corvus

Silly, but cool! http://www.doggelganger.co.nz/ You may need a fast internet connection.

So has everyone else. I used it to get my friendly dog to stop his frustration lunging when he saw another dog on leash. It worked very well. I still use it occasionally, but haven't had him lunging at all since I started using it.

You could try clickering from a chair, hands behind your back. I kind of encourage it to be honest. I taught them to follow the weight of my body, so if I lean left they go left. You could embrace it and make it a conscious signal. I sit out with my hare every day and every movement I make is conscious. It's kind of studying. If every movement is conscious and deliberate, I can keep them subtle enough that I can pick up the effect they have on the hare. And in the process, I'm practising being aware of everything I do. It's when I'm not paying attention that I make mistakes. The lessons carry over to dog training. If I'm conscious of what I'm doing I can control it and therefore when I want to give the boys hints I can control how subtle a hint it is, and when I want them to figure it out on their own I can hold back the hints.

I have the Kong shaped brush as well. I marvel at it every time I use it to scrub out the dried peanut butter. It is very quick and effective and even has a teensy brush that comes out of the bottom that can do the little hole at the end.

Plus, I question if cutting the hair actually results in less hair dropped. As someone who thinks it's time to go to the hairdresser when it starts to seem like there's more of my hair floating around the house and in the drains than there is on my head, I have to assume that the only real difference is that shorter hairs aren't as noticeable. I have tried, but I can't imagine how this would be any different for dogs. How would dogs with lots of hair shed less when their hair is cut shorter? Beware confirmation bias! At least I know about it when I'm ingesting Lappie fur. ;)

There was a study done on the Storm Defender or some similar product. The results suggested that there was a calming effect, but that it was more likely to be from having something wrapped around the body than from reducing the static. I'd go a Thundershirt. Sometimes it blows me away the effect it has on Erik when he's got himself wired over something. He goes from running around alert barking at anything at all every few minutes to asleep in no time at all. It's almost instant. We don't really need to use it much anymore, but I don't know how we ever lived without it.

Finnish Lapphund. Greta on here has Cavs and a Lappie. Seems like two breeds in the same ballpark. Mind you, I woke up the other morning choking on Lappie hair that had somehow worked its way to the back of my throat. That kind of thing doesn't seem to happen with shorter Vallhund hair. OH and I joke that Kivi carefully puts strands of hair all over the house in unlikely places. I don't find that he drops a lot of hair, and when he's shedding it tends to stay in his coat until I comb it out, but you only need one in your pumpkin risotto to be like "What the?? Arg!" I can only assume I ingest a lot of Vallhund hair because it's not long enough to notice when you've got some in your food. Anyway, those Lappies are very sweet, gentle and cuddly. Great with kids, nice size, easy to meet exercise requirements, and very easy to live with. Except when Kivi does his "Kivi can't go to bed because his legs are broken." routine. He becomes a sack of potatoes and OH and I have in the past picked up one end each and carried him slung between us. We thought it might make him think twice about the broken legs routine, but he didn't seem to mind being dragged around like a carcass. He played the part well and when we let him go he continued to play the part well and flopped on the ground still giving us the "Haha, Kivi's legs are still broken" look. He has a mischievous streak, that dog.

The relationships can be complicated, and we're taught that in uni. If you take out the feral predators, the feral prey population can explode, but if you take out the feral prey population, you can find yourself with a much higher rate of native animal predation by the feral predators. That's about as simple as it gets. More often we have no idea what is going to happen. Conservation is a very messy science. It's uncommon IMO that conservationists have the luxury to properly model the entire ecosystem so they know what to do. I guess it's more common nowadays, at least, modelling some of it is, but decisions are still often required before enough information is gathered to make them. That's the nature of it, unfortunately.

So, I've been treating the current ulcer for two days. It is still visible without the dye. I'm assuming it would be a good time to visit the specialist if we want to do that this time 'round? I've pretty much decided that's what I want to do, and OH is in agreement. It did take a long time to heal last time. After a week they were pretty happy with it, but still wanted to keep an eye on it because of the lack of vascularisation.

Sensitivity to noise is considered to be inherent to some degree, although to what degree no one is really sure. Karen Overall wrote a paper looking at co occurrence of noise phobia, in particular thunder and fireworks, and separation anxiety. The numbers were low, but the correlation was high. There's some thought that noise sensitivity may be a manifestation of pathological anxiety, and there's some thought that pathological anxiety is probably hereditary to a large degree. However, learning and socialisation can always play a role. I am suspicious that I taught my last dog to be afraid of thunder because I was young when I got her and I was afraid of it. She was always extremely sensitive to my emotional state. When I got Kivi I made sure I quietly isolated him from both of us when there were loud noises, but he never had any problems, so who knows why that is. He doesn't strike me as the anxious type. :p

Lhok, I think all our Vallhund gurus are caught up in Vallhund related activities at the moment! I think that activity level in the breed varies quite a bit, but it's not impossible to tell from an early age who is going to be a handful and who is going to be a walk in the park. Erik is pretty full on much of the time, but even he sleeps from about 10am to 4pm. And he usually settles on someone's lap after he has his dinner for the rest of the evening. Provided he's had his exercise! My mum's Vall is not all that typical, but he barely needs any exercise at all. He's very lazy. Likes his walks and he's very agile, but he has a very stable temperament and he spends most of his time snoozing. Preferably by someone's foot. He could do with more mental activity than he gets, though. They are a clever breed. I think you need to take care of their mental stimulation and give them things to do, but some need more than others. Erik needs lots! Mum's Vall currently doesn't get any, but he is very good at finding ways to get to food left on kitchen counters or tables. He finds his own mental challenges. ;)

I do the same as you if they are scared. My previous dog was scared of them her whole life until her hearing went. I let her choose a spot she felt safe in and usually left her alone, but if the thunder got really loud I would sit next to her to calm her. One of my current dogs barks at thunder if he is aroused. He has a Thundershirt that helps, but sometimes I just distract him with training, quiet games, or giving him a Kong or a bone to chew on. Last time he got barky about a storm I had him do some of Karen Overall's Relaxation Protocol and he quietened down. If you don't sit with him, does he run around? I would think sitting quietly is an improvement on running around, even if he's still scared.

No, they sound the same. Pain is weakness leaving the body. So, what does that make agony? Go on, tell me it's an exponential function. It's exactly what I want to hear.

Ohhhh, owned by people not dedicated enough to follow motivational routines. Well that's quite specific, isn't it? Why didn't you say! I am still not convinced that this a methodology problem rather than a trainer skill problem. I have zillions of anecdotes about dogs that would actually manage to get out of the yard if their owners would stop smacking them every time they growled at another dog. Methods and tools are just things we pick up to help us train a dog. They can be used and misused by anyone. I don't think stories about a PP trainer that couldn't do this or a correctional trainer that couldn't do that is very indicative of the effectiveness or lack thereof of one method compared to another. I think it's fair to expect that a good trainer will be able to achieve good results with the minimum side effects regardless of what method they use.

I'd be surprised if I were able to identify most fallout as well.

We have a lot of fire trails around here, but they are typically very steep and composed of jumbled bricks, broken pieces of cement, and other construction site waste along with natural rock. Are your fire trails a bit more friendly, Aidan?

Hey, I didn't mean that. I said I didn't think claims that building a reward system was too difficult and complicated for some dogs was a reason to not use rewards with them. It's a cop out. I don't think that means there is no reason to not use rewards and I do think it's the owner's call and I don't really care what call they make. But if they think they can't build a reward system because the dog is too hard, I challenge that. I don't know how many times I have to point out that I have used punishments for it to sink in, but I'll point it out again. I find it rare that I really want to suppress a behaviour. I don't think it's conducive to my aims with my dogs to regularly suppress behaviour. I am well aware that that is my personal choice and I do not think that all positive reinforcement trainers should have the same aims. I thought I made it clear that I think it's a personal choice and doesn't really matter in the scheme of things.

He's nearly 2. Our vet clinic has a vet that has done extra courses in eye medicine. I might see if I can get in to see her on Wednesday. They are pretty good about referring up there and she will be able to give me more information. I don't really want to just wait and see if it happens again. It's a fairly big deal to look after him when he has a sore eye, and I don't want him going through it yet again if we can prevent it.

Thanks for that document, Kirty. OH came home from one of our vet checks last time saying something about irritating hairs in Erik's eye. I asked if he had them or if he might have had them and he said he thought it was the latter. We are back to the vet on Wednesday, so I will talk to them then about seeing a specialist. I think it's very suspicious for the same eye to be affected so often. It is really unpleasant for my poor little guy. I hate seeing him all sad and sorry for himself.

I love Leslie Nelson's Really Reliable Recall dvd. Best $30 I ever spent on dog stuff. It's definitely worth having a copy.

I am a firm believer that if you make the decision with love in your heart you won't be able to make the wrong one. Trust that your love for Oscar will not lead you astray.

Erik has been having recurring problems in one eye. It started a few months ago with squinting. No ulcer and the vet prescribed some Amacin. It cleared up almost right away. About 2 weeks later, he was squinting again and we treated again with Amacin and it cleared up after a few days. Then again, about a week later it recurred, worse this time and E was obviously not a happy chappy. Took him to the vet and they checked for an ulcer but no sign of one. By the following afternoon he had an alarming crater in his eye. We had him sedated for a thorough check and clean, but there was nothing in there but a big fat puncture-like wound. Changed ointment and he went onto antibiotics. It took about a month all up for it to heal, but there was never any vascularisation. Now, three weeks later, he has another ulcer in the same eye, same place. Again, it is deep and we need to keep a very close watch on it. AFAIK there was no trauma at all. He was at the beach yesterday afternoon, but no rough play and nothing to run into. He was fine last night. This morning he was squinting. I thought he might have some sand in there and flushed it with some saline and a syringe. Over the next few hours it got worse and I got a vet appointment. The vet thinks it is unusual for these problems to be recurring in the same eye over short periods of time. We have a basic plan to treat this one and if it happens again in the next few months, we'll take him to an eye specialist. The vet didn't seem to have much of an idea what the specialist might be looking for. He had a tear production test today that went fine. I've not heard of any eye problems in Vallhunds that could be traced to anything in particular. I talked about it with Erik's breeder back before all this started. I understood there is a very low incidence of eye problems in the breed and it was unknown what the cause was. Has anyone seen anything like this happen? What could be going on with that eye?

Kivi almost got himself another mouse yesterday. It was hiding out in my treat pouch and I unwittingly brought it inside when I attached the pouch to my waist. It eventually jumped out of the pouch and once Kivi saw it he did the most spectacular pounce of his career, but the mouse was just out of reach under the cupboard. He had another go at it as it made for the fridge, but missed it again and mousey made it under the fridge to live another day. Love having a mouse in the kitchen. :rolleyes: Erik, in typical fashion, thought the chase was fun but chasing rodents, crabs and birds is the only time he's ever behind Kivi. He doesn't think actually catching them is that great. Kivi is a keen crab hunter down on the mud flats. When Erik was young he worked out what Kivi was chasing and caught a few crabs. He never bothered again. He likes to chase Kivi chasing crabs, though. The interesting thing was we were taking the dogs down to the beach for a run when this mouse appeared. After a half hour drive to the beach, the boys were still in hyper forage mode the whole time we were at the beach. You'd think they hadn't been fed in a week. They did very little playing and not only scrutinised every speck of debris on the beach, but dug up several dead fish that had been buried in the sand. OH and I were speculating on whether their abnormally intense interest in foraging was a result of the brief mouse chase. OH thinks it must have released chemicals in the brain that tells dogs to go find food. I wasn't prepared to hypothesise, but it kind of made sense. I was resisting the urge to check my treat pouch for more mice for an hour afterwards.

I have seen this in positive and traditional trainers. I think we can all agree it is not very beneficial for dogs and their owners, but I don't think it's a problem exclusive to so-called "purely positive" trainers. I thought that looked like Bronson. :D Handsome dog, don't you think, Joe?

Bollocks. Building a reward system in a hare can be a very complex, drawn out exercise that is difficult to establish well. A dog is about a thousand times easier to reward than a hare. Dog trainers need to HtFU and just accept that good foundations take time to establish, but are worth every second twice over down the track. If you don't want to do it just say you don't want to and use corrections. No one here cares. I only care that your reasons aren't excuses.