corvus

How can I know if you won't acknowledge it in discussion? No, not everyone, Erny. Even just amongst trainers there's a lot of variation. I'm using a more clearly defined definition than anyone I have yet seen define it. And lots of trainers are saying play drive rather than prey. And that was a point I have already made. Nice dodging, Erny. If in doubt, just confidently say the other person doesn't know enough. It may surprise you, but people do desktop studies all the time and base major decisions on them. I've done too many to count. It can be useful if you do enough research and talk to a few experienced people. I have tried to do both as much as I can. YouTube has a wealth of video evidence to look at. I must have looked at dozens of dogs in various states of "drive". Spoken to some very successful trainers that use it, too. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we disagree. I can talk using your terminology if you like, but it's gonna be even more confusing because I don't have an extra term to describe the difference I think exists. From this board, actually. My rudeness stems from frustration. Sorry. You took a lot of those quotations out of context, so I didn't bother responding to them. I agree that my posts are convoluted and confusing at the moment, which is why I was reluctant to elaborate on my intial post. I did at your insistence, Erny, so quit complaining. I even said you weren't going to like it. Yes, I acknowledged that in an earlier post. We decided it was a red herring to the discussion at hand. *grinds frustration down* That is possible, which is why I added that the Dingoes and dog in question did not display resource guarding over anything else. I think it unlikely based on that and some videos I've seen on YouTube of similar moments. It looks like redirection to me. I never claimed that you could let alone do use that kind of behaviour in drive training, regardless of what drive you were training in. Well, I did actually say that it was in that post. And my reasons why, I thought, were fair. So what? Now let's scrap my definition and talk about yours. Training with prey drive is NOT DANGEROUS. Did that make sense? I'm not inventing my own terminology. I'm using the aspects of prey drive commonly referred to in places all over the internet. I've already talked at length about chase and bite and why I don't think it alone is prey drive, so I won't go there again. I do find it difficult, though, and I think I explained why, so I won't go there again either. Check the posts in reply to Diva and Cosmolo. No, I get that it's training. Let's go back to your definition. Training in prey drive is structured, increases motivation for whatever you are training them to do, and provides big rewards that are social and fun in nature. I had actually said that already and more than once. See why your "direct manner" frustrates me? Because I wouldn't have to keep contradicting myself if you would at least pretend the difference I see might exist for long enough to understand what my points are. It's a two-way street, Erny. I'm rude because there are a few people on this board who seem thoroughly capable of putting aside their beliefs for long enough to discuss the possibility that there are other possibilities out there. They have been polite, thoughtful, and got me to repeat myself when they have not understood without accusing me of being arrogant or picking at parts of what I had said with arugments I had already responded to several times. It seems very rude to me to do the latter. Fair enough, you don't understand my posts and maybe I'm being too hasty. How about coming at it with a slightly less aggressive and accusatory manner so that I don't assume you are being too rude to even pay attention to what I say in the first place?

What I'm saying, Huski, is I think that we have to look at INTENT. Penny chasing a crab and then biting it when she gets it and that resulting in the crab's death does not mean she intended to kill that crab when she started chasing it. Just because it happens doesn't mean you should make the leap and say the dog intended it to happen. Dogs have a lot of power in their bodies and jaws. I saw a possum that had been killed by a dog with hardly a mark on it, but under the skin everything was crushed and bruised. It only takes a bit of excitement for a dog to forget how hard they are biting or grabbing. And we know that chasing an animal is VERY exciting for many dogs. Here's a really nice video of a dog working in drive: http://www.canis.no/ekurs/14-us-clicker-tr...drive-dogs.html When I look at that dog, I see a dog playing a really awesome game. Even though she(?) is very excited and tightly wound and there's a lot of tension in her body, her tail is up and wagging, her face is pretty relaxed and she brings the toy back for a game of tug and a rub. It's a really social activity, and even when she goes for the bite sleeve thingy her tail is wagging freely. There are loads of videos on YouTube of dogs hunting and killing animals to compare it to. I'm not going to post any because they aren't very nice for animal lovers. You said you didn't believe a herding dog eye-stalking was not using prey drive. I had already shared what I thought about that. More than once.

Where? I've only seen play drive, Erny. And that's what I've been saying over and over in this thread. I'm talking about prey vs play drive. I can't talk about it with you if you won't acknowledge a difference even for the sake of discussion, can I? You've got to at least pretend that a distinction might exist. Diva and Cosmolo managed quite nicely without agreeing with me. Again, I don't even know what you're talking about. Are you using my definition of prey drive or yours? If someone has used my definition of prey drive in the way you say they have, then I'd sure like to know about it. I haven't heard of anyone succeeding yet, and I have read accounts of people trying. No I'm not, and I've already told you that I'm not. Why am I answering this again? It gets so boring repeating myself. Go look up what I said and come back with something more interesting to talk about. To clarify, I have never said that prey drive is dangerous. It IS dangerous if you are a potential prey animal. And it's dangerous if you get in the way. I know someone who got attacked by a captive Dingo in prey drive when he tried to rescue the animal the Dingo was killing. Same Dingoes were happy to allow people to take their meals off them and otherwise acted like domestic dogs. I also know someone else who was attacked when trying to resuce an animal from a domestic dog in prey drive. Same dog was fine with having anything else taken from it by the same human. Hence, be careful about prey drive. Uh huh, that's exactly how Penny used to behave, and no one would have called her a prey driven dog. She looked the same way when she was playing with a toy than when she was chasing a crab or a kangaroo. She killed a few crabs by accident. I don't count it as prey drive if they're playing and accidentally squoosh the poor thing or bite it too hard. Pyry doesn't even waste energy chasing something he doesn't think he can catch. He eyes off every bird he sees, looking for weaknesses. He has caught sick or injured birds, but he doesn't even try for healthy birds. When he's playing, he looks like Penny did when she was chasing a toy. Eye-stalking is an ASPECT of prey drive. As I have already said (twice).... never mind. Go look up what I said twice about it if you are actually interested in discussing it. That's smart and sensible thinking! As I understand it, training in drive increases motivation because it does set up anticipation of something that is loads of fun. The anticipation makes the thing that is loads of fun even more fun. Incidentally, you don't have to use drivey games to create that anticipation. My dogs only have to see me walk into the library to get all hopeful that I've got some treats and a clicker on me. Erik looks almost exactly the same as Huski's Daisy when he's training with the clicker, only a little more animated as he's an animated dog. If you're interested in that side of things, check out establishing operations in psychology. It is something that can influence the effectiveness of a reinforcement in operant conditioning. It's heavy stuff for me, but very interesting if you want to get clever with reinforcers and signals. Try this paper: http://seab.envmed.rochester.edu/jaba/arti...-33-04-0401.pdf

He gets endless opportunities to get what he wants on our terms, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest that he is particularly clever and opportunistic. It just makes me nervous about letting other people take care of him. He's at my parents' house this week and I was like, "listen, DO NOT give him anything for free or he'll walk all over you and come up with all sorts of new tricks I'm not going to like". It's not that I think he would walk all over someone because of a weakness in their handling. More because without structure he's zipping all over the place doing a pile of things that aren't cool like jumping up and down and barking and biting things and running away with things and knocking things over... It's just a lot easier if you tell him what to do before he has a chance to think up something new to try. I don't think he is pushing against boundaries. He is just very creative and he sees life as an endless procession of potential opportunities for getting his way. He doesn't try to "get away with things" much. If I give him a rule structure to work within such as if you want something you do something for me first and then you will get it, he is quite happy to stay within that structure the majority of the time.

Sorry, my bad for using vernacular that was more dramatic than accurate. I'm sure I read somewhere an extra component of prey drive that came after the kill and involved skinning and eating, but I haven't seen that one included everywhere. It doesn't really matter about breeding except to acknowledge that the portions of prey drive that many dogs display has been artificially selected. I think that's fair. To me, it's not the same as play, but it's not the same as prey, either. It gets into one of those shady areas where you would have to know what's going on in the dog's head to know if you've made a false category or a true one. So you could say prey drive is one thing, play drive another, and chasing a lure another, but if you could quantify what the dog was experiencing and test it statistically, you might find that chasing a lure and prey drive are different, or you might find they are the same and dump that differentiation. I'm on the fence, here. Like I said before, I'd like to call them all different things, because I've seen some dogs that are not playing when they chase, but put a rabbit in front of them and they have no interest in it. I can't quite convince myself that it can be prey drive if there's no killing involved. That's what it means to prey on something. Okay, well, that all depends on whether it's prey drive or not. Let's put it this way. If I had a herder that loved herding more than anything, I would Premack it and use it as a reward in SOME cases, but I wouldn't attempt to use it in obedience, because to let a dog herd something it takes a little time, so would interrupt your training sessions, and might act as a jackpot, which could cause your dog to slump a little after they've had that satisfaction. Same goes for a sighthound. I'd attempt to Premack it and use it, but not for teaching new behaviours or even for building motivation. However, I would be looking for a game that uses the same skills. For a herder, frisbee or something similar. For a sighthound, maybe that's when the flirt pole could help. These games might hit the spot and would be suitable for obedience training because you have total control of them and can make it a quick reward so it doesn't interrupt the session and you can maintain a high reward rate. As far as training in drive goes, you could totally do that with those games. Someone on another list told me she has two sighthounds that won't chase anything that isn't an animal. They gave up on lure coursing when someone showed them the lure. When they catch things they kill them and bring them home. She can get them playing, but only with treats, and it doesn't do the same thing for them that chasing and killing does.

That's fair. But there's informal communication and formal communication. If I were making a presentation I wouldn't be on a discussion board. I'm a selfish communicator in informal discussions. Consider me chastised. ;) Lost me again - did you mean to say killing skills, rather than the stated hunting skills? There is a lot more to hunting than the kill, and those skills do need to be honed in play. The muscles, reflexes and decision making used in the hunt are developed in play. Okay, assume that by "hunting skills" we mean the full suite: seek, stalk, chase, grab, kill. If we have a pup just practising chasing and grabbing, that's fine if they were a breed developed to use only those aspects of hunting skills. But if we have a puppy practising the full suite when we can't have him killing things, then perhaps we would not breed from that pup, right? Muscles, reflexes and decision making are not just exclusive to hunting. For an animal that plays into adulthood and uses it as a social tool, these things are equally important to learn for that reason than for hunting. It's also important in contest with other dogs over resources.

I've never really understood what people mean by this in relation to dogs. I have, however, lately started calling Erik the Tall Erik the Enterprising because he quite commonly comes up with new and clever ways of getting what he wants. It's got to the point where I cling to NILIF to give him a legal structure to work within. Without that structure, I just know that I will spend more time breaking habits than teaching new things. After being caught out by Erik's cleverness and creativeness a few times, it's a matter of telling him what to do before he can think of something on his own, now. It made me wonder if this is what people meant by the above statement?

What a great post. I was going to teach Erik to hip target using the elephant trick, but that sounds a lot simpler and more sensible!

Good question! I don't know. I would certainly like to, though. ;) I can only speak from my experience with Erik. Erik wishes to chase and capture a toy. If I let him do that quickly, it's a game to him and he loves playing it. He catches it and we have a little tug, I let him win and he puts the toy down and downs for me to signal he's ready for another go. If I keep the chase going and going, there's this point where he gets serious about what he's going to do to that toy when he gets it. He's going to sit down and skin it. When he gets it, he feels very satisfied, so in a sense I would agree with you that drive satisfaction has been achieved. However, I don't think that this feels the same to Erik. If I take Erik's toy away from him when he has crossed into wanting to skin it, he gets very upset. Seems to me that taking it away cheats him of his drive satisfaction. Where does that leave me? Do I have to wait for him to skin it and lose interest in it before I can engage him again? It certainly seems that way. Either I wait him out or take it off him. There's no way to take it off him without force, because once he's skinning it he's not interested in any identical toy, or food, or another game. He's done. Now I could condition an "out" that is strong enough to overcome his desire to skin the toy, but then what have I achieved? Maybe all I've done is changed the aim back to catching it and tugging rather than sitting down to skin it. Or I've perhaps succeeded in diminishing his desire for the toy. I may as well stick with the original game and keep my chases short. He has fun, he enjoys engaging with me, we can keep the game moving so there's a high rate of reward, and I don't have to upset him or sacrifice a toy. Perhaps what I should be trying to communicate rather than prey versus play drive is end behaviours versus... active behaviours, for lack of another word. Whether Erik is in play drive or prey drive, wanting to skin his toy is what I would call an end behaviour in that that's where the game ends, while wanting to catch his toy and tug is something that can go over and over again without his condition really changing.

For future reference, I'm exploring by way of conversation about 98% of the time. My job at the moment is to advise a senior scientist, but in all the talking we often swing from literature to conjecture to supposition, back to literature, and off into wild speculation. The safest bet for figuring out exactly where we're at if we need to is to double-check. "So have there been studies on that?" I usually try to put "I think" in front of anything I'm going to say that isn't backed up in the literature, but I forget to sometimes when I'm caught up in the telling of a story of whatever research journey I've been on since we last spoke. When it comes to dogs, the only time I'm going to pull the zoology card is either if I've read literature that backs me up or I'm making a behavioural observation. Those things I had to be trained how to do. It's not, and that was my point. He just wants the hare to run. Pyry wants to kill it. There's contention about whether play that simulates hunting serves only to prime hunting skills. From what I read about it there's probably more to it than that, in the form of social skills at least. At this point you also have to consider that many dog breeds are specifically bred NOT to kill things. Retrievers, herders, and even hounds as we have learnt. Therefore, play to develop hunting skills is actually going to hurt them rather than help them. I think it's simplistic to think that all dogs that are playing are able to think. Both my recent puppies have frequently got the zoomies. They can't think much when they're doing that. Leslie McDevitt calls it a sure way to know that a dog is over threshold. By your reasoning, if dogs learn prey drive from play, and they can always think through play, then they can always think through prey drive as well. When DO they stop thinking? I forgot to mention establishing operations in my Google Scholar search as well. That one was super interesting, thanks Aidan!

Here's what I think, although I don't know if it's the response you were after... Let's assume that regardless of whether tug and herding are predatory or play, the important thing is they are the same for Cosmo. When you train a dog to control themselves when they are very excited/aroused in order to perform a behaviour to gain a very high value reward, you're priming them to not only be able to think through excitement in general, but to choose the course of action that has been heavily reinforced. That already puts them streets ahead of a dog that has been trained with positive reinforcement but only in low to medium levels of arousal, for example. Kivi is a great example of this, because he very rarely goes to high levels of arousal. Most of his training has therefore been at low and medium levels of arousal. If I call him when he's in the middle of chasing a bird, he will most likely stop chasing it and come back because he wasn't chasing it in a high level of arousal. But there's a little tiny section at the peak of arousal that he displays where he has rarely been responsive to a command. This level is rare, so we haven't really practised obedience while he was that aroused. Practising at more common levels that are still high for him set him up for success at higher levels, but it's still a bit hit and miss compared to Erik. Erik goes high with little help, and so has practised being operant at that level of arousal far more than Kivi has. As a consequence, when he gets excited it is generally reasonable to expect him to still do what he's told. Training in drive creates high levels of arousal and allows you to teach your dog to think through it, which is why I think training in drive is a fast track way to reliability in high levels of arousal. I disagree that you are unlikely to get responses to commands when the dog enters that drive on its own because I have seen evidence to the contrary. My mother has lately been training Pyry to come when called using Leslie Nelson's Really Reliable Recall method. For the first time in his 7 years of being a hunting fiend, he will go so far as to drop a live animal to come when called. I honestly doubted how far that method could penetrate a dog in prey drive, but there's the proof. However, Pyry is a thinking hunter. It seems to me that a lot of dogs with "prey drive" to spare want desperately to chase something, dig it up, or in the case of a herding breed, stalk it. None of those things necessarily end in the animal getting ripped to pieces, and the Whippet cross we had when I was growing up was a good example of a dog that gets into one of these incomplete parts of prey drive and pretty much stops thinking until the chase is over one way or another. I've seen the same thing in a terrier that found my hare one day. I'm not sure what to make of incomplete prey drive yet. Still thinking about it. I would like to not call it prey drive, but I doubt that's going to catch on any time soon. Diva and SSM have brought up good points about sighthounds not actually intending to rip up the lure, and this is where it gets grey for me. It's certainly an aspect of prey drive, but it doesn't really run with what I think of as prey drive, which is the full suite of behaviours: seek, stalk, chase, grab, kill. That's why I'm harping on about intention and a dog actually killing or wanting to kill an animal. Maybe that's what I'm seeing when I talk about crossover areas between prey and play but not really either.

I don't know, and I'm not afraid to say so. I am not sure if a prey driven dog needs satisfaction from prey drive. I would say no at this point, as long as you play lots of drivey games instead. I think that play can be a substitute for hunting. I think that any training if conditioned enough can hold where a dog goes into prey drive. That includes play drive. Mmm, my problem with the idea of drive intensity is that IME, a dog in prey drive is a thinking, problem-solving animal, whereas a dog over the top with play drive is not a thinking animal at all. Kivi couldn't begin to think about how to get my hare out of his cage, but Pyry does little else when he comes to visit. Kivi has lost it, but Pyry hasn't. I've seen Pyry so intense he has nearly lost it when he's going after something, but he never does. Maybe that's him, maybe not. Thank you for your thoughtful post, Cosmolo. Erny and Huski, I'm not about to apologise for daring to say something that other people might *gasp* listen to. I sometimes fear that people will listen to "experienced trainers". I mean, I had one tell me that raw food changes dogs' behaviour.

Corvus .... I think the problem is that you don't understand how to train in drive. It's almost as though you think that by training in drive, you will have as little control as you would with a wild animal on the hunt. Nonono, you're really missing the point. The point is what KIND of drive. The point is, you call it prey drive and I call it play drive. The point is, I think there's a difference. The point is, I think that what I call prey drive is not something that necessarily can be harnessed, or that you would want to. I say that because I think of prey drive as the thing that happens when a dog spends hours ripping through a wall. It's a great, strong, motivating drive, but it's not for kicks the way playing at hunting is. And it's not necessarily social. If you're going to bag what I'm saying then at least try to understand these fundamental points first. Ah, lovely, you've assessed my entire training style from a one minute fragment of video. As far as PLAY drive goes, I think of it as building motivation and anticipation, but coupling it with self control. That way you can use the motivation you've created with the self control to ask for things that will be performed fast and reliably thanks to your motivation and then reward with the king-sized reward you've been busy building motivation for. As I've said, it is obviously bad if your dog has no self-control. I don't know why you would think I assume training in drive somehow skips that most vitally important of steps. I'm a little bit stunned that anyone would, but according to Leslie McDevitt, it happens quite a lot. Eh, I didn't take note of them. Sorry. Have a look on Google Scholar if you are interested. I did a search on play drive, prey drive, predatory aggression and rough and tumble play and variations thereof. There's a really interesting one about rough and tumble play, though. Have a look on Google Scholar. That's interesting and potentially very useful stuff. Something I mentioned when you put up the video clip on it. Yet in that thread, you were quite set against 'wins' as I suggested. Yeah, I was misinformed. I've changed my mind about that. And this is exactly what I'm talking about. You read some stuff that's all about chase and bite and other stuff that's about tug. What do you choose? I chose chase and bite and now I've changed my mind to tug and push. I'm not TELLING everyone to do the same, but hey, obviously I think it's best or I wouldn't have done it. I'm really bewildered why this is apparently such a hard thing for people to understand. I'm saying tug and killing are DIFFERENT. I'm saying tug is PLAY and killing is PREY. I'm saying that I think there are subtleties to drive and that we shouldn't use play drive and prey drive interchangeably. Have you seen a dog kill something, Erny? You have a hunting breed, don't you? If you don't see a difference I can't argue with that. I do see a difference, though. Wouldn't you like to know. I've been saying I haven't done any drive training with my dogs despite the fact that I've been playing around with it for the last two years on and off. I say that because I wasn't entirely sure what people meant by drive training. I am still not entirely sure, because some people that put up videos with dogs training "in drive" look no different to my uber motivated pups working on a good reward history and nothing else. In my eyes, to be training "in drive" you need to have your dog at that level of excitement where he's a step below losing it. In addition, in my eyes he needs to never lose it, but only come down when given the cue to. If that makes sense. We are not able to do that yet, so therefore not drive training. Just building play drive and having fun and learning about each other.

In your opinion Prey drive is the desire to chase and grab a moving item. A tug is a moving item. The dog chases and grabs it. You can call it play drive all you like but that doesn't make it true, or mean that you know the dog doesn't see the tug as a prey item. How do you know that a dog doesn't see a toy as a prey item? Yes, in my opinion, as a zoologist with experience in animal behaviour. Seriously, Huski, have you seen a dog kill an animal? It's so not the same as chasing a tug toy. UNLESS you're getting into that crossover zone. Here's a video I found that looks like what I think of as a crossover zone: Yes, I think lure coursing in general is prey drive. For most hounds. I don't know, how do you? I say they are if they intend to rip the lure into little pieces if they get it. We had a Whippet cross when I was younger. She could chase a ball and it was a game, but chasing a roo/rabbit/rat etc was not. I would say that because of the body language. Play body language has a lot of wagging, high tails, open mouth with softish lips... that kind of thing. I associate prey drive with more serious body language. A lot more stiffness in the body, the tail doesn't wag and is stiff. How would you differentiate. I still think you can see the intention in a dog's behaviour. There's totally a look they get and you can tell whether they are going to jump on the toy and tug on it, race off in pursuit of a small animal, or wolf down a piece of food. I've got to get a photo so maybe you can see what I'm talking about. Looking for it made me realise that excitement looks much the same across the board, though. It's the moment before the reward is delievered that looks different. Oh for Christ's sake. Not this again. How am I meant to have any kind of discussion if I have to put a disclaimer before every freaking statement? Take a good look at my language, Huski. I put in so many "my feeling is" and "I think" that I really think you're seeing what you want to see. You see implications where there are none and if these trainers are remotely threatened by me than I worry for them and all those that follow them.

Who's the PhD candidate? Genetics that influence behaviour are pretty damn hard to identify. Without knowing anything about the project, it's possible the DNA side of things is just standard procedure. Initial talks with my PhD supervisor and a geneticist involved doing cheek swabs for my project even though I have no intention of looking at genetics. The idea is that if someone eventually does want to look at it, there will already be a DNA bank to plunder.

And yet there are people on this forum who have used prey drive training successfully, without running into the problems you seem to think will occur. Can I just point out that considering how interchangeably people use prey and play, how am I to know which drive they are using? It's not that black and white, but I know you will see it that way anyway, so yes to play drive rather than prey drive. I have looked around substantially on YouTube and have seen exactly zero dogs working nicely in prey drive. How surprising. Plenty working nicely in play, though. Schutzhound stuff is a lot of that crossover stuff I was talking about, and some nice play. No, by tapping in to the dogs' PLAY drive. Tug is a game. Chasing a tug toy and grabbing it is a game. Pretending the tug toy is an animal is a game. Killing something is not a game. Yes I know that, and I've experienced the same thing with Kivi and his food-trained recalls without any drive training at all. I'm not disputing the effectiveness of it and I'm not interested in talking about the basics. You can look up the basics anywhere. But what about the subtleties? Huski, I find that insulting. Why would I do so much research into drive training, seek out people that know a lot about it, play around with it myself, and start my dogs on playing drivey games on cue if I somehow thought it was damaging, ruining, or never intended to use it myself, even? Do you think I'm trying to discredit a method just because I think it warrants a close look? Geez, do you EVER research a method and consider the pitfalls before using it? I'm just trying to share what I've learnt. There's no harm in caution. First of all, it's called a literature review. Second of all, I said explicitly that I keep changing my mind. I haven't drawn very many conclusions about drive training and what I have are subject to being changed at any moment. I'm not trying to argue or discredit drive training, and I'm not against it. I'm wary of prey drive because of the research I've done and the observations I've made (they do call it predatory aggression, which is dirt in my face, by the way). I think play drive is an excellent thing to work on and an excellent way to interact with your dog. Go for it. I've shared my concerns about prey drive and it seems pretty clear that no one is very interested, or thinks it means I don't like drive training, which serves nicely to illustrate my point about people not understanding the subtleties. Merry Christmas to you all. I've said all I wanted to say and more.

Your train of thought puzzles me. :D. Can you explain further what you mean? Okay, but I don't think you'll like what I'm trying to say, because it has its genesis in wildlife experience. It is my observation that at times an animal that is highly excited, even over something good, can become full of nervous energy, and when they are like that it's quite easy for them to go from excitement to fear, but not as easy for them to go back. This applies minimally to dogs and possibly not at all to dogs that have been handled well. Ideally you give them an outlet for that energy before it becomes nervous energy and you're home free. However, it has been my observation that a dog that is playing a high drive game with another dog is only a step or two away from turning that game into something more serious. It's called predatory drift and I think it deserves to be treated with respect. So I'm cautious about drive. Nothing wrong with using prey drive to achieve the training reliability that you're after. Don't know why you're so vehemently against it. Many behaviour problems have been overcome with the use of the instinct that is there. What experiences (depth and breadth) have you had with using prey drive in training that would have you anti to using it? Have you not seen a dog kill an animal? That's not the same as "killing" a toy. I lived with my mum and her wildly prey-driven Vallhund for a while. Pyry once tore the garage wall apart to get at a trapped possum. He's only a 13kg dog. He doesn't do that kind of thing for fun. When he goes into hunting mode he can only be satisfied by catching and killing an animal. He does not want to play tug. He just wants to kill something. I thought long and hard about it, and came to the conclusion that you just can't harness that. He gets very excited about playing with things that resemble animals, but he's playing. The body language is totally different. He is an independent dog. When he's in hunting mode he doesn't want anyone around, but playing is a social thing he does with you. Totally different. I have never done any drive training and don't pretend to be any kind of training expert. But I'm a scientist and I observe and research as surely as I breath. I am telling you that my observations and my research have led me to believe that prey drive and play drive are not the same thing. I will change my mind when I see or read something that is a compelling counter-argument, but until then I think it's wise to be cautious. I want the fun and social thing, not the serious killing thing. It is my current thinking that you can use foraging trips as a relationship building exercise with great success. I think that you can even incorporate that into training with a bit of creativity, but tug is a good deal easier and it's already exactly what you need it to be without any creativity! The jury is out for the moment, so the flirt pole has been retired. I am currently of the opinion that this is where these crossovers between play and prey drive occur if one isn't careful, and I am also of the opinion that I saw it a few times with Erik or at least saw him borderline, which is why the flirt pole has been retired. Indulge an amateur for a moment. Chasing games are fun and I like playing them with the dogs, but this is where looking at Kivi is actually more useful than looking at Erik. Kivi is a low drive dog, but if he sees my hare run his eyes glaze and he won't hear me. When Kivi plays chasing games, it doesn't take much for his eyes to glaze. That is useless to me. He is gone and all he wants to do is stop whatever is moving, preferably with his teeth. He's not trying to kill it, but he's only just still playing. But if I can keep a toy in his sights, it's still definitely a game and his eyes don't glaze. That's useful to me. He is with me, he is capable of listening, and he wants to engage with me. If I drop the toy he might still chase me, but I lose everything I had. I wouldn't go so far as to say without the toy he's in prey drive, but that may well be the case. I will say I think he's a lot closer to prey drive. Too close. I think flirt poles are fine in moderation and good for engaging a reluctant dog. It's too hot for Erik, now, but I'm not sure if that was my clumsy handling or the flirt pole itself. Possibly both. If I had my time again I think I would use it but less chasing and more tugging. Wowsers! Hold on, girl. I never said anything about damaging. Go ahead and use prey drive if you like (if you can), but to me it's kind of anti-social and more about killing things than having fun. See above. My objection is not based on perceived damage to the dog in any way shape or form. It is based on what I would be trying to achieve through using drive at all, and my preference for activities that promote sociality with my dogs. I'm on a steep learning curve, here, and quite frankly I think that drive is very poorly understood. It bothers me because I have a visceral need to know how what I do works. I'm changing my mind on a regular basis, as I do with everything I am learning a lot about from scratch.

That is what I meant, yes. I have also seen dogs that just plumb don't feel comfortable enough to play, and trying to get them to play by any method can stress them. I've come to be cautious about drive. Mostly because people seem to like to talk about it as if it is a magic bullet without actually knowing very much about what they are doing. And I don't mean poor techniques or methods, but in a neurological sense, I guess, although I hate thinking about things in a neurological sense. I have read a lot of explanations that sound loopy to me, and I've read a lot of methodology without any attempt to explain it. In addition to that, prey and play drive seem to be used interchangeably, and that deeply bothers me. I liken them to fear and excitement. Similar sometimes, but in no way the same. I'm not saying don't use it, I'm just saying make damn sure you're encouraging play drive and not prey drive. Does K9 Force have any qualifications, just out of interest?

No one, but a lot of drive training does come from Sch, and it's not suited to just any dog. I meant diving in and building insane amounts of drive without putting in an off switch. And attempting to build drive but going in too hard and causing a decrease in drive, or some people have suggested a bite for the wrong reasons. Going over the top so the dog stops thinking and then having to yank them back to get any sense out of them... There are certainly ways you can be too gung-ho in drive training. Too much drive can result in a dog that loses it, and that is more stress than fun by my interpretation.

Erik's cue is me walking on the spot. It was the easiest way to transition from walking towards him to not going towards him. I just keep shuffling on the spot until I want him to stop, but I've never tried to see how far he will go back. I usually stop at about 1.5m or less.

You could check out the Natural Dog Training Blog. It has a lot of good tips about working with your dog's drive. Actually, I've looked around a lot lately and the methods on there are the ones I like most. Even though the explanations are a little loopy and put some people off, the early exercises are really spot on with the research I've done into rough and tumble play recently. And it's more geared towards the average dog than all the Schutzhund stuff. I think there's a tendancy to be a bit gung-ho with drive training. If you rev them too much you can make them stressed, which is not good, obviously. The difference between a little frustration and stress is sometimes not that obvious. Erik has a "we're about to play an awesome game" cue. It didn't take long for him to turn into a bit of a homing missile whenever he hears that cue. He drops whatever he's doing, runs over to me and downs, waiting for the second cue that tells him to chase and bite whatever I have in my hand. Cues make everything easier. I actually think that cue is stronger than his recall at the moment...

I know of someone on another forum who had a Flat-coated Retriever that thought it was incredibly fun to cover her owners in bruises. It went on for a long time, and they tried just about everything before finally finding a trainer that managed to come up with some creative ways to deal with it that actually worked. They were talking about muzzling this dog at home the biting was so bad. They found that using biting games with legitimate chew toys as rewards for basic obedience helped, and it enabled them to redirect her to her toys when she felt like biting. They taught her the names of her toys to help with the redirection. They found the more loudly or sharply they protested the more excited she got, so they went to quiet, calm commands. Essentially the aim was to harness the biting and bring it under control by putting it on cue and teaching her what she should bite on and when. I think that it still took them a long time to get a handle on it, but they got there in the end. She was a really hard dog.

I have a bit of a weird theory I have recently thought of... It occurred to me that Kivi is always more focused if I pop him a treat I have for something really easy before letting him off leash at the dog park. If I don't do that, he'll run off and have fun. If I do it, he'll run off and have fun, but he'll have an ear out for me and I barely need to whisper his name and he's glued himself to my thigh hanging off my every signal. I ALWAYS have food on me, so it's not like he needs to know I've got food. I very rarely ask him to do anything for free. He will spontaneously come and heel on leash even when I haven't given him a treat yet. So I got to thinking, maybe that initial treat is a primer, getting him into gear. Where one treat goes, other treats inevitably follow. Why wouldn't he get one treat and then anticipate more for the earning? He'll hang about for me, reminding me how well behaved he is and shouldn't he be rewarded. Perhaps that initial treat has become a signal to anticipate further treats, and thus the anticipation increases motivation and makes the whole training thing more rewarding than it is if I let him do something else highly rewarding and then try to cut in on it with treats. It's all kinda half-formed ideas, but I decided to try pairing the initial treat with a word to see if I could get the same effect without the food. That was a couple of weeks ago and then I promptly disappeared for two weeks, so I haven't tried it yet. Meanwhile, Erik has a word that means "We're about to play an outrageously fun game". Whenever I say "ready" his ears prick, his whole body tenses and his eyes bore into my skull as he waits for me to tell him what he needs to do for the outrageously fun game to commence. The game is half the time only moderately fun these days, but saying "ready" beforehand turns it into an outrageously fun game no matter how fun the game itself is. The power of this word is such that even when he's not in the mood for a game or excitedly trying to chase the neighbour's cat I can say "ready" and he'll go through the motions even if all he does for the game is bite and then run off to do something else. So from a purely behavioural perspective, what if you just need a primer? A really definitive way to tell her she's getting something incredible. Kivi is a really mellow dog with not a great deal of drive, but something I've noticed with him is that the more sure he is that he will be rewarded for something, the more enthusiastically he does it. He recalls at a gallop because for 18 months he's received roast meat, raw meat, liver or liver brownies whenever he hears that recall. I've been working on targeting for the last few weeks and every session he gets a little more enthusiastic getting his nose to the target. It's easy and he knows he's going to win. He's almost trotting at the moment, which surprises me, really. Targeting isn't very fun or exciting. Just gotta build up a powerful reward history to get that enthusiam. At least for him. For Erik, a way to tell him he's about to get an outrageously fun game, but it won't start until he does something for me. I guess dog parks are about the most distracting places we go, and we do half our training there anyway.

Yay for the folks that have it on order! It's definitely worth it. It took about 12 months all up for Kivi's recall to get "really reliable", and we had a few setbacks along the way. We have been a bit slack with Erik as he's naturally more inclined to come than Kivi. Kivi still has the odd spitz moment where he doesn't hear or decides he's going to ignore you, but I would put his recall at about 98% reliable. The more you practice, the stronger it gets! Kivi hears his recall now at times when 6 months ago he wouldn't hear it. It's hard to give a basic rundown, but the three golden rules are to reward big EVERY time the dog comes, only call when you are sure they are going to come, and only call once. There are a lot of little games you play to strengthen the recall, and you split recalls up into everyday recalls and an emergency recall. The idea behind that is so you have a recall you have a lot of control over and can be sure to use only when you have something great to reward with. That's your conditioned recall that eventually your dog doesn't think about whether they should listen to or not. They just come automatically. If you are careful and smart about it, you can condition the recall to the extent that it can overcome instinct, even in dogs with very strong instincts. Kivi will come when called when he's in the middle of chasing something. It's beautiful to behold. :D

Well, I'm not sure, but it sounds like an insecurity issue to me. Or maybe he just doesn't know where the toilet is in this new place so he waits for something familiar? Erik gets uncomfortable about toileting in someone else's yard until I see that he wants to go, take him somewhere out of the way outside and give him his cue for toileting. So maybe teaching Master Oberon a verbal cue for toileting would help him. It's easy to teach. You just say your cue every time you catch him weeing. We use "Water the grass". And maybe take him somewhere well out of the way where he feels alone.