corvus

Do you use jackpots? Why/why not? How often? How big?

Hmmm, it's a tricky one. Surely anything that slows pulling also rubs skin and fur? Assuming that the head collar rubs less than anything else and you want to work on Tilly's confidence, could you do a little training while she's wearing it? My dogs tend to forget about a lot of things when I'm handing out treats every second. Have you tried making a fleecey sleeve for your martingale? The Ruffwear Web Master harnesses come with fleece sleeves for the straps that go under the dog's belly. They are loose enough that the straps can be loosened or tightened without taking the sleeve off, but protect the tender belly from the nylon straps.

*puts flame suit on* People here think I'm a nutter, but I honestly think you have to be VERY careful about how far you push a dog that is prepared to snap at you over something he wants. On the one hand, you can't for a moment let aggression ever work for him. It can NEVER get him what he wants. But on the other hand, I have seen dogs like that pushed and they can be really unpredictable. Sometimes it can make them worse. Sometimes it makes them better, but who wants to take that risk? It sounds like you know him pretty well, so you be the judge, but perhaps err on the side of caution and work on teaching him how rewarding it can be to give up something he likes voluntarily. But there's a fine line between bribery and rewards, and I think some dogs are very savvy to whether they are being given treats for deciding not to obey the first time in the hopes that you'll crack out the treats and whether they are being given treats for following directions. Don't fall into that trap of "I might try it without the treats... Oh, didn't work. Better get the treats." Not saying you would, just don't. Are you sure he's not injured at all? Not trying to make excuses for him, but it can be a reason for getting snarky about being touched. I guess what I would do is probably not what other people would do. I am not afraid to admit that I desperately don't want to get into a battle of wills with dogs. IME, it is a slippery slope and you can suddenly find yourself with your hands on a snarling, snapping dog, trying not to get bitten. At best, you manage to hold on until the dog gives up and they've learnt that aggression doesn't work with you. At worst, you get savaged and the dog has learnt to escalate their aggression. That is a pretty big risk to me. I prefer to play games that are less risky, and I'd be concentrating on taking the tension out of the situation and teaching an "up" and "off" command with lots of high value rewards. A leash is a good idea just in case. Targeting would be a good way to get up and off happening quickly. That's what I think I would try, just going on your description and keeping in mind that I might change my mind if I saw what's happening with my own eyes. I generally want my dogs to choose to behave in a way that makes us both happy, so sometimes that means teaching them why my way would make them happy.

Just to offer a balanced perspective, I use ordinary harnesses with a D ring on the back and I have never found them to encourage pulling. Given, I haven't used them on a dog that pulls a lot, but that has been my experience so far anyway. The softouchconcepts harness sounds good.

The problem with clicking when they are in the process of doing their thing is that they might be like Erik, who's like "Argh, get the food away from me; I'm peeing!" He don't want to eat when he's toileting. It's gross. For him I would say my cue for toileting when he first started to go, then we'd play a game when he was done. He seems to think it's all a bit weird, but he definitely gets that once he's gone he's allowed to run inside out of the rain! I have to carry him outside when it's raining, and then he tries to run back in, so he goes into the fenced yard at the back until he's done his thing. He sure gets fast when it's wet. I swear he goes even when he doesn't have to just to get back inside.

We have to respect that sometimes people need something right now to help them out. Training takes time, and if you're a busy person with kids chances are you're still going to have to walk the dog with the kids in the meantime. As Nik has said, she IS working on training and focus. In the interim, an anti-pull harness or head collar will, presumably, stop the pulling so pup doesn't get to practise it. That is a great start to me. I know you have about as strong a dislike for head collars as I have for check chains, huski, but they don't have to be bad, and there's always the no-pull harnesses. I think it's really up to the OP. The OP should take into account that head collars can be aversive and her dog may never like it, but she also needs to take into account that head collars are designed to stop pulling and generally achieve those aims. I'd go for a harness, but I have a hang up about my points of contact with my dogs and that's why I like harnesses over collars in general. I also think the no-pull harnesses are less worrying to dogs when they are first put on. The cords would worry me, but maybe a GL harness would do the job.

Would you care to elaborate, Huski? Why do you think a head collar is totally inappropriate for a pup?

Are you always around when they are likely to find lizards. A good recall or "leave it" works pretty well. Perhaps you could leave some ceramic pipes around for the Blueys to hide in. Mind you, the more lizard refuges you put out the more lizards will come use them! And they could attract snakes as well.

I think as a stop gap measure the no pull or head collars might be a good bet. I have not yet had a dog that is a natural puller, but if I needed a little help I think I would go with the Sporn. I have seen them used on young puppies and I think they were more readily accepted by far than a head collar. My mother uses Haltis on two of her dogs and she really likes them. She says she has far more control. Both dogs learnt to pull before she got to them. Both dogs are happy with their Haltis and will cheerfully help you put them on when it's time for walks. Pulling doesn't happen. I've seen a lot of badly fitted head collars that look really uncomfortable, and I think some dogs never really like them much. If you decide to go that route, make sure you get one that fits your dog well and spend a bit of time habituating your dog to the head collar. As far as brands go, the Halti fits my mother's Boxer/Kelpie cross well, and I'm guessing she'd be pretty similar to an Aussie in size and shape. Incidentally, I'm not sure that I'd use a Sporn on a long-coated dog. I'd be a bit worried about the cords getting matted up in the coat. But I have a Lapphund and practically anything gets caught up in his coat. He walks around with whole tree branches hanging off his tail.

Toilet training is one of the few things I haven't trained Erik with the clicker. I have no even done many treats with him. He really doesn't want to eat while he's in the middle of toileting. But if you do want to click, I would click while she is weeing. Preferably at the start. She should associate the click with the reward.

Our four month old puppy still has accidents as well. I would say mostly because the door is closed or because it's come on very suddenly. As long as he is improving I'm not worried about it. I leave the door open and he takes himself out most of the time. If he's been playing it will often come on quite suddenly and he just looks around for the nearest place to go. If I'm doing my job and watching him, I can remind him to do it outside. I always go with him so I know he's done it and give him praise. He does alert when he needs to go, but not always. Kivi almost never did and still doesn't. Erik has been easier. Some dogs don't catch on as quickly. It helps to have areas where they spend a lot of time and fence off other areas. They like to go in places they don't spend a lot of time, so if they can't get to them, but can get to outside, they will usually go outside.

I think you need to be careful with your socialising, but I don't think there's any reason why you shouldn't let them play on a daily basis if you like. You just have to make going to the park a little about you and them as well as other dogs. My dog LOVES playing with other dogs and can even get a bit fixated. He finds it difficult to concentrate on anything but the dog he hasn't greeted yet. All the same, I can call him away from other dogs in the dog park and hold his attention for a session of heeling and run him through the things he knows and he won't even look at the other dogs. I think you just have to make doing things like that a bit of a habit. I have a toy I swing around for Kivi for times when he is wound up and badly wants to talk to a dog that probably doesn't want to talk to him. Chasing the toy and a game of tug with me deals with all that pent up energy and frustration and also gives me an opportunity to show him that I still exist and am still worth hanging around with even at dog parks. Kivi is getting better all the time, and while he still likes to be the social butterfly, checking in with every human and dog he lays eyes on, he is usually happy to leave everything at a word from me to come and hang out with me for a while. I give him lots of chicken and play with him and stuff. I'm happy for him to be the social butterfly and have not found this has been particularly difficult to get around.

As usual, I'll put a vote in for Leslie Nelson's Really Reliable Recall dvd. It's very good. Seeing as you are not starting from scratch, perhaps you can make less work for yourself with a bit of premack? You could use a release to the lake as a reward. Assuming you don't mind them going into the lake. And assuming they will come out again once they've gone in. One thing I did with Kivi earlier on was to go with him when he wanted to explore something new. If he was really interested, I'd be like "Hey Kivi, let's go check it out!" and run off with him instead of trying to compete directly with it. Over time, he came to prefer hanging out with me and now he's much easier to call away from interesting things. I'm not sure if that's just the recall work we've done, or if it's because he's matured a little and just naturally prefers to be with me, or if it helped to do interesting things with him.

I must be weird. The only time I feel self-conscious with my dogs in public is if I call and get ignored! So I tend to do mouse calls just in case, and of course, my dogs don't always hear mouse calls. I am my own worst enemy. I've never had a dog I've done as much work with as Kivi, though, so I'm learning that there's not much to worry about. If you've put the work in, you won't get ignored. I'm happy to train anywhere, though. I haven't bothered much with seeking out distractions because Kivi is a mellow dude and zillions of people and ball games and cars are not very distracting to him. Dog parks and beaches are way more distracting and I've never felt self-conscious practising things in such an environment. I practise things on our walks as well, and often people look at me askance when I'm chatting away to Kivi and there's no one else with me so it's obvious I'm talking to the dog. I'm not going to shut up just because some people look at me sideways, though.

It's definitely hard for puppies when they are extremely excited. I find the best thing with Erik when he is like that is to be proactive. If I ask for a sit just before he goes to bite me he'll plant his butt and I've got a few seconds to get my hands on something he can bite. If I don't have anything handy I just haveta walk reeeeeeally slowly or ask for Erik to watch me. It's better than shrieking every time his teeth touch me. He's not too bad with his bite inhibition, but if he's super excited he'll hurt me if I use that method before he reigns himself in and finds something else to bite. When Erik is all excited, every time he bites my ankle his excitement is maintained and he'll keep trying to bite my ankle. But if I can divert him before he bites my ankle to biting something that doesn't hurt, we're all happy and he calms down much faster. And my ankles stay safe. Anyway, long story short, I find a rock solid sit to be ever so useful with puppies. Erik is expected to sit whenever he wants something. Anything at all. If he wants something from us, he must put his rear on the ground and keep his mouth shut. He is remarkably good at this for an excitable puppy, now. Remember, there's a point where a dog will be so excited that they can't really hear you. It's not that they aren't listening to you. They genuinely don't hear you. If that's the case, you're better off putting pup in a crate or something until he settles down. Dried pigs ears or snouts are good for calming down over excited puppies.

My dogs are 18 months and 4 months. They have been the first puppies I've crate-trained. We only use the crate overnight. It's set up in our bedroom so the puppy knows we are close. For the first night or two I sat with them once the lights were out until they had settled. Usually the whining is just because they are afraid you have left them all alone and that is a terrifying thing for a puppy. I introduced them to the pen the same way. My older dog Kivi was terrible when I first got him. He was incredibly upset about being left in a pen and he would howl and cry for half an hour. I thought, why is it that he took so quickly to the crate but just can't handle the pen? Well, when he was in the crate he knew I was nearby. I reassured him when he whined and he quickly learnt not to fret about being there. So I approached the pen the same way, starting from scratch. I sat by him with my laptop and just worked away until he fell asleep. I'd try to be back to him before he woke up. Knowing I was there most of the time really made all the difference and 2 days later, he could handle the pen without crying. I did the same for Erik with the same results, only it was quicker for Erik as he was a bit older. Puppies hate being alone. It's very upsetting for them. They cry because they are distressed. As far as toileting goes, remember that puppies don't get a lot of warning before they need to wee. It often comes on suddenly and when a puppy has to go, they have to go right now. So it's good that your puppy is going on the indoor loo, but if he needs to go when he's in the lounge room, he'll go in the lounge room. You have to look for patterns. If he regularly goes in the lounge at a certain time of the day, make sure he's near where you want him to toilet at that time of the day instead. I have penned Erik inside since we got him as he will be an inside dog. I was interested to see how he would go with toilet training, differentiating between paper and outside. Essentially, he's a clean dog and he hates going in his pen. I've had no trouble at all with it. He doesn't go on newspaper that's lying around the house. He's more spatially cued about toileting. Some dogs are more surface cued, though. So I'm told. I believe it.

Yeah, sorry, I went a bit off topic there. Erik often wakes up at 5:30. That's the time our alarm goes off anyway. Once he's awake, there's no stopping him. He NEEDS to run around like a lunatic for the next 3 hours. He's been sleeping all night! We just kind of pop him into the kitchen with the older dog to babysit him for a while. He probably checks his bowl even though he doesn't get fed for another 2 hours. It's always worth it, right? You can always put bowls up when they are not in use.

Other puppies, my leg, but one puppy in particular. It seemed to me like a "I'm feeling a little uncertain.... but a little excited.... what can I do?" and then he'd suddenly perk up and go and hump something. Invariably something he felt less intimidated by. Humping interpretations bother me a little bit because I think it's very hard for people to divorce themselves from human sexuality when they see it. I've seen a lot of young dogs at the park doing it when they get overexcited. To me it is often an indication of them not knowing quite what to do with themselves. I was watching someone else's dog at a family gathering a few weeks ago humping Erik. Why was he picking Erik in particular? Of all the dogs there, Erik was not the smallest, but he was the youngest. One might reason that because he was the youngest he was the logical place to start asserting one's dominance, especially if one is not a dominant dog by nature and wants to start somewhere easy. But then, if Erik was picking targets that were less intimidating to him, why should it be different for an adult dog that was also feeling uncertain? Just because of social maturity? He was desexed and not well socialised. He didn't look to me like he was in his element with 5 other male dogs in a strange backyard. Maybe it's easy to mix up dominance and uncertainty? I am just not convinced about the dominance thing at the moment. I don't see dogs that aren't conflicted in some way doing it. If you see dominance as less about social hierarchy and more about securing access to resources, then I think I have seen a few puppies behaving dominantly. Erik is one of them. At 10 weeks of age, just a few days after we got him, he stood over a small piece of bone he'd found and growled menacingly at Kivi, who was a good 3 metres away at the time. I was like "hello, note to self: watch that!". I'd seen puppies resource guarding before, but there was a different element to this. Erik was not wildly interested in the bone. He was making a point. He thought better of it halfway through and the growl died away very quickly, and then he got nice and comfy with Kivi and we've not seen anything like that happen again. There is no doubt in my mind that Erik will do whatever it takes to get what he wants. To me, that is a dominant personality. My job is to guide him in learning acceptable ways to get what he wants, and to gently habituate him to frustration. Fortunately for me, Erik is very responsive to rewards and thoroughly loves doing things to earn them. He quickly forgets what he wanted when you give him an opportunity to earn a different reward. One time at puppy preschool the Leo puppy tried to take Erik's pig snout. He had a go at her, then pinched a piece of her cooked liver treats, almost as an afterthought! The audacity. Some puppies are rather bold and outspoken, and I think you've gotta treat that much the same way as you would dominance in an older dog.

I'm glad that Aidan mentioned humping as a displacement behaviour, because I noticed Erik doing it when he was 11 weeks, but ONLY when he was vaguely stressed. The first week of puppy class he kept away from all the dogs, and the second week of class he was nervous, but seemed to want to interact. That was when I saw the humping. By the third week, he had come out of his shell a lot and was much more confident. Lo and behold, the humping had vanished and he hasn't done it since. He is now rather full of confidence and hasn't done it since. If Gypsy does it when she has been told off, perhaps she is feeling nervous and doesn't know how to handle that? Puppies are funny. They seem to easily lose their brain in the excitement of being alive. There are things I know Erik knows, but sometimes when I ask he doesn't do them. I figure, he's a baby and sometimes he just doesn't have the self control and focus of an older dog. I just ignore him. If he can't find the self control to sit quietly then I guess he doesn't want a belly rub, game of tug, or treat. He usually finds it within himself to sit quietly.

I don't think this is the group of people you need to ask. Obviously we are all dog lovers and responsible dog owners and consider manners to be important regardless of the size of the dog. OH's parents' Min Pin is not so much allowed to get away with murder because people think it's cute as he gets more easily frightened and then he gets punished for it and that just makes him more afraid. People say he has small dog syndrome, but he doesn't. He's just a little dog in a world of giants and no one is very understanding of that. I think that essentially is what "small dog syndrome" is. I think what happens to misunderstood small dogs is the same as what happens to misunderstood large dogs. The difference is that small dogs react more often because they are more easily startled or frightened. I don't expect them all to behave the same, but I do expect them all to be taught the same things and be held to the same rules as larger dogs.

Quiet on command was one of the first things Erik learnt! I can't remember how I taught it, now. I was going to teach him to bark on command by treating when he did it, then once he's barking reliably, add a cue and stop rewarding unless he barks when you have asked for it. I think I deviated from my plan, though, as I seem to remember Erik was very quick and tended to shut up when I asked him to sit. So I asked him to sit, then dived in with "shhh" and rewarded. Or something like that. Erik likes the sound of his own voice, so we rarely ask for quiet unless we can reward it pretty big at the moment. In the meantime, we ask for a sit or just call him over. As it turns out, a lot of things distract him from barking for a few seconds, and once you ask him to do something else, you've interrupted his barking momentum. Having said that, there are times when he's just too excited/agitated to control himself and that's not his fault. I would like to say I ignore him when he gets like this, and I would say most of the time he settles down on his own, but every now and then it goes on and on and something has to be done for the sake of our eardrums. He's just barking because he wants someone to interact with him. Now.

Yeah, Erik was also like this. Now he just flings himself at my older dog when he wants to play. Erik is the kind of dog that is extremely full of himself and makes demands about pretty much everything. I have found this remarkably easy to handle by just teaching him what does get him what he wants. He will sit quietly when asked even when he's just about bursting because once he knew what sit quietly meant, I asked for it every time he wanted something, then rewarded with what he wanted, or something just as good. He will now sit quietly when asked in most circumstances. He's still a baby, so I don't expect it to be fully proofed, but he will sit when I need him to stop attacking my ankles, and he'll sit when I would like him to stop leaping up and down in front of the couch and barking, and he'll sit when the sheer amount of energy he has is driving everyone in the house including my other dog insane. It's not a permanent fix, though. Just a hold button to give me a moment to think of something I can do with him or give him as an acceptable outlet for all this energy. It would be unfair of me to expect him to control his energy.

Do you have a problem with changing your methods if you don't see progress very quickly, MonElite? You or anyone else can go see Kivi's recall for yourself if you like. I posted a video a few months ago. In fact, I'll make it easy for you. I don't have any recent ones, but he has improved since then by my reckoning. To keep on topic, Kivi was the first dog I tried Leslie Neslon's Really Reliable Recall method on, and I really liked it. What I liked about it was the fact that it conditions your dog to respond without wondering if the reward is going to be better than what they are doing right now. It's a good example of what I was saying before about how your reward doesn't have to trump rewards available elsewhere in the environment.

A dog freaked out and frightened by being mouthed.. and you want the owner to "hold it still". Crikey.. you're dead lucky you've not had a dangerous dog report made out on him. Kivi will experience the end of someone's boot one of these days or be DD declared if you don't train a better recall Corvus. He clearly has good bite inhibition but that's simply not good enough. He'd certainly get my boot in his ribs if he ever put his mouth on any dog near me. Frankly if one of my dogs did that to another, it would most certainly be "corrected" for it and hard. It wouldn't be off leash and allowed to get into that situation again either. You might want to consider a muzzle while you resolve the recall issue. The fact that this appears not to have been an isolated incident concerns me more than a little. From two not even remotely descriptive sentences on the internet you got all that, huh? And without even seeing it! FYI seeing as you seem so interested, it's happened twice outside of the backyard. I don't remember when the last time was, but he does it to Erik. Erik doesn't mind much, and it's given me some handy opportunities to work on Kivi's recall when he's all worked up and off with the fairies. I was beginning to think I'd hit the plateau with his recall, but it turns out I just needed to find something in between normal dog park delerium and total brain switch off to practice with. It was hard to find that with Kivi, but he's coming along nicely now. Let's move on. Here's a further example to illustrate my point. There's this other dog we see at the dog park who does the same thing to Erik, but for her it's not the same drive. She tends to come on too strong when she starts to play. She just doesn't seem to know how to express herself appropriately. When Erik showed up, she would follow him and mouth at his back, but in her case I think it is a mild form of aggression that is based on her just feeling threatened in general about other dogs. And here's a wee little one that stops when you nip him. It feels like control to her, which is rewarding, and so she wants to spend more time following him around and making him stop. Before you throw your hands up and cry that you would never let a dog do that to your puppy, I'll just say now that she never got the chance to hurt or frighten Erik and you can take my word for it or not. So, very similar behaviours, but not driven by the same thing. At least, not in my interpretation. I could be completely wrong about it. But this is why I don't really hold with the idea that the proof is in the pudding. Because what you see is not necessarily what I see and both of us might be wrong. I mentioned in another thread how I had seen trainers applying their chosen method like a sledge hammer and they get results for all that it takes a lot of hammering sometimes. Personally, if I don't see improvements within a very short space of time, I assume that there's something wrong with my method. You can get great results with just about any method. My concern is more about whether you've been least invasive and minimally aversive in the process, as that is what guides all my interactions with any animal. I think it should for welfare if nothing else.

Yeah, I've looked into it a bit. I'm of two minds about it, but I think there's some useful stuff in there.