corvus

Food drive. Targets - like clickers - are always paired with food. But it's fast and easy behaviour, so you can build a lot of anticipation for the reward into it. It would just be like getting dog to chase the food in your hand only not using food in your hand, but a target instead. That way you get drive and a beautifully strong behaviour with endless applications in one go. I was thinking of it as a way to channel all that lovely excitement and arousal you get for clicker training. Ooo, and also, once you taught it, you could be clever with your food rewards, dropping in jackpots and uber high value food rewards from time to time to build the same sort of motivation we get for our recalls.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article....the-ethical-dog

Right on, Luke. That's how I've been using treat delivery as well. I really don't toss treats for Kivi, though. I think he'd have trouble finding them. He seems to think they should come directly from my hand. It takes him a long time to get around to looking for food I've dropped on the floor by accident. Erik always gets it first. That's a good idea, TSD. I've been trying to teach the boys much the same thing. They are getting better... Does anyone use one of those jackpot toys?

Not teaching it and rewarding with drive, but increasing drive for the target and using that as a reward...

Has anyone ever incorporated targeting into drive training? If so, how did you do it?

Yeah... Kivi isn't most dogs. I tried the "too late" thing and he went "oh well. Better luck next time" which pretty much sums Kivi up. I do train the dogs separately (otherwise Erik drives Kivi away!), but thought maybe a bit of competition would encourage Kivi to be quicker. Seeing as it didn't I'm not pressing the issue. Training is stressful enough for him without adding treat with-holding as well! The handing bit is my problem, though. I can throw treats around for Erik and that's all good, but if we're doing stuff close any fumbles really disrupt the rhythm. I think I should teach Erik to catch them, though. He's so short it might help him keep his feet on the ground. How small are your treats? Can you toss or drop small, slippery bits of meat with any kind of precision?

Chicken might help... nice and visible. Catching would be fine except that Kivi is really bad at it. He ducks. :rolleyes: Yes, even when you toss him treats. He likes to very delicately lip them out of my fingers. Sometimes he's the one that drops them. I tried to teach him to catch them, but it's never gonna happen. Even having Erik lurking underneath him and launching up at the last minute to try to snatch the treat doesn't encourage him to be more proactive. How do you throw a treat when you want to reward really close to you? Does anyone have cues to tell their dog whether they are throwing a treat or handing one?

I've been quite interested lately in the different ways we can use food to motivate and reward our dogs. I try to put the food where I want my dog to be, and click for movement and feed for position. But for targeting and mat training, I like to throw the food to get the dog to move away from the target so they have to move back for the next treat. I sometimes throw my target, too! I've been watching my training sessions on video and my treat delivery is a bit clumsy at times and really disrupts my training. Part of the problem is I do a lot of our training outside in the grass or on the heinous shagpile carpet inside, so if I start dropping treats the dog has to search for it. It's not a problem if I only drop one or two and my reward rate is high because whichever dog I'm training will usually ignore it and try to get another click instead. But if I drop a few it just gets really disruptive. Someone I asked about this had the excuse that their fingers were numb due to a neck injury, but I guess I'm just clumsy. I'm thinking of putting treats in a small bowl to keep things ticking over nice and fast. Does anyone else have this problem? How do you like to use food?

Comfortis saved our lives!

One of our dog park regulars is currently bringing his Staffy pup who is in heat to the dog park. He says to us "She finally came in heat!" I didn't ask. It's his dog and if I knew I'd only ruin the amicability of our dealings from here on in.

I've taught all three of my dogs to like water. They all hated it to begin with. My corgi was the worst, and she ended up being the keenest swimmer. We walk in just out of reach and lure the dogs in with treats. Each time we lure them a little further. Kivi still won't swim, but Erik does, although he needs to gain more confidence in the water.

Aww, I'm sorry to hear that. My old corgi went through several bowel obstructions, but never had to have surgery, so sorry, can't help. But I hope your Sheltie recovers quickly and smoothly.

I just want to boast because Kivi Tarro is a targeting superstar! Yaaaay, Kivi! I attempted to teach him rear end awareness with a box months ago, and then some mat training a little later, but both fell flat when he failed to notice anything but me and therefore had no idea what he was getting clicked for and he just hates that, poor guy. I think it's fascinating that he has meltdowns if he's not sure what he's doing right even if his reward rate is really high. Aaaaanyway, so I've been teaching him targeting, and he's coming along really well. This evening I started teaching him which way to sidestep for a hip target with a touch cue. He seemed to pick it up really fast, although he tends to have a great training session and then several really ordinary training sessions. The important thing is we have some nice rear end awareness going on with the hip targeting, and he nose targets very well, and he's just starting to make distance connections for left paw targeting. Most importantly, though, he's loving training. Targeting makes it all much less stressful for him. I'm going to teach Erik because I'm already discovering that luring all kind of looks the same and so how's he meant to know if I'm telling him to roll over, spin on the spot, or do a reverse circle around my left leg?? Not to mention the fact that if I'm not careful I signal him to do a reverse circle around my leg instead of rotating his back end closer to my leg! We got problems. :rolleyes: One dog is so alert he's acting on signals before I've finished giving them and the other is so un-alert that I have to teach him to pay attention to his surroundings!

6ft high opaque fences are the worst! That's what went up next door when that dog finally bit someone (in trying to get to my dog). Those people have moved on and it is still a problem with the new dog! He throws himself at the fence as people walk past and gets my mum's current dogs so upset that she's copped redirected bites as a result. Just serves to build the frustration in the fenced dog and the fear in the dogs walking past. Equally, there's a place we used to walk past that has a huge front yard with wire fences. The dogs would get so worked up when we walked our dogs past that our dogs would get anxious and we would cross the road. For ages we avoided walking past that place at all. Eventually the dogs only got access to the front yard when someone was there with them to call them off. That was when we started walking our dogs past there again. The only potential downside I see is if you are somehow stuck in one of those houses that don't actually have a backyard, but do have a front yard. If it were me, I still wouldn't leave my dogs in the front yard while I was away. I wouldn't be game. I was thinking about this very thing the other day as there's a house on the main road I walk home on that's like this. I was thinking how nervous I'd be. It'd be like leaving my dogs in the pool yard while I was out. Probably nothing would ever happen, but I'd fret about it every time all the same.

Frankly, if this had been the law where I grew up, my dog would not have been attacked more than once on our own driveway, or that other couple of times we were walking past someone's house. And I wouldn't have been rushed by a dog and charged by another from someone's front yard when I was doing my pamphlet delivery job. And the little girl I know of wouldn't have lost 2 and a half fingers from the crazy heeler that took exception to her running her fingers along the front fence. The mongrel of a 3-legged Boxer down the street would not have been attacking passers-by, and countless dog fights and fence fights would have been prevented, not to mention gaining the freedom of being able to walk where we liked with our dogs without having to pray to god that the dog behind the front fence would not realise they could jump it. It's only fair that postmen and water meter readers be allowed to access those parts of your yard without having to deal with a dog they don't know, and what's more, I wouldn't leave a dog in a front yard unsupervised anyway. Only takes one smart alek to open the gate and leave it ajar...

Ditto! The ones by the door get a fun reaction when you run off with them. But at least if the monster is looking for a shoe to sit down and chew up he normally settles for the ones he's been given without looking for a forbidden one.

Came across this "Loopy Training" approach on another list and thought some might find it interesting. The basic concept is that behaviour occurs as a loop and a clicker (or other marker) has two functions: as a bridge and as a cue for reinforcement. There are some good things there about food delivery and clean behaviour. Here's a longish explanation: http://www.equineclickertraining.com/train...y_training.html And here's a shorter one: http://stalecheerios.com/blog/orca/alexand...loopy-training/ I'd like to know what others think about it.

What everyone else said. I teach my dogs "acceptable begging", which means if they want something from my plate they will need to lie down quietly and wait. This is easy enough with one of my dogs, but the other it's a bit of a balancing act. It takes something happening after something else about twice for him to learn to predict it, and if he predicts he's getting something he can get thoroughly over-excited. So even if I do plan on giving him scraps, he doesn't get anything anywhere near the area we eat or while we are eating. I take the plate into the kitchen and wait for him to quit hanging around me long enough to practice a recall and use the plate scraps as a reward. I think that it's much easier to just have a blanket rule of no hanging around while people are eating and no food off plates.

I use Web Master harnesses from Ruff Wear. I guess you might consider them bulky as there's a fair bit of material in them, but they don't restrict movement at all, are virtually impossible to get out of without someone undoing the clips, and they have this handle on the back that I don't know what I ever did without. I've always steered clear of the Ezydog harnesses because the chest pad seems really harsh on the edges to me. For both mine before they grew into the Ruff Wear harnesses I had them in walking harnesses that have just one clip that does up near the shoulderblades and had a double D-ring so you don't have to rely on the clip. I had a Rogz one for Erik, but the shoulder straps were quite low and did seem to restrict his movement a little. So I got a Kramar one, I think. It was all right, if I remember correctly.

I feed one meal of mince with vegies and then one meal of bones, usually chicken wings each days. Once a week I give them a meal of organs, usually liver and kidney together, but Kivi is not really into his kidney. In the vegie mix I add yoghurt and/or cottage cheese with some Brewer's yeast and kelp powder. I freeze it and just dollop a couple of spoons of it on the mince and mix it in each day. I kinda stopped paying much attention to weights and ratios. I don't think vegies are an essential part of the diet, so they only get a small amount. Of the meat they get I try to make about 50% edible bones. I went this way because of my interpretation of how much muscle meat versus bone they should get. I think that raw feeding is very open to interpretation. As long as you've got the basics you should be able to tweak it if something seems not right. I don't weigh what I give them because it's pretty hard with the bones as they are so variable. I just guess and if they start getting a little too porky I cut back and if they are looking skinny I give them more. Remember that you're just feeding a dog. There are a lot of right answers!

Kivi is yet to realise that water ever comes out of the sky. Doesn't like the wet grass much, though! I tell him to go out to do wees in the rain and he wanders off around the yard on his usual activities. I did find him sleeping in the middle of the yard during torrential rain when he was a puppy. Erik is a pansy and won't go out in the rain unless forced.

Surely it's worth a try. Linda Tellington-Jones has methods for making your own anxiety wraps using strips of stretchy material or elastic bandages. She encourages you to be creative and wrap in whatever way you think will help your dog, then do it up with safety pins.

Thanks everyone, a few options for me to check out, there.

Yeah, it doesn't need to be outrageously strong. We just use collars to hold ID, basically. They have KeepSafe collars at the moment, but Erik keeps losing his in wrestling matches with Kivi, and the nylon webbing is really making a mess of his neck fur.

Does anyone know where to get collars that are softer than nylon webbing or leather?