corvus

Crawling is usually submissive. Stalking can be play or can be serious. I've seen both. Erik is a mean play-stalker. He even hides behind things and then springs out at Kivi. Kivi gets slammed about a dozen times throughout our trips to the park. Erik learnt it from a mostly BC mix called Max. Erik only does it to Max and Kivi. Most dogs I've seen Max do it to have been uncomfortable with it. They have to learn that it's only play, because it's not obvious. I think this is why Erik only does it to Kivi and Max. There's a husky around here that does it to small dogs and I find it worrying. I don't know what she's doing, but I'm pretty certain it's not playing. She's a funny one. It looks very predatory coming from that dog.

That's a fair call, but it's addressing symptoms. Maybe you'll be able to suppress the symptoms, maybe you will just contribute to an underlying sense of insecurity and make them worse. The advantage of obedience routines, or asking any behaviour that you can then reward, is that you give the dog something else to do, and possibly change their focus. You then reward them, which not only strengthens your relationship with them, but alleviates stress normally related to the situation. My last dog used to get quite possessive. I'd get up and turn my back and say "If you can't be nice I don't want to talk to you." I kid you not, she would storm off and sulk under the house. Fine by me, but the thing is, it didn't make any difference in the long run. It didn't change her behaviour. For a while I tried cutting in with verbal reprimands before she got a chance to snark. That worked in that it interrupted her and we'd be all right as long as I was watching, but it didn't fix the problem either. Grumping at her after the fact only ever resulted in her taking out her frustration on the poor dog she was harrassing in the first place. She'd get a time out and it didn't make a shred of difference except that she'd snap and then cower, waiting to be told to leave the house. The only thing that actually reduced her attempts to snark at other dogs was giving her more one-on-one attention. But like I said, I wouldn't do that with one of my current dogs.

A guy came into work one day with a shiner. When asked what happened he admitted that a swan had smacked him in the face with its wing. That drew much incredulous hilarity. Moral of the story: don't take on swans. They do mean business when they come at you.

I dunno, I don't really hold puppies to the rules I expect them to eventually follow. I guess it's easier if you do, but they are just wee little babies and it's hard for them. For my current two dogs when they were wee babies I shaped their behaviour to conform to the rules I eventually wanted them to follow over the first few months. But they did learn to sit sometime in their first few days and that's when the NILIF starts. I remember thinking smugly how much better it was to attack the mealtime behaviour with treats right from the start, which I did the second time, but then I had it all backfire on me a few weeks later when the puppy suddenly decided meal times were cause for impossible, brain-exploding excitement and all my early training went out the window. It took quite a while to figure out what to do about that. The answer turned out to be leave the bowl with food in it on the bench until puppy calms down. I do think that an interruptor is a great idea. I taught my second puppy to look my way when I said his name quite early. Good for distracting him from mischief. God bless a puppy's 5 second attention span. I started both my current dogs on long lines for leash training and shaped for shorter and shorter leashes until they were right for regular leashes. Seemed to work, but you can't let them get places by pulling. That's one thing I don't want to have to try to shape out of them. I think if there's one thing I would start earlier next time it's a "calm" cue for laying down for massages.

Haha, this is why I've never wanted a Sibe. They are pretty full on. Chances are it'll get worse before it gets better unless you can keep on top of his exercise requirements. Remember they were bred to run through the snow all day. :p Charleswentworth was telling me recently about the Sibes she used to have and how she got pulling harnesses for them and would attach empty boxes and the likes to their harnesses so they could pull them around the yard. I thought that was freaking awesome. Light stuff for an unconditioned (young) dog, though. Is there somewhere secure you can take him for a daily run? Lots of Sibes around here burn off their energy at the river or the beach where they can run around in the water. Tired puppies are happy puppies. You could also try giving him things like Kongs or pigs ears to chew on when he's indoors so he learns to associate indoors with quiet time. There's not much point if he's still got massive amounts of energy to burn, though. It'll be fighting a losing battle, surely. That biting is certainly a problem. It's possible it might go away if he gets more exercise, but maybe it won't. Best to talk to a professional.

It's a tricky thing. I started to write a reply to this yesterday and gave up when I realised I a) didn't have enough time and b) wasn't being very systematic. I think I'll just put down some ideas and you can take them or leave them. *Consider that your parents calling the dog to them when he is acting up is actually a reward to him. If he's acting this way because he wants attention, then he just got it. * Sometimes I think this is a form of resource guarding. Often with resource guarding I think you can improve things by making the dog feel more secure. If they aren't afraid of losing their resource to another dog, then there's no need for them to be so guardy. Unfortunately, with resource guarding of human attention it's difficult to convince a dog that another dog won't take you from them. Especially if that dog is a bit needy and would gladly take as much attention as you can give him and still want more. Maybe spending more time with the jealous dog will make them feel less jealous, but maybe it will make them feel more jealous. It's a hard one. I have one dog that the more time you spend with him the more time he wants to spend with you. I wouldn't treat jealousy in a dog like that by spending more time with him, obviously, but I did do just that with another dog I had and it certainly helped. *It's possible he's anxious for some reason. I think that it's often useful to give an animal more structure in their life. If you tell him what he should do instead of pushing the other dog around and then reward him for it, then not only do you get improved behaviour in that one situation, but you teach your dog that you've got the answers and all they need to do is follow your lead. That can be easily generalised. *It's also possible it's misplaced territorial guarding sort of behaviour, in which case telling him what he should be doing and rewarding him for it also might help. *I think it's important that you teach him that he can share his people. I've heard various methods involving only patting the dog when the other dog is also being patted and things like that. It might help. My little guy thinks he should bite my big guy's legs when I'm hugging the big guy. He can't do that when he's on his back getting rubs while I'm simultaneously hugging the big guy. You can also try body-blocking, which might even work on a dog that big, but then again, it might not. It might make him feel more insecure about it all. *It's probably worthwhile to get a professional to see the Mal in action to get to the bottom of just what is causing the behaviour. If you don't know what's causing it you'll only ever be managing symptoms. Teaching him what he should do around other dogs is a good start, though. I'd ask for him to sit beside me and hold that position when I'm talking to another dog. I'd reward him heaps, with lots of attention and food if he's into food.

Anne, that sounds similar to what Erik does occasionally. I've always considered it an over-enthusiastic kiss as well, because he only does it if he's really excited and having a cuddle with you. It seems unpredictable to me as well, in that he gets super excited during cuddles a lot, more than once a day, and yet he only mouths occasionally. It is quite uncommon, so I don't bother much about it. Just put him back on the ground and that's that. This sounds a bit different, though? I think it's worth seeing an expert. A good way to deal with "off" is to teach it as a game. Get some treats and teach them to target your hand with their nose, then get them to follow your hand up onto the couch, then off again until they are good enough to be taught a cue for it. "Up" cues can be useful when you want your dog to get into the car and that kind of thing. My partner is more of a hard ass with the dogs than I am, but they are generally more obedient with me. Except for the tricks he taught them. That says a lot to me. They obey out of habit in the end. If I reward something a lot, the dogs will be more likely to do it if I ask for it, but if OH asks and rewards it more than I do, they are more reliable with him. The bigger/longer your reward history the more the dog pays attention to you IME.

Never been body slammed, but I did have a flying whippet cross crash into my foot with her head one day. I was trying to dive out of her way. She went for a tumble and I collapsed in agony. I had no idea a whippet's head was so freaking hard. I ended up with an egg on my foot all nice and bruised. The dog was fine. The other day Kivi was being a needy cuddlebear and I was scratching his chest and giving him cuddles and he was trying to make out with me and then I stopped cuddling and rubbing to look at something and he tried to get my attention back by pawing me. Like, from my ear to my bellybutton. After examining the damage I decided he needs to have his nails cut. I tried teaching him not to paw at people when he wants a chest rub, but alas, his teaching of us to do it in spite of ourselves was more successful.

IME, there are two kinds of "aggressive" dogs. The ones that come at you hackles up and barking at a quick trot or slower, and the ones that charge you, either silently or roaring. I have had the former too many times to count and have never seen it result in an actual physical attack. Still scares me, and I concentrate on getting distance between us quickly without running, but the vast majority of the time my dogs do a better job than I ever could with their calming, no-threat signals. These dogs are not, IME, committed to attacking, so there are plenty of things you can do to convince them not to. The charging ones are a whole other matter. I've been charged with my dog four times. Once the dog got mine and it was only that our other dog got that dog that she was uninjured. Twice I watched and pulled my dog out of the way at the last moment so the charging dog missed. Once the charging dog hit a tree and we were able to get away before it had another go and the other time it gave the owners enough time to catch their dog before he had another go. The fourth time turned out to be a friendly dog. I had nowhere to go and my dog was too big to pull out of the way. I thought I was going to be prising it off with my fingers. Thank goodness it was just a weirdo. The owner goes "Excuse him; he's Irish." I could only kind of laugh shakily.

Cow hooves. I cannot believe how long the boys will chew on those things. Hours! I usually have to take them away eventually when they get more interested in wrestling over them than chewing on them, but they are pretty amazing. Kongs are also a big favourite. And softdrink bottles with treats inside.

IMO it's realistic, so I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. How can you say there's no grey to it when "effective control" must be judged by an owner in general rather than by the odd situation that doesn't pan out as expected? How can you say there's no grey if dogs are never 100% reliable in anything they do because they are living creatures? There is grey because behaviour is grey and we're working on probabilities, not certainties. :yawn: Oh look, an attack on the training level of my dogs. That doesn't happen every other day or something. Only ever from people online, though. Funny, that. Listen, I'm not saying that there should be no standards, or that rules were made to be broken. I'm saying that this standard of "effective control at all times" is a fallacy. It has to be. Steven Lindsay said it as well. I'm saying be more specific about the rules, be more realistic, and you're more likely to get compliance. Either you can pretend that it is achievable and make everyone feel privately embarrassed for not being able to achieve it, or you can be realistic and accept that sometimes even a well-trained dog can be unpredictable and an apology might be the best you can do. It's less about training and more about getting along with the other people at the park. As long as I am not 100% sure what my dogs will do I do not consider them under "effective control", and as long as they are alive they will retain the ability to surprise me. At least, I hope they will, because I don't want robots.

Most of the lack of control we commonly see at off-lead parks CAN be improved. It's because people either don't recognise or recognise and don't want to make the effort to improve the weak areas of their dog's training, that improvement is not gained. They "excuse" it. Okay, but the thing is, you can't make people into what they are not. You can't expect everyone to put the level of work into their dogs as you do. The world just doesn't work like that, and to say that it should is also irrelevant. It doesn't. That is the fact. It's not a matter of excusing oneself, it's a matter of motivation. I'm a fan of making rules that can actually be followed. I think that rules that are unrealistic get ignored and that's what we are seeing at dog parks. It's not defeatist to acknowledge that a rule is unrealistic. We all know. Who hasn't heard it? But the thing is, putting the onus on other people is as good as being defeatist about it anyway, because they won't live to your rules. A problem is only a problem if you're not prepared for it. If you sit there and insist that everyone is doing the wrong thing, how does that help your dog? It doesn't. What helps your dog is training them to cope with other dogs being "problems" at the dog park if you want to use a dog park. That can "indicate" anything you like to you. To me, I just do my best and try to stay honest about my dogs' behaviour. I've got videos of my boys at the park if anyone wants to see them and question my honesty. I've never actually been yelled at, or told off at a dog park, so I find it difficult to believe something "isn't quite right". It's not like I'm not motivated to avoid apologising to strangers. By "pretty regularly" I mean I'm not sure how often it happens. Not every day, probably not every week, but maybe once a fortnight or once a month. I don't know. If I apologised to someone every time my dogs did something I wasn't anticipating it would be daily, though. That's what I love about animals. They always have surprises for you.

I think this so-called "effective control" is a bit improbable. I mean, how can you ever guarantee that level of control? Given we were just talking in the training thread about the impossibility of 100% recalls. Dogs are living creatures with minds and wills all of their own. Without restraint they can and will do what they please. It's not easy to gain good control of them in that state, and if that rule were enforced I think dog parks would be pretty empty. My boys can be a tad unpredictable in their greetings. I would say at least 90% of the time they trot up nice and polite and greet like model dog park citizens. Occasionally they trot up nice and polite and suddenly get excited and bound the last couple of metres. What do you do? Call 'em back and they come, but they've already done their bounding. If they know the dog they tend to charge right up to them and barely pause to touch noses before they get playing. That's okay, we know the owners and they know our dogs and everyone is okay with that. Sometimes the boys will be playing their own game and unexpectedly swing their game right into another dog they were not paying attention to. What do you do? Apologise. Yeah, if I'd seen that coming I would have called them and they probably would have come away, but I didn't see it coming. I'm not prescient. When it comes down to it, I apologise pretty regularly. Because even though my dogs are pretty sensible greeters, and even though they come when called, I don't always foresee what's about to happen and I can't do anything about it once it's happened except apologise. I often err on the side of caution and call them away from small dogs because they are big and scary. But then, some of their best friends are small dogs. I find that people are generally pretty forgiving and polite if you apologise. I'll ask if I should put mine back on leash and I take any form of hesitation as a "yes". I think you just do the best you can to keep your dogs from upsetting other people and dogs. "Control" is a fallacy with animals. The only way you will ever be sure to have control is to keep them restrained. And even then....

You know, something that didn't occur to me until recently (yesterday) is that dogs rarely ignore one another when they meet. Even if they look away, that means something quite specific to dogs. Is there a particular reason why we should ignore a dog when they are trying to greet us? How are they meant to interpret that if they don't really do it to each other? I have never even tried it. I just handle excited dogs by asking for a down, or by telling them to get out of the way so I can come in and dump my stuff so I can then turn around to attend to greetings. If they know I'm going to greet them properly in a moment they seem better able to control themselves. Once they've had their cuddles and kisses they settle down quickly. Mind you, my super excited greeter is little, so you don't really notice if he doesn't quite manage to contain himself and jumps on you. He only does it to me or OH, though. I kinda feel like if he's going to explode if I don't let him give me a kiss before he goes out to toilet and what have you I should probably just put it on cue or release him to do it after a sit or something so that at least we have some semblance of control and don't get him more worked up than he already is by frustrating him. He has been doing a sit or down for greetings since he was 10 weeks old.

They are probably at this moment on another forum bitching about idiot labs and their owners that get in their doggy's face. I think it's not hard to just put a dog on leash if it is upsetting someone, regardless of whether they should be upset or not. Live and let live.

I went out this morning to pick up some milk. I think I was gone for about 15 minutes and when I got back the boys just about exploded they were so excited. They were not at all satisfied with a verbal greeting and I had to crouch down so they could nose and lick my face and give me cuddles for a minute before they were able to get over the sheer excitement of it all. Their greetings were more enthusiastic than when I leave them for several hours. It's the same story when I come home from work and then go out to the gym half an hour later. When I get back from the gym they are both more enthusiastic in their greetings than when I get back from work. I don't get it. I've been told dogs have no sense of time and leaving them for 5 minutes is the same as leaving them for 5 hours. I didn't believe it, because if it were the same why isn't the behaviour when you get back the same? If I go away for a couple of weeks the greetings are different again. Less enthusiastic, but more prolonged and I tend to get dogs stuck to my legs for the rest of the day. When do you get your most enthusiastic greetings from your dogs?

That is so true. If there's one over-arching thing I have learnt since starting my PhD it's that neurology is extremely complicated and anyone trying to apply it to behaviour and how to affect it or understand it needs to be very careful. Having said that, I do think it can help. There's a lot of info out there about rewards and the brain that I think aids understanding. But I find it a little bit nerve-wracking when people start talking about neurology in relation to dog training. It's like watching someone swallow a sword. As far as exercises to aid in recall go, hide-and-seek is the classic one. You can also play games where someone holds your dog and you run away from them and then the dog is released to chase after you. Leslie Nelson also recommends the name game, where you say your dog's name and reward them when they look at you over and over. I like check-ins. My dogs get a treat for deciding to come over to see what we're doing when they are off leash. Kivi gets this look on his face where he's suddenly like, "I want a treat." and he trots over and either sits or glues himself to someone's leg and waits expectantly for his treat. He doesn't usually get check-in treats anymore because he's such a pro. Instead he gets check-in training sessions. He comes over for his check-in treat and we ask him to do a couple of trick or practise a few things we're working on and then give him is treats. Erik isn't as big on treats at the park and gets tug games periodically instead. He likes doing tricks as well.

Um, hello, I didn't disagree with a word you said. As for the long line method, the aim is certainly NOT to let a dog run full tilt to the end and I apologise if that was the impression I gave. Thought it was kinda obvious that you wouldn't do that, but maybe not. The aim is to get them practising the feeling of a loose leash. You wouldn't give them enough long line to build up enough momentum to give you a run for your money if that's what they were likely to do. I've had the odd moment where a dog has taken off on a long line and the beauty is you have a good 3 seconds or so to get ready, check the ground in front of you for obstacles, and then you move with them to slow them gently. Obviously if the dog is too big for that you don't use that method. It's not rocket science. Anyone who wants to know more about that method can go look it up in Steven Lindsay's book online. He goes into more detail than I ever would on a forum.

Ah, that's what I was getting at when I said I think it's easier to condition some dogs than others. I can't remember now if I said that in this thread. Erik doesn't weigh up consequences, he just recalls. He's had a lot less training and practise than Kivi and he generalised a lot easier. Kivi is a matter of practising the recall in every single freaking situation imaginable. It gets hard with high levels of arousal because he doesn't often get that aroused. The situation with the possum carcass was probably influenced by the fact that he was at the bottom of a very steep embankment and so his initial momentum didn't get him far. I actually think he may have turned around to go another way with a less steep hill and gone "Hello again possum!" on the way and that was it. He wasn't coming after that and I had to go and get him. Haven't had to do that since he was a wee puppy. I find it hard to accept that his recall isn't conditioned because 95% of the time he doesn't think about it. My rewards are not higher value than what he is currently doing, and he recalls like he's meant to. But the 5% of the time he doesn't recall is more or less random. He's as likely to blow you off in an everyday situation with low distraction from which he has recalled scores of times without a hitch as he is when he's chasing birds or something. All I can say is it doesn't make sense to me. There are probably details I'm missing and always will because he's a good 30m away when I call.

Yeah, but it's when you go to take the hammock out to empty the sand on the ground that it all goes wrong! It does make some difference, and it at least keeps the worst of the dirt and fur off the upholstery and protects your leather interior from dog claws if you were insistent on getting the model with the leather interior (OH). We have also found the dogs slide around on the cheaper ones. They have beds back there to help give them something stable to lie on. Kivi gets carsick if he slides around.

Haha, thanks Aidan. I wrote a post that was almost exactly the same last night and then sighed and deleted it before posting. When it comes down to it I have my vehement dislike of particular tools due to past experiences as well. It doesn't really matter to me how suitable those tools may be in certain circumstances, I would still avoid them like the plague. I have a weird aversion to collars. I hate them. I hate anything that tightens around a dog's neck in particular. Just my experiences talking. No reason for everyone to hate them, or for me to go on an anti-collar crusade. To the OP, Haltis and GLs are not evil any more than any other training tool is. I know dogs that quite eagerly stick their noses through their Haltis when you hold them out and don't show any signs of finding them aversive. You just have to be sensible and honest about them and careful. Just like any other training tool.

You could also try looking up silky leash. There are some videos online of the method. The aim is to teach them to respond automatically to gentle pressure from the leash to tell them where they should go. I don't know anyone who has used it, but it's meant to be helpful with excitable pullers. Clicker training is pretty awesome and can work if you get that reward rate up really high, but I honestly think it's a bit harder to make it work with nutty adolescent Boxers and the like. They aren't always the most aware of creatures. My mum has a Boxer cross that is ridiculous about switching off when she's excited. It's very frustrating. I think maybe the way to go there is a really loud clicker. My distractable adolescent Vallhund responds really well to marker training when on the leash, but he's got the benefit of having been introduced to it very young and also being a pretty aware dog. He would like to be lunging at passing dogs, but when he hears a click he gets distracted from it and comes to me instead. That's pretty cool, as then I can ask him to heel and reward every couple of steps and we are home free. He's doing better and better with exciting surroundings. Also, Premack can be useful. He can get to sniff or look at stuff if he first does what he's told. Not much help if he just wants to plough ahead like a steam train, though. I really like long lines because they give your dog more time doing the right thing before they hit the end and start doing the wrong thing. I have a verbal warning "hold up" for when they are about to hit the end and then anchor and let the dog hit the end, then call them back and reward them, reward some more for walking close to me on a loose leash. Steven Lindsay talks about this method in his books, but he also adds a check when the dog is at the heel position to make them aware of that spot. I view it as a shaping exercise. You start off with 5m or so of leash and then gradually shorten it as they get the hang of it all. I've only taught puppies this way, so not sure how it goes with a big adolescent dog.

Incidentally, we find with our cheap one that the seatbelt holes mean that all the sand from the dogs' coats tends to end up falling through the seatbelt holes and ending up on the seat underneath anyway. There's velcro around the holes so they can be closed up, but the dogs moving around always pulls them open again.

The Vallhunds I've met have all been very outgoing dogs. Erik is probably at the drivier end of the spectrum for Vallhunds, but it seems common for them to be... quite motivated, I guess. It's hard to put into words what their temperament is like. Erik is a little firecracker. Bright and sparkly and fiery. He does just about everything with a bang. We joke that he cusses like a sailor, because he gives the impression of putting strong emphasis on things. You can really picture him swearing. He struts around radiating confidence and there's always this sense of "F*** yeah!" whenever he does something. He is quite noisy and outspoken. He lets you know when he doesn't like something. Not a lot of guesswork with him. I like it, but I think it helps to be confident yourself and not especially bothered by a little dog loudly telling you that you stink and he'll do what he bloody well likes. The thing is, it's so easy to change his mind. He'll work for anything from a cuddle to a piece of cucumber. I find him to be a handful at times, as he needs a fair bit of mental stimulation and if I skip a few days of training he starts making his own fun. But I think he's unusually demanding. :D I guess it's a hard call for whether Vallhunds would be good for an inexperienced trainer. I think some would be fine. Erik, maybe not. But then, the worst of it is just trying to keep up with him. The qualities that make him so much fun and so easy to train also make him quite likely to invent lots of things to do that you won't like. I found it necessary to be quite stringent with NILIF purely so he wouldn't spontaneously come up with half a dozen obnoxious things to do before I got around to giving him something. It's not hard with him, though. He is quite biddable and very reliable. He's also very family-oriented and loves cuddles and sleeping on your foot. He's great with other dogs, but a little aloof of strange people. Erik's breeder is on DOL and hangs out in the spitz thread. She's been breeding Vallhunds for ages and is great to talk to.

Ha! Sounds like Erik and Kivi's pal Mo, who is a small female SBT. She started out hammering Kivi from all sides until he got sick of her, which is really saying something for Kivi because he is pretty much the Ghandi of dogs when it comes to tolerance and passive resistance. Mo learnt on her own over a period of about 3 months to moderate her play. Kivi didn't help. He never did tell her off. I wouldn't have let it go down like that, but just goes to show that lots of socialisation can just kind of take care of over-the-top behaviour. Mo and Kivi and Erik now get along famously and the crazy face biting is a thing of the past. She has even stopped trying to get their other friend Wags to play with her. He would grumble, but he never told her off either. She learnt more appropriate play behaviour before her puppy licence ran out. Her owner didn't do a thing to help her.