corvus

And we all cope with them differently. Some, like you Corvus, will go for the "feel the fear and do it anyway" approach. Others prefer to find methods to avoid having to feel that fear and anxiety. I think if you got to the stage you couldn't leave the yard with your dogs then perhaps some help to deal with the anxiety might be justifed but its' hardly an irrational anxiety if you keep having negative experiences. We're never going to agree on this topic but for some people "get over it" isn't the solution. Hence my advice about avoidance strategies. Horses for courses. I said I got over it. I didn't say kirty needs to simply get over it. Obviously it's not that simple or she would have done it already. You do what you have to do. If your problem is there are too many loose dogs around, you go looking for places that have fewer (which I suggested earlier). If your problem is a particular dog on your street, take a different route or drive past (which I suggested earlier). And so on. I don't think that I'm lacking compassion because I'm upbeat and solution-focused. Being the victim of dog aggression is traumatic and life altering. It is terrifying when you think a dog is going to attack you. I've stood there shaking and weak in the knees while I watched a large dog charge across 70m of ground towards us, roaring, and I've got no way to protect any of us. I thought we were all going to get mauled. Fortunately I was wrong. The dog was friendly and just had a seriously bizarre greeting ritual. Until that moment I truly believed every charging dog meant to rip us to pieces. It helped me a lot to realise this wasn't the case. So I'm positive because it helped me to be that way. Not because I don't understand how it feels or don't care. I have good bounceback, apparently. But that doesn't mean I don't understand what others are going through. It just means sometimes my idea of help seems really off base. I am only just beginning to realise that. So I'm sorry to all those who have been like "Oh, god, here's Corvus preaching sunflowers and lollipops again - she has no freaking idea what it's like." Except JulesP, who could have found a more diplomatic way to object.

"More humane" doesn't mean your version is inhumane. I was trying to be delicate, but I don't think there's a way to say it without sounding critical. I think you are making a division where there is actually a continuum. Everything you are describing is pretty much what I would do. The only difference is in magnitude. I want to make the animal ever so slightly uncomfortable. Just enough that they start thinking about what they can do to make themselves more comfortable, not enough that they want to move away. To me, restraining a frightened dog close to a trigger has the potential to create a stronger reaction than I want. That's all. You might end up flooding him. Dogs only deal with things instantly when they have to. If you're training dogs to handle triggers with some kind of successive approach, but you're letting them go at their own pace, then you'll see that they will have a good think about what they should do. They certainly will do things by halves. That is exactly the point of all the pussy-footing around. There is no issue with a single party acting on its own as long as it acts appropriately. The point of using very slight pressure is that you're setting them up to act appropriately, which you can then reinforce with a functional reward, like distance. They drive the training, but you shape it. They still learn that a reaction is unnecessary, because they have something that works better. In the process of using that, their emotional association with the trigger changes. Things aren't as scary when they are in control. I don't know what you're doing because I've never seen it. I'm not having a go at you. I'm promoting extra special gentleness with fearful animals, because IME it is the most effective approach. I'm suggesting avoiding restraints because IME restraints can cause panic and if they panic you can find yourself set back months. Just because you have a more resilient animal than that doesn't mean the approach is risk free. The risks are well documented in the scientific literature. If you want to take them, that's your prerogative. I prefer not to, and that's my prerogative.

Excuse me? I have never said everything is all wonderful in dog walking world. Did you miss the bit where I've been there too? We all have scary moments. I'm sure we have all broken up fights. I'm sure we've all had our hearts pounding while we think "Sh**, I'm in trouble." I certainly have. I've aborted dog park visits. I've nearly got us all run over making a hasty retreat. I've carried my small dog past a dog while shaking and hoping to god he's tied up this time. Just a couple of weeks ago I thought I was going to have a five-dog brawl on my hands at the beach. Thankfully it didn't pan out that way. I took it that Kirty doesn't want to feel frightened all the time. Who does? I know that for me, trying to keep things in perspective does make me feel less afraid. It makes me less reactive and more able to see what is actually happening rather than what I fear is happening. When I see what is actually happening, I can take it in and learn from it and when I see it again I know what is going to happen before it does. That is extremely reassuring to me. You don't have to like me or what I think is helpful. I usually just bite my tongue or try to explain politely why I disagree when I'm feeling the rage.

It might be natural to be hyper-vigilant, but that doesn't necessarily make it healthy or justified. There are a lot of people out there who manage to walk their dogs safely and even enjoy the experience. If you can't find a way to do that, maybe you shouldn't be walking your dogs at all. Or get professional help, either for you or your dogs or both. You can't let your fears rule your life (and your dogs'). This is no different to social anxiety or agoraphobia in my mind. Like I said, my last dog was attacked 3 times as well. I've been there. I got over it, and so did she in the end. And I wish people would stop referring to the rest of the dog-owning world as idiots or nuf nufs or other derogatory names. What are people from 'out there' to think when they see things like that? There are a lot of lurkers and guests on this forum. How many do you think are discouraged because of the way people talk about the general dog-owning public? A lot of them are my friends or family and they are NOT idiots just because they don't share the same views as you or behave the same way as you. DOL is not an isolated bubble. What you say here you say to everyone everywhere with an internet connection.

The reasoning is sound but the application can be more sophisticated and IMO humane. Try this for a relatable example. In the past, if a strange dog has come rushing at you and your dogs you have shouted "STOP! Go away!" and somehow magically the dog stops and goes away. Now say one day out of the blue this just stops working. You shout "STOP! Go away!" and the dog keeps coming at you. How is that going to make you feel? What are you going to do? Your one strategy that has always worked has failed. You have nothing up your sleeve. You are at this dog's mercy. Maybe it turns out the dog just sniffs you and then wanders off. Does this make you feel better the next time you see a dog coming and you shout "STOP! Go away!" and it again doesn't work? What if instead, you see a dog milling around. You're not sure if it is going to rush at you, so you watch it closely ready to shout at it. You tense up, watch the dog like a hawk, but it doesn't come any closer and you take a deep breath to try to calm yourself and THEN the dog goes away. Huh. This happens a few times and you decide to try something. You see a dog and you take a deep breath and bingo, the dog goes away. You can make loose dogs go away by taking a deep breath. How does that make you feel next time you see a loose dog? One is kind of an extinction procedure and the other is a negative reinforcement procedure. They both work, but the latter I think gives you way more control and reduces the stress on the animal considerably. I've done this myself and it's highly effective, particularly when the animal figures out for themselves a new coping strategy that in their view is extremely effective. I find that when I aim my behaviour modification at the point before the animal acts, I am highly likely to have them produce an alternative behaviour (or a bunch of them) that are highly appropriate that are exactly what I'm looking for. This is all about safety. If the animal knows they can ask for safety and get it promptly, they will in time stop asking for it so much because they feel generally more safe. They can relax a bit because if ever they feel uncomfortable they need only 'say' so and voila, the pressure is removed. It takes patience, but there is nothing more rewarding than having a previously timid and flighty animal confidently approach you and settle right in your personal space and let you touch them because they completely trust you. It is pretty overwhelming. With my doves I did this mostly with desensitisation and a little counter-conditioning because they are easy and have terrible instincts. One was very hand shy when I got her and has taken a fair bit more work. The hare was probably about as hard as any animal is likely to be and I did it with a safety signal and negative reinforcement and later moved to desensitisation and a wee bit of counter-conditioning. I have used negative reinforcement a little with my dogs to get them doing something they otherwise probably wouldn't have done. For Erik as a pup it was social skills with dogs he couldn't avoid. It worked brilliantly. For Kivi, body awareness and problem solving skills, which I actually used to improve his confidence, as it happens. It was highly effective as well. Kivi is kind of overly confident these days. Maybe all that confidence boosting we did with him gave him more confidence than he has common sense to know what to do with it. :p For this dog, I would teach him a safety signal and use a bit of desensitisation and some negative reinforcement. And some counter-conditioning in the form of hand feeding. I would not flood him. It's just not necessary.

Ah yes, everything is much worse now than it used to be. My previous dog was attacked three times outside the yard. All three were early in her life when we lived in a small town. I moved to Canberra and never had any problems. Moved to Sydney and had one scary moment with the old girl that was mostly my fault. My current dogs... never. We live in a much more built up area than the one where I grew up, there are stacks more dogs, and my dogs go to off leash areas and do street walks all the time. Twice a day. We go all over the place, yet the worst that's ever happened is Kivi lost a tuft of fur once. I rarely see a loose dog when we walk them on the streets. Walking dogs is not supposed to be stressful, no, but I don't think there's any reason for it to be stressful. The house next door to my parents has a couple of dogs that scare my boys, so when we are there I literally drive them past that house, then park the car and get them out and walk them. I don't HAVE to walk my dogs past that house, even though it is a battleaxe block and the only way off the property is past the house. On our walking route down to the dog park there are a couple of houses with dogs that used to send one of my dogs into hysterics. Couldn't walk on the other side of the road as no verge, so I trained him to heel past them. Took a few months and wasn't much fun to begin with, but we can now walk past them while they are barking ferociously and both dogs are close, loose leash, attention on me. Much less stressful. There are solutions. Drive to somewhere that has fewer loose dogs. Scout it first if it makes you feel better. Spend some time watching the local dogs and how they interact with others. I found the dog park way less stressful once I learned to predict what all the dogs were going to do. It's not an endless parade of "OMG, do I need to panic??" More like "Ah yeah, that one's going to pull up short and wait. This one is just going to sniff and move on. That one is going to loop around us and slow down for a side approach. That one is friendly but might be too boisterous - keep interactions short and sweet..." If you can't manage your anxiety, get professional help. We would for our dogs or our kids. Do it for yourself as well.

I don't know if they splinter. Ours disappeared pretty fast. I have no idea what happened to them. They are either lost outside or one of us threw them out. I actually found they smelt worse than the cow hooves, but not all of them. Some were very stinky and some not so much. We just use marrow bones, now.

They are hard. The ones we had were very hard.

We got them once. The dogs didn't like them anyway, and frankly they looked dangerous to me. We give them cow hooves instead. I wouldn't say they are easy on the stomach. If the dogs eat a big chunk they will throw it up again. It's not particularly digestible stuff. I can't imagine antlers would be more digestible, and the shape and sharpness of some of them alarms me a little.

Black Dog Syndrome has very little empirical support. Check out this blog post from someone who has studied it: http://doyoubelieveindog.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/black-dog-syndrome-bad-rap.html Incidentally, I feel uncomfortable opening a gate to get to someone's front door if it is a substantial gate, and that feeling is at least twice as strong if there are dogs and/or kids in the yard. It's got nothing to do with whether I feel the dogs/kids are safe or not. I just don't want to be accidentally responsible for them getting out, or somehow provoking unwanted behaviour by not being ready for it or something. I don't like my dogs to be around strangers unsupervised, at least not in the excitement of them arriving. So I wouldn't want to force someone into that situation by coming in before I am sure they are ready for me. This would not change if they were expecting me or if they were running a home business. I figure it's just courtesy to wait until you're invited to enter the property if possible. I'm kinda vampirish like that. After the first meeting no permission required.

If there was a reliable screening test that could rate the risk of a particular dog regardless of breed or upbringing causing harm, there would be significantly less wriggle room when a dog does something terrible. In that way increasing penalties might work because the onus would be on the owner to have their dog screened if they had an inkling it might be unusual. If the screening was readily accessible and low cost, people could be encouraged to do it, say, when their dog was 12 months old just to be on the safe side. Or when they are thinking about having a baby. Kind of like having cars checked for road-worthiness. To me this would be a voluntary process, because if you made it compulsory you would be doing it for way more dogs than are ever going to need it. But if you opt out, be it on your own head.

It's not that I simply don't mind. I am scared for them. They are in danger. They may well be killed if I don't stop for them and try to get them to safety. Whether they should or shouldn't be there is irrelevant. I do everything in my power to keep my dogs in where they are safe, but I'm not infallible. I hope that one day if my dogs ever end up loose without me someone WILL approach them and get them to safety as soon as humanly possible. Pretty sure that no amount of public condemnation would make me feel worse than I would already just having my dogs out there in harm's way. Obviously there are serial offenders because the owners don't care, and serial offenders with owners at their wit's end trying to keep the dog in, and one-time offenders whose foray outside of the yard is horrifically violent and ends in tragedy. I was speaking to someone last week who had dogs that got out and killed another dog. The dogs were declared dangerous and were put to sleep, but I don't think this person grasped the risk they were living with until it was too late. They had been getting ongoing help from a trainer and never let the dogs off leash or even really took them out of the yard. It is hard to demand people be responsible for something they haven't the ability or reason to predict.

Check definitions of "malice". The implication is a deed done with evil intent, mean-spirited, spiteful. I am surprised to see people persisting in the belief that other people disobey laws because they are not enforced and getting compliance would be as simple as enforcing the law. There is nothing to suggest it is necessarily that simple. Check this interesting book out: http://www.psych.nyu.edu/tyler/lab/Chapters_1-4.pdf Honestly, I am fine approaching strange dogs and taking responsibility for them until someone else can. I see that as my civic duty. I have reunited many lost dogs with their owners or left them at the vet where they have had their microchip details retrieved. I've shared a campsite 4 hours from the nearest medical help in a non-English-speaking country with a rabid fox. I'm not that worried about dealing with a wandering dog. The vast majority of them are friendly, accurately representing the dog population as a whole in this country, as it happens

To be honest, I would seek the help of a veterinary behaviourist. IMO the dog should not be constantly on the go and aroused and need tonnes of mental stimulation. Take it from the girl who used to give her dog 2 hours of physical exercise a day plus close to 2 hours of chewing activity, plus daily trick training sessions of 20-40 minutes. Every time his arousal shoots up it can take many hours for his stress hormones to return to normal. So if he is getting aroused multiple times a day and/or for long periods, he may be stuck in an arousal cycle, never really having the chance to calm down and properly rest. This will make him ever more reactive, and his behaviour more extreme and difficult to predict. Trying to meet his needs by giving him MORE exercise and stimulation may end up perpetuating the problem rather than solving it. Or maybe not. I'd be getting a vet behaviourist in to identify exactly why he is behaving this way and tailoring a program to address that. ETA If behaviour is caused by heightened arousal and emotional states, you cannot reinforce it. Reinforcements act on behaviour itself, not on arousal or emotion, which are instead subject to classical conditioning. Attempts to change the behaviour through reinforcement or punishment will likely be semi-effective at best unless you address the arousal and emotional state driving the behaviour. As such, removing the dog from a situation where they are over-aroused and behaving inappropriately is recommended. It won't make it worse at any rate. Leaving the dog where it is upset or highly aroused probably will make it worse.

Not where community safety is concerned. Some folk just think they do. Or, more to the point, they don't think - about any aspect of dog ownership. You think? The line is blurry to me. Passive smoking? Smoking while pregnant? Alcohol-related violence is blurry. The actual deed is illegal, but it's not illegal to do all the things that lead to the deed. Crimes related to gambling are similar. It is truly shocking how vulnerable people can be preyed upon until they are in too deep to avoid committing some sort of crime. Yet it's legal for people to be treated that way and then they cop it when they sink. Sometimes it feels like people are allowed to set themselves up for crime and then we penalise them afterwards and expect that to solve a problem? I think that the case of dangerous dogs is similar. A lot of contributing factors are legal, and they are legal because others can do them responsibly is my guess. Should those that can do them responsibly be penalised because some can't? History says probably not. Particularly because some of the contributing factors are unknown, like the dog's genetic potential for doing harm and behavioural likelihood of doing harm. There was a study proposal for exploring ways to screen those, actually, which was recently knocked back by the ARC. So much for that. People obey laws that make sense to them. They don't always obey laws because it is law, or because it is enforced, or because of what the penalty for disobeying is.

I don't think people understand the role liberty and autonomy play in this. People are allowed to do a lot of stupid, dangerous things that impact on others, sometimes with devastating results. Drinking, smoking, gambling, etc. Why is it legal when it is so destructive or when the associated health risks are many and varied and well documented? Do we NEED cigarettes? Then let's just outlaw them. They cost our health system billions. That's an extreme example, but points to why this kind of thing is not often done. People have the right to f*** stuff up if that's what they want to do. Change has to come from within, and I don't entirely agree that education is the only answer. After 3 years in animal welfare science one thing is clear to me. Our society does not value or even really care about animals. Any of them. Why don't they? Because they don't know they should? I doubt it. It's in everything we do. When we are cool eating intensively farmed pork that may or may not have been humanely killed before we bought it and ate it, how can anyone expect us as a society to really care if we breed some sick or temperamentally unsound companion animals? The bottom line is it is socially acceptable. It is somehow socially acceptable to dump a 16 year old dog at the pound in winter. We have a culture of doing whatever we bloody feel like at the time. We have a right to be idiots, it seems.

CONDITIONED response. Not "I'll respond to that recall because I will get something good." Not "I will respond to that recall because if I don't something bad will happen to me." It is not about trying to find something more valuable, rewarding, or motivating than chasing prey or whatever it is your dog does instead of recalling. The whole point is to take as much of the cognitive process out of it as possible. It is a reflex. To me the real problem is that some dogs literally cannot hear a recall when they are absorbed in something. In that case, it doesn't matter how the recall was trained, because the dog won't hear it so they won't recall. Some people solve this problem with e-collars and hope to hell they can stop the dog before it's out of range. Others don't let the dog off in certain environments and hope to hell they make the right choice. Depends on what their values and risk assessments are.

Still haven't found my short-haired lapphund equivalent breed, or my long-legged Vallhund breed. You do realise breeds were developed from crossbreeding, right? Some breeds are only a few decades old. Some are still in development now. And there are some really amazing dogs out there that came from reasonably random crosses. For some people, a pedigree is not that meaningful and may not even be what they want. Shouldn't they have the opportunity to get what they want in a dog? Furthermore, registered breeders don't breed enough dogs to meet demand. Why should owner screening be a breeder's job if that's truly what would make a big difference?

In the scheme of things it will probably be better. Council rangers in my area that I know are not out to mess people up on someone's say-so. They have to deal with neighbour disputes and the likes all the time. They are aware that situations do need to be properly investigated. This is really for dogs that would be declared dangerous for relatively minor transgressions because it's the only option. Like dogs that get out once and kill someone's pet cat on the street. Killing someone's cat is not a trifling thing, but maybe it's not something the dog needs to be locked up and muzzled for life for. The menacing dog category is about giving those dogs a shot at a life of some quality and the owners more reasonable requirements that they may actually be able to afford to meet while still protecting the community.

Well, arguably to 'break the drive' you are attempting to offer a stimulus that is salient enough to become more pressing than chasing something or whatever the dog is currently doing. For some dogs, you will probably have to use something pretty strong. It doesn't matter whether you use it as R- or P+, it needs to compete with highly arousing stimuli for strength. Many trainers now are relying on conditioned responses instead. The dog in question stopped after the recall, looked back, then opted to go the other way. The aim with programs like Leslie Nelson's Really Reliable Recall and variations thereof (which have been very popular for decades), is that the dog doesn't think about it. They hear the recall and they respond automatically. As long as they hear it chances are good they will turn almost on the spot and race back towards you. The really nice thing about it is you tend to get very fast recalls without trying very hard. Fast recalls are successful recalls. Less chance of a dog stalling or getting distracted halfway. My dogs usually bolt back at a gallop. It is very simple and people usually have great results with it. This method is best learned through the dvd. It works on all dogs, because the principles are very straight forward. There is a section on the dvd for independent and headstrong dogs. You don't need to assess the dog's suitability because there's nothing potentially harmful about it. Lots of people make dvds about dog training that are popular because the methods are broadly applicable. Take Control Unleashed and BAT. These protocols have helped thousands of dogs all over the world with a large variety of temperament differences and specific problems. Works as well for a frightened or anxious dog as it does for an overly excited dog. Also works great with high drive working dogs. CU was originally designed for sport dogs. If we approach training with a good understanding of learning theory, arousal, and emotional states, the rest is just adapting it to suit the details. That's WHY things like CU are so effective. Because that's exactly what they do. It's not like every dog out there has its own unique set of rules.

Aww, don't feel like that. It sounds like you are doing a great job. Hardly anyone is an optimal trainer. I'm not! FWIW, I gave up doing half the things DOLers say you should do because normal people are confused about it and the awkward discussions that follow are more trouble than they're worth. It's easier to just try to be as considerate as possible. That means you watch other people and adjust your behaviour to suit them. I usually find if I am communicative people are very willing to follow my lead and we make friends, both dog and human. At the end of the day we are sharing a space. If their dog comes over and sticks its head in my treat pouch while I'm training, that's okay, because I DID bring treats into a park and start doing interesting things with them, so I'm prepared for these very scenarios. It's a good training opportunity for us. Most people are apologetic, which I appreciate, but if we couldn't handle being interrupted I shouldn't be training in an environment where interruptions are likely to happen.

I usually find they sit pretty smartly for me when they have ascertained that I am carrying treats! Effective training is quite difficult for the average person. They are flat out getting their dog to walk nicely on leash and come back when called. They might not share the same definition of effective control as I do, but that's okay. I have high standards, and I am prepared for most people we meet not sharing those standards. They have their own standards for behaviour, and as long as they don't make life painful for us I'm cool. I don't remember ever needing a dog to sit within 8 cues for my peace of mind. At the end of the day, lots of people need to use dog parks so their dogs can run safely off leash. If that means we may need to be a little lenient in what we consider effective voice control, I am okay with that. I would not like to think of how many people and dogs would be excluded otherwise. Sub-optimal trainers need to exercise their dogs as well.

You wouldn't notice if you only did bush and fields off leash. There are no adventures to be found on most fields. I don't think that effective voice control is some kind of mystery to the average pet owner. They just never even think about it in the first place. No one ever sits around in the dog park discussing it. Well, maybe the Oscars Law people at the fenced park do, but they are exceptions. IME most people do have verbal control of their dogs to the point where the dogs don't run all over the place doing what they like. They are responsive, just not exactly prompt about it. When people take their dogs out and let them off leash, they are not thinking "Hold on, do I have verbal control of my dog today? How reliable is his recall? Will he turn on a dime or do an arch? Are both acceptable?" They find out when they let the dog off and adjust their behaviour accordingly. I almost never think about it. I know what level of responsiveness I am happy with and I know what to expect from them.

It depends on the weather but I take them bush walking quite frequently. Why? Curious about the impact of typical activities and environments on behaviour. :) The way my dogs behave in suburban parks changed quite noticeably when we started hiking with them off leash a lot. The change became more pronounced when I did a lot of body awareness work with them. They seem to find places in parks that other dogs don't find. People are sometimes surprised to see where they end up.

Just out of curiosity, how often do you take your dogs bush and let them explore, huski?