corvus

Just a friendly suggestion, but maybe it should stipulate somewhere exactly what accreditations Steve Courtney has? Personally, I care more about methods than qualifications, but if someone is advertising they have qualifications the first thing I want to know is what they are and who they came from. It usually says at least a little bit about what kind of methods and approaches to expect, and something about how far the trainer/behaviourist has gone to get training themselves. I have used that kind of thing to decide who's worth calling.

It's all right, I found a paper that pretty much answered those questions at least. I liked their idea of an enriched environment for ratties. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1333515/

Sorry, misunderstood. It sounded the same, but I didn't realise the important bit was that they would work for food when they could get the exact same thing for free. No wonder captive wild cats are always so untoned. Without knowing anything about it, couldn't it be that seeking for food is inherently rewarding? The way that hunting behaviour is thought to be inherently rewarding (in that the bit of the brain that lights up when a cat goes for a mouse is the same bit that lights up during reward-seeking behaviour)? Do you still see contrafreeloading if there is uncertainty in whether there is food to be had from working? To what extent do you see it in animals in enriched environments versus impoverished environments? Before I started training my hare, I used to mix up dried currants and the likes in his food and hide them in his hay. He would race over to rifle through everything to find the currants as soon as I put his bowl down. How do you tell if an animal doesn't just choose to work for something that is available for free simply because it's a bored animal and working alleviates the boredom?

A bad old girl (and good puppy asking before he pounces on her). Post digging Doing a sit amongst all these distracting dogs for a toy throw. It's not a very neat sit, but she was never taught a neat sit.

Cats work for food. You just have to find the right one. Cottage cheese often works. It's harder with herbivores, though. They are not always opportunistic by nature the way carnivores and omnivores are. Their food doesn't hide from them, so you have to find something that really appeals to them to get them interested. Sorry, that's a bit off topic. I'm doing my PhD on optimism and enriched environments. What Kelpie-i suggested is one of the reasons why a neutralisation approach to puppy rearing bothers me. I wonder if passive exposure does the job as well as interaction. Having said that, at the moment I am feeling doubtful that you can increase a dog's problem-solving abilities through the way you teach them early in their life. That's only based on one dog, though. Kivi went from free shaping quite happily to wanting hints all the time. I mentioned it on a clicker training list and someone said they didn't think it was uncommon. I know a few people that dislike free shaping, and I don't blame them. I'm of the firm belief that it's not for every dog and shouldn't be held up as the pinnacle of positive training. Rant aside, I think it's a bit of a red herring to get caught up in how a dog is brought up. Certainly it plays a big role the way the dog can cope with their environment as jdavis has outlined, but as long as the puppy wasn't so messed with that they just don't know what's going on most of the time, I think you can recover a lot. Especially with the right motivators and reward histories. Maybe I'm wrong, though. Hopefully I'll find out over the next 3 years.

The above sounds like the heart of the matter to me. I tend to think of animals thinking in terms of rules. Where there's this situation, react in this way. But that can't be all of it. Life is too dynamic and unpredictable and behaviour itself is quite messy at an individual basis. In behavioural ecology we would try to observe what an entire population or species does and then find reasons for it, but on the ground, it didn't take me long to learn that there's always some individual flying in the face of what everyone else is doing and you just can't figure out why. Why do all first year female fairy-wrens build crap nests? Why do some of them get better at it and some never improve? Most of the time you just never have answers to these things. You can only say that behaviour is complex and highly variable and just like genetics, you're only ever looking at a snapshot. It's in a constant state of adaptation. Sometimes I think that there's no accounting for these dogs that just deeply care about gaining the approval of the humans in their lives. I've got nothing, except that they were bred to care about it. Kivi is scared of large balls. It would be interesting to see how he went with something like that, though. He's not stupid and sometimes he does some surprising things. Yesterday a little dog started something with Erik for getting too close to his new best friend, Kivi. Erik was not going to let this newcomer dictate his access to Kivi, and he got right pissed off and was going to end it right there. Kivi put himself between the two dogs, gave the newcomer a bit of a nuzzle, then started pouring affection on the newcomer's owner all the while shifting his body this way and that to block the other two dogs from getting to each other and thoroughly ignoring Erik, who was very worked up. I was holding Erik, and the other dog was on leash so everything was safe, but it was a big help to have Kivi blocking them both and ignoring them. I wonder what his motivation for acting was, though. Was he protecting Erik? Was he trying to calm the newcomer? Was he just reacting to the tension around him with placating gestures? Why did he focus his attention on the new dog, who started the altercation? Did he turn to the new dog's owner for a reason, or was he just conveniently close for a cuddle and sought out affection to ease his own feelings of tension? I've no idea. Erik responds to the phone ringing by running from wherever he is into the phone in the lounge room because normally that's what I do. He knows what happens when phones ring. It wouldn't especially surprise me if he came and barked at me if I didn't follow his understanding of the phone rules. He is sensitive to these things. One night my partner had a late one at work. Erik was fine until I went to bed without turning the hall light off. He became very restless and seemed to be at a loss for what activity we were doing now. It couldn't be sleeping, because the light was still on and my partner wasn't in bed. He woke me up every hour barking at things until my partner came home at 2:30am. I think that he has a set of criteria for what defines the routine things we do. Before bedtime, I let him out to toilet, feed the rabbits, clean my teeth, turn all the lights off and go to bed. He watched me do all but the second last thing, and it wasn't until I was actually in bed with the light still on that he started to behave strangely. I became convinced a few years ago that my hare knew me by several different criteria as well. I suspect he knows what my footsteps sound like, knows how I move, the gestures I make, the tones I use around him, and the way I react to him, and no doubt the way I smell. All these things come together to form me. When one is different, like I'm wearing strange shoes, maybe it all falls apart and he's not sure it's even me anymore. Just a thought.

Aidan, Pink was saying that the conventional reward of, say, money for humans was not that great a motivator compared to feeling like they were working towards something bigger than themselves. I can't remember the exact words. I don't know any dogs that work for the greater good, but I'd love to hear about it if you do. I've been a bit vague, coming at this from a number of angles simultaneously, although I will happily bow to Vickie and Aidan's superior knowledge if they still disagree with me. That's a very refreshing comment! I have to say, since I got Erik I've realised that you certainly can teach a dog that is very aroused and build speed and enthusiasm into it from scratch. I generally train Erik in fast, high-powered training sessions where he's nice and excited and putting in heaps of effort. He doesn't just roll over when told. He dives into a roll and is back on his feet in an instant (as opposed to Kivi, who lolls around on the ground waving his feet in the air and then finally flops over and lays there on his side until he's sure you're not going to ask him any other down-related things while he's there). I was thinking that with Erik (and my mum's dog), you don't want them as aroused as they can be, at least until you've taught them to be able to think through that. It's not like you can walk out with an extremely high value reward, get them revved, and then expect them to even perform something they know all right in other contexts. That goes without saying, right? Erik's ability to think through his arousal has improved steadily as he's practised, and my mum's dog Jill was the same. But Jill especially took some preparing before she could think past the ball. Like encouraging things she was already doing and rewarding with a throw just to get her in the right state of mind to think about doing something for the ball. I was also thinking that there have been times that I've deliberately tried to bring Erik down to a lower arousal state because it just doesn't suit what I'm trying to teach. Like lying still to get his nails done. As soon as you bring food rewards into the equation he's slapping his paw into my hand and wagging his tail madly when I want him to be calm for once. And I was also thinking of when I've taught Erik things that are a bit weird to him. Like walking backwards. It seems like a normal mechanical skill, but for him at least it wasn't obvious what he should do and it was hard to kickstart it. At least in the very early stages of something like that, I think it's better for him to be a bit calmer than usual. I find that he progresses in leaps and bounds if I start slow with clusters of clicks and then a break, and then ramp it up once he is onto the right sort of movements. Things I can kickstart easily that aren't very weird still get taught as high energy sorts of behaviours right from the start, but some things Erik just seems to need to problem solve. Kivi doesn't think things through, which is why he gets target trained as much as possible these days. He has tunnel vision and I find it very difficult at times to kickstart new behaviours. If I could bring him down a bit, I would sometimes! But he's the low drive dog, so I guess I should be happy he's so focused and use it to my advantage with the targets.

And dogs don't value work that is meaningful in the bigger picture. :D But the experiments he spoke about at the beginning with the candle problem were, I think, relevant to training dogs. If they know they are working for a reward that is worth a lot to them, they might be more motivated, but not necessarily faster at learning. In fact, it may be that they learn slower than if there are no expectations of rewards. I think this has implications with the way drive training may be used, as well. Drive training seeks to increase motivation and anticipation for high value rewards. It's not always a good state for a dog to be in to learn something new. There is a bit of stress involved in being in that state, and like Pink says, tunnel vision. My mum has a dog that has very little interest in food rewards and way too much interest in toy rewards. It took a long time to even set her up so she could be trained, because around food she was not interested and around balls she was so interested she'd get the tunnel vision and just could not think past "BALL. WANT." It was a real challenge to find the right motivator for her that was not too boring and not too arousing. ETA I realise that the drive bit generally doesn't come in until the behaviour is learnt. That's the point I was making, and what I said earlier about teaching something new with teensy, barely there rewards and bringing in big rewards once its learnt to encourage enthusiasm. I have heard people say that it's very easy to train a dog that's nuts about balls, for example, but it's not. As above, you have to prepare them before they can think beyond "ball". As opposed to teaching things with teensy bites of food where with many dogs you are lucky enough to hit on just the right motivation level straight off the mark.

Haha, I feel your pain. Kivi's britches are so dense and fuzzy even when there are no tangles it's really hard to find the skin! You would think I were torturing him when I get brushing down there. I've discovered that I probably was. He's much more tolerant if I am very patient and gentle and do it properly in little sections. A good brush also helped. :D Nonetheless, he only has to sit down and he gets twigs, leaves, dirt and random debris stuck in his fur.

We are in much the same position. Both our dogs are locked inside with no outside access all day. It is usually 9.5 hours at the moment, as I hurry home because one of the dogs is only 8 months old and he can't hold it for much longer than that, but in the past it's been 10 hours most days, and up to 13 hours on occassion. They have bladders of steel! We had a dog walker visiting for my younger boy until recently. Some days he doesn't quite make it, but I figure as long as he makes it most of the time I'm okay with that. What I do feel bad about is coming home, letting them out to pee, then locking them up again because I have to go out again. They are young dogs and really need to get out and run around. I usually play with them or take them to the park or something when I get home. They are fine during the day. No peep out of them and they don't destroy anything. Just sleep.

Aww, poor thing. I know a kid that jumped off a jetty into the lake and landed on a broken bottle. It cut his knee right into the cartlidge and really messed it up. We always pick up glass when we see it as well.

Kivi is a Lapphund, so another northern spitz breed. He tries to dig up a little bed pretty much every time he is preparing to lie down and snooze for a while, no matter where he is. I find it fascinating. It's obviously a compulsive thing. He just digs a few times with his paw before he lies down. I used to try to give him blankets to "dig" up, but he's so not interested. He likes to lie on the ground, so that's what he digs at. He's not stupid, but he also doesn't ever seem to think about what he's doing. He has dug out some impressive beds in the backyard. He only does that when he's bored or has excess energy to spend, though. But digging before he lies down for a snooze happens no matter how buggered he or content he is.

That's an interesting point. So do you think there is a cognitive process going on when that happens? Well, I'm inclined to think so. Say I've been teaching Erik at home to roll over. When we go to the park, I might ask him to roll over. He's in a whole new place and I can practically see him sorting through his repertoire looking for the right behaviour to match the cue. He hesitates and sometimes he even goes to do something else and then corrects himself before he's finished. If I waved a tug toy in front of him and asked him to roll over, he would just down. That's a good way to get to attack a tug toy. He wouldn't even try to think about what I had asked him. But if I ask him to down during tug, he certainly knows what it means and will do it with gusto. I reckon it's because he doesn't need to think about that one. Leslie McDevitt often talks about default behaviours as a way for dogs to "ask" for something they want. I've found with Erik that a default behaviour loses some of its usefulness after a while. Once it becomes the thing to do for any situation, his brain switches off and he does it around the highest of distractions without even really knowing it sometimes. I guess that was the point of the default behaviour, but to begin with I was using it sort of as a "slow down and think" cue. Once he no longer had to think about how to get what he wanted, he stopped slowing down and engaging his brain when I asked for a down. Now I've switched to sit as the "stop and think, please!" cue. He knows it well enough to do it when he's aroused, but not so well that he can do it without thinking about it. It's almost like when you talk to someone for whom English is a recent second language. It takes them a little longer to respond sometimes because they have to do some mental translation. I don't know if that's the same thing as being creative or thinking outside the square, but I do think at the moment that there are times when my dogs think consciously through things and times when they just react. Erik is great fun to shape. He gets that a click for a lean one way probably means he'll get a click for a step in that direction, and another click for several steps in that direction. Kivi seems to me to frequently be unaware of what most of his body is doing when he gets a click. He gets tunnel vision and so it's a real challenge to teach him things sometimes. If he doesn't know why he's being clicked, he tends to throw himself on the ground and whine. I've seen the moment he realises how to win the game. His eyes light up, his ears come forward, his tail comes up and he starts going great guns. I could teach Erik something new with tug as a reward if it were easy. Like, dive under my leg to get to the toy. I used to argue with people over food rewards with my last dog. I rarely used them because she just couldn't THINK around food. That's funny, as I've noticed the same thing. Erik was in the garden with me on the weekend literally pulling weeds up with his mouth while I was pulling weeds up beside him with my hands. Kivi used to do that when he was younger, but he's not into it anymore. Similarly, Kivi has become increasinly stressed about shaping as he has got older. We have switched entirely to targeting because it was just not that fun for him, despite the fact that he was quite decent at it as a pup and seemed to enjoy it. Interesting...

I still kinda think of Aussies as being more drivey as a general rule than Lappies. I think that Lappies are perhaps a bit more friendly and cuddly, although I only know Aussies as an outsider - never had one in the family. My Lappie behaves much the same way towards people and dogs he doesn't know as he does to us. He certainly likes to hang out with me and will be in whatever room I'm in, but he doesn't fret about being away from me, either. Unless he knows I'm just on the other side of the door/gate probably doing something fun. He is, to put it bluntly, thoroughly lazy. He'll run with a friend, but rarely on his own. He would so not get on a grooming table. Some days he won't even get in the car! But he is without question the mellowest, most clumsy Lapphund I've met to date. Training-wise, I would guess Aussies are probably quicker to pick things up. My Lapphund is fun and easy to train, but it generally takes him longer to learn things than it takes my Vallhund. Lapphunds are a teensy bit on the independent side. My boy certainly has his spitz moments of "Yeah, I don't feel like it." He is very confident and laid back, though. It makes life with him very easy. I think you should look at the Belgians some more. Although hey, Aussies are also cool.

Thanks Aidan, that was really interesting. I listened to most of it twice. I think it has applications in reward choice for the task we wish our dogs to perform. You don't always want your dog to fly in with maximum effort. They sometimes need to be able to realise that the rules have changed and work out what the new rules are, and it's hard to do that when you're focused obsessively on a massive reward. The rewards I use for clicker training are pretty ordinary and so small they are basically just a taste of food rather than food itself. I know I'm doing well when my dog stops caring about the odd dropped treat and cares more about getting another click. I use big rewards when I'm trying to build anticipation and enthusiasm for something my dog already knows.

Yaaay, sorted!

Puli! I am having a love affair with Pulis at the moment. Maybe one day I'll get to watch those cords fly... Lappies, Samoyeds, Aussies, Leos... any of those would be good bets. One of our dog park regulars has a pair of Collies. We sit around moaning to each other about the burrs and the sticks and the mud in those coats. I don't have time for more than one hairy dog, but my Lappie is pretty special. He's a total social butterfly. The more people or dogs he has around him the happier he is. He actually gets depressed when he's had extra company for a few days and then they go home. I think I will always have a Lappie, now, and that's saying a lot for me. I love variety, but Lappies are just such a pleasure to live with. Even my slightly broken and possibly marginally retarded one.

Only because I held his hand and took him over to ask. Pumpitdog, that looks like an armpitdog.

My OH is hopeless with puppies. He made me go for a walk with him over Christmas as an excuse to try to get a chance to play with the GR puppy he knew was outside with her family. I have to tell him whenever I see a puppy so he can go and cuddle it. He kisses our dogs on the head all the time. I had a baby rabbit to find a new home one time, and the lady that took her showed up with this huge guy in leather and tats. While I was getting the rabbit he somehow ended up lying on my kitchen floor cuddling with my corgi. I asked them if they needed a box to transport the bunny and by this stage he had her cuddled up in the crook of his neck and his wife goes "No, he'll hold her." and just kind of rolls her eyes.

That's good to hear. OH pointed out that there was a very small earthquake with its epicentre in Yass this week. Think he could have felt that at your place? Bit of a longshot, but you never know.

Hugs to Mist. Hope it is just an odd superstition. It seems so out of character for a confident Sammy boy.

it's part of teaching the dog self control. Well, it can be. If you choose to use it in that fashion. There are loads of different ways you can teach a dog self control inside and outside of tug games. But the question remains, what do you think would happen if you didn't teach the dog self control in a tug game through having an out and an engage cue? I know what would happen with Erik, and it's the exact reason why self control exercises are a part of everything we do with him. Yeah, but I didn't ask about the benefit, did I? I asked what you think would happen if you didn't have that "control". Like Aidan, I also have a dog that doesn't have an out and gets to win by taking the toy away. I haven't found I've needed to teach him one, so I haven't. I don't have any troubles getting the tug off him, and he's a tugging fiend. He gets to take the toy periodically, but most of the time he drops it pretty quickly and comes back to me. He likes it better when I tug with him most of the time. Erik does have a start tug cue, for the same reason self control exercises are part of everything we do with him. And because it's useful to get his attention. And because I like watching the effect it has on him. It's fun. ;) But that's drive building, and it's a benefit. I was asking what people think will happen if they don't finish a game on their terms for control reasons. Anyone that plays tug with their dog ought to be in control by virtue of the fact that they can walk away at any time. I know what happens with Erik without an end of game signal, but again, it's the same thing as what happens with everything in his life if he's not given clear instructions. He's not always a fun dog when he's being creative. ;)

Aww, isn't that funny. My OH likes Charlie very much, too. Sorry to hear everyone has drawn a blank. It must be so frustrating. FYI, my corgi, Penny, had back troubles when we got Kivi. She was a bit sturdier than Charlie, but she was old and already arthritic. She had a degenerate disk up just above her shoulders. Kivi never touched her if she didn't want to be touched, but Kivi is about the most submissive dog on the planet. Penny made it clear when she didn't want to be messed with and he respected it. It was hard on him, though, because he really wanted to play with her and snuggle with her and towards the end she wouldn't let him anywhere near her. I think we were extremely lucky with Kivi, because he had endless tolerance and patience for Penny. I'm pretty happy with Erik as a small dog. He's short and portable, but he's very outgoing and drivey and he's tough. He doesn't think twice about doing all the things bigger dogs do. He loves big dogs! He's like a Kelpie in a smaller, stocky body. He's definitely the kind of small dog a man can have without feeling silly. Also, he looks like a short wolf. He's very solid and muscular for his size, though. Lots of little dogs feel intimidated by him. He is their height, but they can see he's considerably heavier and stronger. Big hugs to Charlie. Hope he can come to some of our future beach parties.

Just curious to know what people think would happen if they don't start and end tug games themselves? Control is a slippery thing, and can exist on a continuum... It can also be in the eye of the beholder.