corvus

I don't think people write dogs off as too hard to teach recalls to and don't bother trying. I go to a lot of off leash areas that are unfenced. Dogs have to have at least a moderately reliable recall or people don't feel safe enough to let the dog off. It's not a black and white thing of whether the dog is under reliable voice control or not. It's a game of probabilities, and in a dynamic environment like an off leash park, most people don't have the skills to identify all the factors involved. They may find the times their dog is unresponsive a complete mystery. If they do, they won't be able to anticipate it and will probably just call their dog in vain and damage their recall. But if it only happens once every few months, it might not be enough for them to change their behaviour or seek professional advice. Or maybe it happens more often, but they can anticipate it and they manage it successfully most of the time. If they only fail to manage it once every few months, again, they may not consider it a problem, even if it's happening weekly. And behaviour drifts over time. It may be difficult to realise reliability is slipping and even more difficult to know what to do about it. Even if you do know what to do about it, you have to knuckle down and do the work. If the dog comes on the third go instead of the first, that's good enough for many. They may want it better, but they don't understand how to make it better and are not sufficiently motivated to find out how and put the work in. I don't think they should necessarily be penalised for not being incredibly effective trainers. Who is?

The training is one thing. Learning when to use it is another entirely. If I always recalled Kivi at the ideal moment, his recall would be up around 99+% in reliability. His main weakness is animal carcasses, and he will reliably recall off them IF I get in early enough. Training has its limitations, and one of them is the person issuing the cues.

Is she bad on leash around other dogs because she's a frustrated greeter (wants to greet NOW) rather than because she wants the dogs to go away? Be careful about identifying reactive behaviour as being rewarding. Most of the time it's not at all. Far from it. Perhaps more accurately, her everyday food is not sufficiently distracting enough to overcome her fear/frustration that is driving her reactive behaviour. When we give dogs a choice between a rewarding stimulus and an aversive stimulus we are basically asking them which one is more important to them rather than which one is more rewarding to them. In a sense we are forcing a choice between two very basic motivational systems: appetitive and defensive. If they choose defensive all that tells us is at the moment a dog is more important to them than the food you have. We can change that by making the food better, but we can also change it by making the dog less scary or exciting. But anyway, sounds like with her problems you should focus on non-food-dependent methods. While you're on BAT, you can also try looking at CAT (Constructional Aggression Treatment). They don't use food at all. Ever. It's generally considered that BAT is more user-friendly and easier on the dogs, but they are pretty similar. The main difference is in CAT they move the trigger away rather than the dog. And in CAT if the dog has a meltdown they wait it out whereas with BAT you call it a mistake and get the dog out asap.

which breeds ? Spitz breeds!

I think most people don't even think about it. I also think it's quite difficult, particularly with some breeds or personalities. I don't go into parks assuming anyone will be able to call their dog and have it come. They often do, so that's nice, but a bigger problem is whether people think they need to call their dog or not.

Food limitations are a major bummer, but there ARE other options. You will just need to work especially hard on desensitisation. You may get a long way with negative reinforcement regimes like BAT. BAT uses food as a crutch, which I support, but it's not dependent on it. The main goal with any reactive dog is to help them feel safe. That is not dependent on food. Food sure as hell helps, but we don't necessarily need it if we are careful. For years I had a wild hare. You generally can't counter-condition a wild hare because they won't eat unless they feel very safe. It took a long time, but I got my hare to the point where I could counter-condition and train operantly just through careful desensitisation. I used to feel very frustrated with dog people complaining that their dog wasn't food driven. I'd be like "I'll swap you your unmotivated-about-food dog for my stupidly flighty, won't-eat-unless-he's-totally-safe hare any day of the week! Dog people don't know how easy they have it!" Of course, you don't always have it easy. A hare is not dangerous and doesn't often need to be out in the scary world with you. A lot of things I could just manage through low stress handling and the likes because they were so rarely necessary. There's no way he could have been okay doing a lot of the stuff dogs do. Anyway, I digress. The point is, don't feel helpless about it because you have food limitations. Where abouts are you? I might know someone in your area who could help you. Incidentally, I don't think people who can use food should worry too much about over-using it. Most people don't reward enough. At some point we should be aiming to wean the dogs off needing food to get through things, but wait until the dog is telling you they are well and truly ready for that. Yesterday Erik was trying to tell me he thought he needed food for not barking at the people hitting baseballs on the next field over. He didn't need it so he didn't get it. Deciding this kind of thing is a bit of an art, especially with dogs that have been conditioned to lean on you when they think they need help. There's a fine line between listening to and honouring your dog and letting them become overly dependent. Then again, does it matter if your dog is pretty dependent on food?

We are delighted. In the summer months we are there most weekends when we are not visiting a Wollongong beach. In the winter it's been much harder because you have to wait until 4pm. It takes us 90 minutes to walk from one end of the dog section to the other and back if we do some training on the way and play around. It's just over a 2km stretch of beach from the gate to the 4wd section that marks the end of the dog off leash area. No cars on the dog beach. By 4pm the sun is already low and the dunes casting shadow on the beach make it pretty cold. We rarely see kids. Never seen anyone bring kids scared of dogs onto the beach. There is plenty of beach nearby where dogs are not allowed and people tend to respect it because Greenhills is right there. The main problem is people let their dogs off in the grassy area you cross to get to the beach entrance where they are supposed to still be on leash. We have had moments on the beach with other dogs, but it's no more or less common than anywhere else we go. Public holidays when it's warm are often super busy and people bring dogs not used to the beach and other dogs.

There are five dogs at my parents' house when mine go to stay. No dog doors. All dogs go on cue after they have eaten. When I'm there I supervise to make sure no one gets distracted and forgets to go. It generally takes less than a minute. It's actually easier with more dogs because half of them overmark the other half. ;)

Pre-conceived notions of a dog based on looks of course exist. I bet everyone does it to a degree. I certainly do. Some dogs are inherently more interesting to me than others just because I like their ears or the shape of their head or something. Humans are powerful pattern-seekers. We see patterns when we only have very small numbers to go on. They colour our future predictions and responses because they act like shortcuts for us in interpreting the world around us. In my view this should absolutely be explored scientifically. It has implications for the way dogs are rated in behavioural assessments for starters. ETA I got a fluffy white thing. :)

Have you thought about leaving Luka intact for a while? There is some evidence to suggest desexing may have a negative impact on his anxiety. Then again, it might not.

Seriously? It's too much to ask to have dogs contained at night so they don't rip into any hapless koalas in their yard? My dogs are inside at night. They go out to toilet and if it's late or we can hear possums in the yard they go out on leash. If they find a blue tongue lizard during the day they go inside until it moves on as well. Some of our lizards are annoyingly habituated, but they live here too. If I can keep them safe from my dogs I will. Just because the article is about an ongoing issue and somehow manages to erroneously link it to a completely different, unpopular issue doesn't mean that the whole thing is rubbish. Dogs do pose a significant threat to koalas, and people living in koala areas in my view have a responsibility to do what they can to ameliorate the threat their dogs may pose. Keeping your dog in at night is not that big a deal.

As far as dogs are concerned the point of a treat is that it's food. My dogs would just about work for cardboard as well. They used to be much pickier, but now they don't seem to care much. My standard treats are Scotty's rolls cut up small because Erik in particular tends to inhale them and he's less likely to cough and splutter over inhaling soft treats, but I usually have some kibble in my pouch and something terrific as well. I haven't noticed any difference in the way they work for Scotty's roll compared to kibble, and it doesn't seem to make any difference if I use stale biscuits, dried fish, cheese, frankfurt, devon, chicken roll, canned fruit... We keep toast or stale bread/biscuits on hand for Kivi's recalls and that makes a difference. Erik would prefer chicken or steak as recall/jackpot treats, but Erik will work for practically anything and his performance doesn't seem to fluctuate much. Reward experiences are great and have their place, but needn't be involved in every treat delivery. Sometimes for the sake of clarity it's ideal to just deliver fast, frequently, and in the right place. Just depends on what your aims are. I use the latter extensively in shaping and trick training. If I'm ever having trouble I get the clicker out and strip back my signals to a bare minimum and concentrate on getting my timing and reward placement right. It makes all the difference.

At the moment they are considered independent. My guess is there is some overlap, but it's probably more like training influences the attachment style rather than the attachment style influencing the training outcomes, if that makes sense. Although someone in academia recently suggested to me that training outcomes in horses seem to be better when they have some kind of attachment with their rider. Perhaps it goes both ways a little bit. But attachment takes time to form. A trainer coming in from outside of a dog's social group won't have any attachment bond with the dog, and most likely won't form one in a single session. They basically have learning theory and that's it. Which includes timing and clear signals.

I wouldn't necessarily do anything except manage him better around toys in future. It's not uncommon for dogs to be protective of their toys, and it's natural behaviour usually. One of my dogs resource guards 'training cues'. He doesn't like other dogs hanging around close to us when he's training. That's fine. I just move him away from the other dogs. If a dog comes over I release him so he knows there will be no training in the immediate future so he doesn't need to see the other dog off. This works pretty well. For toys I pop them away as soon as another dog comes over just to be safe. If I wasn't able to put the toy away for whatever reason, I would block the incoming dog. It might be a good idea to work on getting Caesar to give his toys up to you to make sure he is totally comfortable with it. Here's a link about resource guarding in dogs. http://www.whole-dog-journal.com/issues/14_10/features/Resource-Guarding-Behavior-Modification_20368-1.html

Attachment is considered independent of training ability, and independent of learning theory for that matter. Whether that's true or not is another thing, but we do know attachment is a whole other neural mode.

I think dichotomising it to "love" or "submission" is probably not that helpful. Maybe it's neither. Both my dogs would probably train with anyone, but I doubt either of them would perform better for other people they don't know so well. I have a fairly nuanced set of signals for them that basically amounts to several years of daily interactions and training. I doubt anyone could match that in a one-off meeting. A lot of it seems to translate to other dogs reasonably, but not all of it. Sometimes someone else will try something with them and if it's clear to them what they should do they do it. If it's not clear, they start looking at me like "Er...? Help?" They may just come back to me. The attraction for hanging around strangers is getting something for practically nothing. Perhaps relatively the associated reward rate is very high as well. I give out a lot of rewards, but they get stacks of face time with me. Kivi at least has demonstrated he can figure out who trains with high reward rates and he prefers them. IME your ability as a stranger in the situation to get desired behaviour out of a dog depends on how well you can engage them and how clearly you can communicate to them what you want them to do. Assuming all things are equal on an emotional level. And assuming they have enough of a reinforcement history with people in the first place to even consider us worth their while. I've met some dogs for whom people mean pretty much nothing. If they get something good off you they tend to act like it was random. Incidentally, there's a student in my lab doing a PhD on this.

I expect the majority of it is in clear signalling and an engaging manner. One of my dogs is particularly optimistic about strangers with food. He seems to think whatever they have is probably better than whatever I have, and both my dogs seem to assume a newcomer may not know the rules and will let them drive the interaction. People at the dog park sometimes sneak them treats for doing appalling things like jumping up, or they ask for a sit, which the boys can do in their sleep. As such, they seem to see strangers with dog treats as potentially easy targets if the strangers talk to them. Kivi is also prone to finding whoever in clicker class is clicking the most and attempting to join their training session. Kivi, you're not getting so many clicks because you know this and you don't need them. Kivi says he demands high reward rates for easy behaviours.

I think the fact that socialisation can effectively reduce the incidence of fear aggression proves that well enough.. Only if you assume that a) fear aggression is entirely genetic in the first place, and b) there is a large proportion of dogs with genetic fear aggression in the population. There is no evidence to support the adoption of either assumption, and plenty to support the rejection of both. Every indication is that it's a fair bit more complicated than that. You should expect to see the full effects of Prozac after 5-6 weeks of treatment. In the first few weeks you may find Misty is lethargic or even more anxious than usual. Take it particularly easy with her while her system is adapting. It should improve pretty quickly. It is very distressing to see dogs who are so anxious they can't settle down and rest or are constantly looking for danger. You have done the right thing, and hopefully it does the trick.

My point was that there is no scientific data to support the idea that socialisation even CAN cover up "poor breeding". Or that "good breeding" results in dogs that don't need it. Your point about the nature of the data collected is not really relevant in this case. There are a lot of very good data, as I have already said. To me, identifying dogs as "strong nerved" or "weak nerved" is attributing complex behaviour to a purely genetic origin. Well hey, now that's it genetic you're absolved of any responsibility for it appearing in the first place if you don't like it, and any responsibility for the failure of behaviour modification and training to address the problem. There's no way your claim that it's entirely genetic can be disproved because the technology to do so isn't available yet. You are nice and cosy safe in your belief. Meanwhile, what happens to the poor dog you've written off as having 'weak nerve structure' or some such? Whatever the reason for its behavioural tendencies, those tendencies have to be dealt with and the dog's welfare is of utmost importance. I applaud Darien for recognising their responsibilities and taking the often frowned-upon step of trying medical support. Whether the dog has an ideal temperament or not is entirely beside the point. Whether most dogs have 'weak nerve' or 'strong nerve' structure is entirely beside the point. There are dogs out there that need some help. It may be temporary or it may be ongoing, and chalking those dogs up as genetically flawed doesn't help them. Early socialisation may. And medication may. I hope that Misty gets some relief soon from the Prozac. The early side effects can be daunting, but stick it out and hopefully she will be much better off in a month or so. Watch out for nausea in particular as it's very common. If she doesn't already eat twice a day, it may help her out to feed her twice a day. ETA That's the proverbial 'you'. I don't know what Santo thinks and my comments are not aimed directly at them.

Yes, exactly my point. Because those studies have been done on populations of dogs, which include dogs that do not meet this apparent ideal nerve strength. In fact, most of them do not, it would seem. Thus, please do socialise your dogs, people. Read Scott and Fuller's book before you get too carried away. It's still in print and seriously, it is full of fascinating data and insights. Anyone interested in dog genetics and behaviour should have a look. I don't think their methods are suspect. It's the best you can do without finding genetic clones. There's a reason why it is still considered a primary source of literature. No one has ever topped that study. As far as I know they socialise their dogs, as do assistance dogs. Extensively. Security sector, not so much. Military and police, to a small degree if I understood the trainers I have spoken to. What you are describing I assume is in personality research called a behaviour suite or a super-trait. We have to be careful with these things and test whether certain behaviours really do statistically more often occur together, and that in no way says anything about how genetically inheritable they are. Evidence suggests it depends on the behaviours and the breed. I could write a great deal about the subject. And have published papers on it, as it happens. The bottom line, though, is that the concept of 'nerve' is probably dangerously broad and over-simplified in my opinion, and subject to massive confirmation bias. Plus it is annoying as hell to hear non-descriptive and misleading terms like that in use.

Hold on, I need more explicit information... Which PART exactly of the nerve results in never spooking at new experiences? Ever. Is there a specific length of axons that promotes novelty seeking behaviour? All actual scientific evidence that I know of suggests socialisation is extremely important. If this animal with perfect nerve structure exists that does not need socialisation, than hooray for it. The rest of the world, however, will need to socialise their dogs at a young age for really confident, resilient adult dogs. I hope that if anyone is not sure whether their dog has beautiful nerve structure they should assume it has a normal level of inbuilt fear of the unknown seeing as it is highly adaptive and all, and that it follows the same rules of socialisation as the majority of dogs known to science. Scott and Fuller did a fantastic series of experiments on this back in the 1960s that to this day we still use as a guide in socialisation regimes. When someone does something better and more comprehensive incorporating genetic nerve structure I'll let you all know.

I love my reactive dog. I don't find his reactivity to be a huge issue. He's not an easy dog, but he is astonishingly responsive and it's rare that I can't get through to him when I need to. If he was a little bit more emotionally stable (less prone to anxiety, better able to manage his arousal, maybe a wee bit less outrageously anticipatory) he'd be the perfect dog. He's crazy smart, and he's very affectionate and cuddly, and he's a bold little bastard. Better make sure you have properly judged what he can physically do, because he thinks he can do anything and he doesn't usually bother assessing risks. He just does it. It's very cool. :) And I've never met a more engaging animal. He looks at you and it's like he's trying to look directly into your head and read your thoughts. On the physical side, the short legs have a lot going for them, but I do wish he could keep up with me on a run. Having said all that, Kivi is something pretty special. Everybody likes Kivi. Almost nothing rattles him. He is so even-tempered I've never actually seen him growl or lift his lip in the 5 1/2 years we've had him. My ideal dog could only be better with a darling like Kivi to balance it. <3

Whether dogs can feel love in the same way humans do has not specifically been investigated, but what do people even mean by that? What is assumed is that dogs (like other mammals including humans) do form a deep attachment between mother and young. In dogs, this attachment seems to readily transfer to a human caregiver and strongly resembles that between a mother and young for the life of the dog, which is unsurprising given dogs are a neotenous species. A study was just recently published in PLoS ONE about the secure base effect in dogs, which suggests their bond with us is like the bond a human child has with their mother. However, there have been suggestions that similar bonds can form between horses and humans, and there are social bonds formed between animals in the same social group as well. I know there is research going on at the moment to investigate whether sheep have best friends. The expectation is they probably do. If anyone wants to chase down the scientific evidence for what emotions mammals can experience they should check out Jaak Panksepp. He knows more about this than anyone else in the world and has written extensively on it. Lastly, it is reasonable to assume that different dogs form different types of attachment, just like children and their parents form different kinds of attachment. My current two boys are pretty easy and readily go with other people. They have human friends they greet with almost the same enthusiasm they greet us with. They have no problems staying with other people when we go on holidays. My previous dog was prone to fretting and sulking when I left her, which distressed me. It was not nice to know she was missing me. It was sad to know she was distressed when I wasn't around. She would get over it and had other people she was happy to stay with, but she always seemed very needy when I returned. She was a one person dog. I found it a lot of pressure to live with, actually.

There are a few different things being discussed, here. 1. E-collars for avoidance training where R- is the main quadrant in use. 2. E-collars for aversion training, where the aim is to create a negative association with a stimulus with the expectation this will teach the dog to avoid them in future. One could argue that P+ is the main quadrant in use, but classical conditioning presumably plays a large role. 3. Humaneness of using e-collars. I don't know that all three issues belong in the same discussion now that I think about it. I'm assuming that as far as snake avoidance training goes, we're really talking about using the e-collar to create a negative association. Same problems with punishment fallout we already know about apply i.e. possibility of the dog generalising to non-target stimuli, possibility of the dog responding in a problematic way (increased aggression, going at the snake instead of avoiding it, negative emotional states, shutting down etc.) This is not to say it's going to happen often or that the 'right' level of punishing stimulus won't do the job nicely. Just that it can be complicated. For example, if I were doing it with my dogs I'd want something mild for one, but I honestly couldn't say what I'd want for the other. He's super alert and attends to stacks of different stimuli at once, and he's crazy smart, and prone to anxiety and high arousal AND has a proactive coping style. To me this suite of traits is kind of tricky when it comes to positive punishment. He gives me reasons to use it from time to time, but I'm damn careful about it. As far as avoidance training goes, there is a fair bit of literature about it and I don't have an especial problem with it. To me, best practice is to use functional rewards in the environment because it aligns nicely with research. This also ties in with safety signals, which have been shown to be quite effective in modifying aggressive behaviour, and have in fact been trained with e-collars in dogs in the past with great results. The relevant study is by Tortora (1983). It's worth a read. As far as humaneness goes, like you say there is little support for it in the literature. A LOT of people in the field are distinctly uncomfortable with their use. The reasons why are no mystery. They are often misused, the output isn't necessarily trustworthy, they have the capacity to cause serious pain and emotional trauma, and there is evidence they are quite stressful to the dog when paired with poor timing, which is often. But as far as delivering precise and carefully metered aversive stimuli go, there is probably no better tool available. A friend hunts birds in the States in an area where poisonous snakes are common and tells me the dogs seek out the snakes. In cases like that it seems worth the risk to instil a snake aversion.

Yep, sounds about right for principals. Senior positions are big bikkies and job security is high. I know someone who came into consulting just after I did with a PhD and walked straight into a senior position. Not long after the retrenchments started she strolled over to another company while all the poor juniors spent months out of work. Mind you, she was one of the ones that spent 6 years trying to get into it. Some people leave for government jobs where they get to do more research, but the government has its own problems. People there tend to move on to catchment management looking for something less vulnerable to the whimsy of politics. My dream job before I started my PhD was wildlife research for forestry. But positions there are rare as hen's teeth. The work and conditions are so coveted people get in and stay in until they retire. Although then Barry O'Farrell came along and fired most of them. They just shrugged and went on to private consulting. They were all very highly respected in their fields. It was our loss moreso than theirs.