corvus

Social maturation, perhaps. Hunger, stiffness/soreness, unpleasant weather... lots of things can make a dog unusually short-tempered. Or sometimes there has been stuff going on for a long time and one dog has just about had more than they can take.

A dog has to be food-driven, or they'd die of starvation. Is 'non-compliance' a behaviour? Where has it been proven that 'weak nerve' is genetic? It's not even a term a geneticist would understand! Or that head halters cause injury? Or that prong collars are a superior tool to check chains or head halters? There is an awful lot of hearsay in the dog world.

Oooooo. I want a naughty sighthound. :p Someone who gave me loads of info on Basenjis years ago when I was first looking into the breed had Cirnecos on her list. And someone else I knew with Pharaohs also had them on his list. There was some discussion about whether Cirnecos were TOO naughty. Hello! A breed too naughty for someone who competes in agility with Basenjis? Corvus' ears pricked. ;)

I've been strategically 'working up to' a Basenji. I got my biddable spitz first, and then my outrageously smart and active spitz, which was almost a Shiba. Next step is a more independent spitz, or maybe I'll just jump in finally and get a Basenji. ;) Mind you, one of the things I was worried about with a Basenji was keeping one adequately mentally stimulated. Erik has been good practise for that! Apparently he needs daily training or he starts poking around the house finding contraband to hijack and destroy. Other breeds I'd consider are Akita, Alaskan Malamute, Pharaoh Hound, Saluki, Norwegian Elkhound. Breeds I want someone to import so I can have one: Canaan Dog, Karelian Bear Dog, Jindo (ha!), Yakutian Laika, Japanese style Akita, Cirneco Dell'Etna.

Depends on the nature of the fight. I've broken up fights that way that were mostly noise. When my family was dealing with warring females, a vet behaviourist said get two people to grab the back legs of each dog and both should slowly walk backwards. I've seen a similar version using leashes as per JoeK's description recommended by a Pyrenean breeder. Apparently in the military they lift the dog's back legs up like with the Greyhounds. I've heard sticking a finger/hose up the dog's backside makes them let go. :p

Some of us like contrast. ;)

Not just annoying, downright dangerous and potentially cruel. Check out this page from the same site that turned up on a mailing list today: http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/articles/alphadog.htm

Maybe you could insidiously pair some really obvious stimulus with the beginning of 'settle down' when you are home with them and transfer it. Like some kind of special treat or activity toy they get when it's time to settle that you could give to them as you are leaving. Or several obvious stimuli. A chain of cues could be quite potent, maybe? Like I have a routine when I leave my boys. It goes, outside, cued to toilet, grab a couple of dried cow ears from the cupboard outside, call dogs back in, close and lock doors, then give them their ears and sneak out the front door. Erik starts getting excited when he sees me collecting my things together. Oh boy, I'm gonna get a cow ear! Particularly because I generally only do it when I'm leaving for several hours like if I'm going to uni. I tend to get more things together and put them in a different bag. Erik knows what that means. Kivi doesn't care so much. :p Incidentally, Erik barks more if he can't see what's going on. He's very attentive to sound and seems to be anxious about not being able to see what's making the sounds. It might be different if we had a bigger yard, though.

:rolleyes: I have TRIED to explain to them. Gently. In very small snippets. I carefully, carefully pick my times to say something and make sure I just say a couple of sentences at most with a really simple message. The fact of the matter is that they don't want to train him. They just want to manage him. So it doesn't matter what I say, if someone says something that sounds easier than what I've suggested, then they'll be naturally more attracted to that idea. They need a huge amount of training in their own behaviour if they are ever to going to get anywhere with him. Last time he was here I spent all week teaching him just to pay attention. I thought if I could show them that something could be done and he's not a lost cause that they might be inspired. I spent most of the week priming him just to take treats. The poor dog is scared to take treats because half the time when he helps himself to someone's plate he gets shouted at and it's such a strong punishment that he assumes food and people are by and large not a safe mix. It took me all week, but by the end he was eating every treat in the house and was beginning to get the idea that in our house there are opportunities to earn treats all the time. His owners were like "well, now we know he'll take treats" and I was like "seriously, you have to reward him every time he does something you like" and they were like "well, we tell him he's a good boy, but he doesn't care"... "No, you have to reward him with food. He'll care about that. Good boy doesn't mean anything to him." I may as well not bother. Last I heard he's gone downhill even further and is now on valium. He's an old dog, so possibly some of it is old age, but you have to wonder what kind of life he has if he has to be on valium to cope with it. They will find any excuse for his behaviour. It's not because they are trying to excuse him or absolve themselves of blame. They just don't know how to help him and don't want to have to change the way they do things. It's easier for them to latch onto reasons not to change, and I'm sure they don't even do it consciously. It's very frustrating, but I think this happens to plenty of small dogs.

I could write an essay on this topic. I've spent the last year playing around with conditioning activity patterns in Erik. I've read stacks of kind of non-mainstream literature on it, experimented with several ideas, and basically discovered that there are lots of things that contribute to arousal and subsequent activity. I haven't figured them all out yet. A lot of it might be Ava's age. Anyway, I don't know that there's much you can do if the unsettled behaviour is specifically while you're not there short of drastically changing their ability to interact with each other. Suffice to say I think there's a lot of habit to activity patterns. If you want to change them, view it as breaking a habit. They will keep behaving the way they are used to as long as the opportunity to do so is there, and no cues are present to tell them to do otherwise. But that's not to say you might be able to have success creating a new habit without direct input just by conditioning a response. Example, condition dogs that when you put their mats down they should lie on them and relax. If you can condition it strongly enough, which is not necessarily loads of work, you might be able to cue them to a more settled daily activity pattern by putting the mats down when you leave.

Every article on that website is BS. They used to have much more balanced information, but since Cesar Millan became popular, every breed information page and every article rabbits on about dominance and being the pack leader. Whoever writes them has no freaking idea and it makes me very, very angry. It has turned into IMO one of the most extreme dominance hierarchy obsessive general dog websites. There is stacks of 'information' on that site that is completely lacking in any form of scientific evidence to back it up, and some that actually has scientific evidence that disputes it. Take it with a grain of salt. As far as 'small dog syndrome' goes, I think a lot of the problem is that people don't understand that a lot of the world is more threatening when you're a small dog. And what's more, it's so easy to just pick them up and move them or simply force them to do what you want that people come to rely on that rather than training. Is it a problem? Depends on the dog and how effective the owner is at managing them. OH's parents have a Min Pin that pulls like a freight train on leash. Only, he weighs 3kg, so you don't even notice. Is it a problem? Not really. He's walked on a harness so he doesn't hurt himself and he can't pull anyone over and he's never let off leash. If he were mine, I'd teach him to walk nicely, but he's not and it's not really that big a deal. He also bites if he gets frightened. I don't blame him. He is tiny in a world of giants. He is very highly strung and his owners do not appreciate that he is frightened when he does it. Is it a problem? Only for him. First time I met him he bit me on the face. Given he's 3kg and wasn't deadly serious about it, he didn't even break the skin. I just felt bad that his owner had picked him up because he had a tendency to bite strangers and then basically shoved him into my face. Little wonder he bit me. It's not his fault, you can see. He just has owners that don't understand him. As much as I dislike him, he has been horrifically mishandled. His owners love him and do their best for him, but they just do not understand what life is like for him. He does not think he's the pack leader. He's just scared and anxious a lot of the time. He does whatever makes him feel better. Sometimes that is barking incessantly, and sometimes it's biting. He jumps up because it gets rewarded. He sits on people because he is a lap dog and a very cold, skinny one that appreciates warmth and softness. He growls when he is afraid. He 'asks' to be cuddled because it's one of the few things his owners understand and they reward it. He's on valium much of the time because they don't know how to make him feel safe. Most of those behaviours on that page have nothing to do with dominance. Just reinforcement history. The stakes are rarely as high with small dogs as they are with large dogs, so it's more of a matter of people being lazy because they can afford to be IMO.

So it sounds like it's you leaving her there that is so upsetting to her. You could try Aidan's calming yo-yo exercise. It's on this page: http://www.clickertraining.com/node/1556 The idea is to gently counter-condition your dog from you leaving her so she is not longer uspet by being left in the crate while you go off to do things without her. You can put her in the crate and do the calming yo-yo exercise and build up her tolerance of being left.

I think every pack has different dynamics. My boys are physically separated when they get bones usually, and I supervise. If it's a recreational bone like a marrowbone that's meant to keep them busy for a few hours, they eat together and I watch them until Kivi has had enough and leaves his. He always gives up on it first. I put all chews and boredom busters up if I'm going out, but leave them with a dried cow's ear or something similar to distract them from me leaving. I used to leave the dogs with bones to eat while I was out, but no longer do so. A couple of times I've had to pull a bone out that has got wedged along the top of the dog's mouth. They get quite distressed when it happens and I'd hate to think how painful it would be if it happened while I was out and they had to put up with it for several hours! I have no idea what would happen. Even marrow bones can be splintered so a piece is the right size for that to happen.

Everyone in our house gets veto rights. For a while OH wanted a Bulldog. I really didn't want one, but to me that's not a reason to not have one. I could live with one. I said if he wanted one that badly we could get one, but he would have to do all the research because I wasn't going to do it for him. He did a little bit of research and decided he wasn't invested enough in the idea to do enough research to make sure he had a high chance of getting a healthy dog. So we got a Vallhund instead. That was a joint decision. If I suggest a breed and he's not into it he says no and that's that. If he suggests a breed I couldn't live with, I say no and that's that. We manage to compromise. He's not as fussy as me. ;)

I find the boys poo more often when they are being fed more raw meaty bones, but the poos are smaller and harder. I imagine the volume is actually less, but the frequency more. 2-3 a day is normal, here.

Dunbar has done so much to help average dog owners raise puppies. He is definitely a good place to start, although some people disagree with his position on shaping puppies not to bite over time rather than just having a hard and fast rule from the beginning. Leslie McDevitt is releasing a puppy Control Unleashed book this year that is highly anticipated. A lot of her methods are aimed at very active or reactive dogs, but there is plenty of really good foundation exercises that every dog should learn. It seems tedious at the time, but takes care of so many potential problems before they come up.

On leash is not a problem. You really can stop them from doing it IMO if they are on leash provided you are paying attention. Erik has a delightful habit of ignoring almost everyone and then suddenly jumping on someone quite out of the blue. There's no "Hmm... might check that guy out." It's just "DUDE! Oh... I thought you had something for me." He's a wee bit optimistic. But it's not really a problem because you still have the power to pull him up before he makes contact. The problem for me at least is off leash. Most people Erik will walk right past, but if we are talking to someone and they get food out for their dog, it becomes a race to get to him or get his attention, or quickly communicate to the person to tell him to sit or down before he jumps on them. They don't have to actually give him any food for the behaviour to be reinforced. Just getting closer to it is enough for him. This problem is certainly persistent entirely because we aren't very good at remembering that when we're speaking to other people they sometimes whip out treats, and a little that Erik doesn't reliably respond to a 'down' from us when he's staring into someone else's soul trying to will them to hand over their goods. Selective attention is a pain sometimes. But if we can't train ourselves we may as well forget about that method for training the dog. Anyway, the solution I'm working on is people with food=corvus has food for you right now! Quick, come get it! I'm just trying to teach him that people with food is a cue to orient to me. I can manage that one because the problem is the cue for me to cue Erik. I would cautiously say it's working. I only started a few weeks ago and so I've only had a couple of chances to work on it, but Erik being a fast learner and highly attentive to positive cues appears to have caught on. Meanwhile, I'm doing "leave it" remedial work. A good "leave it" solves a lot of problems!

When I was a kid we had a dog like that living next door to us. He would try to bite our ankles every time we walked up the driveway. We were scared of him and started cutting across a neighbour's property to avoid him, but then the kids there gave us a hard time because we all had this little territorial thing going. Eventually we hit on the idea that we would be friendly to him and when he came to chase our ankles we would tell him he was a good boy. Somewhat miraculously, this worked like a charm and he turned into our biggest fan. The downside was that he would get upset if we ever went past without gushing over him and giving him a rub and so our trips up the driveway were still very much under his control! It's amazing what we have to put up with.

I have pretty distinctive dogs, and I should be able to find CWEW, and Stonecutter I think also knows CWEW. Will the rest of you be able to find a Lappie, two JSs, Charlie, and a Vallhund? I imagine an Elkie would be pretty distinctive as well, especially once added to the other spitzes and Charlie. :D Or should me meet somewhere specific. I don't know the park very well off the top of my head. Isn't there a cafe, though? Maybe we should meet there.

Frankly, I don't shout at people I don't know unless they nearly kill me or something. So my dog sometimes gets rewarded for jumping on people. Well, that's the price I pay for taking them out and about. I'd rather train for it than spend the rest of my life shouting at people before they can mess up my training. It might take longer, or be harder, but at least people don't hate me because I was mean to them once. Seriously, what if one day my dogs somehow are out on the road on their own and one of those people I shouted at drove past and saw them? Think they'd stop and get them to safety? Maybe if they are a lot more considerate than I thought they were when I shouted at them. Now say I just let it go, but explained what I was trying to achieve so they might think twice before doing it again. Would they be more likely to stop and get my dogs to safety? What if they knew there was an aggressive dog in the park and they saw me. Would they approach me to warn me, do you think? It's worth thinking about. People are generally considerate and helpful, even when they don't appear to be they think they are. But they are unlikely to stick their neck out to help someone who has been rude to them.

Awww, we are so on the same page. I get all ;) when I watch my dogs just being dogs together. My boys are BFFs and they play a lot. It really is just so much fun to watch them. As far as I'm concerned, they can play as much or as little as they like. :D That's who they are. I learn stacks from watching them and the way they change their behaviour for each dog they play with. I used to think Erik would grow into a horrible obnoxious dog because Kivi let him do just about whatever he liked to him. But he's not silly. He would be the model puppy the moment a new dog came onto the scene. It's quite interesting that they learn what behaviours are broadly acceptable and which ones are acceptable to just some dogs and who will like it when they charge up to them and so on. Grisha Stewart has a very good dvd on organic socialising of puppies. She supervises and sets up situations where puppies can learn that they can disengage whenever they want just by turning their heads aside. Their owners are taught to 'honour the dog' and always move their puppies on whenever they turn their head aside. I like the idea of taking a more operative and deliberate approach to socialising. It doesn't have to be just exposure. You can in the process teach the puppies quiet and inoffensive ways to say they've had enough and owners learn to look for subtle signs their dogs have had enough and then a lot of troubles can be avoided.

That was my thinking when I volunteered to help someone catch funnel webs. I'm no longer afraid of funnel webs, but any other spider still gives me the heebie jeebies. I had a consulting friend who used to make me laugh because I'd be following him through the bush and he'd suddenly jerk backwards and I was like "You're afraid of spiders, aren't you?" I would recognise that "Hells bells, spider web!" dance anywhere. He was kind of relieved to find another zoologist with the same achilles heel. It was a problem for herp surveys, though, as neither of us liked lifting rocks because half of them had these big, black scary spiders that lived under them that made us shriek. Well, I shrieked. He was too manly. Most of the time.

And what do you study when studying zoology? I have always wanted to ask someone that... does it mean you have knowledge in ALL animals? Or do you pick one to study? Or.... something? lol Corvus got it quite spot on, we also got to study spider behaviour (yay.....feeding spiders with tweezers) and learning how to catch and wrangle kangaroos. My all time fav (insert sarcastic smilie) assignment was to do ethology maps for the dingos at the zoo for a day...in the rain. 9am sleep, 9:10am sleep.....3:40pm sleep. Oooohhh yay 3:50 pee I did one on Sooty Oystercatchers one time that looked much the same. For a bird that can only actually forage half the time due to tides, they spend an awful lot of that time loafing. But I at least had the foresight to pick the project that would be on the beach rather than the leech and tick infested forest. I remember spending 3 hours watching a Pheasant Coucal watching me. I went on to work on Willie Wagtails, which was endless entertainment. One of them bit me one day because I touched her eggs. I had to do subsequent nest checks armed with a pen to keep her at bay.

And what do you study when studying zoology? I have always wanted to ask someone that... does it mean you have knowledge in ALL animals? Or do you pick one to study? Or.... something? lol You learn taxonomy, the basic biology of all the major groups of animals, physiology basics, ecology, genetics basics, often the basics on plant structure, function and diversity, conservation, and a lot about interactions between species and within species. I learnt a fair bit of behavioural ecology as well as that's what I did my honours project in. Behavioural ecology is a way of looking at animal behaviour in terms of evolution. That's what you learn in undergrad. Where you go from there just depends on your interests. I learnt HEAPS about animal ID and ecology and conservation when I worked as an environmental consultant, but my strong point is still birds, mostly because I was into them before I started my degree, and all the behaviour gurus in our department worked on birds. Now I've crossed over into dog cognition and personality and it's so freaking interesting I can barely contain myself at times. Who am I kidding, I can't contain myself at times.

I'm doing a PhD in dog behaviour. I have a zoology degree. Technically all the time I spend with my dogs is work.