corvus

Is it normal? I think it is for some puppies! A dog we have known for a couple of years from the dog park started out interacting with my older dog by literally hanging off his cheek by her teeth. He didn't like it, but being the tolerant fellow he is, he didn't tell her off. I intervened maybe two or three times over the course of about a week when it got so bad that Kivi was trying to get away from her. I wondered how we were going to get anywhere with her being incredibly active and drivey and him being so reticent to set rules. To my surprise, the puppy moderated her behaviour over the next week or two and in no time at all was no longer hanging off Kivi's cheek. He did nothing overtly punishing to her, we did nothing overtly punishing to her, but he just kept shaking her off and turning away and she liked play to be faster. He would run around and let her chase him and jump on him if she let go of his cheek. She is now 2 years old by my reckoning, and while she doesn't have the best of manners, she is fine with other dogs and does not harangue them anymore. Personally, I think it's a case by case thing. I would intervene if one dog looked like they didn't want to play anymore. If both dogs are happy to go back to it, I don't think there's a problem. My opinion is puppies like that need to mix with other dogs so they learn how to interact so that everyone is happy. I don't think necessarily they have to interact with a dog that will punish them to learn that, but if it were my puppy, I think I would be looking for a dog that will. Gently. A very tolerant one. I would not punish myself unless I felt there was no other option. IME punishing a dog for the way it behaves towards another person, dog, or animal doesn't often have much of an impact on them. It's much cleaner if it comes from the one they are interacting with. I think if you wanted to do something about it the most useful would be a "too bad" and put puppy into a pen or behind a fence for a few seconds until it calms down. Time outs are sometimes good for this kind of thing, I think, but it has to be crystal clear, use a marker, and have the time out area really close so there's no fumbling around. If it doesn't start working after, say, 4 reps I'd try something else.

I have two boys at the moment and the next will be a girl for that reason. The boys are great together, but the younger one is a bit of a firecracker and if I were to get another while he was around it would be all about temperament. Particularly if I got another dog his size. It would also be a girl, though, because I'm eyeing off a breed that is known for same-sex aggression. Not interested in taking risks on that front.

My cousin was bitten by someone's dog on the owner's property. She sued and won several thousand dollars. I think she had been invited onto the property, though.

If Erik gets overstimulated on a walk it generally means he hasn't been walked for long enough, or hasn't had a chance to have a run. Not saying it would be the same for Barkly, but I guess having rearranged our lives to fit in a lot more exercise for our dogs, OH and I are in agreement that both dogs seem better for it. Even Kivi, who was showing no indication of needing more exercise or stimulation, is more playful, more cuddly, and more settled at home. If that's possible. He was very settled to begin with. Given our experiences, I'd try more exercise before I tried less. But, that's me! Exercise. Discipline. Affection. See, Luke, all you need to do is project calm assertiveness and Barkly will become calm as well. You don't have the right energy. You are giving the affection first! If you have the right energy, it will bring your dog balance.

It was Advanced Clicker Training. Think that's what it's called. Yes, I could see where she was going with it, but I guess I am not entirely convinced ink flowing reinforces writing. How can we say writing is more likely to occur in the future because ink flows from pens? Is writing with a pencil a different behaviour to writing with a pen?

I was watching Kathy Sdao on a dvd today and she wanted to make the point that reinforcement could be neither good nor bad in some circumstances. She used the example of ink coming out of a pen when it is put to paper as reinforcement for the behaviour of writing. I have to say, the more I think about this the less certain I become about it. I guess that the behaviour of writing is maintained by ink coming out of the pen in some sense, but if nothing came out of the pen, wouldn't we just write with a stick in the dirt? Or with a dry pen in wax or something? Isn't the drive behind this behaviour to communicate rather than to make an ink stroke? What do you think?

There was a paper that came out last year that showed that exposing young puppies to videos made them less fearful of novelty later on. Not sure if that is the kind of thing Greytmate is talking about. Scott and Fuller did the most comprehensive work on puppy development back in the 60s. It is still referenced heavily in research today. I am yet to get my hands on a copy. http://www.amazon.com/Genetics-Social-Beha...t/dp/0226743381

Monah, I think sometimes it's difficult when there are a lot of wild animals around that are not terribly hard for a dog to catch. I know someone in the States with a mole hunter. He kills a lot of moles, but they are in his yard just waiting to be dug up. His owner can't let him out in the yard without expecting that he will dig up and kill some moles. I think moles are awesome and wish I had some in my yard even if they do make a nuisance of themselves, but there's only so much you can do. The dog has to go outside where the moles are living.

OH says "Get those ears under control!" One of his workmates just got two Mini Dachshund puppies. One is a few weeks older than the other. Stupidly cute. But then....

The main transmitters of rabies are foxes, bats, skunks and raccoons. Any mammal can get it, but it's very rare in rodents and lagomorphs. I was in an area infested with rabies in Mexico once and someone got bitten by a mouse (told him not to sleep on the floor). Sheepish radio through to Campo Uno to ask if one could catch rabies from mice resulted in much hilarity. Of course, a week later a rabid fox ambled into camp and stole some items and had a good old chew on them. Some investigation eventually revealed that you couldn't catch it from handling things that have been chewed on by a rabid animal. They think. Despite the fellow who got attacked by a rabid Bobcat having the hospital incinerate his clothes just to be on the safe side. I think it's not that well understood. No one really wants to take chances with it considering how deadly it is. Theoretically transmission can occur if saliva from the infected animal comes into contact with a mucous membrane from the non-infected animal (i.e. mouth, eye, you know where etc.). But if you consider a) how rare rabies is in animals other than bats in the first place; b) how rare it is in rodents; and c) the lack of definitive cases where transmission through ingestion has occurred, it seems like a pretty minor risk. I'd be way more concerned about the dogs picking up internal or external parasites from the gophers. I'd be worming them every 6 weeks. And cutting back their usual rations. No reason for them to get pudgy.

My mum has a Kelpie X Boxer. She is Kelpie sized, but with a deeper chest, has Boxer colouring, but a Kelpie coat type, and crazy ears. You would never guess Boxer in her, but she is quite like a Boxer in temperament. She is a nut about fetch, though. The dog I grew up with was a Gordan Setter X Lab. Best dog ever. My aunt and uncle had a Maltese X Corgi that was kinda weird looking. Corgi body and size, but black and white, wiry hair. She had a drop dead gorgeous temperament. Really beautiful, special dog.

R- doesn't have to be a bludgeoning for it to be effective. I think there are benefits in applying it very lightly and if you're careful the net feeling for the dog is more positive than negative IMO. R- can be as subtle as a vague feeling of pressure that when relieved leaves, well, a sense of relief. That sense of relief can be surprisingly powerful. If a dog is kept under threshold while they are worked in that fashion it mimics the way they learn from the environment and is not IMO particularly stressful. Of course, if you screw it up it can be horribly stressful, but if you make a judgment call and then add a nice big buffer for things like trigger stacking and in case your judgment call was a bit ambitious, then the dog is more protected. Personally, I think there are elements of R- in R+ training, but sometimes I'm not very conventional in how I interpret behaviour.

If you have one chances are you have more. We had a slight overabundance of them for a while and so we moved the rabbit food into mouse proof containers and put some humane mouse traps out. The trap caught one, the dogs caught one, I caught one, and then we didn't see so many. There are definitely loads still around, but as long as they aren't inside or gnawing through the dogs' treat pouches I'm not that fussed.

Haha, I just got out Control Unleashed and am planning revisions and remedial training as well. We didn't actually get as far as trialling, though. Erik sounds quite similar to Barkly. He is also easily aroused, tends to over-react, is impulsive, and sometimes difficult to switch off. Okay, often difficult to switch off. He switches off when he runs out of energy and falls asleep. Sometimes he doesn't even get as far as lying down. He falls asleep in a sit. Anyway, I digress. I'm starting with mat work and the Protocol for Relaxation. I never exposed him much to training classes as a puppy, so he needs lots of work learning to calm down around other dogs having fun. I am taking McDevitt's lessons about Premack to heart and introducing "you can go greet the dog if you first do something for me" at the dog park. Not the same thing every time, though! We already kind of do "Gimme a break". Edited 'cause I was getting a little absorbed.

OH and I have been speculating for a while now on Erik's 'nesting' behaviour, for lack of a better description. Sometimes when we put his Thundershirt on, it seems to trigger a nesting sequence where he will find something to rub his face on, then he'll spend a while vigorously scraping it into a pile and eventually nuzzle around in it and lie on top of it. He usually looks for something soft like a blanket or bed. We hadn't seen it very often before we started using the Thundershirt to lower his arousal. Since we first noticed it in association with the TS, we also started to notice it at other times. Usually it will pop up when he's had a plunge in arousal. Say he has been poking around quite actively and then he suddenly comes to lie down. Or we massage him or maybe cue him to lie down on his bed after he's been busy. It really looks like a behaviour that gets switched on when the conditions are right. I am tentatively saying a sudden drop in arousal when it settles at a particular level a little above where he would normally crash and go to sleep. Erik typically keeps going until he falls asleep practically on the spot, but sometimes he settles more slowly. We see the nest making business when he settles quicker than he naturally would, but slower than a crash. I have a question and a comment. My question is, do other people see this behaviour in their dogs and if so, what is it associated with? We see it a bit with Kivi, but not as intense and pronounced. He digs around a bit and then slumps. He doesn't nuzzle and push with his nose the way Erik does. My comment is this kind of behaviour reminds me how incomprehensible, yet structured behaviour can be. It's like it switches on quite abruptly, and I find it fascinating that it always follows the same sequence and seems to occur in a pattern related to arousal.

I wasn't there so I don't know if you did the right thing. But nor was anyone who is saying you did do the right thing. I think only you know if you did the right thing.

It's like when people play with their hair or touch their face when talking. It usually tells you they are not entirely comfortable. Dogs have a range of behaviours they do when they are not entirely comfortable. Sniffing the ground, tongue flicking sometimes, Erik pokes things with his nose, that kind of thing. I equate it to that feeling you get when you feel like you need to do something but there's nothing really to do. Or if someone yells at you and you disengage from them by looking at something else or stirring your coffee. It's a way to reduce the internal conflict you're feeling.

That sounds awfully familiar! Erik is just over 18 months old and still acts like an adolescent. When he was about 8 months old he could only focus for about 10 seconds when we were out and about and maybe a minute at home. So we trained in 5 second blocks in the park and 30 seconds at home. Thankfully, he's over that at least. Waiting patiently for the mature dog his breeder keeps promising we'll get eventually. Zig looks great!

I completely forgot about Chow babies. They are very squee worthy. I challenge anyone to see a baby Chow class at a show and not squeal.

I disagree. I don't think it is terribly subtle. I have watched that JonBee video over and over in the last few days and yes, there are subtleties as there are subtleties in any interaction, but I just don't see many positive ones that help the dog. There's a point where Cesar loses control of the leash and his body language takes on a different tone altogether. Suddenly he puffs his chest out and moves more stiffly. It is interesting, but then JonBee tries to stop him from picking the leash up again. Cesar apparently either saw this coming or has seen it before because he looped the leash away from the dog with his foot before he tried to pick it up and JonBee still went for him when he reached for it with his hand. I have looked and looked and I just don't see how the change in his body language affected JonBee at all. As far as I can see JonBee was too far gone already to be paying much attention to Cesar's body language. There are times when Cesar's movements are fluid and certain and there are times when they are not. He just looks like a guy with a degree of confidence to me. Judging by JonBee's body language, that's what he sees as well. I certainly didn't see any rhythm soothing JonBee. The dog never looked especially soothed in the entire clip. There used to be a show called Barking Mad made by the BBC where they had a team of behaviourists solving problems with a variety of animals. There was a horse trainer on there called Kelly Marks. She was mostly very nice to horses, but every now and then she got firm with one and pushed it beyond its comfort level with very positive results. I loved watching her work. She did have a beautiful, subtle language of give and take going with horses. Somehow she knew exactly when a horse needed firm handling. It was rare, and she had one or two really serious cases. I felt her interactions with them were harmonious. Harmonious interactions are beautiful to watch. Competitive interactions, not so much.

One of my dogs humps the other. To me, it is a displacement behaviour. He only does it to his brother and he does it when he's uncertain. I stop him because he tends to get obsessive about things like that. The other dog doesn't care at all. I don't think that means he's submissive. It just means he doesn't care if a dog humps him.

No, which is why I'm going back to foundation stuff! I keep stopping to fix specific hiccups that I think mostly stem from the same broad underlying problems. I'd rather fix the problems than treat the symptoms each time one pops up from here until eternity. A training journal may well help! I am writing up a training plan. The key I think is small goals within small timeframes. And making it fun.

Erik said anything Kivi can do he can do better and held a knife to my throat until I agreed to post a photo of him being cute as a puppy as well. Mind you, Erik gets cuter by the day. I think it's the way puppies look so rubbery. I love that age where they are convinced everyone in the world will be their friend and they seem to end up flopped on the ground wriggling and wagging their tails madly if you make eye contact with them and every step seems to involve every bone and muscle in their little bodies. And they only have two speeds: gallop and asleep. Rotties and ACDs have a really cute chunky stage.

Corgis, Bassets, Beagles, and Akitas. Stupidly, impossibly cute. Here's my cutest puppy in the world. Although this is the one I had before him and she was also pretty freaking adorable.

I wasn't ever really planning to compete in agility unless Erik was ready for any excuse to throw himself at a course. I just finished foundation agility with him and we're kinda warming to it (both of us, that is) but I decided I want to backtrack and do some more foundation stuff before going any further. I'm getting Control Unleashed back out and doing all the boring stuff I didn't feel like doing to begin with. I think Erik and I will both like it better if we don't have to keep stopping to patch something up. Whether I make it through the foundation training I want done or not is doubtful. I'm easily distracted. By things like logs and walking backwards. I'm trying to make a foundation training plan that incorporates logs and walking backwards and other such fun things so I'll actually stick to it and finish it. I'm good at starting things, but not so good at finishing them!