corvus

Wow, she has a great way of working her dog! Thanks for posting such great vidoes, guys.

Thanks for your interest in my research and sorry I was running about flat chat most of the day and not able to spend much time chatting - the day absolutely flew past for me! I'd be more than happy to catch up and chat further any time you like Steve I have some journal articles about dogs kept in backyards from Amanda Kobelt's PhD research several years ago. Happy to forward them to you if you like? Email me at: [email protected] I'm hoping to look at things like this in my PhD that I'm starting at the end of March. Would I be able to get hold of the journal articles as well, Mia?

Here I go.... I don't think you can squash prey drive because the very purpose of prey drive requires a dog to be pretty much unstoppable. Think about it. If a predator was easily turned off hunting, they'd starve. There's a whole bunch of chemicals that flood into the body during circumstances like that to reduce the effects of things that might cause the prey drive to switch off before the animal is caught or has decidedly escaped. Adrenaline is the obvious one. If you can squash it, I say it's play behaviour, not prey drive. Although I agree that you may be able to direct or suppress prey drive in some circumstances. And a redirected response sounds likely to me as well. ETA, okay, there are probably ways in which you can squash it completely, but you'd have to do something pretty drastic and systematic.

This is a really shite example of the kind of free shaping I do with Erik when he's bored: This was an easy behaviour from scratch. I call it free shaping because I didn't start with a plan, just clicked the first thing he offered and shaped it into something. He now swipes his paw at pretty much anything you point to and say "paw it". You can see several times I should have clicked and I didn't, and then I clicked for something less than I should have. It's amazing to me how fast it can go even with clumsy clicking. To me, shaping is more of a planned thing, and you might use something to kickstart it. I think that free shaping can be quite stressful, so I don't do much waiting around for something good to click. Kivi doesn't like to offer things spontaneously (maybe he's pessemistic), so I don't do any free shaping with him and only do some shaping if it's something he's naturally good at. Everything else is targeting.

...like a crossbreed? I think it's entirely unrealistic to expect every dog owner to have done research before getting a dog. It doesn't even cross the minds of many dog owners. They just want a dog, so they go out and get one from somewhere convenient. It's not their fault and it doesn't make them unworthy of having a dog. It's just the way a lot of people have been brought up to deal with dogs.

You do what you have to to get the reward coming thick and fast.

K9: How do you know? If responding to the distraction is either physically rewarding or chemically rewarding, it wont stop. Because I tried it. And it can and does stop. I know, because I tried it, and it did. How about that! Have you read Control Unleashed? K9: So the dog learns that the first command you gave doesnt need to be complied with, because you will give it something easier to do & the dog can access the reward that way. It's funny you should say that. I used to think that way. Then I adjusted my thinking because I discovered I was wrong about 99% of it. The other 1% is a whole range of possibilities. I get the sense you want me to PM you. I believe you have a PM button as well. Believe it or not, this thread ain't about you. Like MonElite said, it's hardly a new idea. I was vaguely curious how many people who trained in drive actually did the isolation thing and why. And, naturally, I have an opinion on it as well. My opinion on any form of manipulative isolation has been the same for some time, now. If you want to claim this one as your own, then go ahead, but don't try to make it into something personal between you and The Evil Scientist or something. I'm kinda flattered that I even register on your radar, let alone provoke some casual abuse. Thanks to those who actually answered the question. I've got all I wanted out of this thread. Edited to fix quotes.

K9: It makes it easier on the dog to gain reward by setting an environment that doesnt distract the dog (from reward). So by teaching in a distraction free environment, it makes for less stress on the dog, you know, I do this so I dont ruin soft dogs... Aw, you've missed my point. If you practice things heaps in distracting environments they stop being distracting. It's not like I dumped a puppy in the park and expected them to learn a formal heel right then and there. It's just adding dog parks to the list of places where training may occur. Kivi is really cute about it. He takes a break from running around and comes over to either sit patiently in front of me or OH or glue himself to someone's left leg in the hopes that someone will do some training with him. K9: What happens then? they arent given the reward I guess. I am sure that works (for you) but I find setting the dog up to win a much fairer system. Especially on soft, easy ruined dogs. Ask 'em something easy and reward. Or I use a Least Reinforcing Scenario. Or both! They seem to like the both best. I don't use LRSs much, but I've decided there's a time and place for them, and it's often when I've made a mistake. What do I care what police departments do? They all work with GSDs!

Okay, this is what bothers me. I'm not saying it's not true, just asking for more information. Firstly, all my training is highly rewarding. That's why Erik gets hysterical when I'm training Kivi, I guess. Secondly, Erik at least does put in maximum effort, and we still walk him (because otherwise I would have to train him nearly constantly to keep him busy!) and yet, somehow, he still comes in with maximum effort afterwards. Kivi is steady in his training effort regardless of whether he's skidded in from a wild game with some of his dog friends at the park or whether he's got up from a nap to train. There's just no effect. I would buy this otherwise, but them's the facts. Furthermore, we all know that there's more to getting out of the yard than just expending energy. My dogs come back from a walk more stimulated than when they left. In fact, if I thought I needed a boost in energy for training, I'd take them for a turn around the block on leash first. Just enough exercise and mental stimulation to get everything up and going without making them remotely tired. So... you are deliberately making life without you boring so they will find life with you even more exciting than usual? Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to put an evil spin on this to somehow make everyone agree with me (as if they ever would!), but offering an alternate view. I'm not trying to convince anyone. It's a bouncing board thingy. You paint your rosy picture, I paint my gloomy one and we bounce back until we find the truth of it. Are you agreeing with Huski or disagreeing? How do you go about getting perfect behaviours if you don't practice them when they aren't perfect? My point was why should I only practice them at home until they are perfect and then generalise them? Geez, you guys are too smart for me. What can I say, it's been boring around here lately with not enough people telling me I'm mad/stupid/inexperienced/setting my dogs up for dangerous failure/clueless about training/have failed to notice that dogs are dogs and not any other animal. I just can't get enough of it. For all my reward-based training obsession I guess I must be a glutton for punishment. For the record, my interest in drive training is the same as my interest in any other method. Just wanna know what people actually do. I know crap all about what K9 Force does or doesn't do, but I'm genuinely interested to know how many people isolate their dogs during drive building. How long does it normally take, anyway?

Could you further explain that reasoning? Are you saying her frustration and eagerness were building because you deprived her of anything else interesting in the world and so thus became the world to her? I guess I've never paid much attention to time before distance before distraction. I've taught new behaviours from scratch in the dog park or out walking. I practice things that are far from perfect in the dog park, too. Why shouldn't I? Occasionally they give me a blank look and I figure we need some more practice at home, but realistically, they start doing it in the park, around the house, out walking around the block on leash as soon as they have a cue for it. I fade the home only training as fast as I fade a lure!

I recently heard that while building drive in dogs initially you should isolate them. As in, don't take them for walks, even. Does anyone do that? Why/why not? I don't really get why you would do that. I'm pretty confident my dogs would both be climbing the walls if they were isolated in their yard/house for just a week. I went out of my way to get Erik playing tug in all sorts of places quite early on. I can't really imagine how that would possibly cause problems later on. I do heaps of training in the dog park because my reasoning is you may as well get them used to listening to you in highly distracting surroundings asap. Maybe I'm on a totally weird wavelength or something (as usual)?

I think that's a legitimate concern. When my pup was around with my thunder-phobic older dog I causally isolated him from her during storms. I don't think he was ever going to care much, anyway. My latest pup is the type that might come to care, so I've been doing a lot of distracting him during thunderstorms. With games and training. I don't want to ignore him, but nor do I want to teach him that storms are something unusual or special in any way. So we do fun stuff during storms and he doesn't pay much attention to the noise.

I have to say, I like target sticks. They look so professional. My hare follows a target more readily than my hand, and it has the added bonus that I can turn him away from me without reaching my hand over the top of him. That's a huge benefit. Thanks for your thoughts, everyone.

Now I want a Standard Schnauzer! My wee little Vallhund can do things like that. It's ever so much fun. For him we just rested a folding chair against the door and so when he tried to jump up on it it slid to the ground. The lack of anything stable to put his paws on combined with an unwillingness to stand on the chair once it was down seemed to do the job for him, but it sounds like this dog would be too tall and determined to be deterred by a mere unstable folding chair. Maybe you could try something similar but more suited to his size? Although I think crate training is probably a better idea.

Obsessive humping in a puppy that old most likely is hormonal. There's no point punishing him for it. He can't help it, and in dog society it's not necessarily bad behaviour. Some dogs don't like it, but if the bitch isn't making a song and dance, why should you? Erik is 7 months and has just been desexed and regularly humps our older dog. I just distract him. Sometimes he goes back, but it's not like Kivi cares. They are all over each other all the time anyway. I reckon just distract him with some toy or something and maybe he'll hump that instead. He should settle down over the next month or so.

Kivi used to get car sick as a pup. It persisted for months. He really hated the car. We found that feeding him chicken wings before a long trip was better than giving him nothing and far better than giving him mince and vegies. He seemed to do better with something substantial in his belly. He improved greatly when we put a soft bed with sides in the back for him to lie in. It just really cut down on his movement. To this day he is reluctant to get in the car if his bed isn't there, and he barely fits in it anymore. T Touch also really helped to relax him before a trip. Sometimes I think the anticipation of feeling sick gets them all stressed and then they inevitably feel sick, so some relaxation work maybe derails that feedback loop. We got the bed in and started T Touch for 5 minutes before leaving at the same time and that was the end of our car sickness problems. These days Kivi sits up and looks out the window. Never thought I'd see the day.

Our pet minder is Carolyn from Collar and Lead. She is in the area. I trust her implicitly with my animals. She has the common sense to adjust her feeding routine around my hare when he gets a bit jumpy without being told what to do or look for. That is priceless to me. We have had her in to check on the dogs when they have recently had surgery, and she's been in to daily to let the puppy out for a toilet break for the last couple of months. Don't know where we'd be without her.

I did a few animal behaviour topics at uni under my zoology degree, and did my honours in animal behaviour. I think there's a fairly big difference between science and psychology faculty courses. I was taught behavioural ecology, which is the evolutionary basis of behaviour and how to understand it. Psych often teaches more of the Behaviourism stuff, which covers how animals learn. Behaviourism has had a bad rap in recent times due to an infuriating obsession with avoiding "the black box", that being anything that goes on inside the body. Hard-nosed Behaviourists relegate all behaviour to learning/conditioning from environmental and social effects. Behavioural ecologists look for the evolutionary benefits of behaviour, which is not to say learning theory doesn't come into it, it just rarely does because most of the time animals behave the way they do because of the action of natural selection, which encompasses learning theory, genetics, phylogeny, and most importantly, evolution. If you wanted to do a degree in animal behaviour with the view to eventually do something with dogs, I'd do one of those general Behavioural Sciences ones. Having said that, I'm about to start a PhD on dog behaviour and I just did a traditional zoology degree. It depends on where your interests lie. If it's just dogs and you want a dog job, I'd not bother with a tertiary degree at all. It's a bit of overkill. The only reason I'm doing a PhD is because I want to do research. That's my biased opinion on it all.

Yay! Clicker training is so fun. :D I have lost my iClick. Luckily I have two other box clickers and a click-a-stick. Still, I miss my iClick. Where are you, iClick?? I think the two places that you are most likely to trip up with clicker training to begin with is timing and reward rate. Remember to keep the reward rate nice and high (like, click/treat every couple of seconds on new things) and get used to looking for small details, even a shift of weight. My timing still leaves a bit to be desired, but we're getting there. I like recording my training sessions so I can look back on them and see how inconsistent my signals and clicking are. It's very humbling.

Hey what do you know I actually agree with something you've said Corvus! Yeah, I'm going to ruin it by saying something controversial again... I have said this before and I'm going to bring it up again because it's relevant. I truly believe that excitement and fear are closely related. I think this makes sense when looking at behaviour within an arousal framework. Fear and excitement are both linked to high arousal, and according to the book on stress I'm reading, often involve the same hormones and chemicals but in different ways. For instance, the chemical that is responsible for dopamine release during anticipation of something very rewarding is the same chemical that is responsible for the all sorts of nasty stress-related effects in th body. Interesting, huh? This is pure speculation on my part, but I have a feeling that when an animal is wired, they can tip more easily from a positive state to a fearful or aggressive state than they would ordinarily. I was going to give a hare example, but look, I've restrained myself. Erik is about 7 months old and is finally starting to get a handle on the idea that one can actually relax sometimes. It is very typical of him to become hypervigilant when he's wired. He'll leap up at the slightest noise and tear outside barking his head off. Get him in, calm him down a little and off he goes again after some other noise I didn't hear. When he is in this state it is dead easy to get him to become a tug monster.

I don't think that just because a dog's drive is easily squashed that they therefore have low drive. IMO, there are two things at play, there. There's motivation, and there's bounceback. To me, they are pretty independent, in that you can have a low drive dog with good bounceback, or a high drive dog with poor bounceback. I think that drive is a high state of anticipation for a reward. Anticipation vanishes when you're thinking about threatening things. Taking food when it's handed to you is not likely to be associated with a high state of anticipation, because the dog has to know it's coming and be looking forward to it. So, by my way of thinking, counter-conditioning with treats has nothing to do with drive. At least until the dog is so well conditioned they have come to anticipate a reward in the presence of their stressor! Pretty much cured, then. ETA maybe K9 Force can shed some light on this subtle interplay of drives, anxiety and conditioning?

You were the one that was talking about conditioning. Didn't you know that's universal? Then why wouldn't she also play with a ball to alleviate the pressure? That was the point I was making. I'm sure we all know it's not that simple. You're assuming that the handler is putting pressure on the dog in the first place, and assuming that the handler stops putting pressure on when the dog takes the food. Have you ever fed a frightened dog? They'll inch forwards and lean in from as far away as possible, take the treat and beat a hasty retreat. They naturally want to put space between themselves and the scary thing now that they no longer have a reason to be near it. They may or may not come back for more later. Depends on how stressful it was. And that kind of thing changes quite readily even from moment to moment. Guess what? Birds do the same thing! Imagine that, two unrelated species behaving in the same way in the presence of a stressor and a motivator. I'm not saying there is never a handler effect, just that there doesn't have to be. The simplest explanation is always the place to start. Not again! You'd think I'd know the difference after being a human for 27 years. And a zoology degree on top of that! Have you never been so stressed you feel nauseous? It does happen, and is a scientifically proven fact. It was actually proven with rats. The body releases a particular hormone during stress that suppresses appetite. The eating more thing comes in because at the same time as the appetite-suppressing hormone, the body releases a slower-acting appetite stimulant. The idea being, at the onset and during a stressful event, you don't want to eat, but afterwards you want to eat because during the stress response your body mobilised a heap of your energy stores with the expectation that they would have been used in some physical emergency, and prompts you to replace it all. It's kinda complicated, but that's the overly simple, abridged version. Long story short, no, I have actually not confused dogs with humans. Stress responses do vary between species, but the bones of it is all the same.

It can take 6 weeks for the hormones to fade away in a desexed dog.

I don't think it's a conditioned response to take food. It doesn't make sense on two levels. Firstly, if it was a conditioned response it shouldn't matter whether it's food or not. Just holding something out towards the mouth should do it. Like those carp you see in ponds that rush to the surface and eat woodchips some obnoxious child (corvus) has thrown into the water to see if they are dumb enough to eat it. They spit it right out again, but the point is you can throw any handful of small objects in and the pattern of the splashes produces the "eat it up" response. It doesn't work if you throw something large in. I tried it. :D You could argue that the smell of the food prompts a dog to eat it, except that the way appetite works isn't that simple. As I mentioned before, if a situation is stressful enough digestion shuts down completely and your body actually makes you feel nauseous if food it around. It happens in humans and it happens in other animals as well. Secondly, if taking food is a conditioned response, why isn't chasing a ball? Bet she does both of them plenty. And thirdly (I thought of another one), it's maladaptive to eat when you're very stressed out, but the stress response is linear and closely correlated with how stressful the situation is. Thus, if stress levels go down a little, appetite will stop being so suppressed. Not that dogs only eat when they're hungry, but just that they don't eat when their digestive systems have shut down, most likely because the smell of food is not remotely appetising at that point.

Ah, not necessarily. Here's how I understand it... From an evolutionary perspective, it doesn't make sense to be thinking about food or hunting (or playing) when you think you are in danger. Any drive to do those things will vanish, and that is the way it should be. Consider this... Say you're an anxious dog that gets a real kick out of chasing a toy. This is a behaviour that requires a good deal of focus, so to engage in it, it makes sense that you would need to be relaxed enough in your surroundings to not have to worry much about what is happening away from the ball or whatever. You're going to be running after that ball, or leaping after that tug and while you are doing that you won't be paying much attention to anything else. Vigilance goes out the window. Would you want to throw vigilance out the window when you're anxious about something that is nearby at this very moment? Food, however, doesn't take all that focus. You can pop a dog a treat in the presence of a scary thing and they only have to take their eyes off it for a second. Maybe even not at all, although if they are being that vigilant there's a good chance they are so stressed the idea of eating is actually distasteful.