corvus

There are some good ideas here: http://positively.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=11123 Thinking about the problem in terms of functional rewards is something that I find really helpful in figuring out a strategy for changing behaviour. If I can figure out what the dog wants, I can make its delivery contingent on behaviour I like. IME even if what the animal wants is for you to leave them alone, if they come to feel like they can tell you to leave them alone and you will always honour it, they don't feel like they need to ask you to leave them alone so much. If that makes sense. So you teach them to ask nicely, like by looking away. When they look away you leave. You can add markers if you like and build a safety signal. A sense of control is a powerful thing.

And mine have? Because they mix with strange dogs? They get traumatised? My previous dog got traumatised walking up her own driveway. There was no controlling that interaction. Recently a dog tried to traumatise the boys when they were walking on leash with me down the street. There was no controlling that interaction, either. I didnt read OSS's comment as criticising you- in fact the beginning of the post reads quite the opposite. Seems to me she was merely relating her experience. Nor did I, but it begs the question, don't you think? Obviously it's a rhetorical question because no one knows what my dogs might have been through and how I interpreted it.

Me too. For lots of reasons. If play between dogs is a test of strength, why do dogs who live together often play with each other more than with dogs they don't know? Is it also a test of strength when dogs play with humans? What about self-handicapping? What's the point in that if play is about strength? What's the point of bite inhibition? What's the point of role-reversals? Or bigger dogs laying down on the ground when playing with smaller dogs?

And mine have? Because they mix with strange dogs? They get traumatised? My previous dog got traumatised walking up her own driveway. There was no controlling that interaction. Recently a dog tried to traumatise the boys when they were walking on leash with me down the street. There was no controlling that interaction, either.

There's nothing more interesting than watching dogs talk. Except perhaps watching Grey-crowned Babbler families. No, I think dogs are still more interesting. Seriously, the most interesting talk goes on between dogs that are not familiar with each other. All these new rules come into play, they modify their signals, exaggerate them to make themselves more clearly understood, and if they play they change their play style to suit the new dog. I have learnt so much from watching my dogs talk dog with other dogs. It's kind of like, you can learn a list of words and even some grammar in another language, but you really need to hear it being spoken to start to understand the deeper nuances to the words and how they are used in different contexts. The more I watch my dogs talk dog, the less anxious I feel about dogs I don't know mixing with them.

Depends on what you want. I get ribbed every time I dare say what I do, so I'll leave that one alone! Pfft. As Bob Bailey said recently, people should spend less time on internet forums and more time researching on their own if they want facts. :p Anyone who takes advice off the internet risks making things worse. There are plenty of stories of it happening. If you should put disclaimers on your posts then we all should.

They all leave us sooner or later. It always hurts, and it always leaves a great big hole in our hearts. And yet, we keep doing it to ourselves. Why is that? Obviously because they are worth the hurt. Without question. Ten times over, at least. There's no point living in constant fear of them leaving when it's inevitable and when it happens there will be nothing you can do to stop it. To me, we love with all our hearts and accept that it means we grieve with all our hearts when it comes to an end. Personally, I wouldn't have it any other way. It's life. If you can't let that fear go and just enjoy the time you have, then you need to get professional help of the human psychologist kind.

Right, so you've rewarded orienting to you on cue. Nice. So now your cue to orient to you heralds a leash pop. What's he going to make of that? If you heard something that may mean you'll get a reward or may mean you'll get a leash pop, what would you do? Assuming he heard the cue when you corrected him. I won't comment on the turning his head around because I don't know what it looks like and what kind of dog he is. He was doing something when you corrected him. It wasn't not responding to his name, because a dead dog can do that. What was he doing that a dead dog can't do? Looking at something interesting? Whatever he was doing, that's what you have corrected, assuming you have corrected something. To the OP, avoiding behaviourists that call themselves 'behavioralists' would be a good start. ;) Sandgrubber.

What's the purpose of the correction? Is it to suppress a behaviour or is it meant to get the dog's attention? Are you trying to create a conditioned punisher? I use the dead dog rule. If a dead dog can do it then it's not behaviour. Can a dead dog not pay attention to their name?

Are you sure it's protective behaviour and not, say, possessive behaviour? There are lots of associations that might have occurred without you knowing that could explain why this happens with you and not the OH. It could be entirely haphazard, like a few times a dog was threatening towards him while you were there and so he's doubly on his guard around you. Has he been desexed recently? Dogs go through various stages in their social development that could see a change in behaviour as well.

How you connect with your dog when around other dogs makes a huge difference IMO. Both my dogs are very social and enjoy playing with other dogs, but that doesn't mean there's much in the way of competition for their attention. I'm sure they don't even think on who is more fun. They just do what they have been heavily rewarded to do and check in every few minutes. As for socialising, I don't think it is best for my dogs that they only interact with dogs I like and trust. We meet dogs everywhere we go, and many are not models of canine civilisation. It's hard to avoid them, so I think it's better to be able to confidently handle them. Provided it's in a non-aggressive way.

Erik seems to have plenty of leg for Corvus' requirements! He thinks he's built for any terrain. He might not look it, but he's actually very agile and never seems to get tired. He can cope with most things the environment can throw at him, including swift river crossings. I'm glad, because I'm usually too busy watching my own feet to be carrying him as well. If we have to lift him down a drop we generally have to lift Kivi as well. Valls are a freaking awesome small, bold and active breed. Just closer to medium in weight than small. Something as tough and agile as him but half the size would be about right. As long as I don't have to teach it not to sit on my lap the second it becomes available. I gave up trying to teach Alex the MinPin. He was very persistent about it. It makes me short-tempered.

Hmmm, toy poodles. They and papillons had come to mind. I'm a bit shy of lap dogs, though. I HATE having them expect to sit on me even if I have just sat down for a moment. I like my personal space at least some of the time. Frankly, I don't really want a dog with no fear of heights! The boys give me heart palpatations the way they merrily hoon around on the edges of cliffs. They aren't stupid and have never even looked like they were going to jump off something too high for them, but they go back on leash anyway because my nerves can't take it. :p They have been known to start high speed games of chase and tackle on steep and rocky paths. I don't quite trust them to remember to be careful when there are drop-offs around. Incidentally, it's funny that some people are saying long legs help. I was recently talking to someone who says short legs and a slighty longer body help small dogs keep up on difficult terrain. And independently, someone else mentioned their short-legged dogs did better finding their feet on rock platforms at the beach than larger, longer-legged dogs. Certainly Erik never seems to put a foot wrong even on the most ridiculous terrain that leaves Kivi stumbling all over the place. I am really not sure what I don't like about terriers to be honest. The single-mindedness, perhaps. I won't say I'm open to being persuaded, but I'm trying to be!

Behaviour modification is all relative. I started crate training Kit because I was worried about what would happen if I ever needed to get him out quickly, like if there was a fire. As with everything in behaviour, the key to assessing the success of a modification program is in objective observations. For example, Kit now spends more time in the open, his flight distance is down, his recovery time is down considerably, and his fearful reactions are generally less intense. He orients to me more often, I get to see his cute engaging ears a LOT more , and we are constantly breaking new ground on what he will sit still through and what he will let me touch. These are all things I can measure objectively, with the possible exception of intensity in fearful behaviour, although I can break that down into observable behaviours and variables such as speed. That way I can't kid myself about the effects of the training and I can be confident I am making headway AND minding the animal's welfare, regardless of how distressed an outside observer may be. ;) This goes for dogs as well. If we take note of things like distance and distractions and speed and behavioural indicators of emotional state and make sure we are getting more of the ones we want and less of the ones we don't want, we can't go too far wrong. It also goes a long way towards tweaking our training to be more effective. With this dog, for example, I would be looking for body posture, glancing away, licking lips, low tail, paw lifts, stiffness, where the dog is looking, how many times they shift their focus, where their centre of gravity is from moment to moment, and how quickly they move in each direction. And paying a lot of attention to the distance any of those things kick in. Just off the top of my head. That covers us for both effectiveness of the training and the dog's emotional state.

I'm currently crate training a hare, who is naturally fearful of enclosed spaces. He has a very powerful need for escape routes. I've been writing about it on my blog, linked below in my siggy. The lastest post has a video and everything. ;) What I've been doing with the hare is very time consuming, but he's a hare. Every step has to be very, very tiny and be repeated until he's profoundly comfortable with it. I've been going for 9 months and only this week decided it might be time to add the crate into training. It's just been a whole world of desensitisation. And more recently I managed to squeeze in some counter-conditioning. That took months of preparation. Anyway, I would expect it to go a hell of a lot faster with a dog. If he's truly terrified, I'd stick to stacks of desensitisation. A good understanding and subtle use of R- can be extremely useful in these circumstances to start out.

Thanks guys. I'm not in the market for a third dog, just turning ideas over in my head. And learning about small dogs.

Awesome! It's hard to get past our experiences with OH's parents' dog. We have dogsat him a few times and he drives us crazy. He is very anxious and clingy and he constantly wants to be on my lap or IN bed under the covers with me. Are yours lap dogs when they are not out on long trail rides?

I don't really like terriers. I am not sure how a spitz devotee can find their character so objectionable, but they tend to rub me up the wrong way somehow.

I know two MinPins and they are both pretty timid. OH's parents' poor dog is a basket case. I was trying to teach him down one day and put a hand behind him so he couldn't walk backwards. When he bumped into my hand he screamed like a banshee and Erik got all predatory. Very hairy moment. They do seem pretty active, though. I just don't know if running around on the flat for an hour quite happily also translates to running through the bush for 5 hours. Erik is pretty freaking nimble, and he's built like a tank so has plenty of muscle to get him around. But that doesn't make a shallow river crossing or a sheer drop of 2m any easier for him. When we go for a hike, we often go in rocky places where there are lots of big steps. I watch the effort my boys put into steps that are quite easy for me and I think it's a fair bit of work for them. Certainly they are up to the task and they don't get tired before I do, but what if they were smaller and lighter? Would it take a lot more effort for them to move themselves around that environment? Can a wee little dog keep that up for hours? It makes sense that some terriers could, but what about toy breeds that were bred as companion animals. Has anyone taken their wee little dogs for physically demanding hikes over several hours? My aunt and uncle used to have a Chi they walked for a few km every day. He was pretty fit, but even so, some days he didn't quite make it all the way home.

Oh really? I find that unlikely, given the last hike we did my two medium-sized dogs struggled in parts merely because they have more legs to organise than we do and they don't have the long stride and height we do. They had to do a hell of a lot more jumping and scrambling than we did. I keep thinking, a smaller dog would have to take even more steps and jump even higher in proportion to their size. Although I guess they would be easier to just pick up wherever it gets difficult.

6kg would probably be acceptable. :p

I should have said aside from a JRT!

Are there any really little breeds that are outgoing, confident, and can keep up on, say, a 9km hike with lots of obstacles like rocks and fallen trees to negotiate? Something around 5kg or less?

If he's that easily distracted from the stimulus it should be a cinch! It might, but only if you don't manage the lying-down-quietly bit very well. There's a prerequisite to this, and that is Hugo needs a strong enough reward history for coming to you when you call him that he will do it even when there's something to bark at. It sounded like you already had that. So the rest of it is timing and behaviour chains. 1. When he barks, let him do a few barks and then interrupt it by calling him. Try to be consistent about when you interrupt so it's predictable. Add an additional cue here, like "thank you" that will eventually mean you don't need to call him. 2. When he arrives, either you can reward him or you can tell him to go to his bed/crate/mat and reward him when he's there instead. Or both. 3. Reward him for staying in the spot you put him. Reward often enough that he doesn't get bored and leave. Look, now staying in his spot is more interesting than the cat. Woot! 4. Taper the reward frequency off. Erik usually falls asleep while he's waiting for his next treat once it gets to a few minutes between treats. The important elements are as always to be consistent and time it so it's clear to him that when you say "thank you" that's the cue to run to his spot and lie down in it. Of course, this is a little more difficult if you want him to stay outside and you to stay inside.

I wouldn't use one on Erik. Not no way, not no how. It's just not worth it IMO. I'm not entirely sure what he would do. Get collarsmart is almost a certainty. He is always barking at something, and that is his job as a watchdog. I don't want to suppress it, and a collar isn't going to differentiate between a good watchdog bark and an overly sensitive watchdog bark. One of the things I did with Erik was teach him to come back to his bed and lie down after his first volley of barking. That worked surprisingly well, actually. It was a touch more complicated than that, but Erik is a touch more complicated than most dogs. So the sequence goes like this: BARKBARKBARKBARKBARK... (he takes a breath).. "Erik! Thank you."... (he comes looking for his treat)... "Are you lying down?"... (he lies on his bed and gets his treat). And of course he gets a few more treats to encourage him to stay put on the bed. It helps if you have a mat or bed or crate he should return to. "Thank you" becomes the cue to quit barking and go and lie down. The more you reward it the more reliable it becomes and the less you have to cue it at all. ETA Someone on the CU_Dogs list I think it was conditioned their dog out of fence fighting with the neighbour's dogs by doing the relaxation protocol and just gradually moving it closer and closer to the problem. Wait, I don't know if they got all the way. They were up to moving the RP from the verandah down to the yard. Dogs barking like crazy on the other side fo the fence, but their dog was able to work through the RP in spite of it. There are always options. It just depends how methodical you can be and how much time you want to put in.