corvus

I think you've got all your priorities right. :) First learn to walk, then you can run. ;) Are you doing Leslie McDevitt's off switch game as well as Give Me A Break? You could also practice your shaping/capturing skills and teach Jarrah to take a breath on cue. It's awesome. Rock solid down-stays are awesome as well. Build it all up in little steps and you'll have great foundations and be able to do just about anything. I would seriously consider the Relaxation Protocol. I had a young WL GSD in my study who took the longest time to get through it and so we got to know each other pretty well. He was a bit of a needy greeter. In an effort to compromise with him I one day taught him to put his paws on the wall instead of me and I'd trade him a thumping good hug. This brief compromise came to a sudden end when a day or two later as he started winding up for some more body slamming and grabbing me in a bear hug while he jumped up and down. I slapped the wall and he instantly threw himself so hard at it that he managed to bruise my wrist and he nearly ended up sprawled on the ground from the force of his rebound. I really like my 14kg dog. When he does something crazy and I get in the way it doesn't hurt so much. :p

Except that there actually are no stats. We don't know how many dogs are biting, how often, and what breeds they are. We only know that some dogs are biting and what breeds some of those dogs were. We can't know what is not reported or collated.

Woot! Yes, I'll be at the Penrith one. :) So happy you will be there. I'm sure you will get heaps out of it.

You can also reward 'out of position' if you want to set the dog up for moving back into position and things like that. It is probably advanced training. I would suggest beginners just stick to rewarding in position. If that means they have to use food instead of toys, I think that is all fine. Using toys or play or something like that for a reward depends on great timing with your marker and lots of contrast in your behaviour and your dog needs to be pretty savvy with the training game IMO. I consider rewarding with food a basic foundation skill for dog and trainer. Use as much play or whatever as you like, but get your timing down first, and your head around the effects of reward placement. Oh, snap Paddles. :)

I have no idea, Mita. I was under the impression that the problem with the working dogs was mostly that they were smart and active, but I could be wrong. IMO, early socialisation is not that big a deal in the scheme of things. Assuming you get a puppy at around 8 weeks, you usually still have a month or so of socialisation window left. Personally, I consider the entire first year to be heavily about socialisation. The breeder can only do so much before it's all up to the new owner. I would certainly prefer a puppy from a home where pup was exposed to lots of different things, but it wouldn't be a deal breaker for me if they weren't. I can probably catch up provided the dog has a half-decent temperament. So, I dunno. I guess in considering risk it would be a small component in my mind. Unless it seems likely the puppy and/or mother were under stress. That would be a deal breaker to me.

No. Their frustration was that most of the dogs they got in were failed working dogs from livestock properties. If I understood correctly, the shelter was trying to get the adoption rate up for all the right reasons, but at the end of the day had dogs that weren't really suited to the homes available.

Sorry, I don't follow all threads on DOL and have been especially caught up lately. I wasn't sure if you were talking about the same study, because I feel like it's a bit of a long bow to draw based on the data presented. There were some forms of socialisation that unregistered breeders did significantly more of than registered breeders, for example. And in a lot of cases there were no significant differences. I think it is very complicated as there is no doubt a lot of human psychology involved as well. We don't know whether people who buy from registered breeders are more likely to address behavioural problems if they arise, for example. I have met plenty of ex-pound dogs with behavioural problems that may have got them dumped once, but apparently not twice. Then again, there are some poor souls that bounce in and out until someone like the military or detection dogs find them, or somebody finally makes a really tough decision. My family put a dog from the pound down once because the behavioural problems were serious and it was considered irresponsible to palm the dog off on anyone else and cruel to send her back to the shelter. I think that there is a division in society between people who wouldn't dump an animal unless the circumstances were extreme and rare, and those that just think it's socially acceptable. At the other end there is certainly merit in making dogs more rehomable, but as a QLD RSPCA staff member said to me a few months ago, what's the point? They train the dogs they have so they are reasonably well behaved in the shelter so someone is more likely to take them home, but as soon as they get home the training unravels and the new owner has a dog they can't handle. It may or may not come back, but those that don't aren't necessarily better off. They may cause trouble with neighbours and their family and end up banished to the yard or on a chain.

The speaker line up at this conference is pretty awesome. It's a lot of big names in canine science, and it will be streamed live for free for those of us in other parts of the world. If you can spare the time for the content, I suggest you do! http://caninescience.info/

Really, Mita? I was not aware risk for developing behavioural problems had been quantified and linked to unregistered breeders.

I used this to train Kivi to come around behind and into heel position. He tended to swing out wide and end up on an angle towards me. The hand just told him where his head should be. I seem to remember it was a very brief thing and I was able to fade it very quickly to nothing at all. It's just forming a habit. Kivi is not exactly a forger or a crabber, so we didn't use it for actual heeling. To teach heel I taught a shoulder target to my leg and then shaped him off a smidge later. Extending it was kind of tricky at first because Kivi has a very low frustration threshold. I rode the extinction wave, which is frowned upon by good trainers, but it got me a very persistent heeler and rubbed off into other training contexts, which made Kivi about ten times easier to train in general. So who really cares. :p It's possible I'm about to do this for stays as well because I am too impatient with stays. I think riding the extinction wave is allowed as long as you don't get into the habit of doing it. Bob Bailey talked about this at his seminar last year and I think the argument was it's risky compared to shaping it properly. And lazy. And encourages poor criteria setting.

Squeeze tube, hankdog: http://www.kellysbasecamp.com.au/p/4817115/coghlans-squeeze-tubes.html Fill with PB (or cheese spread) and you can gently release little bits at a time into his mouth when you're out walking with him.

Worms don't really like dog poo. I have a worm farm that gets all my household compostables. It's brilliant. I can hardly keep up with them. I worry if we go away for a couple of weeks that they are going to get hungry. But I don't feed them dog poo. I am a bit precious about them. They are my responsibility and as such I figure I should feed them what they most want to eat. I did used to dump my rabbit's litter tray in there, from time to time, though. I used wood-based litter that goes a bit peaty when it gets wet. The worms were wild about it and there were always big clumps of them in it. My worm farm supports a diverse little mini ecosystem. One time I came outside to discover the farm had fallen over. I literally screamed "Noooo!" and rushed to fix it. I felt like I was witnessing the aftermath of some kind of natural disaster. The worm city! It's collapsed! There are worm casualties on the ground! Quickly, we have to rebuild the city and get them safely inside again!

Thanks PAX, what a great idea. :) I don't think I have the time to commit/contribute much at the moment, but I'm always looking for new things to teach my canine genius. I might poach some ideas if you don't mind. ;)

I've been trying to get Erik to lift his rear foot, but seem to have hit a roadblock getting him to hold it up. He steps it back real nice after 3 sessions, but that's all. I taught him to hop holding up a front paw in this exact same way, so I'm assuming if I just keep going he will sooner or later start holding the foot up. Otherwise I may need a target. Back feet are harder than front feet. The big project that will probably take a while yet is getting a backwards figure-8 around Kivi's legs. Erik can do it following a target, and he can do it around my legs, but I don't think he's grasped yet what the pattern is around Kivi's legs. This week I think I might try in 2-minute sessions to teach him to target his forehead to my hand. Anyone want to try too? Only a 2-minute per day commitment. And you don't have to do it every day. I'm aiming for 5 sessions. I'll video them and post at the end of the week and we can see how far I get. This will be challenging for Erik, I think, who is very nosey. I'll try it with Kivi as well. Fair's fair.

There are some things I just don't really want to find out. Like whether my dogs would kill a bird. Or the circumstances in which my dogs will kill a bird. If I'm ever tempted I think about how bad I'd feel if I took a chance and it resulted in the death of my bird.

I was up half the night thinking about a good-natured trick challenge. I'm afraid the idea has filled me with energy. Does anybody else want to play? Just for fun. Because there's so much variation in dogs and so on there would never be a clear winner. I just thought it would be fun to see what we can do if we manage our time very strictly. I'm thinking 5x2-minute training sessions over a week working towards one predetermined trick and we can video it and see how far everybody gets? Clicker, marker, lure, whatever you like. We could probably learn a lot from each other's attempts. I am extremely busy atm, but I can probably spare 2 minutes a day. Any takers? Glad to hear you have found less chatter more productive, BC Crazy! :) Wobbly, you're absolutely right. It's not really even an argument IMO. McDevitt and Fenzi are coming at training from different ends, so both approaches have their uses and times when they are most appropriate. I would have been at the Fenzi workshop with a dog except that I'll be in Victoria instead. :p I had trouble figuring out how to juggle the clicker when I started training doves. I wanted them to interact with one hand, so I had to hold the seed cup and the clicker in the other. To make it more challenging, the doves are very stimulated by shiny yellow buttons. If they get even a peek of it they want to peck it. So I had to hide it. A tongue click works if I left the clicker behind, but I dunno, I just like the clicker better for some reason. Less variable or something. It took about a week to get clicking with the doves nice and smooth.

At the end of the day it's just behaviour. You don't need to chatter or gesture to get it and it's not better or worse if you do. Dogs will respond to clear communication however you produce it.

Actually, I don't think there's a SA chicken camp this year, but there is a WA one that is on chaining. I've actually been writing about the human element of dog training all week, and even talked to some psychologists about it early this week, so it occurs to me I should make a comment on the clicker vs human interaction argument - is it an argument? I've watched lots of dogs learn by machine and by human trainer in the last few years and I think the idea that a clicker is devoid of human interaction is a misconception. This is dogs we are talking about. They are experts at small details and if they've had any training they know where to look for those details. There is plenty of back-and-forthing going on between someone holding a clicker and a dog responding to it. All a clicker does on that front is encourage people to clean up their signals. When I was clicker training Erik this week to step his rear right foot back, he was watching me very carefully and responding to minute shifts in my balance, gaze, and hand movements. A tiny flick of my fingers would get him moving. A purist might say even that much extra signalling is superfluous and messy, and I can respect that. There is nothing bad about clean signals. I know that much from watching the dogs with the machine. I had trouble in my study keeping the machine even devoid of human interaction. Basically you only have to be in the same room and they try to make you a part of the training. The exception was pound dogs. Some were so clued in they would go mental jumping on you if you so much as glanced at them, but a few seemed to not realise people had anything to offer. I think the notion that using a clicker to mark and cutting down on all other signals could take the human element out of training ignores the fundamental nature of dogs.

I've taught a dog to play a piano, a horse to bow and almost roll over plus work on just verbals, and I have ferrets that come when called out of warrens. I know the concepts :) Is that all you've got? ;) Want a trick challenge?? After I've handed in my thesis, though. Things are kind of intense at the moment. I didn't say he was staring at my treat hand. Mostly he was staring at my face, which I didn't teach him as it happens. I'm happy to agree to disagree. I live with these dogs and I'm telling you Kivi is not a noticer. Noticing is Erik's super-power, though. It's not surprising one had trouble noticing external stimuli during training and the other did not. See that to me is not dog training - you might as well develop a programmed machine to do it for you. I did. :laugh: It's unquestionably effective if you can get the reinforcement and the reinforcement rate right. Just like training in person. It's much easier to train with a clicker than it is with a machine, though, trust me. I don't use a clicker for most of our tricks because I'm a lazy trainer. I wave my hands around and throw some directional cues in and Erik does the rest. Kivi is a fair bit harder, and I use the clicker more with him. He likes it clean and clear. The doves are harder again and only get the clicker. They don't get body language except to feel threatened by most of it. You can turn luring into a bit of an art if you're that way inclined. I've spent entire training sessions teaching my dogs how to move in response to a lure or target, particularly backwards. It's worth it IMO. I love being able to wave my hands around and get a neat trick. Wobbly, chicken camp is July 5th and 6th in Sydney. Other dates for SA and Tas. Might be a QLD one. There is guinea pig camp as well, with Roger Abrantes. See here: http://www.apdt.com.au/news-and-events/apdt-member-events.html

Thats why I dont use a lot of constant rewarding. The dogs are getting too much for doing too little and they stop thinking because they know they don't have to work hard to get it. Nah, mate. That's backwards for so many reasons. You should sign up for chicken camp. It's only a few weeks away now. :) In fact, anyone interested in clicker training and shaping should consider chicken camp. If you come to the Sydney one you can watch me make an ass of myself clicking chickens. It'll be hilarious! Some dogs are just not big 'noticers' and it's got nothing to do with reinforcement. Otherwise both my dogs would have had the same problem, and they certainly didn't. This trait comes out in everything they do. Kivi had problems with go to mat as well. Again, it just came down to figuring out what the problem was. Taught him to target with different body parts and that made him much more aware of them and therefore what they were on or near. And we did some cue adduction training as well. Teaching Kivi to do more than one thing at a time. :) It was really hard for him. Erik is a natural at this stuff. No remedial training required. Marker words work fine, but there's merit in teaching people who are used to giving their dogs a lot of signals to just give them one, which is where clickers come in handy. Get the mouth shut, the body still, and just watch and click. You'll see the difference in training success. And nothing is better for fine-scale stuff for that exact reason. I swear I'm a better trainer with a clicker in my hand. ;) The other day I taught Erik to step back with one hind leg only just for something new to do. That's absolutely a clicker job in my mind. At least, it is with an active dog like Erik who is often moving. Clicker trainers like movement. Behaviour is currency!

FYI, there is some contention about harnesses designed to pass over the front of the dog's breast bone and then low over the shoulders as it's possible the design restricts proper shoulder movement. It's probably no big deal, but they are easy enough to avoid if you're uneasy about them, which I personally am. Recently went through the harness hunt again after the Web Masters both started wearing out, and ended up squarely back at Web Masters. They are really a top notch harness, and the balanced handle is amazingly useful. The Walkeez harnesses are also quite good, and Alpine Outfitters in the US custom make a nice flyball harness and an urban trail harness that both look great for everyday use and are easier on the bank account.

One of my dogs had a lot of trouble with this. In the end I got him doing it by using logs. Kind of like this: This is Erik some years ago, who has always been uber body aware, but even just getting Kivi to put his front feet on took a bit of work. I had tried with phone books and boxes before, but the log seemed to be the right height that he would step up and over but not so low that he would just step over without putting any feet on. And he couldn't walk around. Once he learnt the concept from the log games he was able to generalise to the situations he'd had a lot of trouble with before. Sometimes it's just about figuring out exactly what the problem is and setting up your training session to simply prevent it or at least stack all the odds in your favour. Kivi's problem was mostly he was so focused on my face and hands he never noticed the box. The running off thing is the same. If you think they might do it and you don't want them to, don't train there. Get your foundations right. Always stuff their faces with food when they are in the right position. Make sure you have several treats in your hand so you can, ideally. If you're using a marker, mark-treat-mark-treat-mark-treat until you run out of treats, then step back and get them out of the position so they are not in position and not getting rewarded, and it also gives them contrast so they are clearer about what they are being rewarded for. It's all in the rapid delivery. One treat a second at least. Both my dogs will gather very quickly that it's a stationary behaviour if they are getting rapid fire treats in position. I lure for motion as well, and just pick my moments to mark and reward, usually when they are in a position I particularly like that has set them up well for continuing on with the behaviour after being rewarded. High reward rates usually mean less hunting around obsessively for food, so less lure obsessing and easier luring. Get that reward rate up. One every few seconds. Mark them before they can do the wrong thing and you'll get the steps you want rather than having to wait for them to offer it. Just aim for smaller steps. Like this: look at perch->click->reward at a half pace closer to perch ->remove reward hand->dog's momentum carries them forward to a full pace->click... The reward for the first step sets the dog up to perform the next.

Yeah, there are studies. Don't have time to find them for you right now, but Google Scholar is your friend. I don't know why eunuchs are apparently happier. But human happiness is a fair bit more complicated than animal happiness, one would assume. At any rate, it seems there are impacts of reproductive status on personality in dogs. There is evidence for it. I doubt it is 100% in any animal, but that's not to say it's not significant. I don't know if it's positive or negative. Depends on the dog, maybe.

It's more than that, now, I hear.

What is meant by "development"? Do you mean physical, emotional, personality, physiological development..? Do people realise there have been plenty of men and women sterilised at an early age? Eunuchs live longer than unaltered men, and report being happier. It's not so pretty with women, but the reasons why it was done in women are usually disturbing.