corvus

Oh, I see Midol, you're talking only about TRAINERS all of a sudden. The quadrant itself is not a training concept. It's just a way of explaining the way operative conditioning works. I honestly think OC could be explained in 5 seconds by saying "An animal will work to make good things happen and bad things stop happening" and that is something anyone can understand (I assume) and it doesn't require jargon that doesn't make instant intuitive sense. The way "good things" and "bad things" happening teach a dog is where the quadrant comes in, and that, imho, is not something even a trainer really needs to know to be an effective trainer. I bet plenty don't. Or more to the point, I bet plenty do and just don't use the special terms of the quadrant to organise and pigeon-hole everything just so. As we have seen, the terms in the quadrant might have been invented to define what is meant by "reward" and "punishment' and the two ways they can each be applied to change behaviour, but these things exist on a continuum, not in discrete little holes, so we all still end up arguing about what exactly we mean. I have consistently encountered confusion over whether punishments are punishments if they don't ultimately extinguish behaviour and whether they are punishments if the behaviour is still expressed consistently at slightly lower levels that before, and whether it is still a punishment if the behaviour decreases but then increases and still remains a valid option at any time and whether something is R- or P+ or whether it's P- or P+ or if it even exists in the quadrant at all and so on and so on. I don't like the box. I like to think I'm not quite as arrogant as to think just because some of us get it than it's easy and everyone should.

But it isn't epecially intuitive. I mean, P+?? Sounds like positive punishment. I really do hate jargon. Anything as ostensibly simple as the quadrants that takes more than 5 seconds to explain had better be so specialised there is no way to sum it up in a few words. I spent a year explaining cuckoos and gentes to every person I crossed paths with and it got really boring and tedious after a while, but unfortunately cuckoo gentes are a pretty complicated concept so if you are going to talk about it you need a few quick words to sum up those concepts.

Freaky. I don't know that much about Dunbar, but some of these things are what I do. I do this because in my mind, I want my dog to know when I mean business and that when they hear that tone they know inevitably I will get my way if I have to sit there and nag all day. It is one thing OH can get his head around. I suppose you could teach them that every tone means business, but where's the fun in that? Penny is so conditioned to the "business" tone she hustles no matter what she's doing when I tell her to get moving already. I don't use it all the time, though, so it retains its power. I also used the same thing with my hare when he was living in the house. People often say not to nag, but in all honesty, I see nothing wrong with nagging. In my experience, it usually results in the animal giving up early rather than putting up with you pestering them. There is a scientific basis for nagging as well, although I doubt it would sit well with dog trainers. Smaller individuals in the wild can bend bigger individuals to their will by nagging. The bigger individual can't be bothered fighting because fighting is always costly, and so just comes to move away when the little pesky one shows up making noise and displays and whatnot. This is how small individuals hold a territory. If you watch dogs interacting with each other, sometimes you see a dog behaving very submissively but still able to get their way through being a pest. Couldn't agree more! I've been saying that for ages and people usually agree with me. The quadrants really peeve me because I hate jargon and they are difficult to understand. I think there are times for this, and luring makes sense as being one of those times. The way I think of it, when you are luring them and they are beginning to do it, that's when I end up using the verbal cue. It's kind of like clicking and shaping. The luring action turns into the signal anyway. Then again, I've been labelled a haphazard trainer with no aims, so what would I know? Sounds like it was an interesting seminar.

As long as they respect the constraint of the leash you are in charge? What does that mean, really? Obey the leash and you obey me? You could say the same about fences if the dog never tries to break out of them. A leash is indeed a constraint, and that's really all it is for the most part. It's there to stop your dog getting away from you. Doesn't sound much like an indication of leadership to me. Cesar himself talks fondly of homeless people whose dogs don't walk on leashes at all. I don't much like leashes. There is such a temptation to pull and control with them and once you are in the driving seat you tend to pay less attention to what your dog wants to do and why. That's why I taught Kivi a string of verbal suggestions as well. He is always following my steady stream of suggestions when we are out walking. He pays a lot more attention to me than a dog plodding automatically at heel all the time, just as an example. When I was a kid I used to go for hikes all the time in the bush with Penny. If I couldn't decide which animal track to follow I'd step back and suggest Penny pick one. She would, and it was always fun trying to follow a small corgi's idea of a track. Nonetheless, she was very leery of picking a way unless I'd given her permission, and if I hadn't and she somehow found herself in front of me she was constantly checking back. She never liked being there for long and usually preferred to be walking so close to my heels I'd kick her jaw with each step. The door thing has some truth in it for some dogs. Penny never used to mind, but has become very snarky around doors since her eyesight deteriorated. It's a tight space and she feels nervous when there's a big silly puppy right on top of her. She also won't stand for Kivi lying across the door to the lounge room. As far as she's concerned she should be in there and when the gate is opened she will rectify this human oversight.

Meant to point out last night that more positive methods were suggested on that thread, both by myself and MJ, and those were just the pages I read. It depends on whether it's a flight or fight response or if it's a learnt behaviour. If it is F or F desensitise over time. It's boring and slow, but it works and it is the way positive trainers on other boards I know of do it. I know someone who rehabs aggressive dogs that go into rescue and she uses mostly that and a little leadership exercises thrown in. I would expect she uses very mild aversives once they are getting somewhere, but I'm not sure. If it is learnt, I would want to use Constructional Aggression Treatment, which is a way to teach dogs other ways to allow them to increase distance between themselves and the scary thing other than aggression. When you change the response from aggressive to calm, the problem is all but solved as the emotional response follows. Don't think there are any C.A.T trainers in this country, though. Both methods rely on not triggering an aggressive response. I expect that this is difficult in early days, but I have tamed people shy animals and I believe that even if your very presence triggers them in the first place, classical conditioning is a truly wonderful and underrated thing. When I was a kid I spent hours sitting in a pen with a calf putting in the ground work before putting a halter on her. I had seen what happens when you whack a halter on a scared calf and drag them around, so I and my friend decided to train this one ourselves with patience and avoiding frightening her at all. We did the same thing with 12 month old steers just taken from their mothers. You have to frighten them at first, but it's not that hard to stay out of range and keep triggering to a minimum and build the animal up to handle your presence. I don't see why, if you insist on working with a dog that is triggered by the presence of a human in the first place, you can't start with them in a cage or run and do it the slow and tedious way. You reap the rewards when you try not to scare animals. I have heard that the book Control Unleashed also has a good method or two for dealing with reactive dogs.

Wow, this thread got interesting while I was away! Who knew a little out of character sniping would stimulate discussion? At the risk of continuing the off topic trend.... Thank you Anita, I was frustrated and did need to hear that. I love heated discussions as long as they stay non-personal. When I get called racist and low for something I never intended to be more than a simple observation it's not fun anymore. And I do still think that celebrities should be subject to the same expectations as anyone else, especially in the light of heavy editing and the sensationalist nature of the show in question. I thought that might be taken in the exact opposite way it was. Anyway, I digress. I hear what you're saying, Erny, about personal referals. I just don't really consider a heavily edited television show a particularly good indication of performance. Although I remember watching Kelly Marks with horses on Barking Mad and that woman filled me with awe. She so quickly and easily identifies the problem and she takes handling that one step further, knowing exactly when to bully a little and when to soothe. There never seemed to be any rhyme or reason to when she was going to be a hard arse, but you always knew instantly when she was that it was exactly what was needed. That, imho, is what makes a good behaviourist. Kelly handles with ease the grey areas in training where a tried and true method just needs a little individual tweaking. Maybe the accord I feel for Kelly's work is what other people feel for Cesar's? Nonetheless, Kelly has credentials and I think that's a good thing. She'd surely be a great behaviourist without them, but I know from my own experiences that a little formal training can give you a new way of looking at things and I reckon that's always good no matter who it is or what level of training you take. Same about seminars, mentoring, and workshops. Same about internet forums, I guess. Midol, I get frightened when I agree with something you say in the training section.

Kivi is on a long line. And will remain so until his recall is as reliable as I would like it to be. I am very cautious about these things and Penny was on a long line for months when I first got her and it was months of her never going more than 3 metres away from me anyway that gave me the courage to take the long line off. The emergency recall is his name repeated 3 times in quick succession at a high pitch. I was cutting corners because now he responds quite well to his name called once. I don't want to change it particularly because we already have about 4 months of conditioning and his recall is still improving in spite of everything. Maybe I should just take control of the ER treats and only give them to OH when it's quiet. Unfortunately that doesn't stop him using the ER without any kind of reward in his hands when he feels it's an emergency. Which happens a fair bit when he won't intercept Kivi before he gets it into his head he desperately needs to go say hi to another dog in the first place. I have been trying not to interfere too much with OH when he has Kivi because I want Kivi to get used to OH's natural way of doing things. Perhaps I need to carry chocolate drops and pop OH one when he does the right thing, hm? I love that OH is so active in looking after the animals and spending time with them, but man, I am so tired of explaining this concept and watching in dismay as the recall suffers another setback. Next dog I'm getting he will not even know the emergeny recall until it's solid if I have my way. You can mess around with a Lapphund and get away with it, but not so a Basenji or a Sheba or some such.

It is so frustrating. I have told OH countless times not to call Kivi Tarro when he's not going to come, and he still uses the emergency recall at precisely those times and then gives me a "told you so" look and tells me it doesn't work. That's because it's not trained yet! And it's never going to get there if someone keeps using it when he's busy doing his favourite thing in the world. I have explained it over and over again in various levels of detail and apparently I am still not being understood. Today at the dog park he recalled perfectly to the ER when I used it when he was trotting off to explore the creek, but then totally ignored it when OH used it when he was already just metres away from touching noses with a new doggy friend. It is improving in spite of OH's use of it, but it is really getting silly and making it all a lot harder than it needs to be. He is quite reliable even without the emergency recall until he's playing with another dog. Then you have to pick a moment when he's not totally focused on the game and he will come. Does anyone have a way to explain this concept of not using the emergency recall when it's unlikely the dog is going to want to come back that might get through to my man? I do not for the life of me understand how it could be so hard when I have made it crystal clear over and over again since we started training it.

It's not. How many times do I have to say it? You don't need one. It'd probably help, but you don't need one. I am not a dog expert and have never painted myself as one, but when everyone says that a behaviourist should have some sort of credentials/formal training one wonders why this doesn't seem to apply to celebrities. I don't understand why I have to be a dog expert to say that a dog behaviourist that takes people's money for helping their dogs ought to have some kind of formal training.

It all seems a bit hypocritical, now, in light of just being slammed for suggesting that a certain celebrity trainer could do with some formal training. Incidentally, I don't think VS has any, either. Although I could be wrong. I thought I heard she was an actor.

Heavens, I could call myself a behaviourist. I have a degree in science and animal behaviour was one of my majors. I don't think you need a uni degree, just a course in training completed and a few years under a respected mentor. The latter is the important bit because you can have all the raw talent in the world but experience hones it and gives you more examples to draw from. In zoology, you can largely compensate for experience with knowledge of literature if you have a good memory and a brain suited to applied science, but in the end you will be miserable at field work until you build some solid experience. I was speaking to the person who I did my first nest-finding job with one time and all I could think was that if I had done the same job then after 3 seasons of nest-finding, I would have done a hugely better job. This person thought I did a fine job anyway and did better than some specialists that had come in from other countries, so I really think it's a combination of having a knack for it and experience under a mentor. Difficult things to quantify.

But the thing is, it's very hard to tell because how can you say the dog chases because it has no choice or the dog chases because it chooses to chase? If its drive is that high it will ALWAYS choose to chase because there is nothing that feels better or more satisfying, so how can you say for certain that it has no choice? It's like putting a pen in my hand and paper in front of me and saying that because I draw every time, I have no choice. I do have a choice because I could choose not to draw for whatever reason and it would probably last for a little while at least, but if I were a simpler creature I wouldn't ever have a good reason not to draw. I honestly couldn't imagine this dog of my mother's being more prey driven because I've never seen a dog more driven. He just expresses it in a different way to, say, a GSD. Apparently he has threatened my mother in an attempt to stop her from stopping him from getting at a lizard. He's such a mild mannered dog I almost couldn't believe it of him except that I saw what was left of the garage wall after the possum. In a sense, the lizard is very much like the scenario you describe. He lies around all day and doesn't play or interact with the other dogs and when there's a lizard he goes nuts. Every time someone takes a lizard away from him he wants the next one more. If he gets the lizard his drive to get another just builds. He has just enough success with lizards to turn him into a monster around them. It's him that makes me think people should train in drive. If he was a bigger dog and/or a bit more aggro he'd be a serious danger. Anyway, I'm not sure that he would stop thinking. Maybe he would. Maybe he would appear to not be thinking but actually not hear or see anything else because he was so focused on the rat. I honestly think he's always thinking about how he could catch this animal even as he's chasing it. It seems maladaptive to be able to be riled up to such an extent that you stop thinking and just act.

Hmm, interesting. I don't think it's force, and here's why: My mother's little Vallhund Pyry has a huge prey drive. I have seen him do incredible things trying to get at a small furry animal. He has never been encouraged, but he really doesn't need it. He once tore a hole in the garage wall trying to get to a possum that was stuck there. When he sees my rabbits you can see he starts thinking about how he's going to get to them. He's already at the cage trying to find an opening before he has really started thinking, but you can see that he's running through possibilities and trying them. Give him long enough and I'm confident he would find a way even if he had to pry the bars apart. He certainly didn't start with pulling the wall off the garage for the possum. That came several hours after he discovered it (the possum was okay in the end - we pulled it out by the tail and set it free in the front yard). So, he thinks. He doesn't just react, although the start is a reaction. Secondly, he does call it quits on his own. He once chased a rat into the wood pile by the BBQ. He knew it was in there and spent all day trying to get to it. The next day, he was at it again. It started raining. Halfway through the day he was seen standing on the woodpile in the rain staring off into the distance. This dog LOATHES water. He would do just about anything to stay out of the rain. Anyway, he gave up and went inside. He went back out again once or twice, but gave it up by the end of the day. His prey drive is seriously intense, but he still thinks even when he's discovering superhero strength to get to that prey. When you put a small animal in front of him, he can choose whether to go for it or not. He will always choose to go for it at least at the start, but he has the power to choose to give it up at any time; he just really doesn't want to. Putting an animal in front of him is not forcing him to hunt because thought hasn't abandoned him, but he sure wouldn't choose to not hunt. That's the way I reason it, anyway. My mother's other dog will chase things until she can't physically put one foot in front of the other anymore. She walks like a drunk. But at that point she does stop and lie down. I guess that you can get dogs that won't and will keep running until they run themselves to the ground, and if you have a dog like that I think you do "force" them when you get them worked up to maximum drive. It's probably a lot more compulsive than either of my mother's dogs.

Penny licks herself a lot. But she's an old lady. Her licking has only become so full on in the last few months. She's been checked by a vet and is in good health for her age. She has always cleaned down there in the past, though.

Some dogs are gonna be more intense about it than others, and there's nothing like another dog to bring out the competition. My corgi is really only food obsessed when there are other dogs around that could pinch her food. I grew up with 3 brothers, so I kinda know what she's on about. If they're eating bones together she gets the crate. That way she knows her food is safe. It helps a little. Kivi wouldn't tell Penny off for stealing his food. He'll just get out of her way and bark at her from a distance. I've let other dogs tell Penny off though. It usually goes something like this "Penny, don't you be stealing! Out of it!..... You are going to get beaten up. Don't expect me to rescue you when you get yourself in trouble, girl." And inevitably she tries it on, gets told off, and tries it again. She'll grow some sense eventually, but it's much easier to just put her in a crate or stand over her until she's done and hustle her out.

Yeah, I feel your pain. Kivi gets frustrated easily as well. I tend to click him for something tiny and inevitably he exaggerates it when he starts to catch on so he does the work for me. I just kinda let him come up with things and change what I'm clicking a lot. If he does something cute or useful I put it on cue, but we never pracitise so he usually forgets it. I just do it when he's climbing the walls and needs something to occupy his brain.

Ummmmm .... would you please clarify what you mean? Because the way I'm reading it, this is essentially "leadership", which is what I'm saying. I was agreeing with you but putting a different spin on it. I don't see it as leadership so much as giving an animal the tools to predict. Nothing puts my hare at ease like knowing how things are going to roll. Unless he knows they're going to roll badly for him, that is. If you ignore those times, whenever he is afraid he's afraid of not knowing what is going to happen next. The way I see it, if I do it with a hare and do it with a dog and get more or less the same results, then by my reasoning, given hares are not social and don't have hierarchies, and hares and dogs are way different but still both mammals, then it's probably pretty close to universal. This is why I'm always going on about my hare. When there are similarities, I know I've hit on something that's more about animals being animals than dogs being dogs. Does that make any sense? Anyway, it's a bit off topic. No doubt dogs being the social animals they are and tending to look for guidance, any exercise that makes things predictable is probably going to be doubly useful for a dog, being the two-edged sword of both making life more predictable and easy to understand and creating a view in the dog that you take care of things for him and have all the answers. Hey Luke, maybe you could just do some free shaping with Barkly? Keep him learning but not practising. Play 101 things to do with a box. Try to get him to lift a paw but not take it off the ground. Little, useless stuff. You can toss in some obedience here and there if he gets frustrated about clicker training and needs something he knows how to do.

this? http://www.naturaldogblog.com/blog/2007/08...-using-pushing/ Yeah, that's the one. If you can get past the kookiness, there's some good stuff in there. Ernie, I only use my dogs as an example. I know trainers from other boards that are also professional behaviourists and will say much the same thing. A dog's behaviour WILL change for the better when a human changes their interactions to add more structure to a dog's life, but I doubt it has much to do with pecking order. The best cure for anxiety in general is predictability in general. As long as they don't learn to predict the bad things. Another good cure for anxiety is putting yourself in control of things for the animal so they know where everything is coming from and when. I don't question your methods or their effectiveness in the least, just the explanation.

I have a Kong-shaped scrubbing brush. It's still messy, though.

Kivi tends to fall over when I work on him. Works well for when he's a little nervous, though. How do you go about it to avoid having the dog lie down?

Hold on, are we forgetting that dogs are purely and simply social creatures and don't like to be alone for extended periods? It's not such a stretch to have that turn into a pathological fear if managed poorly. Our pup howled the house down in the first week we had him every time we left him alone, but with care and patience he is now quite happy to be in the yard all alone most of the day. And we shower affection on him whenever we feel like it and he doesn't do a thing for it. Controlling behaviour is a symptom of an anxious or insecure dog, not a dog higher on the pecking order. My 13 year old corgi is a controlling dog, but even she doesn't get anxious when there are no dogs around for her to control. In fact, she's happy because she finds controlling a stressful part of her life. Higher ranking dogs only care about what someone else is doing when it directly interferes with them getting what they want. Luke, have you heard about the pushing exercise described in Natural Dog Training? It's a method that has been used to transfer food drive to tug and fetch. I've been trying it with Kivi and I think it helps. Kivi is not a very driven dog so it's hard to get him keen on anything. There's an article about it on the web somewhere.

I have read the first T-Touch book Linda put out and found it really interesting. I think that there's a lot of use for it. I've tried it a little on my two dogs and learnt that if you do it wrong it's kinda jarring and for my arthritic dog can be painful, but if you do it right it's pretty amazing and the dog just sinks into your hands. Kivi turns to putty if I find the right pressure and the right spots. We have had great success using it to help him with car sickness. I tried it on a couple of anxious dogs I met on holidays and they pretty much surrendered. The books are good for telling you how to do it and when to use what kinds of touches, but in my experience so far there's a lot more to it. You really have to sync yourself with the animal to get the best results, and that's something that's hard to achieve consciously, I think. My mother is better at it than me and has been taming her new pet budgie with T-Touch and last I heard it was working very well. It does come off pretty airy fairy a lot of the time, which makes it difficult to take it seriously. I suggest you just think of it as massage. If you've had a good massage you'll know that it's very difficult to resist relaxing. If you've had a bad massage you would know that it can be uncomfortable or even painful. When you are concentrating on giving your animal a good massage you often suddenly discover you are matching your breathing rate with the animal and your fingers are moving to the same rhythm and everything seems to work.

I've been bitten and scratched by a live possum and didn't get a tetanus shot! It was pretty minor, though. I think possums can get mange and other similar problems. I was helping treat one in captivity once that had a very bad skin condition that made her itchy and scabby. She lost a lot of fur and her skin was excessively dry and crusty with sores. In the end she died. The vet she was taken to did not know the cause of the condition.

My old corgi Penny has cataracts. No vet she's been to has ever mentioned possible treatments. She is 13 and has been going blind for about the last 3 years. She can't see very well now, but she's not blind. She has trouble close up and far away but she gets around fine and doesn't act blind. It's been very gradual, which has given her a chance to adapt.

If you've poisoned your come command you might have to start from scratch with a new one. Try some truly amazing food rewards like cooked meat. Practise heaps. Several times a day when you are 100% sure they will come. Keep them on long lines or in enclosed areas so they never get a chance to say no. If you concentrate on teaching them that their new come command means the most wonderful rewards in the world rather than that their come command is about them coming you can build up a conditioned response. If the best food in the world is still met with a luke warm response, try something else they like better. Tug games or fetch or whatever. You can even use releasing them again for another run as a reward.