corvus

What's wrong with the Yerkes-Dodson law? It explains all this stuff through the concept of arousal, and it's backed up with data. In the scheme of things, heel work requires very little cognitive processing. Attention and focus are basically the same thing and are not very hard if the dog is moderately motivated. Precision is easy if the arousal level is right. You only make it hard when you ramp up their arousal to get flashy heels and then have to balance them against their natural urge to forge out of position seeing as they now have too much activated energy to find the precision side of things so easy. You're managing conflict you have deliberately introduced. Not saying it ain't fun or rewarding or clever, but it's not compressing some abstract concept of a dog's instinctive behaviours or something. It's just arousal. In contrast, herding requires the dog to be quite flexible. Herding in the heading version, that is. They have to constantly respond to small and unpredictable changes in the flock or herd and adjust their behaviour accordingly, and they also have to be attending to a handler at the same time. If they are as ramped up as a dog doing a nice, stylised heel, they are going to sacrifice some of their ability to change and adapt to the dynamic environment they are working in. They will have trouble problem solving, and attending to as many stimuli as they can when they are less aroused. I'm not plucking this out of thin air. There is science behind it.

Science talk is only confusing if the person explaining it isn't very good at it. ;) I always have more success in person. Or on the phone, even. There are no cues on the internet to tell you when you're losing them.

Erik hates cats, because my parents' cats have frightened him a few times. But he still looks for them and if he finds them he will bark and if he gets the chance he'll chase them. It's a drive chase rather than a fun chase, though. He's trying to make them go away. It can be tricky interpreting the behaviour of proactive dogs. In my mind, Erik looks for the cats because he thinks they are there and better the devil you know. He doesn't like them, he wants them gone, so he will find them and when he does he'll drive them off and he'll probably feel quite pleased with himself over it because in his mind he saw off trouble before it could find him. Hankdog, that's awesome. And you handled it really well. It can be a tricky part of the process. Erik does the "Oi! Someone's picking up the drill! I get a treat for that. Come on, pay up!" thing. I ask for quiet until the drill goes down again and THEN he gets a treat.

It seems like a lot of motor sequences are highly... I would say genetic except I just picture a certain associate supervisor twitching every time I think like that. ;) Conserved? Herding is like that as well. Erik does this thing where if we lose Kivi in the bush I say "Erik, where's Kivi?" and E looks around, listens, lopes back to the last place he saw him and dives into the bush and casts around until he locates him, then he drives him back to us from behind. If Kivi doesn't go fast enough Erik bites him on the hocks. The only thing I taught him was "Where's...." means "find". The rest was pure instinct, I assume, and he's not even a 'mainstream' herding breed. It's reasonably complex for something he never needed to learn. But it reminds me of bees and other social insects, that have some very complex behaviours that completely hard-wired, to the point where they don't do it if they don't have the right gene. Very cool. One time my WL Mal friend spontaneously started this hold and bark with me. It was fascinating. I watched all the pieces fall into place and bingo, there it was. To be honest, sometimes this kind of thing is beautiful and sometimes it's kind of disturbing when you look at what led to the behaviour. Makes me question a lot of things we do.

There's some good rant fodder there! Depends who you ask. :) Lots of people think they have the answers, but science doesn't AFAIK, so I doubt they know as much as they think they do. Then again, it's very tricky to quantify what experienced people know in their gut. It's a pet project of my supervisor's. He's even managed to hook a student or two to work on it recently. There are tests for traits that are predictive to some degree of future behaviour, but at this point it's a bit ugly IMO. Hopefully in years to come we can clean it up and make it quicker and more reliable, but people have been doing this for a long time and haven't made tremendous inroads yet.

Whoa! Slow down. Affective neuroscience is still pretty new. Panksepp has the neural side of things reasonably solid after basically his entire life working on it, but how it translates to behaviour is trickier. The brain is so beautifully complex and flexible that we can't make things that do what it does naturally. I figure it's fair to say SEEKING is where it's all at for most training, but I wouldn't go so far as to say all drives fit neatly into it. There's some crossover and plenty of opportunity to be surprised yet. I wouldn't say they were well researched, either. You are finding some great resources. I'm gonna have to start sending you papers at this rate. Drive theory was mostly dumped because it failed to explain learning as well as operant conditioning does, basically. So in that sense I guess because of reliability issues, but only in that it wasn't The Answer. Obviously OC isn't, either, it just explains more than drive theory did. I'm not really sure why it fell so deeply out of favour, but Panksepp might provide the bridge to get these ideas back into the spotlight. I know a few academics in my field that are turning over ideas how to incorporate Panksepp's seven emotional systems into some kind of behavioural model. Then there will be a whole lot of testing to do.

It's rarely spoken about in the herding world, either, AFAIK. Often I think "training in drive" refers more to arousal than anything else. There's a lot of talk about chemical rewards and whatnot, but all rewards are chemical at the heart of it. Arousal is intrinsically entwined with focus and performance. In security and shutzhund where you hear most about training in drive, the behaviours being trained are quite different to herding and retrieving. It's fast and punchy and intense and doesn't really require much cognitive processing on the dog's part. Totally different arousal requirements for good performance than in something more prolonged and needing more cognitive processing.

When Kivi starts it can sometimes be hard to get him to stop if it's frustration barking. Somewhere along the line he learnt to bark joyously and persistently when we come home. It takes him a minute or so to calm down again. Sometimes if we stuff a sock or toy in his mouth he's happy and starts doing his walk in circles with ears pinned back routine instead. On the plus side, we often get roo-roos, which are considerably cuter and less irritating than barking. Only his special favourites get roo-roos. People love it. He stays indoors when we are not around as he was noisy by himself in the yard. But he's quiet and content inside, and he can comfortably hold it a full day. It would be my preference to let him spend more time outside because he likes it. Kivi still tries to dig sleeping holes in our floor and we have pulled all the carpet up. He is known to dig holes in the yard and sit in them and bark until someone comes to look at it. He also one time dug a hole at the dog park and quite deliberately pushed Erik into it and then sat on him. Kivi is a dork.

Wobbly, FWIW I think you're something kinda special. Not only are you capable of some startling insights, but you seem to have a good sense of what you know and what you don't know. The latter is a pretty big deal. If there is one thing I've learnt from my PhD (and there's not, there are a zillion), it's that the more you learn the less you realise you know. You have an inquiring mind and seem to be able to take in apparently conflicting methodologies and understand that they are not conflicting at all. Good for you. I hope you continue on your investigative journey, and realise there is no endpoint. :) Just more and more knowledge and experience. If we have time at chicken camp I'll show you my response landscapes. They are supposed to make it easier for people to see how arousal and emotional states interact and influence training outcomes. Supposedly it hints at when you should be lowering arousal and when you should be counter-conditioning and so forth. They are online, but the paper is heavy going. The curse of academia. A lovely lady at Horses and People 'translated' it into a nice article. Complete with terribly awkward quotes from me. http://www.horsesandpeople.com.au/article/your-horse-the-mood-learn I did a dog one for Click! magazine, but I think you have to be an APDT member to get that. She's a staffy mix, right? They have some odd responses to arousal around other dogs IME. Usually when dogs get highly aroused they are likely to default to what they were bred to do.

My Lappie would be fine in an apartment with an hour of exercise a day. Probably not so much when he was a puppy, though. But the good thing is they seem to mature fast. He's also not much of a barker. He barks when someone comes to the door, basically, and that's it. A super laid back adult Lappie would be fine IMO. I have met plenty of JS that seem a fair bit more active and alert than my Lappie, who spends most of his day impersonating a rug. Incidentally, don't whippets have kind of thin skin prone to tearing? We used to have a whippet cross when I was a kid. My corgi cut her off while they were playing chase one day and clipped her and she went flying into some lantana and cut her shoulder quite badly. The corgi was taking similar spills all the time, as do my current dogs. Those little cattle herders are tough as old boots, and Kivi is so fluffy his coat seems to be protective. ETA Lappies are a little independent, but very affectionate. I work from home and mine is usually in the same room as me. He likes to be nearby. We get morning cuddles in bed from him pretty regularly. He is a darling.

Oh, I see. Erik is like that chasing other dogs playing fetch. He loves to do it so much he can tell when a dog is barely entertaining the thought of looking for a toy to play fetch with. Completely useless for training, though, and he can't learn much in that state even if I could use it as a reward. At the moment we do a vague kind of pattern game that is kind of like GMAB (but probably doesn't qualify) with some dogs that love fetch that we know don't get too pissy with him. LAT if it's dogs we don't know. I am assuming it's highly reinforcing. It's clearly extremely difficult for him to resist the urge to get all cattle herdy about it, but I don't know if that's because it's highly reinforcing or because it pushes all his magic buttons and he has no choice. If someone says "You can do this massively reinforcing thing if you want, or you can do something else." and someone else says "You must do this massively reinforcing thing." I don't know that I'd be able to tell which one he was responding to by the outcome alone.

Ask The Spotted Devil. I seem to remember she was being quite careful about tug in a retrieving context. A dog park friend does competition retrieving with his two Tollers and doesn't ever seem to reward with anything but more retrieves. He started a new pup this year and it's been fun to watch her progress. He builds it up, setting her up to succeed each time and slowly increasing difficulty.

Compulsive drive? I get what you're trying to say about conditioning a dog to perform particular behaviours in particular contexts/in response to particular signals, but I'm not sure how this can be considered unrewarding if it's something they like to do?

I get sick of people deciding what their dog is motivated by. TSD just demonstrated the benefits of working on building multiple reinforcers. Sometimes dogs just don't know that something is rewarding because they haven't that much experience with it being rewarding.

There are a few studies that suggest dogs impact wildlife just by passing through. They are predators and animals will be disturbed by them regardless of how well they are behaved, although obviously it makes sense to limit the impact they have. We go through some pretty nice places with good habitat. We are very lucky that we can visit such places in the company of our dogs, who clearly have the time of their lives in that environment just dashing around on the rocks and wading in the creeks and sniffing around. They act like it's Disneyland. We show our gratefulness by being respectful of others, cleaning up after our dogs, keeping them away from wildlife, sticking to the tracks as much as possible, and being mindful not to damage habitat. I hope that if we continue to be respectful and careful we will continue to be allowed to enjoy this with our dogs. We love the winter months for the hiking. It is one of our favourite activities, and one of the dogs', too.

The only problem is once you have bush dogs, suburban dog parks become too small and tame to contain them. :p They're all like "What's up that embankment? What's through that near impenetrable line of scrub?" Last week someone said "I've never seen any dogs go down THERE before!" as my dogs plunged into an overgrown, bushy drain and started crashing about. Yeah... They find adventure wherever they go, now.

Have you ever tried negotiating some of the rockier/slipperier trails with an excited dog or two attached to you? As an ecological consultant I started off with a "dogs on leashes only in bush" rule, but the more adventurous we got, the less practical this rule became, and at times it is downright dangerous. I need all my balance, thanks. And it's probably better that my dogs are not trailing a long line that is getting tangled in shrubs and fallen branches and shredding small plants. We compromise with good recalls and put the dogs on leash if we do come across an animal that may be harassed or stressed by the dogs' curiosity. Echidnas, lizards, wallabies, snakes usually. Although Erik brought us a turtle once. We said thank you and put it back by the creek. We find most of our walking spots through Google maps. My partner is not bad at detecting trails from aerial photos. We start on fire trails and explore from there.

It may be worth checking out Kay Laurence's book "Learning Games". http://www.fishpond.com.au/Books/Learning-Games-Kay-Laurence/9781890948368 From what I have heard she has a very good program for rehabilitating shy and fearful dogs and building confidence that involves problem solving, body awareness, and connection with their human handler. I haven't seen this book, so I'm only guessing, but it sounds like it might incorporate those kinds of games. There's also another book by James O'Heare called Empowerment Training, but it is pretty heavy on theory and light on methodology. I would love to see people trying out body awareness/balance, problem solving, and training persistence. I don't know if it will work, but we did this with one of my dogs with pretty amazing results. I didn't exactly realise there was a problem with him until I started teaching him balance exercises and taking him into the bush. Twelve months later, though, he was a very different dog with vastly more confidence and far easier to train.

FYI, Raineth, Erik is on Prozac at the moment and it has certainly helped him. The biggest thing it has done is enable him to sleep more. Not lethargy, but good, restful sleep for several hours a day where he used to be awake and alert most of the time. He was the dog that needed to get out and be exercised a couple of hours a day and now it's not so crucial. I can skip a walk and don't have to pay for it later with endless restlessness and poking. I don't want to discuss it too much here because some people don't like me and it's been hard enough to go this route without having people lean on my insecurities about it. But if you (or anyone else) ever want to know the specifics I'm happy to discuss privately.

I don't think it's obviously territoriality. Given an agility ring is presumably neutral territory. With herding breeds they can tend to default to driving behaviour when they are very aroused and uncomfortable with something. I would assume the dog's not comfortable with the environment, which may or may not be specifically the judge. What does the owner do if the dog makes a mistake in the ring? How have they been dealing with the problems with strangers so far? Is there something in particular that is likely to trigger this? Is it happening every time or occasionally?

Ha! Sounds like Erik. It makes things easier in some ways and harder in others. Erik is incredibly responsive at high arousal, so it is pretty easy to get his attention at least. But he's also quite volatile at high arousal. I found it a challenge to begin with to recognise when he was compromised because he was still super responsive. There's no clear moment when you go "Ah, lost him. I'll remember that!" He just gets steadily more volatile and unpredictable. It got way easier when he got good at LAT, because he would tell me clearly that he was having trouble by starting to offer it. I have had him run 10m back to me to start a game of LAT and I was just like "Really? You're bothered by that? I had no idea, buddy." Yeah, I guess cats are unambiguous for her. You see them, you chase them. Dogs, who knows. Maybe she might have to defend herself, maybe she'll be fine. It's probably quite nerve wracking for her to see them coming and not really know what's going to happen and how to stop bad things happening to her. This is why things like LAT are quite effective. They teach the dog that there's a simple rule that will solve this problem. They just keep looking and looking back for their treat and they won't have to interact with the dog at all. Part of LAT is a "look but don't touch" understanding. It's like a promise to them that they won't have to engage directly with whatever they are looking at, so they will be safe when they play this game. I would let her sit and watch dogs coming if all she does is watch. If you can get her off the path that would be good. If she's allowed to watch she will hopefully learn in time she doesn't have to watch so closely and then you can get her glancing and moving at the same time. Yes! Exactly. Leslie McDevitt says it's the dog's job to notice things that bother them and tell you by just looking quietly. Not staring, not lunging, not barking. There is a moment they do this before they decide they should be more proactive. You mark and reward that and you'll be right and get LAT happening nice and quick. You don't need setups to teach it. I did it on the run. If you have trouble with that you can teach it with any objects at all and generalise later.

CC probably works best with simple stimuli. Dogs are not so simple. Grisha Stewart came up with BAT because she could only get so far with her dog's problems with other dogs using counter-conditioning alone. And she had a disagreement with the CAT people. ;) Possibly you have an arousal problem? It is an uphill battle changing emotional responses when arousal is high. You can teach her to wait before acting using things like LAT from Control Unleashed. And BAT works well if you can do setups. It's good that you haven't seen any evidence that she's going to be over-eager to use aggression yet. In her mind she may not have been avoiding trouble so much as managing the situation, if that makes sense. She may therefore not use that strategy until she is faced with the same context. Keep the intensity low by working on her around relatively slow and calm dogs or using bigger distances. As long as the intensity is low you'll see the behavioural responses you want.

Didn't see the OP suggest that their dog didn't like the sorts of things that happen at dog parks. Just that there is occasionally an issue. We occasionally have issues as well. Everyone does, in or out of the dog park. As long as the overall dog park experience is positive, then I'd take my dog. If the overall experience tended to be negative I wouldn't. You can't judge that from someone relating an occasional experience.

I think maybe it's a bit more complicated than it seems. A dog can mostly enjoy the dog park despite having the odd moment with another dog. My dog in the past has known a few dogs he doesn't like at the dog park. Just because something might happen doesn't mean he's not enjoying himself or that we're asking for trouble. It's like a kid's playground. There are some bullies and some dropkicks and some weirdos and if your dog happens to run into them we can't guarantee everyone is going to behave themselves. Sometimes my dog is the weirdo and sometimes he's the victim of one. Depends on the perspective of the other dog. You just have to take each moment as it comes and try to manage and try to keep the net park experience positive for everyone.

It's hard to say because you say the other dog started it. Normally I would say escalation of aggression on a leash is probably related to frustration or a sense that escape/avoidance options are now very limited. I don't think I've ever seen a dog wait until another dog is put on leash and THEN make a move on them. If these two dogs have a history with one another it might be that the other dog was looking for any tiny indication that something might happen, and that could be as small as tension as your dog is put on leash. Such tension may or may not be directly related to the frustration/limited options I mentioned. It could be as simple as your dog had to momentarily split his attention between you and the other dog and that made him tense a bit. I have seen dogs more likely to start something if they are in close proximity to their owner. Backup is at hand, I guess. I had a dog that was like this and I would walk away when she tried it. I guess it's conceivable the other dog waited until your dog's movement was limited from the leash before making a move, but it seems unlikely to me.