corvus

Any ideas?

Teach the dog to target your hand with their nose. Once they are good at that, hold the collar out between the dog and your hand and cue them to target again. Much bribery with food may be necessary at first. A jackpot of food when they put their head through works well.

My corgi was a chronic air snapper in her later years. It just took proactive management, moving her out of situations that tended to cause her to snap before she did. A lot of the problem was due to some unpleasant experiences with strange dogs that she eventually mostly got over by buying space with air snaps. I didn't know enough about behaviour at the time to realise I didn't have to just stand there and watch it, or to realise that every time she bought space with an air snap it make air snapping more of a default behaviour. These days I reward non-aggressive coping strategies. Erik gets treats if he tells a dog in his face to go away without using his teeth or his voice. He also gets success. If the dog didn't pay attention to his non-aggressive signals, I intervene and make sure it gives Erik some space. Incidentally, she NEVER did it to the 'wrong dog'. She was pretty savvy.

Desensitisation works when a dog is exposed to something repeatedly but at a level where they can cope with it without snapping. The important thing to remember about this is that if you repeatedly expose them to the thing they are worried about and they do actually snap or bark or otherwise do something to try to buy distance from it, it will sensitise them instead of desensitise them. That means they become more sensitive to the thing that worries them than they already were and the problem behaviour will kick in earlier and probably more with more intensity. In short, it will make it worse.

The short answer is reward him when he's looking at a big dog but not barking, lunging or snapping. If he does any of those things, he is too close to the large dog. Keep him far enough from large dogs that he won't snap. Watch his body language. If he goes stiff and still, you're on thin ice. The more you reward him for calm behaviour around big dogs, the closer he will be able to tolerate them. Go at his pace and don't push him. For every time he is around big dogs and doesn't snap, give yourself a point. Every time he snaps at a large dog, deduct from yourself 10 points. It is your job to manage the situation so he is comfortable. The long answer would come from the behaviourist you should hire to explain to you exactly what is happening and design a multi-faceted program to help you help him.

Petcare 2000 in Taren Point often has tails and roo shanks as well. The shanks are great. Meaty and there's a little marrow up for grabs as well. Just gotta watch the bones as they tend to splinter. I just bought 5kg of mince from Petbarn that was labelled 70% roo, 30% beef and tripe. It's packed by the All Vet Natural company, which is supposed to be preservative free AFAIK. It seems pretty good quality. Cost about $25.

Penny would often end up in odd places, like under a housemate's bed where she never went normally. I ended up making several den-like places for her to choose from, because I couldn't figure out exactly what she wanted. Just darkness and an enclosed space was not it. She seemed to like something quite solid on two or three sides, but she wanted to be with people as well. I just tried to help her find a place she could feel safe. If she was panting and shaking a lot, I would sit with her with an arm over her while I read a book or watched TV. Sometimes it helped a little. My housemate's dog was all right, but a couple of times he was frightened by big claps of thunder and literally came and thrust his head into my chest if I was the closest human. He genuinely wanted a cuddle, so I would give him one and he'd be okay after that and would take himself back to his bed and lie down again. A cuddle when he wanted one definitely helped him cope when he was scared.

Aw, thanks. This is a real bug bear of mine. I'm sorry if I got a bit ranty. It's nothing personal, Kirislin, just frustrates me that it's such a widespread belief and one I believe can do more harm than good.

This reminds me of Erik, who doesn't have a problem with dogs in general, but has a problem if there is an absence of dogs and then just one comes into view. For him I have had very good success with LAT played in places where we have lots of space to move and good visibility. We have a sporting complex in the next suburb comprising of 4 playing fields, a series of mountain bike tracks, and a cycle track going through it all. It is rarely busy, but often we encounter just one dog being walked, which is just the kind of thing that gets Erik going. Because it's mostly playing fields, we can see the dog a long way off and start playing LAT very early. We can usually pass the dog far enough away that Erik doesn't lose it. Lots of practise with 'telling' me there's a dog by looking but not barking does get generalised to sitations where dogs are closer. The key for Erik is starting early. If they pop out of nowhere, he tends to be much harder. It's a lost cause if they lunge at him. Do you know anyone with a good stooge dog? If you don't have a good place to practise LAT where the visibility is good and there's room to move, I'd be trying to set up some BAT sessions. The idea is to gradually work the dog up to walking past calmly by always rewarding them for calm behaviour by taking them away from the other dog until they are comfortable enough that they don't need to be taken away.

It is NOT the worst thing you can do! What you are seeing is an emotional response. It is not operative, therefore, it does not fall under the rules of the quadrants. You cannot reinforce it. I repeat, you cannot reinforce it. There is so much confusion around this and it drives me crazy because dogs suffer because people are too afraid to do anything lest they reinforce something that cannot be reinforced with rewards. Positive reinforcement creates a positive emotional state. Fear is a negative emotional state. They are antagonistic. One will win out. "Rewarding" fearful behaviour can only help change a fearful animal's emotional state to a positive one. The confusion I think lies in coddling. Lots of nervous energy around a dog that is already fearful does not make them feel better. Making baby sounds and cooing over them and so on may well make them worse, but not because it is rewarding. It just prepares them to feel frightened and arouses them so they become more reactive. Calm comforting will not make it worse. It probably won't make it better either, but I know dogs that it did help, my own being one of them. Some of us spent years stoically ignoring our fearful dogs because we thought it was best for them, only to try comforting as a last resort when they were old and we figured it couldn't get any worse. If your dog can't settle on their own, there is nothing at all wrong with comforting them if it calms them.

You can't reinforce fear. If she wants to be close to you because she's terrified, why wouldn't you let her? It's not like it can get much worse. My old girl was terrified of fireworks. When the commercial ones were going off across the road I sat under my desk with her pressed under my legs and held her there. If I didn't hold her she would run around hysterically. She was better being held. You don't have to coddle or anything. Just be there for her. Calmly.

Don't reward him when he does something Dan says. You're confirming his notion that you're the only one that matters. Like PF said, that is unfair to Dan. Dan should be the one to reward.

Then use a different consequence. Train him to do something else instead and reward when he does it. That and counter-conditioning are the basis of the majority of behaviour modification. Don't dwell on your helplessness. You are not helpless. You can provide a consequence in this situation that does not depend on your emotional commitment to the wellbeing of people you don't like.

I don't get why it's such a big deal to react to a few bad experiences with wariness. It's not a big deal. It's perfectly natural and adaptive. You can bet I am damn wary of any cute and fluffy glider I have to handle. I know from experience they chomp regularly and do a fair bit of damage when they do. Oh, what a shame I can't love them the same way I love harmless little native doves. I am also damn wary of getting large parrots or hawks out of mist nets. I'm wary of any cornered animal, including dogs of any breed. Because I've been chomped on or attacked by cornered animals. Associations happen. Who cares? I will never look at Irish Setters the same after we had that one charge us with teeth bared and roaring. He turned out to be friendly with a very bizarre greeting ritual, but I didn't know that when he was scaring the pants off me, so the negative association lingers. With enough positive or neutral experiences it will naturally fade. That's evolution, people, and I'm grateful for it. Otherwise I'd get chomped a lot more often or I'd be wary of a lot more things than I need to be wary of. Approach/avoidance is one of the most deeply emotional and subconscious things we can learn.

Maybe I don't appreciate what it's like to have a dog very sensitive to me because I don't have one, but I do have a dog that is really sensitive to signals. Erik knows if another dog is even thinking about doing something exciting. He is unbelievably tuned in. If we want to change his behavioural response to a signal, we train an alternative behaviour. For example, he sees someone out running and he barks at them, so we have been training him that when he sees someone out running, he should look, but not bark and he will be rewarded. I don't see why how you feel should be the thing that determines how he behaves. Generally, the consequence drives behaviour, not the signal that prompts it. Don't feel like you can't do anything because your feelings are determining his behaviour. That's not necessarily the case and besides which, you actually can change how he responds to your signals. Obviously rousing on him isn't a consequence he particularly cares about in this instance.

Depends on the origin of the behaviour, obviously. I sense you are asking what I would do if I thought the behaviour had its origins in insecurity or anxiety of some sort. It would depend on whether it was general anxiety or anxiety that could be traced to specific sources. If specific sources, counter-conditioning is always a good place to start. If general, interrupt. Our Min Pin visitor marks inside several times every single time he visits. I keep a sharp eye on him and if he looks like he's giving something a good sniff I distract him before he can lift his leg. Hopefully. He settles down within the first 12 hours and the behaviour stops on its own.

Marking people is not necessarily a lack of respect. Obviously it would be if a human did it, but we need to not jump to conclusions just because it's something that's very rude to us. We don't know how the dog views a human leg or a coat over a chair. Like I said before, sometimes dogs do it when they are feeling insecure. We don't know how their perception of the world may change with their emotional state. Truly, sometimes dogs don't know how to behave and they default to instinctive behaviours. I'm not saying we should excuse it and do nothing about it, but I am saying that sometimes these things can be an indicator of a disturbed, frightened, unsettled, anxious or uncomfortable dog. I don't think that dogs should be punished for feeling like that, regardless of the behaviour that comes as a result of those feelings. Yes, sometimes dogs just need to be taught that people's stuff is not a pee-mail box, but it's not always as simple as that. If a dog is behaving that way because they are anxious, shouting at them, calling them names and so on is most likely going to make it worse if it does anything at all. Even if you manage to suppress the marking behaviour, do you think you have dealt with the underlying emotional state? Incidentally, Kivi marked someone's leg, once. It was indicative of a lack of aim! He was going for the bench the guy was sitting on. I was still mortified, but it's the only time he's ever done it and I'm not gonna hustle him into a rigid NILIF program on the off chance that it was a display of a lack of respect for this poor stranger sitting on a bench that Kivi did not even look at.

Hasn't been my experience. I've had dog owners at our local park telling me with troubled frowns what they think leads to problems and trying to reason out a way to handle it. Mostly they react, though, which is why some owners really struggle with their dogs. The dogs get overexcited and suddenly good wholesome play turns nasty and a blue occurs. The dogs involved get told off and put back on leash and taken away, but if the owners had seen it coming they could have intervened before it got nasty. Some of them have a vague sense of this and will try, but don't have the foundation training in place for it to work. Others just have no idea there are precursors to what happened. If something is going down with my dogs, I step in fast and explain to the owner why I did step in. They will give me puzzled looks, but sometimes they look harder at their own dogs, and start trying to control the behaviour that caused the problem, and sometimes they tell me why they think their dog is doing it. There are always going to be some people that haven't the faintest idea that their dogs have feelings that are different to theirs, and no interest in learning about how to tell what their dog is feeling or how to be considerate dog park users, but why focus on those when there are people out there who do care and just haven't been taught? And there are more of them than people on this forum think. Everyone is too busy writing off the average Joe as a failure of a dog owner or yelling at them for being ignorant to actually talk to them and find out how they feel about their dogs. I am not kidding when I say I have had complete strangers ask me why I think their dog doesn't like huskies, or why their dog plays well one minute and then snaps a moment later. There are a lot of dog owners out there who do care, but just don't know how to find out more and don't have the motivation to look very hard. That doesn't mean they wouldn't listen if the information was easy to get hold of.

Well... I wouldn't be so quick to write it off as dominant, antagonistic, or threatening behaviour. I have known male dogs that mark when they are uncomfortable in their surroundings. They aren't especially discriminatory as a general rule, but that's not to say they wouldn't target areas that smell strongly of someone they are not comfortable with, be that human or dog. It must make them feel better to smell themselves when all around them are smells that unsettle them. Add to that the paw chewing, which absolutely can be a sign of anxiety, and I'm not seeing a dominant dog. I'm seeing an anxious dog. As for the antagonistic behaviour towards people that are frightened of him, I have a dog that is positively drawn to people who don't want to talk to him. I honestly think he just reads tension in their bodies, or just sees someone behaving strangely and he has to go and sticky beak. I don't think it's odd at all that he gets in their personal space. He doesn't understand what they are on about and being the social fellow he is who has had nothing but good experiences with people, he doesn't even hesitate in going over there for a closer look. What's he got to lose? He will lean on people and get way too close to their food if he thinks he might be allowed to sneak a morsel. He doesn't have much sense of personal space. He gets told to go away and he does, but I can't guarantee it would work with someone who wasn't confident around him or who was drawing away from him. That kinda looks like withdrawing from the food to leave a space open for him to have a go. This is how dogs read each other all the time. If they are ready to let someone else have a go at their resource, they move away from it. If they are not, they hover over it and don't open a space for another dog to enter. Standing too close is pushy in my mind. It's like saying "Hey. I'm pretty sure you're done, right?" So I don't stand around and let it happen because I'd hate for that behaviour to be rewarded, but I wouldn't be especially concerned about it. It might be a red flag for a very confident dog, but hey, I like very confident dogs. It completely does not surprise me that he runs away if the person who copped a marking tries to tell him off. They have no history with him like you do. If he's run away and been safe once, he'll keep doing it. All that said, though, I haven't seen him so I don't know what is driving his behaviour. Just ideas.

Thanks. That's a fair bit closer than Burns or Myella or Luddenham.

"Other one" That's what we use. Perfectly natural. We don't have one for this but use pointing and "here" or "this side" instead. I expect they pay more attention to the hands. "Weave", and we don't have one for the other one. I've only put it on cue for Erik and used a gesture as if I were pulling his backside around to my side. I don't know. We make up our own. I tend to find the physical signal comes first and I usually find a verbal signal comes naturally or not at all. For example, Erik comes from behind through my legs when I walk like a cowboy and say "Where are you?" I didn't mean to make a verbal cue, but I kept saying it because I was never sure if he was going to turn up or not. We have "over!" to tell the dogs to jump over something, which is a nice, general cue so works well as a verbal. Also "Up-up!" for jumping onto something, and "back-back" for walking backwards. I direct with my hands, though. So the verbal cue tells them what to do and the physical cue tells them where to do it. If I always want them to do the same thing in the same place, I find a specific cue for it. It can be verbal or physical or both. I've been teaching Erik to walk backwards in a circle around my foot as I move it in a circle around him like I'm stirring him. I have no idea what I would call that, but that's okay because Erik responds to the foot movement. I've been trying to teach him the concept of "vault" to get him to put both feet on something while he's jumping over it rather than jumping clean over it. I want him to "over" or "vault" on my cue rather than what feels right to him at the time. It's hard, though! He is not entirely sure why his jumps get rewarded sometimes and not at others. I slowed it down and added a hand signal to suggest he put his front paws there, but although he follows the hand signal well, he hasn't put it together yet.

I'm okay feeding them a little off meat, but I'd rather not feed them exclusively off meat for weeks on end. I know a dog that gastro from eating chicken that was a little off and she was quite sick with it. My dogs seem to think if it's been sitting around in open for a week, they should roll in it, but if it's been there for 2 weeks or more, it's food. It astonishes me what they can eat without getting sick, but I've heard the bugs in chilled meat are particularly nasty. Not sure if that's true, but at any rate I'm not keen on my freezer stinking like off meat. Who is the meat wholesaler you buy beef mince from?

What, the dog parks you don't go to? Did you all see the little dog 'chase' the bigger pup under a chair with friendly tail wags? Those would be the dog parks I walk past, drive past and listen to the stories of other users here. Then I get to see the scars and the drains put in dogs I meet out and about. The dog attack reported last week occurred in one of the three Canberra dog parks Corvus. All I can say is count your blessings if your local is good but you yourself say you avoid some dog parks. Provocation successful. I go to lots of different dog parks and off leash beaches. I must have to count my blessings several times over that there's only one local dog park I don't go to much because of the other dogs. It helps to have friendly, well socialised dogs myself. There is nothing like watching dogs interact more or less freely for learning about dog behaviour. I think it's just about as useful for owners as it is for dogs. I'm always pointing out signals to OH and quizzing him on what it means. He's pretty good! :D Someone ought to break up that huge indoor dog meet into small groups and have knowledgeable people give a running commentary to the owners about what is being communicated. I reckon dog parks would be better for everyone if people were made aware of common signals their dogs might display and things they should be watching for. I went to a playgroup like that once and it was good having someone pointing out a lot of the subtleties that were going on. It teaches people when and how to intervene. If the waggy little dog was mine, I would have called it away when the other dog was first showing signs of discomfort, but situations can change rapidly and sometimes it's not the best thing to do IMO. A fast retreat can trigger the other dog to chase and nip. Sometimes it's better to gently turn one dog away and then get between them so you're blocking the other dog's view while your dog retreats. It takes the pressure off more gradually and with less visual stimulation, I think. Not so easy to pull off in a timely fashion when you're not the closest human, though.

What, the dog parks you don't go to? Did you all see the little dog 'chase' the bigger pup under a chair with friendly tail wags?

Yes, vet behaviourists have specialised in animal behaviour medicine.