corvus

I read an interesting paper about E-collar use and cortisol levels in dogs one time. Perhaps I can find it somewhere... If I remember correctly, all e-collar use resulted in some raised cortisol levels, but good timing was a whole lot less stressful than bad timing and bad timing was quite stressful.

How do you use the e-collar? As an R- buzz or a P+ buzz? Perhaps it would be more accurate to say they learnt what is expected of them at the same rate but in addition learnt what they shouldn't do?

Thanks for your time K9. I still like dogs that blow me off a lot and a dog that is focused on me alone whenever I'm there would annoy the hell out of me, but drive training and neutralisation to prey animals is one thing I'd like to try.

A puppy pen or crate would also help. Remember that she's only a baby and isn't very good at self control yet. It sounds like she growls and barks in frustration. As long as it doesn't result in her getting what she wants I don't think it's a problem. Puppies do a lot of wildly obnoxious things in the interests of getting some attention/treats/dinner or whatever else they want to do. They will extinguish on their own if you ignore them. In the meantime, don't bother telling her anything unless you can see she's about to do what you want her to! She has to learn what all these words mean. When I was teaching Kivi Tarro a leave it noise "ah-ah!" in our case, then I had to make sure I followed it up every time I said it and make sure he stopped what he was doing. I just blocked him with my body and if he was really keen, walked him backwards by shuffling into his space. It takes a while to condition something like that without physical punishments, but Kivi will now usually back off and find something else to do when I cry "ah-ah". It also helps if you can tell them what they should be doing. Asking for a sit is good to get their focus and teach them that they can get what they want if they do what they're told.

I saw a deaf dog being trained on "Barking Mad" once. They used big, exaggerated hand (arm) signals and an e-collar that only vibrates for when he wasn't looking at them. The dog was so deleriously happy that he could suddenly understand what people were saying to him that he followed all directions with gusto. It was very heart-warming.

Penny is going deaf and blind. She seems to have the most trouble trying to pinpoint where you are calling from. Sometimes I see her looking around for me when I call her but she can't see me and she can't work out where my voice is coming from. I have found that I just have to keep her close. Fortunately, she has come to the same conclusion and doesn't wander far. She gets scared when she can't find us. We just have to be aware of where she is and be ready to go after her if she can't hear or isn't watching us. ETA often a sharp noise helps Penny work out where we are. Clicking my fingers seems to help. Also she's better with higher pitched noises than normal speaking pitch, so raising the pitch of my voice helps, too.

Another good example would be flooding versus desensitisation. Flooding is undoubtedly quicker, but you'd want to be careful who you did it with and know how strong the fear response might be.

Thanks for the heads up. I found a dried up dead hare in the field this week. It was kinda disturbing, but my fascination for dead things won out in the end. Might skip the fresh ones, though.

You haveta train them where to get out. And they have to be calm enough in the water that they aren't panicking to learn. We have the large dogs Skamper Ramp and it doesn't seem very flimsy to me. I've heard that you should put a flag or something above the way out of the pool as dogs look up when they are swimming, not straight ahead. At least the SR is white, so attracts attention.

K9: Because take the dogs out of the same environment & they behave completely different. I have had a few people bring me dogs that they have raised from a day old (various reasons). These are very different animals that often dont respond to the same things other dogs do. I've been thinking about this... How do you know it's not taking them out of the environment in the first place that alters the way they behave? My mother has a kitten that was orphaned and hand-raised. When she first came home she was freakishly attached to humans. It gave me the willies. No cat I've ever known has wanted to sit on someone's chest so they could suck on that person's nose! It struck me as unnatural. How do we know that it was the fact that cats aren't born with more reserve towards humans that dictated her behaviour or the enironment in which she was brought up? Now if you take humans out of the equation completely, and you scored behaviour across a large sample size, but controlled for basic needs that might affect behaviour such as food, water, shelter... then you might be able to say with more confidence what is inborn. In fact, the fox study does this pretty well, and also controls for social interactions. Other foxes are present but have very limited ability to influence the behaviour of other foxes. It's hard to get much better than that in behaviour.

I have another question. What happens to a dog that is neutralised to everything and focused on one handler if the dog has to do something without the handler? Like a vet visit for example. Would the dog find such a situation very stressful? What about if the handler goes on holidays and has to leave the dog in someone else's care? What would happen to the dog if the handler died or had to rehome the dog for some unforseen reason? Could neutralisation create a dependence on one handler?

True, but possibly beside the point. Does the article mention slapping a dog on the side or pressure on a flat collar? I haven't actually read it because I'm away from home this week and on expensive mobile internet. Does it just mention tools that are used to give physical corrections? I wouldn't like to see such tools banned (although it wouldn't affect me because I don't use them), but I would happily encourage the public to avoid them, because in my mind, misuse of something designed to be aversive is worse than misuse of something designed to not be especially aversive. I got into a fight with my pup's trainer when she wanted to put a no-pull harness on him at 12 weeks because I believed it would be mildly aversive to him and he wasn't a puller so he didn't need it. Her argument was that he needed to learn now before he got big not to pull. I guess that probably saves lives. I declined to use it, but looking at the way the puppies in the class responded to it compared to the way they might respond to a leash correction with a check chain, I'd take the no-pull harness every time. I think a lot less can go wrong with it.

We have a Skamper Ramp, although I don't think it is as effective as they claim. It didn't save the gecko that fell in! :'( Also, Penny won't use it properly. She doesn't trust the way it floats. She will go to it every time we put her in because it looks like a place to get out, but when she gets there she clings to the side closest to the edge of the pool and gets stuck. So we put the ramp next to the deep end stairs and piled some pavers and bricks in so she could stand on them and get out with the help of the ramp. She can do it, although she finds it hard given her arthritis. I'm worried about her as her eyesight is going. My aunty lost their old dog when she drowned in their fish pond. She couldn't see very well anymore. So Penny gets the run of the house and the yard in the hopes that she will spend most of her time inside if she has the choice. We tried putting her inside all the time and she grew to dislike it. We are fencing the pool eventually, though. Ours is so close to the house we can't put a fence between it and the house. We have part of the backyard fenced off from the pool, and that's where Kivi stays, but Penny barks all day if she's stuck in there and drives the neighbours mad. Kivi hasn't had pool training because he thinks he breathes through his bellybutton and panics if you put him in the water. He's not gonna learn where to get out if he thinks he's drowning. So he has his safe bit of the yard. He fell in once when he was a puppy and is very careful around the pool. He only has access to it when we are at home. I think you can also get little stairs to help animals out of pools. If you can't find them from pool places, try boating places. Or you can also get a solid cover for the pool. The ones I have seen are strong enough for children to run on. I expect they are very expensive, though.

So what, slight pressure on a flat collar is now a correction? Oh dear. How can one walk a dog without corrections? What if you used a harness instead of a flat collar? Would that also be a correction? Slight pressure on his collar is aversive to Kivi because he's not used to it. He's worn a harness since he was a puppy and wears a breakaway collar, so I hardly ever even touch the collar. Its only purpose is to hold his ID tag. But he's quite comfortable being steered with a hand on his harness and will happily go where you direct him. So getting back on topic, if you had no check chain or prong and a dog was jumping up, you could put a harness on them and stand on the leash and you would be working within the "no physical punishments" thing whether you believed what you were doing was a physical punishment or not, right?

K9: Absolutely, the example I gave of SARDOGS lab is a perfect example, I can give you many of my own dogs, but for some reason as they are mine people expect that so I really like giving examples of other peoples dogs, to show it can be done, by other than me. So then, is it as simple as neutral exposure and offering an acceptable way to achieve drive satisfaction that comes from you (such as tug for example)? K9: It is my belief that the movement of a rabbit will trigger the dogs raw prey drive, the dog will give chase & when it does or doesn't catch the rabbit, it will absorb the scent. The scent will transfer into a trigger for the dog in later times. With high prey drive dogs, people make the mistake of doing nothing with the raw drive, then the dogs natural desire to achieve drive satisfaction kicks in, the dog finds a way to satisfy the drive, perhaps chasing rabbits, then it will take a corrective measures to try & regain some obedience... Okay, so in my case the whole property smells like rabbit all the time, so my guess is the smell is unlikely to become a trigger, but the sight may continue to be a trigger. If you are in the process of exposing your dog to rabbits with the aim of neutralising them, when would you do something with the raw drive? My vague plan was to do some training in the hare's enclosure. If I trained with drive satisfaction as a reward in the presence of the hare, would I be heading the way of happy positive socialisation instead of neutralisation? Haha, only if you come watch my hare and discuss the origins of behaviour with me. The internet is frustrating when it comes to detailed discussion. I will agree to disagree on the basis that we see things differently on most accounts, except on the possibility of foxes being born with more pack drive seeing as a) foxes are essentially solitary in the first place and b) pack drive and liking affection is such a similar thing in my books that I'm not yet willing to separate them. My hare is meant to be solitary as well, but he still likes company. He would prefer it to be in less threatening form than a human, though. In the video online, you can see their setup and the foxes are in cages side by side, row upon row, so they can see each other and talk to each other. Apparently they assess them at a month old as well. And I think you probably would agree that my dog with his circling and leaning and whining is not dominant if you saw him. This is because he is a spineless wuss. He approaches every dog and person pretty much the same way, only with more whining and circling if he knows them. How he would be treated by an alpha wolf (i.e. his parent if he were a wolf, seeing as wolf packs are really just a family unit) when he approached that way would depend on how that wolf was feeling at that moment, wouldn't it? If all he was doing was circling and whining, I would be surprised if he copped it. Not even Penny gives it to him if he does it to her, and she's a cranky, old, arthritic lady. On the other hand, some dogs don't like being leaned on and licked and tell him to get lost. Because they think he's being dominant? I doubt it, considering it's all appeasement gestures. More likely because they don't want a big puppy in their face when they are trying to do something. Ask me again when he's grown up. Incidentally, he's a good deal less forthright than Ahsoka.

Well, I wouldn't do it, but the person that suggested it to me is a positive trainer with a lot of experience. She said it's not a punishment if the dog can't actually do it in the first place. A leash correction comes after the dog has started its jump. Standing on the leash doesn't enable it to start its jump. I personally think the difference is pretty slight, but I don't train dogs for a living. If the dog already knows sit in some context, I would be pre-empting the jumping with that. If he doesn't, it's the single easiest thing to teach a dog. If he's knocking you over in the interim, then maybe you need to dedicate an afternoon to practicing when you're on the ball and can dodge the jumping. My mother has a dog that was very good at springing it on you when you weren't expecting it, but she wasn't big enough to knock you over. Not all that many dogs are, really, and a lot of those big ones aren't jumpers seeing as that would put them above your face and most people discover when they get a giant puppy that it isn't long before jumping up becomes a problem. I hope most people that get a giant puppy are warned not to let them learn to jump up.

I have gone so far as to explicitly say in this thread that I will not judge anyone who chooses to use punishments and thinks they can do it successfully. I have repeatedly pointed out that my opinions are only my opinions. What do you care what I think of punishments? If you think you are doing right by your dogs, then how can my relation of my own personal experiences possibly offend you? I am not insinuating that you train through fear and have a bad relationship with your dogs. I said nothing of the sort. I have no freaking idea what you do with your dogs or how they relate to you and I didn't even ask because I don't care. I just said physical punishments subtly and insidiously damaged my relationship with my dog. It's not about you, folks, it's entirely about me. You don't see me calling people out because they said positive methods can cause problems as well. That's because I didn't take it personally, as I'm sure it wasn't meant personally. Honestly. Anyway, when you get passionate about a subject then you do put it out there for other people and say "this is our stance on this issue". It's like a religion. Could it be that they actually strongly believe that physical corrections and tools used to deliver them do more harm than good?? Need I remind you that in America, anyone can walk out and buy an e-collar or a prong and slap it on their dog with no professional advice? I know I'd rather they bought a clicker and a treat bag if that's the way they were going to do things.

No, I know that they are getting success because it works. It worked with Penny, too. It just depends on what you mean by success. I don't know what's going on with anyone else's dogs. I just know that what I thought was success turned out to be something else. No, like I said, I wholly believe it can be done without the troubles I experienced. Perhaps without any ill effects at all, but I don't know because the nature of Penny's ill effects were so very subtle. Like I said before, if it weren't for that hare I would probably never have known. It wasn't something I could point my finger at and say "There, that's fear building in my dog." I might be able to see it now, but not at the time. I hope that it's not happening right in front of your eyes like it was in front of mine, because it really made me feel like crap when I realised years later. All I have is a warning, Huski. I don't know who it applies to if anyone. For the record, my dog doesn't fear me. Most people would say we have a great relationship. She adores me and I adore her. She is very obedient and reliable. My warning is not about ruling through fear, which is a pretty obvious danger of using punishments. I'm more concerned about the subtle things that you don't pick up, like with Penny. If you haven't had a taste of magic, how do you know it gets better than what you have?

The idea that punishment can cause damage means a lot to me. I will never be able to repair what I ruined with Penny. That knowledge haunts me every time I think of using punishment or corrections. I have improved our relationship, but it will never be what it should be. If someone can mess it up so easily and yet so subtly that it's barely noticeable then I'd rather avoid it if at all possible, and would urge others to do the same. I have heard about people that have messed up positive methods, but I don't know anyone personally who has and the people I know who have used these methods are just average people that don't know much about training. This is purely my opinion, but messing up with positive reinforcement is surely a good deal less potentially damaging than messing up with fear. Now my opinions are coloured by wild animals and soft dogs, and if I get a hard dog and discover I need punishments in my world after all, you'll all know where I will come for help. I have had this conversation so many times and there's only one dog I've ever heard of who I believe really needed punishment and there was something seriously wrong in his brain. I know of many more dogs that responded badly to punishment, sometimes with upsetting results, and some of these were the very dogs thought of as "hard". So it's a no-brainer to me. But that's just my experiences. I won't judge anyone that wants to use punishments and believes they can use them "successfully", but I have no interest in supporting something that has ruined my shot at magic with Penny. Incidentally, people have been amazed at how quickly their large, boisterous dog can learn to sit for a pat instead of jumping all over you. I find it's a lot easier with big dogs than small dogs, actually. I once taught someone's dog to stop jumping up when I was 14 with nothing more than lightness on my feet and giving the dog what she wanted. It took about two minutes. Not all dogs are that fast, but I figure it's worth a try. Someone suggested standing on the dog's leash so they can't actually get the front feet up. Not really a correction, but works pretty well all the same. Pretty soon dog tries something else and you get to reward them.

Well, I think that what is said is that the use of punishment CAN damage the bond between dog and owner. I know for a fact that it can because I trained Penny with corrections. It wasn't until 18 months into attempting to connect with a wild hare some 9 years after training Penny with corrections that I finally made that connection with the hare and suddenly realised how much my relationship with my dog had been damaged all those years ago. I would never have known if I hadn't hand-raised that hare and learnt what it looks like to have an untainted bond with an animal. I wholly believe that not all dogs respond the way Penny did and that it can be done with no long-term negative effects, but I don't want to risk it. I don't believe I have to. And besides, the magic I've seen without punishments is pretty addictive. I'm forever trying to recreate it. My dogs know about it when I'm cross with them, but if I'm in my right mind and acting not reacting, then they don't get physical corrections. I create conditional punishers, such as the "oi" with my hare. They aren't particularly effective until you teach the animal what it means. Then the effectiveness increases over time until it plateaus. If they are really bad, they get sent outside for a few minutes. I haven't yet found a need for physical punishment, and given it is so easily misused, I will keep it out of my toolbox as long as I can keep me and my animals safe and sane without it. Incidentally, I think antelopes and dogs are completely comparable when it comes to the fear response. Fear responses are more or less the same across all vertebrates. Trigger = flight or fight (or freeze). The difference is only in the expression and intensity. This seems like a big difference to some, but not to me. It is actually VERY useful to look at fear in a more flighty animal than dogs. It gives you a respect for fear that I think everyone should have. It's not a nice tool. It is hard to predict how much of it is safe to use. It is hard to predict how intense the response will be. It's hard to know if the animal is learning some things you don't want it to learn along with some things that you do. In my experience, sometimes the things you don't want them to learn can have long-lasting effects on your relationship. A dog will hopefully never react the way an antelope would to fear, but I for one like to know where the end of the fear response continuum lies. It's good to know what is in the realms of possibility in the animal world. Personally, I would never use a trainer that used physical corrections either, no matter how experienced that trainer might be. I could never trust someone else to punish my pets. And there are too many trainers out there that know less than I do in the first place.

Yeah, but a dog that is slightly afraid of its handler will learn a lot. I don't know about you, but I don't like the "Don't hurt me!" look that tells me I just went too far. A dog might recover from that within a couple of seconds, but it is my belief that you still went too far if you got that look. Okay, an aversive that doesn't use fear. I'll use my hare because he's such a good litmus test for fear. You KNOW when he's scared. When my hare starts chewing on something he's not meant to, I'll say "Oi! Get out of that!". He stops and looks at me. He thinks about it. He decides he's enjoying nibbling, so he starts again. I say "Oi!" and I get up. He crouches slightly, but he doesn't move, he's just ready to. So I go "Oooo, you get out of that you naughty boy" or something to that effect and I approach him flicking my fingers at him or I act like I'm going to chase him. The pressure of my presence getting closer to his personal space is something he doesn't feel like right now so he lopes off to find something else to do. This exchange is something that has developed over time and now he knows when I say "Oi!" I'm going to get up and shoo him away if he doesn't stop what he's doing. He'll often test me and figure out exactly what gets me to say "oi". Every once in a while he feels like being chased and deliberately goes and chews on something he's not meant to and keeps at it until I get up and chase him. I think in most cases getting in his space in a non-threatening way is aversive because he moves away to widen the space again. However if it caused fear he wouldn't be back at it 2 minutes later or deliberately trying to provoke me into coming after him. Generally if I say "oi" he wanders off to do something else because he's not in the mood to be chased. I can use the same sort of thing with the dogs, except they normally come towards me rather than going away. An aversive that does use fear: The way I dealt with Kivi outlined in my earlier post. Well, my thought is that this is exactly the kind of case that ends with someone shouting at their dog and shoving them or hitting them. I doubt they are going to be thinking of safe or positive ways to handle this when they are on the ground and/or bleeding. I know I wouldn't. If they had used positive methods to teach the dog to sit instead of jumping up when it was small they wouldn't have this problem. If they got this dog when he was already that size and had learnt this behaviour, then one would hope the folks adopting him out would do something to address this before they give the dog to someone. If the dog is doing something that can't be ignored then chances are the correction is going to come pretty emotionally charged no matter what it is, and it will be a correction no matter what the person has been told about how evil they are. We all have our limits.

Outdated? I don't think so. It's just operant conditioning, after all. Are these dogs that receive food and treats and don't see their owners as the bee's knees just lacking respect or outright aggressive? I suspect a lot of dogs that lack respect for their owners still think they are pretty sweet. After all, they get everything they want. That little dog I mentioned in an earlier post who went pretty bad under usual socialisation still thought my mother was the bee's knees even though she couldn't convince him that he didn't need to be aggressive to be safe. What could her hold over him be other than providing All Good Things? That's a genuine question, not one trying to catch you out or something. He was pretty good with me, too, and I didn't feed him or do anything like that, but then I'm a zoologist, which means domestic animals adore me and wild animals hate me. Well, perhaps you have never met a Lapphund? How can you say that if a dog is allowed to discover for themselves what they find rewarding that the things they come back for more than anything else is not at least somewhere a result of genetics? I'm talking about why dogs gravitate towards the rewards they gravitate towards. You're talking about why they keep doing it. Obviously dogs go back for what they have found rewarding in the past, but what dictates why they found it rewarding in the first place? If you apply a reward, such as getting a stranger to feed your dog, then yeah, it's a learned thing, but then, what about the food? The food is a reward all by itself, like playing, chasing, tugging or affection to use other examples. Dogs are born liking food. Perhaps what you're trying to say is that my dog finds the attention he receives from seeking cuddles rewarding, not so much the cuddles themselves? That's what I would say if I hadn't seen him trying to get someone to put their arm around his shoulders. For this dog, though, the cuddles themselves go hand in hand with affection. For my other dog, cuddles are not a display of affection and she'd rather you didn't do it to her. Definitely check out the fox study. It's pretty interesting. I thought it was Arctic Foxes but apparently it's Silver Foxes. It's an ongoing Russian experiment. Here's an excerpt from http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/807641/posts which talks about the experiment. "To ensure that their tameness results from genetic selection, we do not train the foxes. Most of them spend their lives in cages and are allowed only brief "time dosed" contacts with human beings... At seven or eight months, when the foxes reach sexual maturity, they are scored for tameness and assigned to one of three classes. The least domesticated foxes, those that flee from experimenters or bite when stroked or handled, are assigned to Class III. (Even Class III foxes are tamer than the calmest farm-bred foxes. Among other things, they allow themselves to be hand fed.) Foxes in Class II let themselves be petted and handled but show no emotionally friendly response to experimenters. Foxes in Class I are friendly toward experimenters, wagging their tails and whining. In the sixth generation bred for tameness we had to add an even higher-scoring category. Members of Class IE, the "domesticated elite," are eager to establish human contact, whimpering to attract attention and sniffing and licking experimenters like dogs. They start displaying this kind of behavior before they are one month old. By the tenth generation, 18 percent of fox pups were elite; by the 20th, the figure had reached 35 percent. Today elite foxes make up 70 to 80 percent of our experimentally selected population." There's a video on the internet somewhere showing one of those IE foxes turning itself inside out when a human comes to visit. It's quite fascinating, but supports the point I'm trying to make, which is that some animals are born wanting more affection than others and this is what makes cuddles a good thing for Lapphunds but not small corgis. Oh, I agree! Except for the dominant bit. No one who had seen this behaviour would call it dominant. In our house, practically any attempt to get attention works. He only leans, circles and whines if he wants affection, though. Like I said, his methods are beside the point. Well, maybe you haven't, but I have. I even have a photo somewhere of my old girl curled up in a bed with my mother's boy. Penny's not a snuggler as a rule, but nor does she get cold. Kivi is very touchy-feely with other dogs. He's often trying to walk with them touching flanks, licking and nuzzling their face and so on, but he's still a pup. You should look at this thread: http://www.dolforums.com.au/index.php?showtopic=131029 if you've never seen dogs snuggling just because. You were the one that brought human personalities into this discussion, not me! Agreed, but that's not the point. The point is that he's a dog that likes food. As in, naturally likes food. I know why he keeps doing it and it is as you say, learnt. When we hand out treats at the dog park we often find we have a few extra dogs as well. It's a common problem with dogs that have been trained with food. It always occurs to Kivi much faster than it occurs to Penny despite the fact that Penny is far more into food than Kivi because Penny wasn't trained much with treats. Most of us don't think it is a problem, but that's our call. Yes, but not really since he was a puppy and it was pretty hard back then. We were struggling to win him over until the person with the steak stopped feeding him the steak. Penny would be a better example because she likes food even more than Kivi does and is an adult. I know for a fact she will stop and scoff the food, but she will leave it if I start getting too far ahead. Kivi probably wouldn't without a bit of encouragement because he's slightly less nervous of being left on his own. I would rather not try it while he's still an obnoxious teenager who thinks he knows everything. A few months ago before his emergency recall suffered a serious setback I believe he would have come if we used it, but it's hard to say at the moment when it's still a bit fragile. I have successfully shooed him away from someone else feeding him treats. He just needs a prod to get him going. He doesn't need steak to get him going. He doesn't even need a food reward. If he's not really that hungry and the food is still a possible rather than a certain, he doesn't need a prod at all. That's because he's not driven by food to the exclusion of all else. Neither is my food loving corgi. Ultimately, a high prey drive dog that doesn't want to eat my rabbits is what I want. If such a dog found the very smell of a rabbit exciting, then can you break this cycle just with loads of neutral exposure early on? Is it possible that just the smell of the rabbit is creating a positive value even as you think you are attaching no value to the rabbits with all this exposure and not adding any rewards?

Okay, I'm not picking a fight or trying to rip this apart; I just want to understand it and so I ask questions. How can your dog not be missing out on social skills if he doesn't interact with any other dog but your dogs? Don't they need to experience the various styles of other dogs in order to learn how best to handle each unique situation? What do they do if you take them somewhere fun like the beach and another dog approaches them? I am beginning to wonder if this is actually more or less the same as my idea of socialisation anyway? When I socialise, I don't sit there feeding the dog whenever anything new comes along and he doesn't freak out. I don't use treats at all. My aim in socialisation is just exposure. We sit, we look, and if something good happens, then I'm okay with that, but I don't encourage it particularly.

I didn't mean to start pulling apart the AVASB Statement in this manner, but I can't help it as I keep seeing these sorts of statements. Firstly, I'd like to know where they gathered their statistics to be able to release a statement that suggests "punishment" is what the general public use first up. I can only speak from my own experience and from what I learn/hear from others, but I tend to find that many of the unwanted behaviours that have developed and are for what people need me to help with, is because the owner has been loath to "punish" their dog at all. Well, I think that a lot of people do automatically use punishment, even physical punishment. We are higher primates after all. Look at the way chimps handle their problems! They are violent creatures. We are not that bad thank god, but nor are we bonobos making love not war. As someone who takes a lot of provoking before I get angry and a lot more before I get physical, I was shocked to find myself standing over a frightened puppy one day when he was annoying the crap out of me and had a "MUMMUMMUMMUMMUM!" moment with his teeth when I was running late and trying to do things. I had pushed him off me so violently that I'd really scared him, possibly even hurt him. It was too much and I knew it as soon as I'd done it, but I'm only human and I have a higher tolerance than many people I know. It's in our nature. Although I do agree that a lot of problems people have stem from discipline problems. However, you could look at it another way and say that it's because the people hadn't told the dog what TO do rather than what not to do. In addition, I think trends have changed and more is expected of dogs these days. When I was a kid, dogs roamed the streets and mostly did what they liked as long as they didn't bite anyone. And that was only 15 years ago. Consider that it's also possible that the people who happily use punishment and end up with problems anyway could be less likely to be the kind of people that seek professional help? Temple Grandin says the worst thing you can do to an animal is make it feel afraid. She once oversaw the training of antelopes at a zoo and if someone inadvertently frightened them that was often the last time that person could get anywhere near them. Given, we kinda need dogs to fit into society a wee bit better than a wild antelope, but it serves to highlight just how powerful fear is. In my mind, if you are going to use something that potentially powerful on another animal, you had better be VERY careful and know what you are doing. Hence, I try to keep my aversives to an absolute minimum. Until I blow up and my animals learn that sometimes I turn into a nutter, that is. Lastly, I think we need to remember that these articles are meant as sweeping generalisations, aren't they? Generalisations about most dogs and most dog owners. No one on this forum is really a "most dog owners" kind of person. I happen to think that the majority of aggression is driven by fear, even when it is in the guise of something else. Fear and reinforcement. So yeah, I would like to see people be real careful with how they use fear. I agree that not all aversives illicit a fear response and I personally try to stick with aversives that don't. My rule of thumb is that the animal should be back to normal within about half a minute of the aversive. That's just me, though. I don't think Jo Public particularly needs physical punishments in their tool box, but I guess that's just me, too. There aren't many things I have encountered that could be solved with physical punishment but not ignoring coupled with an incompatible behaviour or training with positive reinforcement. In fact, I can't think of anything, and I personally know of one dog, possibly two that did become aggressive after physical punishment.

I don't either, but it's nice all the same! It's certainly nothing to complain about. K9: Yeah I think some people call them Alphas. The one that beholds all rewards & information will attract the most respect in a dogs eyes. Well, I was thinking more about to the exclusion of all else. It doesn't take much for most dogs to think you're the bees knees if you feed them and give them treats, let alone if you are nice to them, offer direction when they are looking for it, and give them tools to actually communicate with you and ask for things. The power of bridging the species gap in communication is quite something. K9: These are human traits your describing & I dont feel Anthropomorphism is an accurate way of deciding why a dog does what it does. My feeling would be that your dog knows what works, squirm around the feet of a person, lick them perhaps & I get good things. Mmm I described it in human terms, but liking snuggles and interactions with others is not exclusively the domain of humans. I'm sure you know about the Arctic Fox study where they were trying to simulate the domestication of dogs and selected just the cuddly fox cubs to breed from. There is more to cuddles and pats than just "getting good things". It releases chemicals in the body and even affects physiology, as shown by the little fox cubs that came out with blue eyes or looking like Border Collies. So yes, my Lapphund is a natural snugglebum. Otherwise he wouldn't be thinking snuggles were a good thing in the first place. He's not a squirmer or a licker, as it happens. He just leans, circles and whines, but that's beside the point. What decides what a dog does is what they find inherently rewarding/aversive. Food, toys, play, pats.... whatever it is, whether you take control of it or not it's still natural to the animal and not anthropomorphic. K9: I wonder if a human companion was the same would we think it so attractive? As long as you have the right bribe, you will have their attention... This provides quite a good argument for neutralisation in my opinion. If your dog wasnt food driven the I guess you wouldnt be able to win him over & he would just walk off with whomever was providing the highest reward at the time. Well would you find a human you had conditioned to adore you above all things particularly attractive? There's a name for people like that. It's not very flattering. Yes, he would walk off with whomever was providing the highest reward at the time, but on the other hand, it's not like he isn't bonded to us at all. If someone beside us is handing out steak, you can bet they find they have an extra dog sitting politely at their feet and that's because he tried that once when he was a pup and discovered it worked with other people as well combined with the value of the treat on offing. But if we walked away it's not like we've lost our dog to the person with the steak. He would come after us because we are his people, we give him his meals, his water, take him for walks and play with him. If our dog wasn't food driven we wouldn't be wasting our time trying to win him over with food. We'd be focusing on whatever did take his fancy, like most people do. The only difference between this method and your method is that you decide what your dog is going to value and I let my dog tell me what he values. Where's the benefit in one way over another with that argument? One is the preference of a control freak and the other is the ramblings of a liberatarian. To me, it sounds like as usual, picking a line straight down the middle is probably the most sensible.