corvus

Buddy sounds like Kivi. Kivi tends to win dogs over with kisses and nuzzles, but sometimes he gets a little too intimate with his kisses and strange dogs are like "Um, excuse me. Really not that comfortable with this. We only just met!" He also feels it is vitally important to greet EVERY dog that comes to the park. He doesn't need to play with all of them, but he just needs to introduce himself to all of them.

Maybe just give him a little more time? OH's parents sometimes leave their anxious little dog here and he does much the same thing. He did improve over the week last time he was here. The more comfortable he became with me the easier he was to manage. I hate this little dog, but having him quietly sitting on my lap is preferable to having him scratching at the windows howling. There was not much I could do but give him time, not try to force anything on him, and just do all the feeding and chat to him during the day. Good luck.

I think there is a clicker class or two up in the Northern Beaches. If it were me, I'd give these folks a ring: http://www.dogsanonymous.com.au/Site_1/About_Us.html I know nothing very much about them, but anyone who knows anything about clicker training and is interested in the ways wild animals are trained is where I would start. But that's just me.

I agree, but there is another way to use the word that I think is also totally legitimate and that is in a generally descriptive sense. For example, the puppy my mother had that met anything new with aggressive behaviour. He wasn't aggressive all the time, but he was so habitually aggressive and had such a low bite threshold that I think it's fair to have called him an aggressive dog in the same sense that you would call someone who repeatedly got hit with assault charges an aggressive person. There were definitely a variety of reasons for his aggression and we don't look back on it all shaking our heads and saying he was a bad dog. He wasn't. He just wasn't very suited to the society he was born into.

Errr.... yeah, this is why I'm hyper paranoid about training clubs and have trouble convincing myself to even try one.

I just thought this was pretty ingenious. Here's a video of this fellow training his GSP with the use of homing pigeons as a reward. Poor pigeons, he must have about a dozen of them tucked away in that bag!

Ah, thanks guys! Might start taking the target with me when we go out and get him nose targeting in some different surroundings. I was going to skip stationary targets for now, but sounds like I should not be lazy and impatient and make sure his nose targeting is really solid.

This is going to be a rambling post because I'm not sure what I'm doing. I'm currently teaching Kivi targeting. He gets easily frustrated in training and likes a lot of help, so I thought if I taught him to target I'd be able to show him what I wanted him to do and just make it nice and easy for him. He is currently targeting my target stick quite nicely over short distances with his nose, and I'm working on duration and movement. He will stick his nose to the ball on the end of the stick and he'll follow it, say, around the clothesline heading away from me, but he doesn't seem thoroughly sure of himself yet. Eventually, I want to teach him to target with other parts of his body as well. My temptation is to start on that nowish, but another part of me thinks maybe I should stick with the nose targeting until it's stronger, maybe another week or so until he's really sure of himself? I was going to use the touch of the target stick as a cue for what body part I wanted him to move, because he's a really touchy feely kinda dog and it seemed to make sense to use that, but now I realise that that's really geared towards close work. I'm not sure if that matters or not. Probably not so much for Kivi, who I'm training for fun. I need to clarify it all in my head. Can I teach him to target the stick with his nose as a default and add touch cues for different body parts, or do you think that would be a bit confusing? How strong should his basic nose targeting be before I teach him to target with something else?

I am pretty sure they are legal in WA. OH's parents have an electric no-bark collar for their dog that they got while in Bunbury. I'd never seen one and actually thought they were illegal. I looked it up purely out of interest and it seemed they were legal in WA, but not many other places in Australia. I only had a cursory look, though. It was several years ago. The e-collar so did not solve the barking issue. They have just moved to QLD and the dog is now drugged half the time and still barks heaps. His bark sets the collar off and makes him yelp, which sets the collar off again. When he was in WA, he would usually figure out to stop barking at that point, but he's got some issues that are getting worse as he gets older, and he didn't take the move that well, poor little guy. Incidentally, OH's parents have no idea that their collar is not legal in some states. How are people meant to abide by the law when it's so random and the people it's especially relevant to have no idea it even exists?

Sorry guys, took me a while to get my act together. Erik seems to have something to say to Charlie. Riley, Kivi and Erik. Riley getting to know Charlie. Charlie getting into the beach spirit. More digging! I didn't get many photos. Maybe next time. ;)

Probably best to get a professional to see Dazey so they can tell what her problem is and how best to deal with it.

I was thinking South Coast looked good. I will definitely give them a call at Sutherland. Erik says if agility consists of putting his feet on things and pivoting around them he would do that all day. He's adorable, every time he sees me standing near a box he puts his paws on it and wags his tail at me. So cute!

I really want to start Erik at obedience classes, but I have no idea where to take him except not our local club. It doesn't have to be anything fancy as I just want to get him practising basic skills and get some socialisation to boot, but somewhere that won't mind if I don't use a martingale or check chain would be nice. I would eventually like to do some agility with Erik. He's freaking awesome at everything! I'm having so much fun. :D I feel like a teacher with an honours student. Just set him on the right track and try to keep up.

With my dogs I just put them back on leash when they are hanging around nearby, so I don't really go towards them or call them. The only cue that I'm about to put them back on leash is that I have it in my hand. I don't think it would matter, anyway, as I reward them so many times in one outing for checking in without putting them on leash that they are pretty happy to come and spend time with me. If I put them back on leash one time out of every, say, ten times I give treats for checking in, then a) the reward history is high enough to overcome the odd negative and b) they are so used to coming and getting a treat that going back on leash isn't a disappointment for them anyway. They get lots of treats when they are on leash as well. They like having their leashes on. My old dog was so keen on getting her leash put on that I used to click the leash clip as a recall. She would come flying from wherever when she hear the chink of her leash. Until she went deaf... :D

I don't entirely remember, Snowball. I think I started out teaching him to bark on cue with the clicker. If I remember correctly, I was clicking and rewarding when he barked at me, and then I was teaching him a hand signal and only rewarding the bark when I had given the hand signal. If I remember correctly, before I'd really got the cue to bark sorted out, I was getting quiet moments while he was trying to figure out what to do for a click, so I stopped clicking for barks and started clicking for quiet instead. So we never did get speak on cue, but basically the whole reason I was trying to get speak on cue was because last time I taught a dog to be quiet on cue I started out with speak on cue, so I just skipped a step when the opportunity was there. I think there's a thread about it in the dog tricks sub-forum of the training forum at the moment. http://www.dolforums.com.au/index.php?show...p;#entry4090807 ETA linky.

I guess what I consider with any dog that has once found, say, growling and snapping bought them space, is that even if you address that so that the dog no longer even feels a need for more space and so stops growling and snapping in that situation, if ever they feel in a different situation that they might need to buy space, there's a good chance they will try growling and snapping again. Just as an example. That's what I mean by assessing risk, or likelihoods. Maybe they are now so confident that they will never feel that way again, but you don't know. Sweet, cotton candy Kivi has never growled or snapped. It doesn't mean he never will, but the way I judge it, the likelihood of him growling or snapping is lower than the likelihood of a dog that has growled or snapped before doing it again. As far as defining aggression, in this context I think of it as a habitual response, not a one off. I would also consider intent, as to me a dog that is lunging is not necessarily intending to harm, whereas a dog that delivers an uninhibited bite is a whole other kettle of fish. There are so many variations in aggressive behaviour and the possible consequences. I've seen dogs snap with no intention to even make contact and I've seen dogs cause deep gashes. I think they can both be called aggressive behaviours, but whether you feel it's important to 'cure' a dog of air snapping is up to you. I don't think anyone would argue that a dog causing deep gashes needs help immediately, or that repeated aggressive behaviours cannot be safely shrugged off.

Seeing as no one else seems to want to start a new topic to avoid derailing the formal heel on the right side topic, I'll do it. I think that this attitude is a bit of a dangerous one. I believe that once a behaviour is in an animal's repertoire, it's always in an animal's repitoire. If it never crops up ever again, then maybe you were lucky, maybe you addressed the root of the problem so well that it's no longer a problem, or maybe you are really good at management and have always erred on the side of caution. You'll probably never know. Suppression is all well and good as long as it works, but you have to consider whether you've addressed the root of the problem or not. If you haven't, then you're pinning everything on your power to suppress the expression of whatever emotion caused the aggression in the first place. Whereas if you address the root of the problem by changing the very response to whatever first caused aggression, then you don't have to pin everything on whether you can intimidate your animal sufficiently or not. Assuming that suppression can only be achieved through intimidation - someone jump in if I'm wrong - and continues to rely on intimidation. You have the choice to suppress the symptoms or address the root of the problem. You may be lucky to have the exact same results whichever you choose to do, but to say that it doesn't matter what method you chose as long as the aggression isn't displayed is over-simplifying it. For myself, what is even more relevant than whether the dog exhibits aggression or not is the risk of it exhibiting aggression in the future or not. Behaviour modification in general is very much about assessing likelihoods. I don't want to sound rude or derogatory, but to ignore that I think would be like jumping into the surf and trying to bob over every wave with the reasoning that a wave is only relevant when it dumps you. Sooner or later you'll get dumped. Unless you swim in a bay. :D

It sounds like she is really spooked! I would definitely not ignore it, or flood her by putting the fans on all the time. There's no need to put her through that stress. Counter-conditioning does work, and very well IME. Also very quickly with domestic animals! With your dog it might take a little longer because she sounds very timid and very spooked by the fan. You may have to start by rewarding her just for being in the room at all. If she is not comfortable in the room and leaves as soon as you get near the light switch, start at the very beginning and just sit with her in the room for a few minutes at a time and feed her treats. If you do decide to try counter-conditioning, a good idea is to count in your head how many seconds you leave the fan on. You can add a second every time until she reacts and then start from scratch, but I think it's better for counter-conditioning to avoid her reacting at all. So if she's all right with one second ten times in a row, move to two. Just as an example. She might be able to go faster than that.

Oh, I do love it when people on the internet think they have a situation they haven't seen with a dog they don't know and a handler they've never met totally nailed. There's really no point arguing with someone that somehow knows exactly what is happening better than the person who is actually witnessing it. The hypocrisy of internet forums.

Nuisance barking and excited barking are two different things, and one will not necessarily lead to the other. We have a very vocal pup in this house. We taught him to be quiet on cue with lots of rewards. When he gets REALLY excited it's a bit of a struggle for him, so we don't ask him to be quiet unless we can reward it with something pretty good. But saying his name and giving him something else to do really helps. I'm not really worried about him becoming a nuisance barker because when he's on watchdog duties he only lets out one burst of noise and then he's done. He only barks when there's something to bark at.

I just don't take risks with dogs and prey animals. It's far less stressful just to keep them separated. My dogs sometimes go and stare at my hare through his cage and he gets frightened and runs around. Just watching him do that is rewarding enough for my dog to go and do it when he happens to be near the cage for a while. He will come away when called and I can train him right in front of the cage without losing him to the hare, but that doesn't mean watching the hare isn't rewarding anymore. I have tried punishments and there's nothing I'm prepared to do to him that is bad enough to make him stop. So the hare now has screening along his cage and he feels a bit safer from the doggy eyes. I have a fine recall and leave it, but it doesn't stop the dog from being interested in the hare.

Of course, we are always happy to share Kivi around a little. I am really glad that the girls liked him so much. I have really felt like a Lappie would be a great choice for you guys. Kivi is always happy to have strangers give him a cuddle, and most Lappies I've met have been the same. I love how easy he is.

Why is that Corvus??? Seemed like a bit of an unnecessarily aggressive post to me. But I used the smiley wink! So don't take me too seriously.

This has probably been posted before at some point, but it's an interesting read for those that haven't had a look. http://www.clickertraining.com/node/642

Well, I'm at a bit of a loss. Best way to break a habit is to physically prevent it from being practised. Failing that, perhaps you need to focus on why your dog is doing this and try to treat it at its source? I don't know why the dog is doing it, but I would assume that it is not comfortable with cars around the ute. It'd take a fair bit of work, but you could work on building the dog's confidence in the ute. Perhaps you could work on getting the dog super happy and relaxed to lie on a mat or blanket outside of the ute and then transfer it inside, with the hopes of transferring the relaxed state of being as well? Or heavily reinforce an incompatible behaviour like "down" until your dog is capable of giving you a down in the ute, although that would depend on you being heard from the cabin and if you didn't really nail it before trying it in the ute it would probably degrade over time. I would say your chances of success would be dependent on how hard you were willing to work on it. If it were me, I'd at least use the crate in the meantime so your dog can't practise this bad habit. You really have to stop these things 100% to break the habit, I think.