corvus

Yeah, I did. I think I lured it. He really didn't like it at first. He's a herder and is a touch sensitive about body space. So I fed him tons of treats when he was there and he quickly got over his initial dislike of it and it became his favourite trick. He already had a habit of walking under things or between legs when he was trying to get a break from another dog, so it was easy to get him doing it on cue if I saw he was trying to get a break and couldn't. He's funny now. He gets in there and it's like a security blanket. He relaxes and his personal bubble gets smaller so he can cope with things closer than he otherwise could. If he's feeling a bit like there's too much going on, I tell him to go there and he can look around and take things in without getting so over-stimulated. I taught it to Kivi as well, with targeting my hand and luring him in from behind me. He is also pretty fond of it, but nothing special for him. The most common mistake newbies to clicker training make is too low a reinforcement rate. Aim for a click every couple of seconds. It's a lot, but that't the point. You get in so many click/treats the dog is like "Wowsers! This game is awesome!" If you can't find enough to click, be less picky. :) Good luck! Glad to hear he's doing LAT at least. If Erik has a rough day or two it usually takes him another couple of days before he's back to normal. It used to take more like a week. I wouldn't be surprised if it was longer for Jake. He's probably feeling it more keenly than Erik does.

I love naming animals because you can be creative. And playful. My three doves are Wrack, Ruin and Mayhem. They also have a food bowl with skulls on it. People love it. This led to the delightful situation of teaching my 2 year old niece the word "mayhem" when she was here at Christmas feeding Mayhem out of her teeny hand. When I had Kit the hare (named because I didn't think he'd last 24 hours and didn't know what sex he was anyway), I got a rabbit and called her Caboodle. She got rehomed as she was the devil incarnate. Second rabbit was Kat. She got myxo. Third rabbit was Bonnie, short for Bonita. I decided the Kit and .... theme wasn't working out. I doubt there are any other Kivi Tarros anywhere. He gets called just Kivi about 90% of the time. He does get his full name, usually when I am exasperated with him or giving him some love. People often laugh when I call Erik. They think it is cute and suits him.

It's really hard, we face this a lot with Erik. He doesn't like strange dogs mouthing him or buffeting him. They can do it if he is friends with them, but he HAS to know they will back off when he asks before they are considered friends. It's all about trust. We have a lot of problems particularly with bully breeds and puppies not noticing when he's asking them to stop. He asks very politely, then he suddenly snaps and drives them off aggressively. I have heavily reinforced asking politely and don't wait around to see how it will pan out. If the other dog doesn't back off immediately I move as fast as I can to intervene. I have given several people apologetic explanations while I body block their dog. They are usually very understanding. I really like his polite "please don't" signals, and I badly want to preserve them. If they don't work when he needs them he'll stop using them, and they do work for many dogs and give me a chance to avert disaster with those they don't work on. He has got into a fight or two before trying to drive off a dog that wasn't listening to him. It's not good for his wellbeing. The more he has to do it the more he will jump straight to it instead of trying the polite version first, and he'll work backwards from there to doing it pre-emptively. But you know all this. This is how we end up with dog aggressive dogs. One thing I love is cueing Erik to walk between my legs. Parked there with a leg on either side of him, he is protected from the other dog and I am in a good position to intervene. If the dog comes head on he can scoot backwards and I can block the dog with my legs. Often all he needs is a barrier so he can have a break from being roughed up. It doesn't always work, but it works often enough that sometimes Erik will nuzzle his way in there from behind without being cued if he is feeling stressed.

Sorry to hear that. Setbacks are kinda part of life, but it's particularly problematic with dogs like Jake that are really kind of on the edge of what they can handle in life in general in the first place. Poor Jake. It's totally up to you, but have you looked into something like a harness with multiple attachment points? LIke this http://www.springerloaded.co.uk/#/ttouch-training-harness-info/4554385828 It might make him feel a bit more secure and still give you the leverage to guide him physically. I'm not exactly sure what Vicki's aim was, but my guess would be with 101 things to do with a box, your aim should be to click and treat him for doing pretty much anything at all. I find it a bit of a dicey game to be honest. I don't play it with either of mine. Kivi is too risk averse by nature to feel comfortable taking lots of chances with new behaviours. It took me about a year to get him to the point where he can be clicker trained to do the kinds of tricks Erik does. I use targeting with him for most new behaviours. I really don't think he likes free shaping. He whinges and gets stressed. Erik can be free shaped quite easily, but you can bet he'll get frustrated. So I only free shape him when I have to. Which is basically never. I would suggest that you focus on clicking for "trying". And do it in short bouts. Reinforcement that is not contingent on behaviour can be almost as stressful as punishment not contingent on behaviour. What you don't want to do is seemingly reward him randomly. He should feel that he knows how to get a click and that is by trying something. That's my suggestion anyway. Might be best to check with Vicki. I'm not sure who recommended the prong in the first place and why. I guess it is up to you. I would dump it, but what do I know? I have an aversion for any equipment that delivers punishments automatically. Bad experiences. If there is one thing I want to be in complete control of if possible it's delivering aversives. I am completely biased, though.

I'm yet to meet a nice one to be honest. There are a few around here. I have known a couple since they were puppies and they started out all right, although a bit odd, but they all do a lot of growly and tail up and stiff greetings now, if they even get as far as greetings. I'm sure there are plenty of nice ones out there, but I've never met one. I'm open-minded, but my emotional reaction is that I don't like them. Too many negative experiences with no positive experiences to balance it out.

I usually get mugged once a day when the pupsaurs unanimously decide amongst themselves that it's time for their afternoon walk. I do usually go at roughly the same time, so it's unsurprising. Erik leaps into my lap and gives me about 30 seconds of INTENSE snuggling, clinging to my neck and kicking my laptop and flip-flopping backwards across my hands while I'm still trying to type. Kivi comes to me with ears pinned back and some item (like a sock) in his mouth and looks at me all sweet with his right-biased gentle tail wags. To be honest, sometimes I need them to come and remind me. If I don't have them declaring it's walk time I am often tempted to just work through. But taking a break to spend time with my favourite 4-legs is healthy. Their mugging behaviour makes me smile, and once they have told me that if I loved them I would take them out, they go lie down and snooze until I ask them if they want to go to the park. Then Kivi runs over to give me a big smooch on the face as if he just LOVES me for suggesting it and Erik runs around trying to 'help' me put my shoes on. He makes it harder. :) Sometimes they decide walk time is 2 hours early today. What's with that?

Then she's not really "crate trained", is she? One would assume a crate trained dog is at least comfortable in a crate. I would bet not even 20% of the dog population is crate trained. Way to make a stressful vet visit even more stressful. The only time we've ever had problems in our vet waiting room was when someone with an aggressive dog sat by the door and we had to walk our dogs right under its nose to get them inside. We have a large waiting room and people don't sit on top of each other unless it's full. Even then, folks often stand in a corner to stay away from other people. I have never seen an unrestrained animal there in my memory. It's a very busy practice. Often if people's dog is acting up and disturbing other people or animals they will take them outside all on their own. Imagine that. There are members of the general public with common sense pertaining to animals.

BC Crazy, it may just be powerful conditioning. Usually this is what medication is aimed at overcoming. You can see for yourself that a dog can't get better if their emotional associations are extremely strong and negative. If the cues are there (e.g. "My yard, where all the scary stuff happens"), the emotional response can be so strongly conditioned that it's like an avalanche. But don't despair. Getting the right medication should help a lot, but fiddling with doses to get it right is pretty normal, I think. In the meantime, maybe you could try really shaking up her routine at home to see if you can disrupt whatever cues she is using. It might be stressful for her, but can it be any worse than what she's already experiencing? I would look for patterns in when she's at her worse. For example, my Erik is always at his worst at about 9am on a weekday. My partner has gone to work, his arousal has peaked naturally for some reason, he's anxious I'm going to leave him, and often I'm moving around the house doing things where I can't be at his beck and call. I have tried lots of things to derail his behaviour at this time, and had moderate success with things like massage and using the Thundershirt pre-emptively to help him start the day with lower arousal. Currently I'm doing down-stays on a mat where I can. Giving him a frozen Kong also helps get his mind off the routine.

Surplus killing is known in plenty of species of carnivore, particularly in relation to livestock in confined areas. Highly opportunistic predators like foxes are thought to be stimulated to make kills by the behaviour or proximity of prey animals independent of how hungry they are or whether they could possibly eat everything they kill. If you imagine a fox in a chicken coop, the chickens flapping around may well keep the predatory sequence cycling over and over again until there are no more chickens flapping around. Then the fox has more than it can eat. Obviously the fox doesn't care. The exact dynamics of this kind of thing are unknown. Maybe it depends on how lean the fox is, or the density of food opportunities in its home range, or even the fox's personality. Whatever the case, the fox is just responding to programming same as any other predatory animal, and it's not the only species that kills more than it needs. Orcas are known to kill whales just for the tongue, bears kill lots of animals for nutritionally important bits of them like fat deposits, and let's not forget humans. Some of them kill just for the sport of it. Often in conservation people are running to stay in the same spot. Most things that can buy time are worth the effort, because it takes time to figure out lasting solutions and often things are at a crisis point by the time anyone gets to extract money out of anyone to do some research. Sometimes even then it doesn't happen. Given foxes are still one of those problems with no lasting solutions in sight despite many years of research and ongoing funding, band-aids are all we've got. I guess that this is nicer than baits, and more specific.

That's a really hard question to answer without seeing the dog. Ultimately it's up to you to decide how bad it is and what compromises you are willing to make. In an ideal world, a good way to manage anything is to stay well away from any circumstance where it may occur in the first place. If you can give your dog sufficient exercise and mental stimulation without bumping into things that get him over-excited, that would be wonderful. You can try taking him out very early or late to try for quieter times, for example. Personally, I would be unlikely to sacrifice mental stimulation for avoiding potential trouble. If he gets stir crazy he will probably be worse. You will probably have to deal with him popping into stalk mode anyway, even if you try to avoid other dogs. There are a few strategies that might help to break his focus or reduce the intensity of his reactions. - Walking in an arc away from the other dog so you're steadily but not suddenly increasing the distance. - Wait him out in the one spot (not recommended if it takes him more than, say, a minute to stop straining or whatever and try something new). - Body block, putting yourself or another obstacle between him and whatever he's staring at so he can't see it anymore and try to back him out while continuing to block his view. - A head collar may be useful in breaking his focus and moving him in another direction, but you would have to get him used to wearing one first, which might take some counter-conditioning and desensitisation. You could use two leashes so you only touch the head collar one when you really need it. Some front attach harnesses might be similarly helpful but without the need for a lot of CC. IME they aren't great for steering dogs, although better than a leash on a flat or martingale collar. Other people with reactive dogs might have some better ideas. It's very difficult and goes against the grain to give advice about what might be acceptable rather than what might be ideal. No one here can tell you what will be best for you and your dog. You have to decide for yourself what you can or should do and what you won't or shouldn't.

Mogwai, I think you should embrace the boring foundation side of Control Unleashed. Games like LAT for some dogs are not really appropriate until you've done the basics with them. Things like the relaxation protocol, whiplash turns and leave it, default behaviours and automatic reorienting to you after going through a door and the likes. When these are second nature, they will all come to your rescue when you get out into the real world and face exciting things. It doesn't take that long if you are dedicated, and if you do it straight off the mark you will get the maximum effect of CU later down the track when you start playing the games. I expect the reason why your dog can't do things like heeling on cue when he's faced with an exciting environment has more to do with high arousal than anything. There are lots of gems in CU about bringing arousal down and being able to cue your dog to calm themselves. Teaching your dog to take a breath on cue has been hugely useful to us. Here's a video of Leslie demonstrating some of the games with her dogs. It shows how attentive they are to her. This attentiveness doesn't come just from playing things like LAT. It comes from a lot of foundation work getting the dogs used to paying attention to her and being rewarded for doing so. ETA And Aidan's advice for getting your dog working for food is great. In the past I've started with really good food in a quiet, safe environment and used that as my foot in the door. It takes very little time to get a dog working for any kind of food that way IME. Like, a week or less. Taking it on the road is a delicate matter. Start off asking for really, really easy things regardless of what you know they can do at home. Like whiplash turns. Move slowly to harder or longer behaviours. Don't get frustrated if it falls apart. Just go backwards a step or two and take it more slowly still.

Oh, I just realised Cosmolo already said basically everything I said in my last post. Sorry, Cosmolo, I did read it and thought it was great. I meant to just add a little to the excellent points you made but sometime in the last 24 hours I apparently forgot the 'little' bit. You know, TheLBD, I think I know some people who use CU games to avoid doing counter-conditioning. I was one of them at one point. I hate CC. It's boring and tedious. But nothing I know of is more universally effective. The last few months I've been blitzing Erik's milder triggers with CC with great success. I still hate it, though. :p Like training stays. I hate those, too. Both can be integrated nicely with CU at least, which helps slightly impetuous people like me knuckle down and do them. I joke that Kivi's stays are most reliable when I'm moving around because I can't sit still for 3 minutes doing nothing. It's not really a joke, though...

Teaching LAT is easy if you focus on what the dog's job is. Erik's job is to tell me he's noticed something by stopping and looking at it. Quietly. So if I see him doing that, I mark and reward. These days I don't so much because he's an old hand, but he'll get a "good boy" to tell him I've noticed he's doing a good job and thanks for telling me you saw something weird/spooky/exciting and normal coping rules apply. It helped me a lot to get ahead of him and reinforce responses of acceptable intensity that happened BEFORE he started doing something more problematic.

Thanks for the feedback, folks. It is very helpful to know if I'm pitching things at the right level. Thought I would mention that another problem with lots of exclusive "watch me" is that it can mask emotional issues. For example, Erik can get through a lot of things as long as he's doing something I've told him to do. It usually involves him staring at my face and fiercely ignoring whatever it is that has unsettled him. Sometimes to the extent that if I cue LAT he is resistant to doing it. Superficially, it looks like "Oh wow, look at that dog's phenomenal focus." but really it's "Oh dear, that dog is so keen to actively avoid that thing he won't even look at it." I suppose for me, it's an acceptable way to get him through a situation where he is really too close for comfort and there's nothing I can do about it and I'm happy enough to reinforce it in those situations as a management tool, but it doesn't change how he feels about the trigger much at all. While he's staring at me, no doubt his little heart is pounding and that puts him right up to his threshold so the slightest thing will tip him over the edge and see him unravel, which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid him doing. What's more, he's not experiencing a nice, calm state around the trigger, which is what I do what him doing, as that's what will help him change his association with it and therefore make him much easier to manage and a happier, better adjusted dog. What I really want to see from Erik is a good long look so I can see he is gathering the information he wants calmly and appropriately. As opposed to his cattle herding way, which tends to involve him barking and rushing at things. Lots of LAT glances tells me he is coping, but not well. Refusing to look tells me he is barely coping. LAT on cue only tells me he is coping well, and responding to a LAT cue with a long look tells me he has it together and is well in control of himself. Very nice. If he was just watching me all the time I think I would find it harder to pinpoint where he's at and adjust how I'm managing him as a result.

I should make it clear that Leslie doesn't often say the clicker acts as an interruptor, probably because people misunderstand. You're not clicking TO interrupt a behaviour. You're clicking to mark a quiet look before your dog ramps up. You're clicking to say "Good dog, you noticed that thing and you just looked. That's your job." But a side-effect of that is that the dog looks back to you and so they are looking away from the thing before they can get fixated. Doesn't mean they won't look back and get fixated, though. You have to make sure you're clicking looking, not staring. It's much easier to click the right thing if you are thinking about what you want your dog to do rather than what you don't want them to do.

The problem is we're talking to the average joe (no disrespect towards the OP) so taking one more thing to potentially go wrong out of the equation makes it easier. Who says the dog likes food anyway? Uh huh, but I think one of the reasons why there are CU fans all over the place in ever-growing numbers is because things like LAT are pretty easy to learn and implement, results come quickly, and it works for a variety of problems. Even if someone just does LAT and nothing else from CU and even if they don't even really do it well or properly, I would be surprised if they managed to address their problem without also getting some positive knock-on effects on their relationship with their dog. And LAT does tend to work. Most people seem to have success with it. Yep, and my point was that LAT does address relationships and gives you a really valuable management tool. If you want it. If you don't, then don't use it. OP seems to want it, though. You try clicking a clicker-savvy dog and tell me the click doesn't interrupt behaviour. :p It's a side-effect, but a potentially useful one. I certainly exploit it in training. In fact, the dog doesn't even have to be clicker savvy. It just helps. I am pretty confident Leslie McDevitt does not pull theories from the sky, either, so you're in good company. So use a verbal marker. Who cares? Clicker will work better, though. I hate the notion that a dog wants to work for their human. It just brings in all this emotional mess and expectations that are as likely to make things worse as better. I hate seeing people upset because they just can't figure out how to make their dog care about them. Some dogs are more independent than others, even if they are kelpies. I don't think we need to put this expectation on owners that their dog should want their attention and want to do what they tell them to. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. It doesn't really matter. If you build up a nice reinforcement history with them they will get that anyway, it will be a moot point and no one will feel miserable because their dog didn't read the working dog manual or some such. Really, it's just behaviour. There's nothing wrong with rewarding the heck out of it if you like it. That's how we get more of it! You use rewards that increase the behaviour they follow, whatever those are. I have plenty of reasons why I think it's worthwhile getting a dog to work for food, but that's another story.

Honestly, I think games like LAT are profoundly good at building trusting relationships between dogs and their handlers. If you ever watch a pro at it, it's far from tricks and clicker and treat exchange. It's a lot of cooperating and two-way communication with your dog. The benefit of LAT over straight focus on you is LAT gives the dog permission to gather information they have a strong compulsion to gather. It's kind of like acknowledging that there are things in the world that may demand your dog's attention other than you. LAT gives the dog the opportunity to attend to those things without disengaging from you. As a result, the dog stays attentive to you and also feels calmer because they can see what's going on. You're facing it as a team rather than asking them to ignore something that they are hard-wired not to ignore. The reason why we don't do it this way if we follow Control Unleashed is because we're trying to stop the dog from starting an unwanted behavioural sequence. This is especially important with sticky herding behaviours and the likes because once they get on the way it can be a challenge to interrupt them. The more a dog practices them, the harder it is to change their habits. I would guess at least 95% of the time, focusing on the target is the precursor to the unwanted behavioural sequence. If you interrupt then, you have a high probability of preventing the sequence from occurring at all. THIS IS VERY GOOD, particularly with self-reinforcing behaviours. In LAT, the clicker interrupts the behavioural sequence and the reward comes when the dog looks back to the handler. So it should go: dog orients to target -> click -> dog orients to handler -> treat. If the dog doesn't orient to the handler after the click, you know they are probably not in an operant state and you need more distance. You're substituting an unwanted behavioural sequence with a more appropriate and desirable one and hooking it onto whatever triggers the unwanted sequence, so in the end the trigger itself cues the desired behavioural sequence (LAT). It's like any behaviour in that you can fade out the rewards later if you want, but people have a tendency to use LAT with reinforcement as a bit of a management crutch. Probably because it's so effective! Depending on the nature of the problem you're trying to treat, you can completely get rid of it with LAT and stop cueing it at all, or you will eventually plateau, which suggests you probably have some bigger emotional or arousal problems to deal with if you really want to put it to bed. It's not like it's the only way to tackle the problem and I'm not dissing other ways, but it is tried and true with all sorts of problematic dogs all over the world. To really understand why, you have to delve a bit deeper into the CU program. The subtleties that come out in discussions amongst CU practitioners are eye opening. It's a hell of a lot more than a few tricks. Relationship is a massive part of it.

It's not exactly a big secret. More information about the context of this study in the lab's broader research interests can be found here:http://crl.ucsd.edu/~ahorowit/dogresearch You can always e-mail the researchers and ask them if you have questions. It's a well-known canine behaviour lab. If lots of people contribute they can learn plenty from 1 minute of video. They don't need a complete documentation of every kind of play a single person engages in with their dog to learn stuff.

This is a new citizen science dog study that has just been launched. The request is that anyone around the world film themselves playing with their dog for about a minute and submit the video so that researchers can study how people and dogs play together. http://doghumanplay.com/

When your Kong rolled under the lounge chair. When your human won't let you eat that piece of bread with tomato sauce that's on the ground but offers you some meat instead. (*pout* "But I want bread.") You can't decide what order to eat your chicken wings in and have to lay them all out next to each other on the ground to choose. Your chicken has half-formed eggs in its body cavity. Ewww, gross. There are goobers in my food. A pet rabbit is on your bed. A hairy spider is floating in your water bowl. A bird found the bone you were taking a break from for a moment, took it into the nearest tree, and then accidentally dropped it into the next door neighbour's yard. Another dog in a yard says a rude word to you as you're walking past.

The public access test is not easy for a dog to pass, and I believe they have to pass it every year. Most assistance dog organisations breed their own dogs and most of them don't make it to service dog. That may give you some indication of how hard it actually is. The training takes a long time and dedication, but even then you need a special kind of dog to make it.

Yeah, I know. I had agility classes I had driven an hour to get to that I walked away from 10 minutes in because my dog wasn't in a good working state. It's a pain when it's the only time in the week I had access to most of the equipment and the instructors, but... bigger picture. It's not a waste of time to sit down on the outskirts of class for an hour and work on getting the right emotional state, even if you quit agility the next week. :p It's money in the bank to see past your plans to underlying problems and work on them then and there, plans be damned. Our agility problems were symptoms of a bigger problem I needed to quit agility to resolve. Ken Ramirez says you should walk into every training session with a plan and then throw it out the window the moment you lay eyes on the animal in front of you. I have always liked this advice. I think it captures what makes good training. Always have solid plans for where you're going and how you'll get there and what you're up to and always be prepared to change them to suit the other half of the training equation. I flirted with being the one to dictate what we were doing when and it was a stupendous failure. Now I just condition. Slow and steady and at times frustrating, but solid foundation work is priceless.

Only because I'm interested in what people plan versus what they take advantage of!! I think both are of equal value. But I look at what I did with Kenz and what I have been doing with Hamish and I'm interested in the difference. As a youngster Kenzie had many formal training session, and she was so advanced at so many things at a young age. Hamish has had much less formal training and I can see the difference between them. The big difference I see is that Kenzie was taught early to "learn", which is something I haven't done enough of with Hamish and that is actually my focus now. So Hamish is now getting some more "formal training" sessions compared to what he used to get. And I think that people tend to teach different things in formal vs incidental, which seems to have been a bit reflected here (in that many have mentioned new things get taught formally whereas practice and proofing tends to happen more incidentally). I don't really differentiate. It's just a big mashup for me. I know what I'm working towards, where I'm up to, and what needs work. A lot of the tricks we have fun with serve multiple purposes and contribute to more formal skills and behaviours. I train what I feel like training at the time because I'm in it for fun, but I'm flexible and take advantage of what the environment throws at me. I have plans in that I know what I'm working on, but they are adaptable plans. My main focus is to have fun with my dogs. If they aren't having fun or I'm not having fun, the plan is not a good one and should be ditched or put on hold for now.

Why does there have to be a line between 'formal' and 'incidental'?

I just thought I'd put this out there in case some found it useful... Not saying that it's perfect or anything! I had just turned the video on a few weeks ago to film some training when Erik decided he was disturbed by this softball practice going on in the field. I pretty much had to leave the video on while I managed him, but when I checked it later I realised it's actually not a bad video for showing LAT in particular, and our use of default downs. Erik is very barky, so this is pretty low level reactions from him. If this happened tomorrow I don't think I would reinforce so much, but he wouldn't need it. I hadn't been aware he had improved that much! The sheer frequency of his offered LATs is an indication he's pretty disturbed in this video. Erik deeply mistrusts ball games. The second bit of the clip shows him barking for attention instead of because he was bothered. See if you can pick the difference. It's hard especially because the volume is quiet.