corvus

It was a factor in a factor analysis. Associated with destructiveness, playfulness, and general activity. Mita, the Swedish fellow Svartberg did a series of papers on boldness and shyness in dogs. That was factor analysis as well, but based on the Swedish DMA rather than a survey. Most of them are available free online. His entire PhD thesis is also free online. It's called "Personality in Dogs". It does start to get especially tricky when you're looking at big, over-arching personality types. For example, you might have a dog that has a lower bite threshold than another dog, but do you call it a low bite threshold trait or does it come under the broader umbrella of "proactive coping", which might incorporate a suite of behaviours that typically come out in times of stress, variable depending on the type of stressor. One thing that Aidan's quote was getting at, I think, is that behaviour is by nature flexible so that animals can adapt to their environment. An animal that usually copes with stress proactively is entirely likely to switch to a more passive form of coping if the situation favours it. Theoretically we would expect even a strong tendency to behave in a certain way to be flexible. A lack of behavioural flexibility means the animal will get stressed more often, which is hard on their bodies.

There are undoubtedly trust issues. Scientists are guided by a sense of obligation to both uncover the truth of a matter and then report it. They'll want to do this their way, because they trust their own work and their own interpretations of the data. It's easy for something that starts out to be mutually beneficial to wind up being something both parties feel burned and jaded about. Scientists will feel like their integrity is being compromised or they are not being allowed to do their job if they are being given directives, but the other interested party is going to feel like they are losing control of their project and not getting what they wanted out of it if scientists go ahead and do exactly what they want to do. Finding a middle ground where everybody does benefit equally can be very challenging, and probably gets more challenging the more investment is made into the project. I think maybe finding the right people to work with will have a big impact on how working together may pan out. But at the end of the day, once you get scientists involved you have to be prepared for whatever comes out of the study to be published (unless you can afford to put a scientist on your payroll). Publications are currency for scientists, so they won't want to get involved in anything where their ability to publish might be limited. A lot of organisations balk because they are not entirely sure they will like the results of a study. The scientist probably won't care, which is what scares the organisations, who have a vested interest in the outcome. I can certainly see where they are coming from. Questions like "What if they find out dogs in shelters are going deaf??" are pertinent. The scientist will publish it and get a big pat on the back, and the shelters that facilitated the data collection are the ones that are going to cop the heat. Anyway, in a couple of months I'll be finished writing my thesis and will be fiddling around trying to get more papers out before I graduate at the end of the year. Feel free to flick me an e-mail ([email protected]) if you ever want to discuss possibilities. I might know someone suitable if I'm not. Yep, that's exactly the kind of thing I meant when I said the field is still in this exploratory phase. A lot of work seems to be aimed at figuring out what can be reliably measured and what is stable and correlations between that and relevant behaviours rather than at what actually is predictive. And genetics rarely enter into it because those that are doing these studies are not geneticists. When we do get into predictive stuff it's a lot of hints and that's about all. And still there's the problem with how the data is collected, which is usually through survey or behavioural observations, both of which usually have subjective components. I could rant about this all day. Sam Gosling is one of the authors on the first paper mita posted. He's an interesting chap, and has a lot of really sensible things to say about personality research and why it's not moving forward very satisfactorily. We need some mathematical types to come and help us figure out what to look at.

I assume it's not being published in a peer reviewed journal? That would be the most obvious answer. It's not that we think no one is breeding dogs with any semblance of a systematic approach. It's just that they are largely invisible to us. If you approached an academic with interests in the area and offered a lot of data I doubt you would have much trouble getting it statistically analysed and published in a peer reviewed journal. Then what you and others like you have done would no longer be invisible to most of the world. The peer review process may be about 50% bollocks, but at the end of the day it's the best we've got, really. And that means anything that's not peer reviewed is automatically not as credible as something that is peer reviewed. It's nothing personal, just the hierarchy of credible information. There's no way for us to tell if we are hearing stuff from a breeder with exceptional methodological skills and acres of hard data or a breeder with only a basic concept of what they are trying to do with their breeding and a whole lot of biased data, which is worse than no data. Scientists are doing their best just like breeders are. We face the irritating dichotomy of either being shrugged off as somehow not experienced enough with the topic or having big holes in our methodology (that are usually dealt with, incidentally) or having people leap on everything we say and clinging to it like a drowning man clinging to a life raft. People regularly misinterpret studies or give them more credence than we do ourselves. Abstracts don't have all the cautionary bits about interpretation. There's not much we can do about it. We put it out there and grit our teeth and wait for the armchair experts to pull it apart or vehemently object to something they imagined we said. Life is not black and white, but it seems most of the population can only think in terms of black and white. The very title of the thread is testament to that. Is temperament 100% genetic? It's like asking if the ocean is 100% water. It's the wrong question. We don't even know what "temperament" is.

What statistically significant and repeatable breeder's results?

They were by virtue of the fact a couple of CEOs were. The majority of the organisation was never pro-BSL. A friend of mine used to be in a managerial role at the RSPCA and told me how hard he and his colleagues tried to persuade the very few people at the top that were forcing the entire organisation behind BSL that it was a bad move. They even put together a video showing a pitbull they had come through one of the shelters doing all the things pitbulls were supposed to not be safe doing. They sent it off and begged and pleaded and were basically told the dog in the video could not possibly be a pitbull BECAUSE it was obviously a great dog. You can't argue with that level of cognitive dissonance. Those people are no longer there. I'm surprised the RSPCA haven't been pushing for a repeal. Probably a crapload more cognitive dissonance thanks to those who put them in the situation they are now in.

Corvus, some USA police dog programs do exactly that.....send pups out to pet homes to be return for assessment at 12-14 months old. The failure rate is higher, but they claim to get better dogs when training and environment of the police puppy program hasn't influenced the raw genetics of the dog with less likelihood of environment and training masking character flaw. This concept was adopted due to some officers injured/killed on duty when their seemingly well trained and eviromentally sound dogs shut down under pressure in attempt to keep the officers safe?. The same has occurred with some high ranking dogs in bite sports when cross training into civil protection roles.......the dogs trained in prey drive with impressive bites fail in defence drive when pressure is applied to fight off the dog reflective of a real scenario, the dog runs off the field in fear of the opponent. The dogs are lacking in genetic defence/fight drive for a roles greater than sport. I'm not really sure what your point is. I certainly don't have very specific information on failure rates in working dog training programs. I'm sure that "civil aggression" or "fight drive" or whatever you want to call it is very important in police dogs, and if the literature is anything to go by this seems likely to be highly heritable in GSDs (not 100%, though, and not so much in other breeds). Doesn't prove temperament is 100% genetic, though. This whole topic comes down to one very important distinction. What do you KNOW and what do you THINK? In science, we don't consider it known until it's been shown with a a few nice, scientifically robust and repeatable studies with statistically significant results. And even then we often find out there was an alternative explanation we hadn't considered.

Yes. Shy-bold is considered one of the more robust traits, although technically it's a super-trait. Still, there are problems with it. Mostly revolving around the fact we have troubles standardising testing and still have no way to account for environment and training. If we collect enough data it can to some extent overwhelm those problems, but it doesn't really solve them, if you know what I mean. It just squishes them under the weight of the generalised concept of dog. With some fancy statistical models you can get some interesting correlations out, but at the end of the day you're still stuck with problems related to how you collected the data. Most of the time it has some subjective components. Sometimes it's very subjective. Which is not to say that there's nothing to it, just that it's very difficult to know what is going on. It's exceptionally complex stuff, but yes, if you breed shy dogs you'll get shy puppies. Yes, exactly. It's very, very hard to tease the influences apart. When I collected data on this I found that just about everything affected the expression of boldness. I would bet money on things I didn't collect data on also affecting it aside from just genetics. We need better measures. Well, yes and no. But within the field of animal personality, hardly anyone agrees with anyone else, so it's worse than most fields! The reason why agreement is kind of poor is that the data is collected in different ways and analysed in different ways and different data is collected in the first place. There's not much of a solid foundation to build on. The field is kind of still in this exploratory phase it's been in for, like, 30 years. People have been selectively breeding dogs for working positions for a long time, though. From what I can tell just by talking to them and from working with a few siblings, puppy raisers have a pretty huge impact even with litter mates that were both picked for advanced training as babies. It was quite fun comparing siblings and close relatives in advanced training. Lots of similarities, but at the end of the day it's the little details that make all the difference and the reason why one dog can make it while his litter brother does not. You're absolutely right and I think this attitude is very heartening to see in breeders. I feel for you, though, because at the end of the day I think breeders are stuck with a lot of guessing and hit and miss. You have to consider everything may have been genetic because in most cases you don't know what is and what isn't. No one does. That's all I'm trying to say.

The point LBD makes is very important. I don't think anyone disputes that there is a genetic component to temperament, but it's not as easy to attribute something entirely to genetics as it seems. And the point I made earlier about validation and definitions still stand. Terms like "weak nerve" or "strong nerve" are particularly problematic, because you're basically defining traits based on behaviour you like or don't like. If you define temperament as genetic by the behaviour displayed, yet simultaneously accept that environment can alter behaviour, how can you claim that temperament is in fact unalterable and therefore genetic? I have never heard a description of weak or strong nerve that couldn't be explained with a couple of other possibilities that are not based on pure genetics. For example, there are some studies that suggest animals are more resilient to stress if they have a lot of play in their early life, or if they are presented with mild challenges to overcome in early life, or if they watch television in early life, or if their mother's are calm and relaxed during pregnancy. The bounceback Santo attributes 100% to genetics is as far as science is concerned, anything but 100% genetics. Oops. ETA As far as Stella goes, I think it highly likely there is a genetic component and highly unlikely it is entirely genetic. Erik is in the same boat, really. I never saw him in person before he was sent to us at 9 weeks old, but there were some things he was doing that very week we got him that raised some red flags and I handled him extremely carefully in his first 6 months or so. I can't say what he'd be like if I had handled him differently, obviously. There are some things he's always had a lot more trouble with than most dogs seem to. We trained him extensively from an early age to be better at these things, and he did get a lot better at them, but we're still working with a dog who did not seem able to learn this on his own like other dogs are. Nonetheless, we don't know what he would be like with another family, or living on a bigger property, or in a quieter suburb and so on. We will never know how much of his behaviour is our fault or how much trouble we averted before it could develop. I don't think there's any use in playing the guessing game with this. There are too many potential variables involved and no answers.

Look, I drew a picture. This is a simplified version, and just for ONE trait. The black line shows the trait in question as a sliding scale between shy and bold. The genetic potential of the puppy means they could potentially fall within the range shown by the genetic potential line. Then the environmental range further refines where on the shy-bold line the puppy will ultimately end up. I haven't added how the shy-bold trait may interact with other personality traits, or the effects pre-birth from the mother's stress levels etc. Beneath the shy-bold line is the range an owner might be able to successfully manage. So you can't be sure that when you give Puppy A to an owner that the owner successfully managed because you matched the right puppy to the right owner or because you matched the puppy with the right potentials to the owner with the right potentials. There's nothing very exact about it. Incidentally, I think the failure rates for working dogs I quoted is related to older dogs. Usually they are assessed once as puppies and then most of the puppies are released from the program straight off the bat, but of those left that come back for training at about 12 months or so, 50-70% fail the training.

I personally have data that raises significant questions about the latter. But perhaps it is a matter of definition. How do you quantify temperament? Everybody I know does it through behaviour. If behaviour can be altered by the environment, how can you claim that temperament is not? You need heritability scores, but even those are validated by measures of behavioural output. This is a circular argument. It does not mean there's no truth to it, but I think people need to think hard about what they know and what is conventional wisdom or something they think they know. There are big problems with believing something that can't be verified. If breeders genuinely want to get better at breeding for temperament they need to realise they don't know that much about it. I can assure you they don't, because nobody does. That's why the fallout rate for most working dogs that are specifically bred for doing a job is still commonly 50-70%. That's huge. If they knew how to breed the right temperament it wouldn't be nearly so high.

The problem with this is how can you verify it? The only way I can think of is with behavioural genetics, and we just don't have the knowledge base for that yet. Behaviour is gloriously flexible because it is adaptive. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that certain personality traits can be measured consistently over time with behavioural observations, but there is also plenty of evidence that other traits appear to be much less consistent over time. And there is yet more evidence that an animal that shows one trait considered to be a measure of personality can be induced to basically reverse their expression of that trait by changing the environmental conditions. Nobody really knows how readily this occurs, or if it occurs at all in dogs. Furthermore, we don't really understand how early (and in utero) conditions may shape even genetic expression. There is plenty of evidence to suggest a baby's experiences in utero program them for the environmental conditions they are likely to be born into. I get the breeder's meaning, but it is too simplistic. Maybe. No. Yes. It comes down to measurement IMO. If you know what to measure and can do so in a standardised manner you will be heading towards something more systematic and reliable. Those first two are damn hard to figure out, though. Scientists still haven't worked out either.

I don't think there is much conclusive evidence about desexing at all. I went through the literature last year when writing a paper on a related topic (personality and sex/reproductive status in dogs). The more I read the less sure I was about the entire issue. My current opinion is that we don't understand enough about how desexing affects individual dogs to be making routine decisions about it based on anyone's guidelines. I think we need a whole lot more research. I would opt to hold off desexing until there was a good reason to do it. As it turns out, there was with both of my current male dogs. One had one undescended testicle and one that had descended and then withdrawn into the abdominal cavity again. My other dog was humping like nobody's business at around 6 months. It was unusually frequent and it was not a training issue. We had him done at 7 months and he settled down over the following weeks and humping went way down.

I can definitely see where hubby is coming from on consultation fees. It really is very high. Good lucky with Jo and the vets at Russell Lea. I hope they do the trick for you. Jo is fabulous to talk to. She is understanding and very compassionate.

I'm not trying to put down either because I don't know who they are and what you've been through, but if you're really serious about helping her I would see someone at Sydney Animal Behaviour Service in Seaforth. They are extraordinarily expensive, but no one in NSW is better qualified to help you handle this than Kersti Seksal. If she or one of her co-workers can't help you find a solution that will improve your dog's emotional state when you have to leave her, I doubt anyone can. If you can't afford them and are not already seeing her, my second choice would be Jo Righetti. She is not a vet behaviourist, but is very experienced and All Natural Vet Care in Russell Lea work with her. She possibly works with a few other vets as well. I get that you are probably feeling pretty despairing at this point and that you have tried everything. Hang in there. I agree that if she is content and happy when you are with her it seems you should go above and beyond to try to help her for those times when she can't be with you. It is very exhausting, though, and it gets harder and harder to find the will to try yet another thing when nothing yet has really made a significant improvement. But I don't think managing the toileting issue is a solution.

Where in NSW are you, Paddo Pup? Members may be able to recommend a good vet behaviourist. If you are at your wit's end and the dog is distressed enough that you think it is having a significant negative impact on her quality of life, please go and see a vet behaviourist. Everybody's welfare is at stake, yours and the dog's. They are expensive, but they see this kind of thing all the time and they will know better than anyone on an internet forum how best to treat it.

Ugh, the drugs do not "mask" behaviours and natural reactions. This stigma is way out of control. People need to learn about what these drugs actually do and how. We know what the natural behaviours and reactions are and they are impacting negatively on the dog's health and well-being. That's why we put dogs on these medications in the first place. Because their brain chemistry is messing up their ability to learn to moderate their natural behaviours and reactions so that they are more normal. The whole point of the drugs is to regulate their brain chemistry to facilitate that learning. Often once they learn you can take them off the drugs and everything sticks. Sometimes the dog is just naturally prone to brain chemistry imbalances and they stay on a maintenance dose long-term, just like some people do. Drugs are not supposed to be some magic bullet that changes behaviour so everything is fixed. They're supposed to be an aid in behavioural modification. And they are often a very effective one. My advice is don't take advice off the internet. No one here can see how distressed your dog is and how they are showing this and what the maintaining conditions for those problem behaviours might be. Get a vet behaviourist to see the dog and talk about your options.

I forgot to say before that in the trick video when Erik does his meerkat pose you can see he pokes my hand half a dozen times or so. That's another way to get duration with a fast and active dog. I taught the trick with a hand target and he learnt to hold the position because I kept the target signal there for multiple touches. A cleaner trainer would teach the dog to hold their nose on the target rather than poke it multiple times. ;) This is a reward placement thing as well. If you want them to stick on the target you should feed them as close to it as possible to begin with. This is a general rule of thumb that holds for a lot of things. Mark the movement, feed the position. I love training my doves. They are SO MUCH HARDER than dogs. They spend a lot of time staring at me motionless, but when they move they are fast and there's not much warning and it's all over in an instant. Training doves teaches me better timing. I'm doing chicken camp in July, and I can't wait!!

Which Chinese herbs are we talking about? If they have active ingredients, you can consider those drugs. I'd want to know exactly what was in them and what the active ingredient does. It may be important if the dog is ever on any other medication. These things can interact. There are drugs your vet can prescribe for dog dementia that will help them with things like incontinence and unsettled sleeping patterns, and the dosage is generally more of a known quantity than that of herbs, because they are better regulated.

If the 'loneliness' issue stems from an anxiety issue, anti-anxiety drugs are entirely appropriate and DO deal DIRECTLY with the root cause of separation anxiety. If your dog has a physical illness you medicate for that illness. It's no different if your dog has an emotional illness. Psychotropic drugs are not inherently "heavy". Heavy dosages may be heavy. The drugs themselves can be administered at very low dosages like any other medication. It can take a bit of fiddling with dosages to find one that is right for a particular dog. I was reading a case the other day where the ideal dose for a particular dog was a small fraction of the normal dose. If the Reconcile had helped with the anxiety at all it would make sense to revisit with a different dosage. If it did nothing positive that does not mean Clomicalm won't help either. If the dog is distressed on a daily basis and her quality of life is compromised, that is reason enough to try a different medication in my mind. A nappy is not going to help the dog in the long run. Medication might.

Reconcile and Prozac are exactly the same (fluoextine), Reconcile is just chewable and flavoured so dogs will like it. Why did the dog stay on Reconcile for 9 months if it didn't have any positive effects? Clomicalm generally has fewer side-effects. Usually none, as it happens.

Extinction bursts can be really hard on dogs. It's like when we put money in a vending machine and make our selection and nothing comes out. We get quite outraged. It's not exactly fun. I feel more comfortable sort of guiding them out of the behaviour offering frenzy. Some dogs can hack a cold turkey extinction procedure and come back more determined than ever (ahem, Erik), but other dogs may not be so resilient. I work my dogs on the assumption that they will know when they are doing the right thing because they got a click/treat and will know when they are not because they got nothing. They will get frustrated if they don't know how to get a click, and if they are getting nothing, so it's my job to make sure I'm setting things up so they can get a lot of clicks and then they are confident they will be able to 'win' this game by figuring out how to get lots more clicks. Kivi used to have an extremely low frustration threshold. Teaching him to target was really helpful. It broke tasks down into pieces that he was confident in doing, so he didn't get so frustrated.

Here's that trick video I mentioned. It's got more of Kivi waiting than Erik, but it might give you an idea of the structure. It's like 10-15 seconds with one dog, then down or sit stay, while you do 10-15 seconds with the other dog. As they get better at it you can spend longer with each dog. If they can't wait for 10-15 seconds, reward the waiting dog when you reward the working dog. https://www.youtube.com/embed/jHHwlvp9-ro?rel=0 Also, you can see in the vid Erik sometimes bounces as he tries to do extra behaviours before I've cued them. I don't usually mind if he's a bit loose because it doesn't really matter, but since he learned to climb onto my shoulders it's a bigger deal. I don't want him messing that one up, thanks. A couple of weeks ago I was crouching while I did something with Kivi and turned around to find Erik eyeing my shoulders and getting ready to jump. That's why he's supposed to be in a down-stay while I'm doing stuff with Kivi! I told him not to, but he came up anyway. Stimulus control is important! Naughty moments aside, it helps to anticipate them and have a 'wait' cue or just use a down to have them take a few breaths and settle down. Reward placement goes a long way as well. Erik was definitely one for popping up instantly. If it's a position, getting the treat in their mouth while they are in it is super helpful. The more you can get in there before they get up the better. Have 5 treats in your hand and make sure you're in a position to pop one treat after the other into his mouth when he's in a down. A few months ago I taught Erik to hold something, which was harder because obviously I couldn't treat him while he was holding something else. I used a clicker and just had to be very sharp-eyed and quick on the button, and when I got a hold for more than a second he got a jackpot. He will now hold it while doing other tricks, so that's pretty cool.

1. Ugh, Kivi gets like this sometimes. I'm not sure it's the same problem, but I b would say the priority is the reward rate rather than getting the behaviour you know he can do. If he can do a sit or down stay, I would get him to do that in the hopes it would break the cycle of crazy. If he's not able to do that, it might help to go back to something really basic like a target so you can get a lot of reps and a high reward rate until you've taken the edge off and he feels reassured that he will be rewarded. You could also try behaviours he has to do from a down. We have a few of these we use to calm them down while still training. The "pick-a-hand" game is a good one, where they have to indicate which hand you're holding a treat in. 2. I eventually found the best way to train two dogs was to switch between them a lot and reward the one that wasn't working for waiting quietly. It was quite hard to find the right rhythm that would work for me, as I get quite absorbed in training and often forgot the other dog. If I switch between them so that they are essentially both always working even when I'm only training one, all the noise and carry on vanished. I started it using mats as stations so a few reps, then send dog to mat and call second dog up. I LOVE this. One of our recent trick videos has some examples of how easy training two dogs becomes when they both feel like they are being trained. Erik often lays down on the spot automatically as soon as I switch my focus to Kivi so I don't even have to remember to cue it. 3. I'm not sure about this one. With Erik it just comes down to timing. If he's getting really intense and making mistakes or throwing out too many behaviours I start saying "No" and he starts paying more attention. I ostensibly don't use a NRM, but apparently Erik thinks I do. At any rate, used occasionally it seems to be quite useful. The other thing I would try is start incorporating down-stays into training. Erik used to bark at me incessantly if I didn't give him cues fast enough. I taught him I only train dogs that are lying down quietly and it did wonders for his self-control in training. I take it a lot of the noise and lack of impulse control was simply because he had no reason to be more restrained. Erik flourished under lots of structure and rules. If there are vacuums he will fill them with behaviours, so managing his training is often about making sure he knows what he is supposed to be doing from one moment to the next. But given his moments are much smaller than mine, this means he sometimes has to know what to do without me telling him. Teaching him generalised rules like "If you want training cues you will have to down quietly first" are excellent for filling the vacuums and he readily takes them outside of training as well, which is very useful. As for fading, it's an art! I usually start by stringing behaviours together and rewarding after 2 or 3. Hope your recovery goes well and the dogs are kind to you. :)

Is he still doing it when you are NOT present? If it were attention-seeking it would be contingent on your presence, because there's no point whining and carrying on to no one if you want attention from someone. The fact that he has also shown anxiety about noises in the past may be indicative of an underlying general anxiety problem.

Sorry, that was poorly phrased. I can't be bothered re-phrasing, so I deleted it.