corvus

Thanks. It's easy teaching Erik complicated tricks. He is part cat and seems to have been born with amazing balance and body awareness as well as a massive intellect. He seems to think he can do just about anything, and he pretty much can. He falls off or misses and just gets right back into it even harder. I just have to keep up! I've had some interesting problems to solve, but usually good timing with a clicker solves them if Erik doesn't spontaneously work it out on his own. I just recently taught him a "switch" cue to get him changing direction in reverse. It seems to be helping a lot with an ongoing problem we were having with backwards weaving through my legs. I taught him using a method I found on the internet that turned out to be a stupid idea and taught him to consistently overshoot. Clicking helped, but the switch cue is helping more. Kivi doesn't know half the tricks Erik does. I don't think he could learn all of them. He's too cautious and slow. My partner taught Erik to do a combat roll by cueing roll over while Erik was running. E just dropped his shoulder and rolled mid stride despite the fact he was running. It didn't work so well with Kivi! Kivi is learning a backwards weave, though. It's harder because he's bigger and much clumsier, but he's getting there. I do it alongside a fence so he can't go too wide. I'd love to see the video of Ruby skateboarding!

A bit like this:

Definitely weren't dobes. I thought about it, but they had gundog faces and weren't that tall. I was trying to think what they could be other than weims and all I could come up with was a blue dobe crossed with a weim. They didn't exactly look like spectacular weims, but they didn't look like any other breed or even really like a cross. Pretty sure they weren't clipped. If they were, I wouldn't have seen markings on their faces. It was most clear on their faces with very light bluey-tan eyebrows and around their muzzles. I googled afterwards but couldn't find any reference to what I saw. But it's hard to find these things. They don't get talked about much and sometimes they have names I wouldn't know about.

One time I saw two Weims... I swear they were Weims. From a distance, there was no question in my mind. They were the right size, shape and colour. But closer up, I could just make out dilute tan markings in a fairly typical black and tan kind of pattern. Eyebrows, muzzle, paws and a bit on the chest in one, I think. It was barely visible. I didn't ask the owner if they were purebred as I didn't want to be rude, but I was scrutinising those dogs and I couldn't see any other breed in them. Looked exactly like Weims. Is this colouring known in the breed?

I think everyone is giving you excellent advice here, Staffyluv. I would ask you what you are going to do in class if you can't reliably get Zig working for food anywhere but at home? It's not fair on him to put him in over his head with distractions and it is going to make you very frustrated. Foundations first. You need: 1) A conditioned marker or cue that tells Zig to orient to you right now because he's about to get something awesome. I usually use "Hey!" This is your foot in the door. It should be so well conditioned that he doesn't even think "Wait, do I want that something awesome right now?" He just looks to you. Practice it at least three times, three times a day for the next three weeks. Just pair it with awesome stuff. It's an exercise in classical conditioning. 2) Get him used to working for food. Cosmo's method is fine. In the past I have gone for frequency over quantity (lots of opportunities to earn a few bits of food), but you'll probably get it happening quicker if you do it Cosmo's way. Get him doing things around the house for food. You came inside when called? Good dog! Have a treat! He should feel that at any time he might get an opportunity to earn a tasty tidbit. 3) An idea of how much he can cope with before his brain breaks and he can't concentrate on food anymore. LBD has already suggested this and I think it will help you. If you know where his threshold is you can be better at staying under it and 'dicking around' there and gently pushing the envelope where you can do it in a controlled manner. This is an exercise in desensitisation. The idea is to give him exposure to stuff that is exciting without provoking him to great levels of excitement. He's practicing being around them without losing his concentration. 4) A plan for what you do when he loses his ability to focus. Example, get more distance, wait impassively until he gives up pulling, do a u-turn, arc off in a different direction (not as frustrating as a u-turn if his issue is frustration), teach take a breath, teach LAT, practice downs. There are plenty of options. We can help you pick one if you're not sure what would be best. If you know what you will do then you can just do it when you need to. He will appreciate the promptness and consistency of your guidance. 5) Do some off switch games so he learns to rev up and then relax again. This will help him manage his arousal and improve his self control and awareness when he gets excited. You will have a much easier time of teaching him to focus on you in distracting environments if you build all this up first. Baby steps. If you build a strong foundation you will get places. If you don't, there's every chance you will be fixing one thing or another for a long time to come. What you don't want is him getting used to being excited and distracted around stuff. Generally I assume if a dog is distracted they are probably uncomfortable with the environment. For example, it is too exciting for them and they can't split their focus between you and all the exciting stuff going on, which creates conflict in them because they want to be able to do both and they can't. A bit of counter-conditioning never goes astray. Be kind to him. If he's conflicted, make it easier for him to choose you. Do this by reducing the intensity of the competing stimuli (distance), bringing his arousal down (massage, downs, if anything like that works), or bringing food into the equation. I know some people that use squeeze tubes to deliver peanut butter. The licking has a calming effect. If your conditioned attention cue is good enough, you can use that, but then you have to follow it up with something from that list. ETA I still think GMAB would help you a lot. The video on demand is pretty cheap.

Too right. Aidan is also fond of saying things like that. They have to be food motivated. But I have come across dogs like this in my study. In fact, I had to dump a staffy mix because he just couldn't concentrate on the task. He'd give it a few minutes max, then it would be "Oh, a bird! Look, a toy! Let's play tug. Or I can just run around with it on my own. That's fine, too." He liked food well enough, he was just rarely calm enough to be able to work for it and was insanely distractible. Anyway, I had a sudden brainwave. Staffyluv, you need the Give Me A Break game. Leslie McDevitt used to have a rescue JRT mix called Snap. This dog was a bit of a basket case. He could not concentrate on one thing for more than a few seconds. She had to start working him in her basement, and even there he would race off to investigate at the slightest sound from the plumbing or whatever. She eventually got him offering her all the attention she could want. The GMAB game was, I think, pivotal. The general idea is to ask for attention in small doses, then release the dog to do what they want. The more you release them the less they want to go. This is basically how I got Erik training in dog parks. He went from being able to give me about 2 seconds of focus even if there were no dogs in the park to being able to do complex tricks and clicker training with a strange dog approaching or getting in the way. Erik's ability to attend to me almost regardless of what is going on is hugely useful. It's the only reason he can be let off leash, really. If he wasn't so attentive he'd be a bit of a worry off leash. He is to some degree naturally attentive, but it took me months of very patient work to get him to the point he's at now. I did the same with Kivi, although it was a whole lot easier with him. Kivi will literally work around a dog with its head in my treat pouch without taking his eyes off me, and he's my uber social one. So I can attest that it does work, and very well. There are videos on demand that show it on CleanRun, I think.

I got my partner a skateboard to teach Erik to skateboard on, but he never did. We got three feet on and the skateboard went into storage. But Erik does some pretty neat balancing tricks. Here he is balancing on my wobbly leg: Don't watch the rest of the video. This is from nearly a year ago and Erik has much cooler tricks, now, and is much better at the ones in the video. We are currently working on backwards figure-8 around Kivi's legs and piggy back amongst other things. The piggy back is kinda hard without an extra person. It's going to take a while.

It's worthwhile IMO to get a dog into the habit of working for food. It gets easier once they are used to it. For example, I've started dogs on really good stuff, like boiled hearts, and once they are used to the idea they can earn it and want it I start throwing in other treats. Currently my dogs will work for pretty much any food. Kibble, canned fruit, chopped veggies... It took me much longer to get my wild hare working for food. As a grazing species, they aren't that concerned with obtaining food. The grass doesn't go anywhere. There's no hurry. My hare certainly left eating until when he was completely relaxed and felt safe. It took a few months, but eventually I had him working pretty reliably for rabbit pellets. Had to start with fresh strawberries and blueberries, though. I'm still hunting for something my doves like more than their regular seed. But they seem happy to work for their seed most of the time anyway. At first they'd only do it if they were hungry, but now they aren't so fussy. They seem to like the training for its own sake. I figure if we can get animals like hares and doves working for food, we should be able to get most dogs working for food as long as they don't have some kind of digestive issue. I think I wrote a blog post on how to get animals working for food one time when I was still blogging if you're interested. I think the most important thing is to take care of their emotional state first. If they are wound up or stressed it's hard to get them to eat. If they are not wound up or stressed and they still won't eat, try some training with good food at meal times. If they still won't work for it, it's probably fair to say they can stand to have their food intake cut back a little. I haven't intentionally used fasting to get any of my animals working for food, but I did dole it out in small portions so they were getting hungry when I brought them food.

Also, this is the only photo of my corgi as a puppy. Corgi puppies should be illegal.

Not enough Lapphunds, here. Or Vallhunds on Lapphunds. That Erik sure was a cute little jellybean.

Yes, huski, you did misunderstand. It's hard to say without upsetting people. I can have a zillion people say "Well my working line dog settles fine with x y and z." And at the end of the day I can only shrug and say "They aren't Erik, I guess." I can only say what my experience has been, and just because it doesn't align with that of people with WL dogs does not mean I must have been doing something wrong or that my experiences are invalid. I'm comfortable with Erik apparently being weird. It seems typical of him! :laugh: Lablover and Kavik - private, GSDs, ESSs and a Mal. The dogs do all manner of things. Collecting data at the moment, so I'll be at it for a few weeks if these dogs pull through the training for me.

Just curious, are there working line labs in Australia?

Erik used to be like that! For everything! When I first started my PhD and was working from home again, if someone delivered a package or a truck came down the street or something like that, he would fire up and he would take several hours to calm down again. Then he'd snooze for an hour or two, wake up, and start up again. I found rewarding for staying on his bed was too time consuming. He would do the down like a coiled spring thing. Even when I got the Manners Minder and could leave him to do down-stay training without my full attention he never really relaxed, so the problems persisted. I even tried biofeedback and held off rewarding until the tail went down and his eyes went soft. I started with a clicker and quickly dumped it because it got him too aroused. I would very quietly and slowly slip him a treat because anything faster or accompanied by a noise would make his tail spring up and his eyes light up. I am happy to report he is nowhere near that bad anymore. Usually he's back to baseline in a minute or two at most. I'm sure down on a mat or bed or crate would be much more effective with him now than it was when I was doing it at first because he is generally much calmer. I just haven't really tried it because I haven't felt I needed to. He's not been giving me a lot of problems. Maybe what I consider problems are not what other people would and vice versa. It occurred to me that Leslie McDevitt has some good info on mat training for dogs that don't know how to relax. She asks that the dogs do the Relaxation Protocol first, and also uses a lot of massage and what she calls passive attention work. She is very focused on getting that arousal down. It's sound advice I think. Didn't realise my expression of frustration was going to get so many noses out of joint. I just had a moment where I identified with the OP and thought they might feel frustrated as well. Reaching across cyberspace can be a blundering affair. I'll leave you guys to it.

You don't understand obviously because you are not me. I have not been quick to discount or run down other's experiences. I'm just frustrated because of all the things I tried I think it was the least effective, yet it's the most common thing I see recommended. I don't want other people to feel like if they can't get this to work they are not trying hard enough. I think that all dogs should be given structured down time, and both mine were as puppies. I think that if you have a dog that is difficult to settle, you are best served by trying to figure out why they are having such problems and try to treat that. This is what has been most effective in helping Erik. I spoke to a number of people with stacks more experience than me about it and got plenty of good advice. The best I got was to give him time-consuming stuff to do with his mouth. It made a big difference. I don't think I really still have problems getting him to settle, but given I am with him very close to 24/7, it's hard to get perspective on the issue. It's been the most difficult and long-standing problem I've had with him. I think he is better now than he ever has been. He is Erik, though, and sometimes he has stuff to get out of his system and me grumping at him or telling him to lie down is not going to take care of his basic needs. I am just trying to encourage a critical treatment of the problem. So the dog can't relax indoors. Why not? Maybe it's not simply because they haven't been taught to. Incidentally, I spent this week with WL dogs. I'm tired, frazzled, and my cynicism is through the roof. And I'm suddenly of the opinion that my Vallhund is the most f***ing awesome dog in the world. At this point I don't think experiences with WL dogs count for much. I think you have to take the dog you've got and work out what their individual needs are and go from there.

I didn't see a single person say that. If no one said that then you have no reason to be defensive. Honest, I really am just very tired of hearing it, and it comes up so often. It's like someone saying "Did you know you can put these letters together and make words?" *grinds teeth* Yes. I did. Like I said, maybe it's news to some people and helpful information. I still might scream the next time I hear it, though. Can't make any promises. I have not much interest in other people's experiences with teaching high drive and/or high energy dogs to settle at this point. I have my own experiences, which seem more relevant to me. Doesn't invalidate yours, though. The world can simultaneously hold two people with contrary experiences without imploding. To the OP, I also find treat dispensing toys should be used with caution. I think massage is a great place to start. You should see if it's going to help very quickly. Remember long, slow strokes. E particularly responds to firm massage around his haunches. The Relaxation Protocol is gold. If you can, do it! Every dog I have from here on will do the RP early on. Most people I have spoken with who have used it have found it to be helpful. It's very adaptable. It looks easy, but some dogs find it very challenging. It took me five days repeating Day 1 before Erik could do it without barking or pacing partway through. I would particularly recommend it if your dog has trouble settling in other places as well as home. Because of RP Erik can now be taken most places and be expected to have a little explore and then lie down and chill for at least a while. He used to bark incessantly. I was pretty chuffed when he went for quiet downs instead. ETA I forgot to mention the soothing effects of licking and chewing. If you haven't tried a frozen Kong, give it a go. We stuff ours with the mince and veggie mix the dogs get for their dinners when they aren't getting bones. Erik gets a lot of his food this way. It made a very big difference, and has been a pivotal part of treating his terror/hatred of our cleaners. Nothing I tried really helped until it occurred to me to give him a frozen Kong in his crate when they arrived.

If I hear one more person say "teach them to relax on their bed or in a crate" I might scream. It may be relevant, but I guess that from my perspective both my dogs learnt that kind of thing as puppies. For one, it stuck, for the other it just didn't. This is unsurprising, because it's a simplistic answer to a potentially convoluted problem. Erik is a lot more active than Kivi. You can't expect Erik to lie down when he's antsy unless you provide him with something to do. I can't lie down when I'm antsy, either. It doesn't really work. I used to find with Erik that telling him to go to bed worked in the short-term, but not in the long-term. Yes, he would go, and often eventually he would even fall asleep there, but when he woke up again he'd just go right back to restless activity. Sooner or later he can't lie on his bed. He's just too wound up. He fidgets and barks and I spend too much time telling him to lie down again. We both end up frustrated. Erik's problem is not that he hasn't been taught to settle. It's that sometimes he honestly can't. His arousal is too high, he's wide awake and bored, and he just isn't that good at calming himself down. He has always needed help with this. I could write a book on what we have tried and how effective they have been. Instead, I will just say this: Relaxation is not just a body position or being still, but also a state of arousal and an emotional state. If you have the arousal and the emotional state sorted, generally the relaxation will come on its own. Often people can achieve this just by teaching their dog to lay down on a bed or something, because these dogs are the type that can calm down easily when faced with a low energy activity so that they can perform it. Other dogs cannot and will need help. If you dog needs help, the Relaxation Protocol is an excellent place to start. Even if it doesn't address the problem directly, it is usually helpful in some way. Massage is great, but you may at first need to hold your dog in place and start with just a few seconds and work up. If E gets a 10-minute massage it tends to do what 30 minutes of enforced downs might do but without the whinging and need for regular feedback and reinforcement. Thundershirt does what 10-minutes of massage usually does. I'd be lost without frozen Kongs. And, obviously, make sure the dog is getting enough exercise. Upping Erik's daily exercise did help. Finally, if the dog is bored and restless, give them a puzzle toy or something like a Buster Cube. Erik is nuts about his Kong Wobbler. He's going to put it through a wall one day, and the noise is nearly as bad as his "I'm BORED!" barking, but at least it feeds the bored monster so it goes to sleep for a while. Not every dog has problems like Erik's, but not every dog can simply switch off when told to lie down, either. To account for all dogs, first lower arousal and take it from there.

There is really no such thing as "aggression for no particular reason". Even if the reason is medical, it still happens for a reason. Identifying the reason is the best way to go about changing the behaviour. I think it pays to be very careful about being confrontational with dogs like this. A lot of people say things like "he needs to know that behaviour is not on". How are you going to tell him that without meeting aggression with aggression? And if that's how you do it, you had better hope he backs down rather than escalating. I've had a small puppy escalate and it was scary. He might have been small, but he could still hurt and he was trying really hard to do just that. The usual way to tackle these kinds of things without confrontation is NILIF and desensitisation/counter-conditioning. This is how I did it with my Erik, who at 9 1/2 weeks old reminded me very strongly of this puppy that escalated and tried to have me. Erik is now 3 years old and it's hard to believe I ever handled him so carefully. He pretty much lets me do anything to him, now. It's some behaviour modification, but also a large dose of trust. If I don't habitually push him around then he doesn't feel that bothered when I do for whatever pressing reason. I've always listened to him in the past. I don't push him too far and I don't frighten or hurt him.

I thought Europe was more dog friendly than both the US and the UK. Most restaurants we went to in Spain and France outside the major cities had resident dogs come and visit us while we were eating, but dogs are not supposed to be in food preparation areas in the UK. Impeccably well behaved dogs. It is more than where they are allowed to go, though. The attitude is very different. I saw lots of exceptionally well groomed dogs in Barcelona that were at their ideal weight and most were entire. Nordic countries might be very dog friendly, but it's kind of socially unacceptable to have a dog if you work full time. What's more, animal ownership is highly legislated at least in Sweden AFAIK. People here complain about the nanny states, well, you might not like Sweden... For example: http://www.thelocal.se/10716/20080326/#.UPvEvKFet9k I don't think you are allowed to crate dogs, and I have heard that you can be fined if you don't walk your dog.

I don't know if you could call a dog alleviating boredom bad habits. There are things my dog might do routinely if he's bored, but if he's not bored he doesn't do them. Hence, not a habit, but a predictable response to specific conditions. I got Erik when Kivi was just shy of 18 months old. Kivi was an only dog only for a couple of months. He is a very social dog and he would get quite stir crazy if we didn't take him to the dog park to play with other dogs every few days. When we brought the puppy home he was so excited and in the weeks that followed he spent a lot of time with the puppy and no longer bounced off the walls if he didn't get to go to the dog park. He is now nearly 5 and Erik is his BFF. They are so good together, and look out for each other. So for us at least a second dog has been the right thing for the first dog. I think the fact that our two are not quite 18 months apart in age facilitated their bond with each other. It is a big decision to make, but it sounds like you guys are ready to make it if you're going so far as to look at potential dogs to bring home. I would say form a contingency plan for what you would do if it didn't work out and see if that makes you feel any surer of yourself. I don't think I could ever go back to one dog. The two of them are so tight with each other it always makes me feel good to see them with each other. They play a lot and it keeps them fit and always puts a smile on my face. If I were you, I'd give it another 6 months at least, depending on your dog's maturity. Kivi behaved like an adult dog at 18 months, but Erik didn't until he was 3 years old, basically.

Here is Overall's Relaxation Protocol: http://www.dogdaysnw.com/doc/OverallRelaxationProtocol.pdf Incidentally, giving Erik sufficient physical exercise is pretty important. His mental activity is the biggest problem, but if he doesn't get enough physical activity it's like shooting ourselves in the foot. Nothing works as well as it usually does and he gradually gets more and more difficult. He is a short dog so it's much easier to make him physically tired than an athletic kelpie, but we don't wear him out. We just take enough of the edge off that he's not driving us nuts.

Or a stereotypy. Lots of animals pace or circle compulsively. It's a major problem in captive wild animals and is thought to be related to what they would normally do in the wild. An animal that usually spends a large portion of the day traveling is likely to develop a pacing or circling stereotypy in captivity. It is a pointless behaviour in that there is no obvious purpose for it. Stereotypies are an interesting problem. Their occurrence is usually in response to chronic stress, but they often become self-soothing, so if you stop an animal from performing them their stress may increase unless you can teach them an alternative coping behaviour. When Erik was about 5 months old he went through this phase where for a few hours a day he would be so wired he looked like he was on amphetamines. It was insane. I remember having him on my lap darting glances in every direction. He couldn't stay still for more than about 5 seconds and would race off and start roaming around the place and barking. I had never seen anything like it before. I started using massage and quiet time on a mat with a pig's ear or Kong to help him settle down. It made a huge difference and that was the last we saw of the crazy eyes, but getting him to settle reliably has been an ongoing project for the last couple of years. I have tried massage, thundershirt, down-stays, reinforcing one volley of alert barking and then return to bed, frozen Kongs and rec bones, Karen Overall's Relaxation Protocol, confinement, more exercise, and food dispensing toys like a Buster Cube or Kong Wobbler. A lot of things have helped and he is a much nicer dog to live with now, but there's a limit to what he can do. If he gets bored he gets bored and it can be very hard to settle him. He is not destructive, but pokes everything and if he's really bored and frustrated he will stand around and bark as well. There is nothing I have ever found that can halt this short of giving him a Kong Wobbler or something. He just has to be left to get it out of his system. With a dog that has been like Erik was all day every day for many years you certainly have your work cut out for you. I would start the Relaxation Protocol. I would be astonished if she found it easy. I did Day 1 with Erik 5 days in a row before he was able to get through the whole thing without getting up and circling and barking, and that was not even when he was at his worst. Starting the RP should give you some indication of whether she can learn to settle. It may be that she can't. In which case you should bite the bullet and see Kersti Seksal. She might be a little more effective at finding the right medication than Robert Stabler has been. She has also had heaps of tuition with Karen Overall's protocols and will be able to guide you to get your dog through it. You can't just do half a day's exercises or something. It's designed to gradually increase in difficulty and then decrease again and you really need to follow that structure. Did Stabler give you a report? Did he make a diagnosis?

I don't think Nekhbet was recommending anything. She hasn't seen your dog, after all, I assume. I take it she was just saying some dogs are seriously anti-social and it's abnormal and one has to question whether the dog can lead a quality life. I think that we have to be careful with this line of discussion, because there are few people who are qualified to assess whether a dog is behaving abnormally. Often something can be done to improve matters, whether that is through training, changing or better managing the environment, or medication (short or long term). If someone declares the dog anti-social and that there's no way to improve its ability to cope with other dogs, how do we know they are qualified to make this call? How do we know it is not a dog that is just beyond their skill set? How do they know? A lot of people have had huge success with teaching alternative coping behaviours for dogs to perform when they see something that worries them, as Nekhbet described, but we have to keep in mind that dogs exist on a continuum of emotional reactivity just like people do. I've seen it suggested that Intermittent Explosive Disorder in humans may be a good model for the way some dogs behave, for example. If a dog is highly emotionally reactive, training can make a huge difference, but it's unlikely to make the dog less emotionally reactive by nature.

We get ours from Ashbrook farms in Lansvale. It was recommended to us by the owner of the dog kennels where we left our dogs over New Year last year. The quality is quite good and it's fresh. I'm actually not sure what the chicken mince costs. It's quite coarse and probably moderately fatty. We were out there last week and picked up 15kg of chicken mince, a box of marylands (5kg? Can't remember) a couple of femur bones, 5kg of lamb brisket, 2kg of chicken liver, 3 lamb shanks and I think maybe 8 pig trotters. It cost about $80. Never had any problems with them.

Might be a displacement behaviour in that context. In others it may be a transition behaviour where a dog moves from one state to another, which is pretty much the same interpretation as the energy dissipation one. Erik ignores adult cuddles unless we start when he thinks we should be getting up and doing stuff with him. Then we get outraged barks and an Erik on the bed like "Guys! No! We were getting up!" He says "Hrr" when he's told to do something he doesn't want to do, or when he can't figure something out. It's like a cross between a sigh and a growl and sounds like the sounds people make when they are getting so frustrated they are about to yell and throw things. I have heard it from other dogs as well. I think sighs are usually part of regulating arousal. There is a physiological aspect. Taking a deep breath and sighing it out is calming for us and is for dogs as well.

Incidentally, the foxes are a type bred in captivity for the fur trade. They are not kept in those tiny cages specifically for the experiment. It's just the standard way to keep them. There is research out there about improving their welfare, same as there is for livestock.