corvus

That happened to me once and I stood back and watched in bemusement as she tried to poke his neck, knowing full well she would not get a finger on him unless I helped her. She also said "tsst" at him, which made him bark at her more than he already was. I am never rude to dog owners, though. My dogs are very distinctive. One day my dogs might get out and find themselves on the road. I'm not going to give anyone a reason not to stop and pick them up for me. It could be the difference between life and death. I can suck it up and be polite for that no matter how rude they are to me. Mostly they don't know they are being rude. They just don't know what I think is good or poor manners. A trainer told me recently that Kivi was so fat he had rolls of fat. She told me this because she had said I fed him too many treats and he was going to get fat and I said I'd been feeding him that many treats for 3 years and was he fat now? I shouldn't have set her up. I pointed out it was actually loose skin and you could feel his ribs without much trouble even through his thick coat. She insisted he was fat. I looked her in the eye, nodded, and said "All right, he's fat." It cost me nothing. There's no point getting upset about it. He doesn't care, so the only one that matters is me. If I know she's wrong then there's nothing to be upset about.

Cane Corso? Dobermann? Giant Schnauzer?

I have lived around a lot of buckets and troughs and never seen any snake of any species around or in them. But hey, what would I know, I only live around buckets of water in snake territories. My aunt and uncle lived for years above a small creek where they had seen a Tiger snake. They had a pond stocked with small frogs and water dishes for the dogs and never saw a Tiger in their yard. Does it mean Tigers don't seek out water dishes or ponds? No. Tigers are complex creatures and we don't entirely understand how they use their microhabitats and what drives their movements. Maybe that Tiger dropped by regularly and was never seen. Maybe it was never seen becuase it never went up there. Maybe a neighbour had a pond the snake liked better. I'm not picking on you or refuting what you have seen. I am not saying you are wrong. I am suggesting you may not have the full story and therefore your conclusions might be premature. What makes your experiences more truthful than anyone else's? You say you've seen them seeking out water, suddenly someone else realises they have seen them near water, and someone else sees one curled up by the ceramic water bowl where the temperature is just right, or under a trough where there is shelter and now snakes seeking out water is conventional wisdom. That's how all the silliness about snakes not sharing yards with Blue-togues and so on comes about. Anything dangerous tends to be surrounded by myths.

No!

What about them? Lots of snakes love frogs. Lots of birds love frogs as well. So do foxes, cats, bats, and quolls. Platypus live on the edge of water bodies. That's their habitat. Doesn't mean they are going to come live in your yard because you have dog bowls full of water. I think you will find water is definitely a factor in any population of pretty much any species of animal on earth. With a few exceptions.

Loose dogs are causing illness, now?? Wow, watch out everyone. Keep some throat lozenges on you when out walking the dogs. I'm gonna dose up on Vitamin C before I take my boys out. Stay safe! Now that I think about it, I shouted at some dogs last week and ever since I've had a slight cough. Coincidence?? I think not!

I've only ever seen two snakes in the water and one was a python that curled up under a log underwater to get away from us and the other was in Yellow Waters at Kakadu and it got snapped up by a Jabiru. The channels there are many with vegetation overhanging the water. The snakes are only in the water because there's not much land! They get them in the irrigation channels inland, but they get trapped in the gates like every other animal that can swim. Water isn't as easy to come by out there. I've walked around in small and extensive wetlands and never laid eyes on a snake. I did a 10 day field trip setting up fykes in rivers and wetlands and didn't see a single snake. We caught everything else that ever went in the water in those traps. Someone else saw one on the edge of the river. That was November when they are very active. I asked the people that have done a lot of those trips if they ever caught snakes and they said they did once. I have done loads of frog surveys at night and never seen a snake in or around the water during a frog survey. Sorry, I'm just not feeling like the water thing is a fact with snakes. IME they readily take to the water, but that doesn't equate to loving to swim and actively seeking out water sources like dog water bowls and pools. Like I said, we no doubt have snakes around, but we have a pool and we've never had a snake in it and never seen a snake in our yard. We've had 4 species of lizard, a rat, and frogs in the pool, but never a snake. I imagine if we stayed here long enough we'd get a snake in the pool. Pretty much everything falls in sooner or later. Don't forget that snakes need to seek shelter from heat as well. They overheat if they are in the open when it's over 32.

I saw another rare breed at the spring fair. Podengo Pequeno! :D I got to have a play and a cuddle. What a charming little breed. We saw the Xolos, too. OH said he wanted to help oil them.

We have a pool and live across the road from a gully reserve. Never seen a snake in the yard.

That was Kivi. I took a break and taught him to target and started getting him to put his paws or nose on various items I indicated. By the time I eventually got back to the mat he had no trouble. Sometimes it helps to use something raised above ground level to target. It's easier to notice!

If I'm trying to get a dog to target, regardless of the target or the body part to target with, I approach it much the same way. Pay BIG any time they are in the desired place. A handful of treats in a matter of seconds. Then call them off it. Start from very close to the mat so she only has to take a step. At first, I wouldn't care if she is down on it or not. I'd just pay for moving onto it. Once she's moving to the mat, then you can either add down on it or get it happening from all angles. Toss the food in every direction so they have to go get it and go back to the mat from a different angle/distance. Erik has a "bugger off" cue that means he should go to his mat and lie down on it. He takes it very seriously, the cutie. It's a good skill, whether you want to use it in agility or not. I use it to station my dogs when I'm training one at a time.

We saw one on a fire trail 2 weeks ago and one on a walking track in late June. Both small browns. First snakes I've seen in the Sutherland Shire since we moved here 3 1/2 years ago. For every one you see there are 5 you don't.

I always fret when one of my animals is not very interested in training (including the hare). I think that sometimes they are out of sorts. I usually find it does go all day and sometimes into the next. It's good to keep in mind, I think, that we don't know what their cortisol levels are doing and how they are feeling. In my books, my animal is out of sorts if I can't get them interested by asking for easy things and giving a very high reward rate. They will be withdrawn and inactive and not show any interest in what I'm doing. Who knows why they are out of sorts? I just keep an eye on them and get happy when they start acting like normal again. If it's more like they are being scatter-brained or distracted, I usually consider there's a problem with the environment and I'm asking too much. It's incredible what the dogs will do even when they are not entirely comfortable. Erik is highly functional even when he's barely there because he's so distracted. It just shows in a drop in reliability and focus. If my dogs are looking around, missing cues, performing the wrong behaviours, needing several cues instead of one... I up the reward rate or take them away from the immediate surroundings so I can better see what is upsetting them. Distance makes everything clearer, I find.

Well, the title of the study is 'Dog Bite Injury: an investigation into the effectiveness of regulation'. Does it seem strange there were a lot of bully types? No!

BAT and CAT could be argued to be based on eliciting a response. It's not rocket science. Just keeping it low key so the response elicited is one you want to reward. ETA BAT= Behaviour Adjustment Training, CAT= Constructional Aggression Treatment. Both use R- to some extent, I think.

Yes, that's the point. Anything will reinforce what they already think. Regardless of whether they are pro-pitbull or anti-pitbull. Regardless of whether there are tattoos in the video or fluffy bunnies. So what's the big deal?

I'm an animal behaviour scientist. We have no scientific standards! At least, we try to have them but our study subjects usually have other ideas. They hardly ever react the way you anticipate, which usually means a lot of tweaking of methods goes on. Particularly if you're looking at something that hasn't been looked at before. Having said that, have you considered that cutting down his stimulation and exercise actually put him into a mild depression? Less arousal = less reactive behaviour? And having said THAT, you're probably right anyway. Trigger stacking in dogs can be a major problem. I've seen Erik fine with two different things on their own, but if they are both present together he starts barking. Add another trigger on top of that and he picks one and runs at them. He does give signs that he's vaguely bothered by something if I look hard enough, though. It helped a lot to consider his job to be noticing things and telling me with LAT. Then I started to notice the more subtle signals I had been missing. He has a look about him when he's thinking about barking at something.

No, what I have done is explain one very powerful aspect of human psychology that is relevant to the discussion. I never said you can't alter perceptions. I said a single video won't change anyone's mind. I doubt a single video will alter perceptions, either when it comes to it, even in fence-sitters. Unless it's a very clever one. Anyone who watches the Gruen knows there is a lot of psychology in advertising. ;) What's a pro-pittie video in the scheme of things? Nothing. The ones that already like pitties will still like them, the fence-sitters will be looking for more balanced information, and the ones that already don't like pitties will still dislike them. Sorry to rain on your parade, but brow-beating the folks that like the vid about the content of the video and different ideas of public perception and associations is a little pointless in the face of it. Why don't people put their energy towards more constructive things, like pooling all their ideas and criticisms and launching a campaign to 'workover' the public perception of pitbulls, for example? If you all know how to do it better, then go do it better.

Well that explains it all, doesnt it. Hugh Worthless, was it? He wouldnt know what a pitbull was if it bit him on the ass. And you just proved my point about confirmation bias. It wasn't just Hugh Wirth. He didn't do it on his own. There were other people on the panel that were in complete agreement. Like I said, it's not people being stupid, it's people being people. They knew what they saw couldn't be right the same way a lot of other people knew what they saw could be right. They found a way to protect their beliefs and that was to become convinced that what they were seeing was not a pitbull. This is how the human mind works. We see pitbulls where we expect to see them and we see not-pitbulls where we know pitbulls can't be. IMO it was an extreme case, but who knows what those people had experienced to make them so convinced pitbulls are the spawn of satan. ETA My mate left the RSPCA, but he was convinced the pitbull restriction would be repealed eventually. He said the decision in the first place was made by so few and did not represent the views of even all of the RSPCA managers. He said there were people in there now working to get it changed. Maybe he was displaying a bit of confirmation bias as well. Or maybe it will get repealed eventually.

People have their negative opinions on anything confirmed by anything at all. That's why it's called confirmation bias. Seriously, people will go out of their way to find evidence that confirms an already held belief and they actively avoid any situation in which they might find evidence to refute an already held belief. They will even find evidence to support a belief from things completely unrelated to that belief. Read, a video is not going to change anyone's mind about pitbulls no matter what the content is, how the dogs are portrayed, what they are wearing, who they are hanging with or what they are doing. So this whole argument about image is pointless. I have a mate who used to be a manager for the RSPCA. When the pitbull legislation was on the table, a bunch of RSPCA shelter employees made a video with a pitbull who was doing therapy and stuff with kids and all sorts of ambassadorial things. They sent the video to the people they had to convince in the RSPCA and none of them even believed it was a pitbull. They said it couldn't be because of the things it was doing. Pitbulls can't do that because they are too dangerous. End of story. They were not convinced and they never will be, maybe not even if they experience it for themselves. They are not blind or stupid. They are just humans deep in the clutches of confirmation bias. A video may help make up the mind of someone sitting on the fence, but who knows how they will interpret the video.

I thought the OP was conversing with experts?

Teach her to take a breath on cue! I freaking love this. It's apparently explained in the CU book and it's on the foundation dvds, but I missed it the first time around. I taught it to my dogs by holding food above their noses and marking when their nostrils flared or when they shut their mouth. You can use it in conjunction with LAT to speed up calming down. Can you video working with her so you can see what you're doing or show someone else? I had the same issue and it turned out I was creating a chain that went bark, come when called over, perform some behaviour on cue, then bark again. I now have a 10 second rule where I don't reward anything within 10 seconds of behaviour I don't want. It's hard to stick to sometimes, though.

I swear Erik had one 12 month long fear period. I just kept treats handy for emergency counter-conditioning. I prefer to work them through it then and there. Never had it fail yet.

Pessimistic about unknown dogs? ;) I would be, too, if I had been attacked by one and did not know why or how to stop it from happening again. The real insidious side of this is that for all we know, she feels that every time she behaved aggressively and was not subsequently attacked she averted disaster. Animals (and humans) are intensely superstitious. We are all looking for ways to control our environment. If it seems to her that behaving aggressively is working she will just keep doing it more and more. It becomes her default. IMO it's imperative that she not be put in situations where she will feel compelled to get in first and act aggressively to avert a disaster that probably would never happen if she did nothing. As long as she is practising that aggression she doesn't know the disaster wouldn't have happened. It may appear to escalate in frequency, and that would be expected if the behaviour is being reinforced in some way. It as well as an escalation in intensity would also be expected if rather than being desensitised to other dogs by repeated interactions she is being sensitised. This happens when the dog is routinely being pushed too far in the presence of the triggers, and it means the more she is exposed the more sensitive she becomes to any signals that suggest she might be exposed, and she reacts to those by getting her back up and being prepared to fight if she has to. Once she's prepared, it's like going around with a loaded gun. It won't take much to trigger her. The "best" way to deal with it is the way that works with the least amount of stress for her and you. The broadly accepted method is desensitisation because it aims at changing the dog's emotional response to the things that upset her. What's more, it aims to keep the dog always below the point where she would react aggressively. This is generally accepted to be minimally stressful for a frightened dog. It can take time and be difficult to manage, though. There are lots of good tools out there for helping you manage, like the games from Control Unleashed by Leslie McDevitt. But anyway, Underdog can help you with all of that stuff.

This might be a good start: http://www.hilltopanimalhospital.com/deferential%20behavior.htm More info: http://www.vin.com/VINDBPub/SearchPB/Proceedings/PR05000/PR00470.htm