corvus

That's what I wanted in a dog when I was 13. My parents got me a Pembroke Corgi. She was everything I dreamed of and was the perfect first dog for me. She was ALWAYS with me when she could be. She was fine off leash with next to no recall training. That coat might be a problem for your son, though?

I decided it wasn't wise to use confrontational training methods with pushy dogs after a hairy experience with a small breed 12 week old puppy of all things. I provoked him by pushing a matter and he tried to attack me. Given, he turned out to be an emotionally unstable dog with a rather proactive, inflexible coping style and he never tried again with me, but the lesson was, I think, valid nonetheless. If you piss off a dog they can suddenly decide to try to hurt you, and if it's hard to stop a small, 12 week old puppy it's only going to get harder. I'm a human with a big fat forebrain. I think I can come up with some smarter tactics for dealing with an animal that can hurt me than provoking it to hurt me and hoping it is too intimidated to try. Says the girl with an "animals that have bitten me" list...

I would love to. And Morisset is my home town. But feeling a bit intimidated. I'm just a hobby trainer.

My last dog was on Supercoat for many years and was fine.... or so I thought. When she was around 9 years old she started getting bouts of nausea every few months. She'd be terribly sick, not be able to keep anything down, then she'd recover and be back to normal. I ended up getting her blood tests and x-rays to try to work out what was going on, but they showed nothing. The vet suggested I try her on homecooked and the change in her was immediate and profound. She trimmed down and started acting like a puppy again. She suddenly had loads of energy and would do happy dances every meal time. In the next few months her arthritis cleared up completely and we had no more bouts of nausea. I later went onto raw and don't do kibble at all anymore. Well, I have lately got some for training treats for the Manners Minder. So, Supercoat was never great for my dog, but I didn't know it until I took her off it.

Okay, I believe you. But I wouldn't go so far as to draw a line of causality is all. I've seen it in very different contexts, often as displacement behaviour. I think it is all together likely that a dog that does not have structure in its life would regularly feel conflicted or over-excited/aroused and engage in displacement behaviours. That's not to say the two go hand-in-hand, though. Let's not jump to conclusions.

Might be worth considering the so-called "Thai Dingo". Also, what's that breed that's meant to be of the same stock as Bali Street Dogs despite being a relatively new breed? Kintamani? I think they come in black and tan... I think BSDs themselves might be a bit too variable, but I think they have a few genetic markers in common with the Dingo that no other breeds have.

I have a dog that we desexed earlier than we planned because he was humping the other dog all the time. He is also an outspoken, obnoxious little so-and-so and the desexing didn't change that one iota. It did stop the humping, though. That's all it did. Have you thought about a counter-conditioning program so he learns to accept strange people and kids touching him? That is assuming he's acting up because he doesn't like it... Possibly that's a false assumption. We did this with our little guy and it worked for everything we thought of counter-conditioning. He is definitely still tetchy about some handling from strangers, but it's restricted to things we didn't CC for various reasons. We did a lot of it just with us at home putting things on cue and it has been translated successfully to strangers in strange environments, so the kids don't even necessarily need to be put in the firing line.

I'm not picking on you showdog, but I don't believe you are entirely correct. I disagree. There are several reasons why dogs might hump. It is not uncommon in play between dogs and may or may not be considered rude or dominating. Like schmoo said, I often interpret it as the dog being excited but not really sure what to do about it. It can also be related to anxiety (same sort of scenario: dog is feeling socially conflicted and doesn't know what to do about it). And sometimes it is just hormonal, although usually in an adolescent dog hitting puberty. I do not really know why people think it is a dominance gesture. I have rarely seen it used as such, although I won't say never. Dominating is about control. If you're a dog using mounting as a dominant gesture you're doing it to show you can. Therefore you would have to rule out the other possible reasons first. At any rate, dogs that try to control other dogs are generally not actually dominant themselves. They just like to be in control. A truly dominant dog doesn't need to posture and so forth. Actually, someone did a study on this and found that spoiling a dog does not create issues. However, your point that they need to know where they stand is valid and relevant to this situation IMO. If it is a reaction to excitement or anxiety or just not really knowing how to handle her arousal (that's not in the sexual sense), giving her structure and rules is a good place to start to address it. If it were me, I'd introduce some rules into play. Things like you sit or down before you get to tug/wrestle/chase. You can turn it into a little training session. In the meantime, I'd just gently push her off and give her something else to do instead. Whenever my little guy is being a nutter or doing something I'm not fond of I tell him to sit. It stops the behaviour and gives me a moment to decide what to do next. If I reward him then he's rewarded for the sit rather than the obnoxious behaviour preceding it. I have to be careful, though. Sometimes just telling him to sit can be a reward... I think it is a problem in that some dogs REALLY don't like it. If she were to use this tactic on another dog she might end up in a fight.

Way to go! I quit on the "uh uh" and I feel very liberated. Haven't missed it at all. I do tell Erik "go away" whenever he thinks he's going to get something and he's not. It has become a bit of a NRM, but I don't use it in training. I remember thinking that I didn't need clicker training. I thought I was pretty good at making myself understood without it. Now I don't know how I ever lived without clickers. And I used to think all one needed to stop misbehaviour was "the tone". Kivi doesn't give a rat's about the tone, bless him. Erik does, and now I find it freakily unnatural. I'm like, Erik, why do you care if I sound cross? It doesn't make any sense.

The point was brought up on another board once that when dogs breed randomly for several generations you tend to get "yella dogs" as they called them - square, medium-sized, short (but double) coated, yellow dogs, often with prick ears and a slightly curled tail. It's a fascinating observation.

Just a scrap, but sounded like a serious scrap. Luckily the instigator was on leash, but the other dog wasn't keen on letting it go. The owner of the unleashed dog was able to pull it away. I used to try to do the "I'll take care of this" alpha thing when an aggressive looking dog was approaching. I realised with my last dog that it doesn't work if you just all of a sudden decide to start doing it one day. And I learnt that dogs are much better at reading other dogs than people are. With Kivi I took a bottom-up approach instead and just made sure I was there whenever he needed some social support. As a result, he now tends to put me between him and a dog he doesn't like the look of rather than me trying to put myself between him and a dog I don't like the look of. It's way better. I'm super chuffed with the bottom-up approach.

I ain't trying to condescend or accuse you of not being honest. I was actually attempting to offer support for everything you said about e-collars before the stim vs shock thing, but hey, what can you do. My apologies for sounding condescending.

There was a dog fight at our dog park just this morning. A non-regular and a semi-regular. Funniest thing, though, Mr Dog Park Ambassador Kivi Tarro who strongly feels he should greet every single dog in the park in turn got to about 3 or 4 metres from the dog that later started the fight and bailed. He just turned around and came back, and Erik took his lead. There's hope for Kivi yet.

The "best" tool is the one that the owner is comfortable with using. If the owner doesn't want to apply an aversive electric current designed to make a dog uncomfortable to their pooch then an electric collar is not the right tool. Calling it a "stim" instead of a "shock" won't change that. I think you've done a fine job of painting the "right" image there to get by without also using ambiguous language. You are so fair, and then at the last moment, just when everyone's feeling nice and comfy, you start playing down the aversives. Don't play down aversives! It's not worth it, and you don't have to. You just have to be honest. I'm sure the anti-e-collar possy does like to use the word "shock". And that is pretty irrelevant. No one here is parading a "Ban E-collars!" sign.

Come on, Erny, let's not mince words. If it's aversive enough to avoid and it happens of a sudden it's a shock in my books. OH one Christmas got toy remote control tanks and when your tank got shot you'd get an electric shock through the controller. It wasn't much more than an unpleasant tingle (a "stim" using the e-collar PC term), but the quality of the tingle drove me insane and made my flesh crawl. It doesn't just instantly go away, either. I used to be a wuss about those tens machines and insisted on low levels, but the area would still tingle unpleasantly for a while after they turned it off. The only reason I wouldn't call it a shock is because it was expected and prolonged. I don't think there's any need to dress up or dress down electric collars. They are what they are meant to be, which is aversive. "Shock" is aversive language. "Stim", not so much. That's an ambiguous word. I say the aversive language is honest.

Last night Kivi was being a needy smooch and tried to sleep on the bed with us. The bed as far as I'm concerned is the final stronghold. They are not allowed to sleep there with us. They have beds on the floor in the tiny bedroom and they ought to be happy with that. It occurred to me that there was a time when my dog slept in another room all together and the bedroom was the final stronghold. I was very reticent to bring the dog into my room to sleep, and in the end the only reason I did was because she was barking at possums quietly and someone was staying in the lounge room and couldn't sleep. She was so happy I never did move her back out again like I planned. I do believe that one act of letting her sleep in my room with me made a huge difference to our relationship. She was profoundly content with this arrangement and behaved like an angel. I decided I'd been wrong about bedrooms. I hadn't realised it made a difference to the dog where they slept. So the next two dogs were in the bedroom from day one. The only downside is that they can't be expected to sleep away from us if we're staying overnight at someone else's place. They sleep with the other dogs at my parents' house, but only if we're not there. I guess that I'm okay with this, because I believe now that letting a dog sleep in the bedroom with you if they want to is a strong bonding activity for them. That's just one example. What have you given a try for one reason or another and decided you had been wrong about?

I don't think I could ever bring myself to leave an electronic collar on my dogs unattended. I just cannot bring myself to trust them. That's me, though. Fortunately our dogs quit the barking when we moved them inside. They now stay in all day when I'm working in the city, which amounts to about 9.5 hours. When I'm working from home the door stays open, but mostly they snooze inside anyway. I was really sad about putting them inside rather than the yard, but I think I was wrong to be sad. They are happier inside from what I can tell. They are not spending the day barking in distress, so I can only assume they are happier inside.

Really? I thought Shibas were included as an ancient dog breed in that paper. Maybe I just assumed they were. I have a vague notion that they may have been bundled in with the Akita. I reckon have a closer look at the tables. AFAIK there aren't any other obscure pariah dogs that have black and tan. Most of them are yellow or black and white. Interesting that Dingos and NGSD don't have black and white.

Jindos also come in black and tan as well as white and yellow, but there are some other colours as well.

I'm inclined to agree with Aidan on the aversiveness of citronella collars. There was a peculiar presentation at the NDTF conference from someone that had done a pilot study on citronella collars. Her sample size was way small and she failed to get a significant result to indicate that the citronella collar was aversive. Well, she said it was significant, but just barely and with so few dogs and not very convincing results in other measures in the study you have to wonder if one could conclude anything from it at all. If it was so horrible I feel sure she would have got better results than she did, even with the small numbers she had. Isn't Direct Stop citronella? I'm pretty dubious about that one, too.

Shiba Inu?

Erik is a very opportunistic dog. I call him our landshark. Just when you're least expecting it he jumps up and yoinks food right out of your hands. Fortunately he really only does it when we're handing out treats for some reason anyway, but of course he gets rewarded every time, doesn't he. Last week he stole a garlic bread off the table when we left it unattended for 2 minutes. That'll learn us. Aside from that Erik is constantly making his own fun and I rarely approve. Last night he got bored and so he opened one of the cupboards in the kitchen and got out a Pyrex lid to chew up. He also snuck off with one of my Doc Martens to chew on, and somehow got hold of his squeaky ball that had been on a shelf somewhere. The night before he produced a piece of used Gladwrap, presumably taken from the kitchen tidy. That was after ripping up a few boxes and some wrapping paper. There is no end to the things he gets into, really. Kivi is all about used tissues. One time when he was a puppy OH picked him up and cuddled him in bed and Kivi promptly vomits a used tissue onto his arm. I still lol at the memory of the look on OH's face.

Yes. I totally had a Rivroc Canaan Dog pegged as my next dog before Finnish Lapphunds and Leonbergers. LOVED those black and white CDs. But the breeder moved away just 6 months before I was ready for another dog. She was the only CD breeder in Oz. Before Erik I badly wanted an Akita called Halo. But he just wasn't gonna fit in our car! That car got written off 6 months later and he would fit in the new one. But we have Erik, now. We love the E, and realistically he fits in the house a lot better than a large male Akita ever would have.

If you really want to use a check chain or give corrections to teach LLW, just make sure you're consistent and careful about what the dog might also be associating the checks with. Back when I got my first dog I went to obedience classes with her like a good little dog owner and they taught me how to teach a heel with checks. Only thing was, the dog wasn't much of a puller and so I didn't use corrections between heeling practise. About the only thing she learnt from it all was to walk as far away from me as possible because it was only when she walked close to me that she got corrections. Pretty crap when you realise your dog has an aversion to being near you on walks. It took years for that aversion to wear off. Conversely, my current two dogs have been rewarded heavily for walking close to us on leash and as a result often gravitate close to our sides on their own. They have also been heavily rewarded for coming over when they hear their names, so it's easier to deal with distractions.

I'm trying to nut out whether there's a difference between creativity and a willingness to try new things in dogs. Do you think your dog is creative? How would you judge that? Can dogs even be creative?