corvus

Those words went out of use? Erik's "go to mat" command is "bugger off". And his NRM (used sparingly) is "go away". I've been thinking he needs a "come inside" command that is shaping up to be "For the love of god and all that is holy!" or alternatively "Erik, don't make me hurt you."

Haha, Aidan, that's exactly what I said to Erik a couple of weeks ago when I looked up to find him with an edge of carpet in his mouth, quietly backing up to see how much he could pull up. The little twerp lets it go and then actually kicks it back in place with his paw when it doesn't go on its own, then he trots over to me with ears flat as if he's the model puppy in all ways. I guess the command worked.

Can it work? Yes. Would I try it? Probably not. Unless my resident was friendly and non-confrontational towards other dogs and I was getting a breed that was known to be much the same and the sizes of both dogs would be profoundly different. That's me. I've lived with warring females trying to kill each other and it was extremely horrible. I would never take that risk lightly. ETA my mother has two females that are closer in size than I would generally be comfortable with, but her resident female was much more comfortable with other females than males, and was also quite soft and not very interested in fighting, so it made sense and has worked out fine.

You can write a book on it! And people have. I think there's a Brenda Aloff book about dog body language, and a Stanley Coren one. I think it's interesting that humans have decided to decree what is "good manners" for dogs. I don't see any manners conventions when I watch my dogs interacting with other dogs at the dog park. I see my dogs responding to the specific body language of the dog they are approaching. Some dogs they race right up to and some dogs they walk up to and some dogs they trot or run to, then stop a good 5 metres away and turn on the non-threatening body language, or let the other dog make the next move. Most of it is in the eyes and the general tension in the body. Mind you, there is behaviour that happens sometimes that I put a stop to because the other dog thinks it's rude. A tail straight out parallel to the ground is one I don't see often. I usually interpret it as caution with a bit of submission. Kind of like permission to sniff under the tail, but lacking in confidence. Tail up is confident. Tail down is submissive, but a dog can be confidently submissive, which is usually clear in the speed and surety of their movement. Ears up and forward is confident and alert and sometimes aggressive. Ears swivelled back and away from the head is sometimes fear, but in other contexts it's associated with play. Hackles up is generally just arousal, not necessarily aggression. How high the head is held is often an indication of confidence, as is how high the tail is held. Licking lips and sniffing the ground are often displacement activities designed to lessen the tension in an interaction. They may be interpreted as calming signals or signals of stress. That's just a few.

It takes 3 months to break the cycle. The eggs stay in the environment for that long. So as long as you keep treating and it's actually killing all the fleas you'll get there. It is entirely possible that your fleas are resistant to most of the products available. Ours certainly were. I do believe my poor old corgi was breeding her own race of super fleas. We weren't finding sick fleas on our treated dogs, but perfectly healthy fleas. In the end, we used Comfortis. It took 3 months and no environmental pesticides to break the cycle. I'm VERY reticent about spraying poison around in my environment. I did it before Comfortis came out, but it only knocked them down for a week anyway. I wasn't keen on repeat bombing.

I don't think we can make any blanket statements about who breeds with whom. But I guess my thought is how do you know it's the pet dogs the dingoes are breeding with and not the domestic dogs gone feral? I think it's fair to expect that dogs and dingoes will breed with whoever is handy at the time, and I think it's fair to expect that this will generally be wild dogs and domestic dogs breeding amongst themselves rather than with each other. You have to remember that population genetics is a slow, big thing and it's very dynamic. You'll always get individuals breaking the "rules", but it's what the majority are doing that matters. http://www.britainhill.com/GeneticStructure.pdf Don't get me started! We face this problem pretty much daily in conservation. It's a real pain for legislating species protection. Everywhere you look there are new species or false species. Hence my earlier comment about the species concept being outdated. It had problems right from the start, but they have grown in magnitude since genetic markers and so forth. Lilli, has it occurred to you that you might have the exception to the rule in CAOs?

To play devil's advocate... But that's the point! Where resources allow it they congregate, but otherwise they are not pack animals. Dingoes are not domesticated, though. I think the argument is that the ones that stopped mating with the hunters became domestic dogs. The ones that kept hunting remained as wild dogs of whatever type. They are all over the place. It's a good point. The friendly foxes came about in a matter of a few generations. But I guess it's not parsimonious. It's simpler that dogs made even smaller evolutionary steps from pariah dogs than from wolves. Also a good point. Looks can be deceiving, but it's true that dogs have a huge variety of roles. Some are now useless hunters (Erik, I'm looking at you and that mouse you watched run under your nose to the fridge tonight!) whereas others are quite accomplished at a variety of game. I think Canaan Dogs are a good model. They hang around, semi-domesticated, and if you wanted a dog to herd you'd pick one that would be good at it. If you wanted one to hunt, you'd pick one that would be good at it. If you wanted one as a guard dog, you picked one that looked to be good at it. They are still kind of semi-domesticated in some parts. There's a Canaan for any job. And if you get a good one for one particular job, you breed from it and keep the puppies and pretty soon you have a line and even a new breed. Basically, if you want something in a dog, you breed it from what you have at hand. Some of our breeds now have been around a lot longer than breed standards. Lapphunds, for example, have been herding reindeer supposedly for thousands of years, but they only got a standard some 30 years ago.

I went through this for the first time last winter. There was never any question of not staying with her, and my partner was the same. My mum came down for it as well. My girl died surrounded by people that loved her. If only we could do that for humans. We went out afterwards and had a small wake for her. It was profoundly right in every way.

Even I say "oi".... It used to have a very specific meaning to my hare: "you stop chewing on that or I will come over there". Of course, some days he wanted me to come over there and chase him away, so he'd deliberately pretend to chew on forbidden items. Funny, it was the only time he ever pretended to chew on something. If I wasn't paying enough attention he'd pick the item up in his mouth and do a really exaggerrated chew. NOMNOMNOM, I'm eating your sock/bag/shirt/power cords! What are you gonna do!

I don't know why hyenas are coming into things, here. They might not be particularly closely related to dogs, but their social system is fascinatingly complex and it is based on a dominance hierarchy. They also fill a similar ecological niche to wolves. That's they only reason I can see that makes it worth considering hyenas in the whole thing.

I think the point of the "dogs are not descended from wolves" argument is two-pronged. On the one hand, it's an attempt to dislodge the idea that we should apply pack theory models to our domestic dogs (pack theory models that are of questionable accuracy for wolves anyway). On the other hand, humans didn't "descend" from chimpanzees. We're cousins. Closely related species, but we didn't evolve directly from them. We just shared a common ancestor. I think that is what she's really getting at with this argument. The question you should be asking yourselves is "Did dogs evolve from wolves through artificial selection, or did they evolve from a different kind of canid that shared a common ancestor with the wolf?" There is no doubt that dogs are very closely related to wolves. It is most likely that wolves contributed to the genetics of what we now call the domestic dog. But that's not to say that the wolf is necessarily the dog's closest relative in the wild, or that there is more wolf blood in there than anything else.

The Coppingers wrote a whole book about it that is currently sitting on my coffee table waiting for me to get around to reading it. From what I can gather the ideas about where dogs came from convince most people, but some of my friends in research didn't much like the writing style and some of the things said about wolves and dogs. I'll have to read it already. I'm a bit behind on dog genetics, but last I heard they had changed domestic dogs to a wolf subspecies because of evidence from mitochondrial DNA, which has its own little suite of problems. Personally, I think that dogs descended from wolves in that they descended from pariah dogs that descended from wolves. I do not think that dogs are anywhere near as social as wolves. From a species perspective, technically dogs and wolves must be the same species because they can interbreed and produce viable offspring. Only problem with that is that so can tigers and lions. The species thing is starting to really annoy me. It's very arbitrary. It's got to the point that cryptic species are popping up all over the place now that we have the technology to look at genetics. I think the species concept is outdated. As far as the non-linear dog goes, there's a lot of good stuff worth a look in that. Semyonova is sadly a raging pitbull hater and BSL advocate, but that doesn't mean all her ideas are rubbish.

I think you mean "quiet". And it is a command that has to be generalised same as everything else. "Quiet" when your dog is waiting for you to throw them a ball at home is not necessarily the same as "quiet" when your dog is waiting for you to throw them a ball at the dog park. Furthermore, "quiet" is a reactive command. I personally am not fond of spending all my time reacting to my dogs. And lastly, barking is a symptom. It goes away if you treat the cause - if that's what you want. The problem is that sometimes that cause is the desperate need to communicate, and in that case I think it's self-rewarding. Someone wrote that dogs are intensely superstitious about what their barking causes. I can't remember who said that, now. Whether or not there is nuisance barking at other times as well is adding a layer of complexity to the whole problem that doesn't necessarily exist. Whether or not the dog has been trained in general is adding another layer of complexity that doesn't necessarily exist.

It helps to have a Dyson. Part of our problems last summer was our shagpile carpet. It is almost impossible for anything to penetrate to the roots of that horrible stuff. We hate it. One of these days we'll get around to ripping it up. We are on our second month with no flea protection after Comfortis all spring/summer and still no sign of them. Incidentally, I have one Comfortis tablet for dogs under 10kg that I can no longer use as Erik is now over 10kg. If anyone with one small dog wants to give it a go, PM me. It is nasty stuff, that is for sure. It made Kivi vomit the first couple of times he had it, even on a full stomach as suggested. His body settled down after that and no further reactions. Erik was a little off colour the day after the first dose, but no further side effects. I wouldn't use it lightly, but I do not know what would have happened if it hadn't come on the market when it did. Our problem was scary. It's hard to believe all it took was a new treatment to break the cycle. For some reason my rabbit never got them, though. Her cage is inside and nearly a metre off the ground. She does come out of her cage briefly every week, but she just never picked them up. Good thing, because you can't give Comfortis to bunnies.

Maybe this will help people understand where the study is heading: From: Describing the ideal Australian companion dog Tammie King, Linda C. Marston, Pauleen C. Bennett Applied Animal Behaviour Science 2009

I think small herders are a good pick as a family dog. They are easy to train, portable, and pretty active without needing hours of off leash running a day. I had a corgi when I was a teenager, and I used to take her for 4 hour bush walks. She'd never be more than 10 metres away from me and didn't have a shred of recall training... because she was never more than 10 metres away from me. My parents have a Sheltie, who is similar, if a little more highly strung. My Vallhund is another small herder with a lot of get-go. He's super fun and a bit more active, but I think you've got to be confident with dogs because mine is extremely outgoing and sometimes a bit of a handful. Dead easy to train, though, and although he's had a bit of recall training, we spent a lot more time on the Lapphund's recall because he's more independent. The Vall needs little encouragement to stay close. What about a Lagotto?

Aidan, that sounds very much like Leslie McDevitt's Look At That game that I am such a huge fan of. She uses the click both as a bridge to reward looking at something and simultaneously using the click as an interrupter of further staring. So then you have your dog's attention and it's a lot easier to hold it by clicking for glances at the interesting/scary thing. Steven Lindsay was talking about how great clickers are as bridges because the sound is quite sharp and so it's always a little surprise. A good way to jolt them off one "track" and onto the "let's train!" track.

That sounds familiar! When Erik was a puppy I had taught him by about 10-12 weeks to sit quietly to wait for his dinner. Problem was, he then figured out all the little cues that would tell him dinner was imminent and he'd get so excited he was no longer capable of sitting quietly and he was worse than ever! At the same time, he was starting to cotton on to other cues in his life. I kid you not, OH would ring home before he left work and Erik would start barking then and get gradually more excited until it peaked when OH arrived home 40 minutes later, and then he'd stay wound up for a couple of hours at least. He would be so wired that every little noise would have him on his feet barking and off to investigate. OH was ready to send him back to his breeder. He was about 5 months old when he was at his worst. We concentrated on uncoupling the things that were cueing his excitement from the things he was so excited about. So picking up his bowl no longer meant he would get food very soon. It would get dished out and sit on the counter for an hour if that's how long it took him to calm down. OH's nightly phone call predicted that I would go and play a game with him and then we would sit on a mat with a Kong or a pig's ear and he would get a massage. We also started massages at least once a day and coupled it with a "shhh" command that he already knew meant to stop barking. I started teaching him self control with games by winding him up for 30 seconds, then winding back down with "shhh" and then winding back up again so he learnt to bring himself back a few notches very quickly. Karen Overall's relaxation protocol might be worth a look, and Leslie McDevitt's Control Unleashed book is full of ways to manage highly strung dogs. Bedazzled, do you think the CS "you won a prize" game would work on any dog if done right? I have been loathe to use anything that remotely resembles a time out with Erik for a long time, now. He used to have melt downs if I separated him from us. Proper, hysterical, mess himself melt downs. He is a lot better now and can usually manage a few minutes if it's in a context he knows, but it's always dicey to me. If it's in a context he hasn't experienced it in before I think he'd go right back to just a step away from a melt down again.

I think you just have to remind yourself that this is the worst it gets. And be prepared to laugh and not take things too seriously. My little guy is on his slow and weary way out of adolescence and frankly I think it's a good day if he can focus on me for more than a few minutes. The world is extremely interesting to him at the moment. So I just go with the flow and don't expect more than about 30 seconds of attention at a time. I dismiss him before he can get distracted. I honestly think he has an over-sensitive reward system, because he is a bit manic about getting rewards. But that's all right, because it makes him pretty alert to any opportunity to do what he's told to do. We haven't phased out treats and don't intend to. It makes for some super reliable behaviour, and we have really strong things like down to fall back on if he's inventing something terrible to do that can't be allowed to be found to be rewarding. And basically he thinks it's always worth a go to do what he's told. I try not to get into battles with him, because he tends to be more motivated to win them than I am. Besides which, he is an obnoxious twat. It has always seemed more sensible to just teach him the benefits of choosing to behave in ways that I enjoy. This has worked well for us, as he always wants to do what he's asked to do because it has historically been rewarded. He gets all the cuddles he wants provided he does what is asked of him first. In all honesty, I love NILIF for a dog like him. Without that structure in his life he would be forever trying things that are most likely going to be unfun for me. It's quite a bit less stressful once they learn the drill. Erik downs automatically whenever he really wants something. Much better than jumping all over me barking or whatever else he has dreamt up.

British Bulldogs too! The breeder of my girl said to be careful of her with other dogs as different breeds often react to the Bulldog jaw and noises. When I first brought Mildred home my Rotti was terrified of her for about two weeks as her jaw protruded which showed her teeth and she had loud growly breathing. This is very interesting to read about this. I have heard this about the samoyed/spitz's before but not the bulldogs/boxers before. My fluffy big spitz dog has never really provoked an unexpected reaction, but he is extremely friendly and submissive. He did, however, get a bit confused by the first bulldog he met. It tried to play with him and he was just not sure what was going on with all that noise and the way the bulldog shuffled around. He was a bit like "Er... actually, I don't feel like playing after all. I'm going over here with my mum, now." That is a pretty extreme reaction from him.

I don't consider the above deprivation. To me, deprivation creates an appetite. As in, thresholds that trigger behaviour to do something about that particular state are lower than usual. Say, a cat is hungry and therefore when a mouse runs by it is more likely to try to catch it. In a training sense, say the dog is hungry, so is more likely to respond to stimuli that suggest food is coming with more gusto. It particularly doesn't want to miss out on the food and it's particularly easy to make it think about how to get food. It's all well and good to say you can deprive as long as you do no harm, but how do you tell if you are doing harm through deprivation? What do you classify as harm?

On another note, I do enjoy your posts, m-j.

My sister's greyhound does this. She was raised in a kennel and is undersized. It is suspected she was bullied a fair bit by the other dogs. I was down at the beach with them one day watching this lunging and snapping. After a bit I'd put my hand on her every time another dog was heading our way and say quietly "It's okay, Mitzi, no biggy." I would estimate the lunges dropped by about 80% instantly. Half an hour later she was letting other dogs sniff her. By no means fixed, but her problem was anxiety and she felt better for having someone soothe away some of that anxiety. She's a pretty sensitive dog, but IMO no anxious dog needs an owner - who is supposed to be their lifeline and sense of security and safety - getting in their face making scary noises at them whenever they try to alleviate their anxiety. It's just gonna convince them they are right to be anxious.

Agility (kind of) goldfish. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWR2RgLX61o I would totally teach my bunny rabbit agility if she wasn't such a lazy, inactive thing. My last bunny would have been great at it, but I am yet to see Bonnie actually run except for when she's chasing Kit, and then it's kind of embarrassing to watch. She'll stand on her hind legs for a treat, but that's as agile as she gets.

Ignorance seems to be popular ;) Harsh methods...ok I can understand peoples resistance. As for the tools, their just tools! It's 100% up to the handler to determine in what manner they're used in OR how they're educated to use them. If we're talking about abuse of the tools? Well that's just the grey area we all dig around in to find support. Everything is open to abuse. I think you completely missed the point I was making, HR! It's not about trends, or abuse, or calling corrections harsh, or ignorance, or anything else political. It's not politically motivated at all. We just live in a more empathetic age than 30 odd years ago and people want to buy things that make them feel like they are being nice to dogs. So new training tools don't get harsh-sounding names or they wouldn't sell. Just like if you whack "eco friendly" on a packet of chemically bleached recycled toilet paper it will sell. It has little to do with whether it is actually environmentally friendly or not.