corvus

I love watching the boys play. How can you not smile when little Erik is wrestling his big fluffy friend to the ground, and then scrambling on top of him and going for the "kill bite" at his neck? Kivi does actually try to stay on his feet sometimes, but Erik overwhelms him. But then, Kivi gets his own back, running behind Erik with Erik's tail or the handle on his harness in his mouth. He holds Erik back and Erik keeps trying to run forwards. Silly dogs. When Erik gets into things I'll be like "Erik! What are you doing??" and he comes over and gazes up at me and wags his tail and puts his ears just a little back. I can't help laughing because he's so cute and he turns this look on as if I could ever be fooled by it. I'll say, "Were you being a brat? Yeah, and you wouldn't know appeasement if it bit you." I just know he'll be back into whatever he was into the moment I turn my back. Kivi is just a bit special. It cracks me up when he refuses to get up to go to bed and I'll be sitting there pushing him, and Erik will be tugging on one of his legs or his tail, and he rolls around mouthing us both like he's got a disability and he thinks this is the funniest game ever. Just as I almost have him up Erik will jump on him and we all fall down again, and then Kivi's groaning and flailing feebly on his back, and I try again and he'll be like a sack of potatoes and just will not put his feet underneath him until he's had his fill of cuddles. Sneaky devil. I used to say his natural state was to be on the ground with several dogs on top of him. He has apparently not grown out of that, and in lieu of several dogs, me and Erik will do.

Yah, I think maybe there's more differences between individuals within the breeds than the breeds themselves! Those Sammies are real smoochers, but my Lapphund... he's always giving kisses as well, but I think he's lazier than the average Lappie or Sami. He's in the lounge room at the moment because he was too lazy to get up and follow me to my study. Erik always finds the energy to follow me around. Kivi is extremely social, but not especially attached to anyone in particular. I don't know how that compares to the other two breeds. I could leave Kivi with a complete stranger and he'd barely miss me. It's good because I never worry about him in someone else's care, but when I go to pick him up I expect little more than a "rooroo!" and a kiss on the face. Sometimes I don't even get that. Kivi is great off leash. Mostly he just sticks close, but we did a fair bit of training and conditioning to get that. He still takes off into the swamp at the dog park on a regular basis. Just to check if there's any possum carcasses to eat, you understand. He lurks on the edge of the embankment that goes into the swamp and you just know he's going to plunge down there sooner or later. Fortunately he stays out of the mangrove mud and comes back, either when we call him or on his own when he ascertains that there are no possum carcasses today. I think we're overdue for a NSW Spitz meet.

Haha, what a hard choice! You know we all love these discussions. ;) Are you looking for something like your current dog, or a little different? Is there anything in particular you'd like to be different? Personally, my preferences run Lappie, Sami, Keesie. I like that the Lapphunds are a little more of a herding dog than the other two. At least, that's my perception. Lapphunds are very sweet and come in som pretty colours, but Samoyeds are also totally drop dead gorgeous and I just love their smiles. I think perhaps the Samis are a bit noisier than the Lappies, and a bit bigger and heavier. Perhaps a bit harder to train/a bit more independent. As far as Kees go, you'd know more about that. I only know Jedi, really. He seems a bit more aloof towards strangers than the Lappies and Samis I've met, but still pretty friendly. I think that fur is thicker than Lapphund fur as well. I think it's much of a muchness, though. They are all great breeds and for me it's little more than looks, size, and minor differences in coat. I was sorely tempted to get a Samoyed to go with my big, black and tan Lapphund. They look good together. ;) I like having two quite different breeds, though. My Vallhund and Lapphund are kind of vaguely comparable, but very different temperaments. I don't think I could cope with two dogs Kivi's size with that much hair, but I don't think I could cope with two clever, enterprising Eriks that need all that mental stimulation.

Sounds like a little firecracker! Can't wait to meet her. Erik regularly shreds things. He gets boxes out of the recycling box in the kitchen and rips them into little pieces. I figure as long as he's ripping up something that's disposable, free, and not too hard to clean up he's not ripping up something expensive that I want. :D He's really not a hunter, at least not yet. He only seems interested in instant gratification and easy wins. Why waste time trying to get a mousey you can't see when there are tug toys you can see ready for a mock kill?

It's not just me, it's OH as well. I want to go into academia and he is in the film industry. I don't want to leave Oz, but nor do I want to end up consulting again because I can't get a research position in Sydney or Melbourne. It's a long way in the future, but I'd rather think about it now so I can help myself as much as possible in networking and so forth and have some kind of "worst case scenario" plan. Easier said than done when you're in your early twenties.

Your dogs are never alone Corvus. They have each other. Ah... Good point. :D They don't do much during the day, though. I work from home most days, now, and they sleep around my feet for hours and hours. But it's probably a fair point that if they have each other to snooze on they are possibly more content than if they didn't have anyone to snooze on. I'm starting to wonder if any breed is really "suited" to being left alone for most of the day. I mean, Kivi coped for a while, but he's obviously happier to have someone around with him. Even Basenjis, which are pretty independent as dogs go, are suggested to be kept with other dogs. Maybe a livestock guardian, but they are hardly suited to being a companion animal. We kinda bred soical dependency into dogs thousands of years ago. I also have a sneaking suspicion that it's really hard to meet the exercise requirements of a high energy breed. I feel like I go for breeds that are believed to have moderate to low exercise requirements and they still need around an hour a day of free running/mental stimulation. So I dunno, if I were the OP I think I'd look for a moderately energetic breed and could reasonably expect it to be able to do a 10 k run a couple of times a week provided it had finished growing and been built up to that distance? Is that wildly wrong? Or go for one of the bigger breeds that are on the mellow side but could take that much exercise if you offered it, like a Golden. I'm a bit confused on shedding as well. I guess I have a warped view of the world with a long-coated northern breed and a short-coated northern breed, but I still reckon the long, thick coat leaves less hair lying around than the short double coat. Provided you brush regularly... outside... with a bin at hand. I don't know about single-coated breeds. The only ones I've known have been year-round shedders. What about a Lagotto? Weims are nice, but I get intimidated about keeping a gundog happy exercise-wise. We go to the dog park on a cold, damp morning really early on a weekend when they are forecasting rain and it's full of GSPs, Viszlas and Border Collies. You can tell the folks that are desperately trying to get the dogs exercised before the weather turns bad. Our dogs can cope with a couple of days of no exercise if the weather is miserable.

It's true, I think sometimes it's not so easy as just taking an animal with you when you move. I'm wondering what would become of my rabbit and hare if I had to move overseas in a few years in order to get a job. I could take them out of the country, but they cetainly wouldn't be coming back in no matter how badly I wanted to bring them. And I seriously think it would be way too much for my hare. He'd be better off released into the wild with a kiss and a prayer. It would break my heart, but sometimes the best thing for an animal is to rehome it. I'd rather someone rehomed their dog because they recognised they were no longer particularly interested than hold onto them and never take them out of the yard or do any training with them or play any games with them or spend any time with them. Having said that, I can't understand how people could get a pet and have it not be a member of the family. How can they not get attached to it?

That sounds like about the same amount of time we are away from home and we keep our two moderately active dogs happy. They get a run at the park most days for about half an hour and they are happy. Once Erik my little Vallhund is old enough I hope that he'll be up for being my jogging companion. My Lapphund was pretty useless, but he's a broken Lapphund. Another forum member has a Lapphund that runs long distances with her. They are nice and mellow when indoors usually, but lots of fur. I still find the fur less annoying than that for short-haired breeds, though. It really only comes out when you brush it. Short-haired dogs shed all over the place. Maybe an Aussie? Although maybe not if you're looking for something that doesn't shed much... I don't know much about the breeds you have chosen. What about a smaller spitz breed with shorter hair like a Shiba Inu? They can be quite active, but are a little on the independent side. Only, I guess they do have a thick double coat even if it's not all that long. Come to think, those Shibas can be pretty mischievous. Maybe clever, independent dogs aren't the way to go... I can kinda relate about the poodles. I don't have anything specifically against them, but somehow I'm just not a poodle person. I dunno! I got nothing.

Kivi was just like that. Only he was never fast enough to bother the birds much. After a while he developed a weird relationships with one of the local magpies. He would sit very, very still and watch it move around the yard. If it flew away he got all disappointed. Kivi still pounces and stalks, but he doesn't have much prey drive, so I don't think it necessarily means Emmy has lots of prey drive. A better indicator might be her reaction to moving objects or how much she likes to tug or rip things up. Kivi was always very gentle with his mouth, although he gets excited by moving objects. Erik was a crazy biter and tugger and he's my drivey one, but he really does not get as excited by the mousies as Kivi does, and he's no pouncer, although he stalks like a BC.

Yeah, Erik's a handful, but he's SO much fun. He made me realise why people like working breeds. I wasn't entirely prepared for a lot of the mischief he gets up to, but I'm glad I went for "the tiger" as he was described to me by his breeder rather than the mellow guy. I get a real kick out of the way he just throws himself into things. Of course, it's not so fun when he's throwing himself into ripping up the carpet or opening the kitchen cupboards to get things out to chew on. Can't be lazy, that's for sure. Thanks for the tip about quiet places. I've been teaching Erik to stay on his mat in lieu of crates because the mat is less annoying to lug from room to room. Sounds like I should really step that up and start incorporating it in more things.

Treating two species the same and appreciating their similarities are two wildly different things to me, and not necessarily related in the slightest. As you have noted, there are some massive differences even between two animals of the same species. I don't train my two dogs exactly the same way. As far as training my animals go, I think my domestic rabbit and one of my dogs have more in common than my domestic rabbit and my wild hare, or my two domestic dogs. I treat them all vastly differently, but I still learn a lot from the things they have in common. Good point, m-j. Staying too long on one criteria and making quite small SAs was something I struggled with for a while. It's only since I got Erik, actually, that I started to see what I had been doing wrong. He moves fast and works for longer than a minute (thanks bunnies), so it was easier to see the progression at work.

What happened earlier was that he was going into drive, getting over-aroused and when I wanted to leave the game he'd lose it and nip me. It happened about 2 or 3 times. That's not his fault. That was my crappy handling. I don't think that's happened in the last 6 months, and he's 11 months now. My point was, now I can pretty much go out and get him as revved as I like and then teach him something new with a clicker (provided it's something active and exciting) or through some other means and he'll be fine. If I say that's that I'm not gonna get chomped even if he's at the same level of arousal (or higher) that months ago would have seen him come unravelled. He's got a lot more focus and self-control, now, and I don't think that's only because he's older. On the other hand, Erik gets aroused by a lot of things and obviously I would rather he wasn't tearing out of the house barking every 5 minutes because he's so wired he has to do something. Teaching him to calm down around environmental stimuli has been a good deal harder than teaching him self-control in tug games. Back in March he was doing pre-agility and he was so excited about the environment (which was new to him) and all the dogs running around that he did get pretty insane. It was train with him manically so he could do something with all that energy or watch his frustration go through the roof and have him barking hysterically. I was amazed but relieved that I could at least keep his attention as long as I was willing to run him through his tricks and teach him new stuff. That ain't a permanent management solution, but I'm okay doing it and gradually gravitating to doing quiet, low energy activities between running. If I'd thought I was going to do agility with him I would have done more work preparing him for that environment. But he is improving. He was sitting quietly on his bed while the guys mowed the lawns last week, and I've got him doing an itsy bit of lying on his mat when I'm training Kivi. Baby steps. Yeah, that makes sense, thanks. I think I do sometimes ask for too much before rewarding. That's another time that arousal comes into play in training. If I don't reward enough at high arousal, I get frustration expressed with high energy activities, like barking and jumping. If I don't reward enough at lower arousal I seem to get lower arousal and confusion. Don't know if Erik is calling shots in your opinion. I bet he thinks he is, but he is under pretty strict NILIF purely in the interests of not spending most of my time unteaching him things he's taught himself in trying to get what he wants. It's easier to keep up with him if I can give him a framework to guide his decisions.

That's funny, because it has taught me kinda the opposite. I learnt more about training dogs from living with a hare than from living with several very different dogs. There's no way in hell a hare is much like a dog, but it's the similarities that I found so valuable, not the differences. My hare became my litmus test for what I could reasonably expect of my dogs. If my hare didn't want any bar of something I would find myself questioning whether it was fair to do it to my dogs just because they didn't fly into a panic like he did. The answer was not always the same for the hare and the dogs, but asking the question was valuable. It did change my mind about some of the things I habitually did, and gave me a better understanding of the ways to take advantage of associative learning and the ways it causes trouble. It gave me a huge appreciation for desensitisation and counter-conditioning, and taught me to be more aware of my body, where my centre of gravity was, and how I shifted my weight. I learnt about pressure and to pay attention to my animal whilst applying it. It got me thinking about alternatives to hands-on methods and using my body to communicate. I developed habits about being aware of how cues are more than just one thing you say or one signal and got to being consistent about all my cues, right down to the way I walked or the sequence of doing things. That has all carried over to the way I work with my dogs and really broadened my mind.

I want a chicken. I have a hare and a rabbit, but they don't feed at a high rate like chickens do. What non-dogs have you trained and what did it teach you?

I feel like mine does more G-rated kisses.

Oh, here's one with tongue. Knew I was bound to have one.

I've got one a bit like that. No tongue in this shot, but there often is!

Most likely because I've been stumbling along with my first high drive dog and making mistakes along the way, but I found with Erik that to begin with he wasn't capable of nearly the control in high arousal that he's capable of now. He had some self-control issues, and I was trying to teach him self-control in pace with his climbing arousal. Sometimes in the beginning I misjudged it and ended up with bruises on my leg. That was good for teaching me to pay closer attention to his behaviour. Nowadays I sometimes think he's going to explode if he stays at that level of arousal for long, and if I left him to it himself he would, but if I give him something to do he's fine. He can and does learn in that state, but only because he's learnt to keep thinking through the arousal. I can clicker train him when he's like that, but for some things he seems to need to slow down and think more carefully. I find that when he's really aroused he will throw himself into things with more physicality than usual, so if I'm trying to get him to do less active things he'll be throwing in rolls and spins just to try to use up some of that mobilised energy, I guess.

The Opponent-process Theory of Motivation paper is available in full for free here: http://dionysus.psych.wisc.edu/lit/Article...lomonR1974a.pdf As it turns out, the separation anxiety paper is available in full for free as well. It's long and a bit hard, but I found the maintenance stimuli section to be really interesting. http://www.behav.org/00library/articles/do...aration_anx.pdf

Hey Jigsaw, I do, but it's on my other computer, which is currently refusing to speak to my bluetooth mouse. I'll send it tomorrow morning. Hey, I've got another one about pathological anxiety in dogs that is pretty heavy going but fascinating stuff. Interested?

Yay, someone answered! :D I'm an inverted U-curve girl. But I wonder about Kivi, my low drive boy. Obviously with Erik if he gets too aroused everything goes out the window and he is very difficult to manage. I would almost say with Kivi that I couldn't get him too aroused. He does get too aroused from time to time, but nothing I can do can get his eyes to glaze over like that. With Erik, I am often trying to bring him down a bit. I've never had to bring Kivi down in training. I'm always trying to perk him up some more.

:D Erik is a good watchdog and would bark at anyone coming in, friend or foe. I wouldn't expect him to do any more, though. But more importantly, whatever he does is fine, really. That's him and I accept him as he is. Same goes for Kivi, who would most likely bring them a sock or toy and push it into their leg.

I will come clean and admit that I struggle with psychology, but this reference came up in a fascinating paper about separation anxiety and once I figured out what the heck it was all about I had a bit of a lightbulb moment. I do believe that Steven Lindsay spoke briefly about this study at the NDTF conference. It looks at skydivers and how at first they have more fear before jumping, but as they get more experienced they have less fear at jumping, but more pleasure upon landing safely. It's like a see-saw. When one is up, the other is down. It's been used to explain drug addiction, with pleasure being the opponent-process to withdrawal. The less pleasure you get from a drug (more habituated/desensitised) the stronger the withdrawal when you don't have it. In the paper about SA, this was used as a possible aid in understanding it. The feelings of comfort and well-being that accompany the dog's proximity to that someone special are followed by feeling the need for social contact, or perhaps the aversiveness of missing it. The more they switch between those extremes the more they depend on the social contact to make them feel secure. At least, that's how I understood it, although obviously this doesn't happen to every dog. One could maybe consider the same process at work between play and inhibition?

I have a Vallhund and a Lapphund. The Vall seems to shed a little all the time, but has big sheds a couple of times a year. The Lappie sheds twice a year and bits of him go at different times. I find if the Lappie is doing a major coat blow and I'm not on top of it, we do sometimes get tumbleweeds. But tumbleweeds are easier to clean up than the random fur on everything the Vall leaves behind. The Lappie I find easier to deal with as his undercoat tends to get all wound up in his guard hairs when he sheds, so not much comes out until you brush it. But he has these long hairs that will turn up on their own in all sorts of places. Often in food or on clean plates somehow. The Vall is constantly ingesting Lappie fur.

Do you follow the drive theory arousal relationship in which drive creates arousal and the more arousal the better the performance? Or are you maybe more of an "inverted U curve" person, in which low and high arousal decrease performance, but moderate arousal increases it? Or do you have some other arousal theory you follow? How do you view arousal in training?