak back and come back in and leave some tasty treats in his bowl and leave again. I'm trying to get him to the point where he'll eat while I'm hanging around outside his cage in sight. Then just reduce the distance a step at a time. And I'm trying to associate the treats more strongly with myself. I can toss them to him while I'm in the cage, but he doesn't really like the tossing movement and it's hard to get them somewhere he'll notice them. The other night I was tossing bits of banana to what I thought was him lurking behind his cardboard box only to realise he was actually behind me in his other safe spot being absolutely still and silent. I was throwing bits of banana to a rat.

If they follow the same pattern as these chookies, and the starlings and rats they've done the same thing with, look for happy behaviour at its maximum when they have settled into their new home and realised it's awesome, then a gradual decrease as they get used to their new life and adjust their standards to suit.

I don't disagree in the slightest. My concern (and, it appears, the concern of the OP) is what you do about the other off leash area users in the meantime. And the way I see it, you avoid dog parks or you do lots of socialisation and live with the risks. What else can you do? Which way you decide to go depends on your assessment of the risks.

I think that's a very important point. I think it's ideal that my dogs cope with rude behaviour non-aggressively without fear. They don't know that it's behaviour they shouldn't have to tolerate, so why should they care? They don't as long as their strategy works. I am happy to let them practise non-aggressive, non-fearful coping behaviours and have success with it until the cows come home. I will bail early if they are not having success with their non-aggressive coping behaviours. I don't want them to be doing the flight or fight thing rather than the tend and befriend thing. I have. Penny was small, old and fragile when I was taking her to dog parks. She had a pre-emptively aggressive coping strategy. She very rarely had to use it. Like I said, a look and they'd leave her alone. Erik's not exactly huge, either. You can bet I was insanely careful when I was introducing him to dog parks as a 6kg puppy. He's the height of most of the SWFs we see, just heavier. Doesn't mean a big dog can't hurt him by accident. I don't think that anyone's dog park concerns are fantasy. I believe them, I'm just yet to experience it. I'm always ready for it and it never happens. I don't know what people want. Do you want to take your dogs to dog parks or not? If you do, socialise the heck out of them and be as cautious as hell like everyone who has any sense does. If you don't, then don't. It's like on one hand everyone's advocating a person's right to take their small dog to a park and on the other telling them it's too dangerous to do it. They are two unrelated things. Either it's too dangerous or it's not. Whether it's right or wrong for it to be too dangerous is out of the equation as far as making risk assessments goes. You've got to be realistic. I'm not going to be blessed with a population full of people that follow dog park rules any time soon, so I just make sure I follow them and make sure my dogs are as bombproof as they can be. Seems to work for me.

Puppies are like babies. They cry because they are distressed. They can learn that crying doesn't ever alleviate their distress, but personally I don't bother when I can just deal with the distress at the source. It seems kind of mean to me to teach a baby that their natural way of communicating distress is useless. What are they meant to do then? Not that it is likely to have a long-term impact on them. I distinguish between distress crying and "give me attention" crying. If they are crying in distress I don't let it go on for more than a few minutes. The rule of thumb in most books I've read is that if they haven't stopped in 20 minutes they aren't going to stop until they are exhausted and you should go and get them. I don't even wait that long. I might wait 10 minutes max, but mostly if they don't settle within a few minutes I don't let them get themselves all worked up and fretful by crying and crying. The protocol for teaching him to accept you moving around is a great place to start IMO. Here's a copy of Karen Overall's protocol on this, which is really good if you want some easy directions to follow. http://home.gci.net/~divs/behavior/bemod_depart.html A problem that can arise in puppies that grow up indoors with little exposure to outside is that they can end up with a narrow idea of what is comfortable and secure. If you happen to be the biggest and most interesting thing in their life, it's easy for them to end up depending on your presence to feel like everything is normal and safe. If I were you, I'd give him things he likes while you're around to associate with you when you're not around. So get him chewing on the Kongs while you are at home with him. Think about giving him a toy or blanket that only comes out when you're around for a while so that he can later associate it with everything being cool in his world. This is why sometimes leaving a radio or the television on can help. They associate the noise with you being home and so it's less stressful to them when you're not at home.

Sometimes I am not sure what parallel universe I live in. On the weekend we left a dog park because there was an anti-social dog that Erik couldn't handle (Kivi was fine, but he's big and fluffy and has more experience). It is only the second or third time I've left prematurely, and we visit dog parks and off leash beaches several times a week. Lots of different ones, almost every day. There are some we have learnt never to go to, but otherwise, we just don't have a lot of problems. Even when I had my old, grumpy girl she'd just give them the look and they'd avoid her. I figure there are two ways to approach dog parks: avoid or socialise them to it. Not every dog is gonna love it or be easily socialised to it, so you carefully ask yourself if it's in their best interests to take them. My boys are both pretty confident and they take things in their stride. They know dogs appear out of nowhere and stick their noses up their butts, or come racing over and may bowl them, or might snap at them, or be unfriendly, or get up them for going near the ball. They know some dogs are downright weird and will rush them and then run away. They know how to say stop non-aggressively, how to get out of a game that has become too boisterous without getting chased and rumbled, and the efficacy of being able to say "I'm no threat; please don't hurt me." They know who to avoid and how to tell a dog to relax and it takes actually getting aggressively chased and bitten by a dog to really worry them, because if that happens their attempts to communicate have failed. It's happened... maybe three times in the last few years. I'm yet to have to break up a fight or treat an injury. And you know what? With all this rude behaviour they still have a blast every time. They are totally comfortable with the bad bits and love the good bits. So I dunno. You do what works best for you and what makes your dog feel safe and secure. For my two confident boys lots of early exposure under super close supervision has given them a high tolerance for a lot of odd behaviour.

Anyone who isn't Staranais can also read it if they are interested. It's pretty much what I'm planning to do with dogs for the next 3 years.

Staranais, Thought you might be interested in this paper about measuring emotional state in battery hens once they are out of their cages since you mentioned battery hens in discussions about stress recently: http://stud.epsilon.slu.se/863/3/lindstrom_l_100312.pdf

A lot of what I've read lately I think is applicable to dog trainers, especially regarding arousal, anticipation, and dopamine mediated reward systems. This hare of mine is really testing me at the moment. I certainly need more than just OC with him. I suspect all his dopamine hits come from avoiding danger. I will be so freaking triumphant if I ever get his cooperation to touch him again.

Every snippet I've seen of Karen Pryor's new book makes me want it. I've already used an anecdote from that book to try to re-tame my hare. It sounds as though it goes beyond operant conditioning and touches on The Black Box *gasp*. Given I'm spending all my free time reading about animal cognition, arousal, and emotions and how they affect behaviour at the moment, sometimes I forget about OC all together. Then someone reminds me to stop worrying about what emotion is driving the behaviour and just treat the behaviour instead. Would love to see it all come together, though. So, has anyone got it?

Dogs can sulk and how . One of my dogs when reprimanded (doesn't happen often as she is such an angel) gives the appearance of sulking. If I am in bed and I am being stern to her she comes even closer placing her head on my neck with that really sad look on her face, she looks as though she is about to cry. That's a social affiliation behaviour. I find these so interesting! Erik did a good one the other night when I discovered him chewing on my $900 binoculars. All my fault for leaving them somewhere he could get them, but I made a lot of "Nononono NOOOOO" sorts of noises and he was all like "Did I do good?" I was really upset with myself and I was ignoring him because I didn't feel I could be fair to him until I'd calmed down. He came over all anxious and when I finally let him up for a cuddle he got really sooky and snuggled up high on my chest where he could lay his head against my neck. I wouldn't say he was sulking, but I think perhaps he was trying to reconnect with me so everything would be right in his world again.

I love training Erik because he's so easy and you only have to look at him to get him fired up and excited. But Kivi Tarro is very mellow and laid back and he just doesn't get very aroused. He's got his head in the clouds most of the time and has a very low frustration threshold. Erik can do heaps of things I could be proud of, but I think I'm more proud of Kivi because we're in a good place with training where he is happy and more enthusiastic than I ever thought I could get him. It's taken a long time to get him there. Here's a few snippets of a training session earlier in the week. He's not a performance dog, and what he does doesn't look wildly clever or difficult, but just wanted to share 'cause I'm proud as punch of him anyway.

I'm beginning to think dog park rules that go beyond "don't bring a dog on heat into the park, all dogs should be under effective voice control or on leash, and pick up after your dog" is asking a bit much of the average dog park frequenter. I just go and look out for my guys and make sure they don't scare any other dogs. I generally find expecting anything at all from other owners is setting myself up for disappointment/frustration, so I don't expect anything from other owners and just act on my reading of the situation. It's pretty dynamic and variable and I think you have to be flexible, have a cool head, and be prepared for anything. If I'm ever uncertain the boys go on leash or I call them into a hang about. If I ever feel worried we leave. Short of reading one of those books, I think you just have to be dog park savvy.

Fair enough- tho I would perhaps interpret this as him feeling physically uncomfortable ..and going to a 'safe' spot - his bed .. But why would it be "safe" if he never uses it? There are heaps of places he typically lies where he might feel safe, but I could count the times he's chosen to lie on his bed on one hand. He only has one because I feel mean for giving Erik something cuddly and soft and leaving Kivi to the floor. If he wants to hide from me, he goes under the deck or into the garden.

Sure beats having it attacked or flattened. That's why I said avoid rather than don't. Sometimes if you pick up a small dog that is being harrangued by a larger, excitable dog the big dog goes nuts and starts jumping up trying to grab your dog. It can turn a bad situation worse. I've seen it happen, had it happen to me, and saw the bruises on someone's arm when the bigger dog bit them trying to grab the smaller dog. Sometimes it's far better for everyone to leave the dog on the ground and body block instead. I think it's a good rule of thumb because IME it's more likely to cause trouble than avert it, but there are always exceptions. If you think your dog is going to get attacked or flattened I doubt you'd be in the dog park in the first place.

Avoid picking your dog up. It's a good idea to walk them around the perimeter of the park on leash before letting them off. You might not take toys but other people will, and if your dog gets between a BC and its ball there's a good chance they'll get told off. It's best to be able to call them away, but if you can't depend on them coming it's a good idea to have a toy or treats to distract them.

Yes, I think they sulk. But it's different to being blue. Kivi gets blue when he comes home from my parents' house where there are lots of dogs, and when OH's parents leave after they stay for a few days. He goes quiet and inactive. He sulks when I do something to him like put smelly stuff on him, or brush him all over, or take him for a hydrobath and blow dry him. He'll go and lie on his bed, which he never does any other time. My last dog was the queen of sulking. She would go and lie in a corner and refuse to make eye contact. If I went over to her she'd turn her head away from me. If I called her she'd refuse to budge. It was this game we'd go through where she would hold out for as long as she could while I would try to entice her out of the sulkfest.