corvus

I love reversing dogs. I just think it's really cool when a dog has precision with their back end. I've been teaching my dogs to back their rear end onto the top of a log. I think it is really hard for them, despite the fact that Erik picked it up very quickly. Erik is a freak. I've started to use the logs to teach Erik to swing his rear end to one side as he's going back. I used to use one of those rubber mats with nubs for extra grip as a target for back feet, but I'm finding something raised works better. I love watching Erik feeling with his back foot for the target. Kivi is a ways off that, yet. The love is not the most graceful of dogs. He is still mastering balancing on the logs in the first place, although this morning he managed to walk along the top of one log and then onto the top of a skinnier one without instantly falling off. I threw a party. I'm not sure when interacting with logs became my main training interest, but I'm considering the possibility that I'm not cut out for competition.

Maybe you could use an intermediate bridge, or "keep going" signal.

In December last year there was information on the KPA website under the Australia section about a course in the first half of this year, if I remember correctly. The info has now been taken down, so I'm not sure if it's currently underway and there are no plans for another one or if it got cancelled. Anyway, going off my shady memory of it, Terry Ryan was doing the workshops in Perth, I think. You could always contact them and ask.

At the risk of starting a Karen Pryor dissatisfaction pow-wow, have you thought about learning through Karen Pryor Academy? I think KPA are teaching in Australia this year. It's definitely a heftier outlay, but maybe it would suit you better than NDTF and give you something by which to differentiate yourself in the market place? You would probably have to travel, though.

Young puppies usually have a handy desire to stick close. I don't let them off until I am confident they won't bolt. I let them trail a long line for a while as we figure out what their typical responses are. We try to get the long line off pretty fast, though. They are hazardous IMO. Just be ready for adolescence when puppy suddenly decides the world is a lot more interesting than you!

What assumptions? I'm not making any. I KNOW dogs can be baby-stepped because there are people like Grisha Stewart and Jesús Rosales-Ruiz/Kellie Snider that have heavily researched it. They are hardly the only ones. There is plenty of evidence that it works. I am not assuming it is the right method for every dog on The Dog Whisperer. My argument is that I find it unlikely every dog on The Dog Whisperer is for whatever reason not suitable to be rehabilitated this way. I certainly have. I would point out that it's not necessarily an operant process, which seems to be your assumption. Do I object to the use of aversion training using classical conditioning? No, not if it's done well and carefully planned.

One time I shut Kivi in the study overnight by accident. I didn't know he was in there when I shut the door. OH got up the next morning and wanted to know where Kivi was. A brief, mad hunt around the house revealed him standing patiently behind the study door waiting to be let out. I had to laugh. Only Kivi would just quietly wait 8 hours to be let out again. He didn't make a sound the whole time he was in there. It's possible he was standing there at the door for 8 hours... He's a bit special.

not every dog has the luxury of this. Many owners want to see safety or it's a one way trip to the vet. Dog behaviour is not always going to be warm and fuzzy. You do what you have to do to make the dog safe, yes it may be confused for the first time but you show it the right way to remove that confusion. Many owners just can't even handle it. Think about it. If they let their dogs get to this point, do you really think they are going to be willing and/or able to rehabilitate them slowly and properly? CM always says he's there to rehabilitate dogs but people are the ones who need the training. Did it look to you like JonBee's owners could handle CM's approach? And I question if every dog on The Dog Whisperer is one that doesn't have the luxury of being able to be baby-stepped through. How do you know? I don't!

To me the concern is not so much that he kicks dogs and how the kick feels to the dog, but the fact that he sets them up so he needs to do it in the first place. I'm far more distressed by a dog that is forced into a situation they do not want to be in so they can be "shown" how not to behave. To me, they are shown that the absolute worst thing can happen to them and they can't do anything to stop it but they didn't die. I would rather a confident dog that knows how to cope. They will learn how to cope either way in the end, but if they can learn slowly in easy steps rather than in one giant, confusing leap, why force them to leap?

Oh, wait, one person would have to say both conflicting things and pretend to be a doctor sometimes and a trainer others... That takes some of the fun out of it.

wow. I am so framing a screen shot of this. Yeah, that would be right. Cut out the bit that makes it clear I was being sarcastic. Although... Let's do an experiment. When I have a doctorate in dog behaviour, let's go out with a simple couplet of conflicting statements about dogs and tell them to random people and see who believes what the doctor says and who believes what the trainer says. It would be fun! Incidentally, anyone who wants to comment on the restrictive or broad nature of my post-graduate degree can do my PhD first and then make their comments. PF is right, a higher degree in animal behaviour does not equip someone to be a trainer, but I never said that it does. As it happens, academics aren't interested in anybody's one dog. They are interested in a population of dogs. So it does get a little old when people keep telling them they are wrong because of this one dog.

I do see good things about him, but I am so freaking tired of having every balancing statement I make utterly ignored that I don't see any point sharing them. If you don't love him you're a CM basher, no matter how many virtues of his you can think up or how many times you extoll them. So call me a CM basher. It's better than the things I've been called when I've tried to be fair to him. I thought that Mal was a wolfdog?

We avoid fenced parks as well. Large, open parks where people walk their dog through or up and back are my choice. Dogs on the move don't get a chance to get into too much trouble. There are always exceptions, but it seems a good way to minimise the risks to me. Our dog park has a canine godmother. This dog is wonderful with puppies and fantastic at teaching puppies not to panic if a dog is charging up to them. My boys both grew up under her daily tutelage and they think she's the bees knees. Erik still greets her as if he's a baby puppy. She is greeted enthusiastically by many dogs that first met her when they were puppies.

For those interested, there's a video of the first part of the segment with JonBee that the essay is talking about here: When I look at it, to me every minute pull Millan does on the leash makes JonBee appear more and more nervous. I think it's a really interesting video because JonBee's behaviour is a little unusual IMO. He's not saying "Please don't touch me" and then going over threshold when he is touched and snapping. He's saying "You will not touch me." and he only really loses it when it doesn't work. I have met one or two dogs like that. I like them. There's a point where Millan reaches for the leash and he snaps at him. He's like "You won't touch that, either." I was impressed he understood what the leash meant. I think he's a beautiful, fascinating dog. I've no idea what would or wouldn't have worked on him. I have no idea what his temperament was really like or what had been tried aside from attempts to physically dominate him. I just don't think that Millan's mesmerising body language did much for him other than shorten the length of time he was stressed out of his brain and maybe help him calm down more quickly. Maybe.

Thanks for the link to the essays. When I first read this it made sense to me and I agreed with it. It's a very persuasive argument. But when I stopped to think about it, I changed my mind. I don't agree. However nicely he moves, however rhythmically and predictably, what is that predictability supposed to bring to a worried dog? Animals find comfort and security in predictability, but if given the choice "you can have this guy pull on you rhythmically or you can not engage with him at all", what do you think they would choose? If they have no history with him, I think they'd choose not to engage. If they had some history with him, I think they'd choose to engage. To me, Cesar comes on too strong. At times he offers dogs no chance to withdraw if the pressure is too much for them. He just floods them right through their threshold and that's when he gets bit. He does it deliberately because I think he believes it has to happen for him to achieve the state in the dog he wants to achieve. I think that it doesn't have to happen. I think if you give an animal a predictable routine even if it's only a 5 minute one once a day, they will come to depend on it. The more little routines you give them, the more they trust you and the more they depend on you. Your very presence comes to mean safety and security. They know how things go down around you. That's not to say you never push the envelope, but I think pushing them should become part of the routine way you interact with them. Pressure, release, never too much. You're showing them what they can do and showing them that they can cope. And you're providing them with a predictable framework so they feel safe with you, even when you're pushing them. You build up their tolerance and confidence. They know that whatever happens, they will be all right. When I see dogs in Cesar's presence after he has laid down the law, I see dogs that have had their entire world come crashing down on them. They do nothing because they don't know what to do. Every response that used to work doesn't anymore. Sometimes it's then that they try to have a go at him. To me, this is a cruel way of fixing the problem. It doesn't matter that it has to change and the dog and people will be better off for it. It doesn't matter whether the dog will completely get over it or not. It matters that a dog has suddenly been cast adrift from what he knows and he didn't have to be. You can teach them the new rules so that they never know what happened. I think that for all the subtlety Millan undeniably has in his natural body language, he still lacks subtlety in his understanding of dog behaviour. The other night he had a dummy dog approach a SWF. He completely missed or ignored the calming signals the dummy dog was shooting out and the uncertainty the dummy dog was displaying. Is it fair to bring a dog into a situation it is not comfortable with to make a point with another dog? Where were the massages and steady rhythms for that dog?

If you ever become a dog training instructor, you'll encounter a whole new kind of nutcase.. attached on occasion to the end of a dog's lead. No thanks! I'm going to cloister myself away in academia where my every word comes with the weight of the word "doctor" behind it. Ha! No, every person with a dog is a dog expert.

I've never asked a theory question when the instructor is addressing the whole class. That would be rude! If I have a really involved question I send e-mails and invite them to ignore me if they like. :D I generally don't share my background and try to pretend I'm a normal student. I am not sure that is the best way to do things, though... During Erik's puppy preschool I was trying my hardest to speak as little as possible and not draw the attention of the instructor. If I was quiet and worked as far away from the rest of the group as I could, the instructor ignored me and I could do what I liked. I don't think she liked me very much, though. But at least she didn't ring me up a few months later to blow up at me and accuse me of questioning her professional skills like Kivi's puppy class instructor did... I didn't even know what she was referring to. Was it because I asked if I could use a clicker in class and then didn't when she said "you can if you like but I don't"? Or was it because I said I didn't want to put a no-pull harness on my puppy that didn't pull? That's all I could think of. I used to think all dog trainers were scary nutcases. Happily, I know better, now. :D But some I think really are scary nutcases. ;)

I was just trying to say different people have different approaches and it doesn't necessarily mean they will find any given activity frustrating just because most everyone else learns about it a different way than they do. I think Trisha is a good example of that is all. She gets plenty of instruction in herding. I'd be surprised if the people she chooses to instruct her are heavy on learning theory. And I shrugged because it's not as big a deal to me as you seem to think it is. We almost never talk about theory in agility. That doesn't frustrate me. I just learnt to ask the right questions so I could learn the way that I usually learn. If I have a problem and I can explain it with theory, I usually start and then quickly stop when I get the "what are you talking about?" look and just let them say their piece instead. I'm too grateful for what they can do to be down on what they can't. I have other friends and mentors I can ask outside of class. Neither would I. But at the end of the day I know my dog and sometimes I think an approach would work slightly better if I tweaked it a bit. I will ask the instructor first because sometimes I don't have all the information. Most of the time if I understand what the instructors are trying to teach me I am happy to do it their way. You won't believe me, but if there is just one thing on this planet I know how to do it's be a good student. I've been a high achiever all my life and I'm not smart enough to have done it on brains alone. I get help from teachers. They don't help obnoxious students that disrupt classes. My online persona and the way I behave in classes are worlds apart.

You certainly can. There is, however, nothing else like a dog park you can expose your dogs to that will enable you to walk into a dog park some time later and be sure your dog will be comfortable with it. If you intend to use dog parks, start early if you have the opportunity IMO.

Can I just say at this point that this is not what I'm getting at at all. When I learnt how to ride a motorbike I wasn't very interested in how it runs, but if I wanted to know what would happen if I hit a bump while cornering I would ask my motorcycle instructor and I would hope they'd be able to tell me. And I wouldn't expect a definitive answer, I'd expect something along the lines of "If your tyres have plenty of grip left on them and are properly inflated and you weren't going too fast... But if there was gravel on the road as well as a bump... Or if the bump ran vertically along the road rather than horizontally..." and so on. And when I asked questions like that those were the sorts of answers I'd get. I'm not saying I expect to go to a training class and be taught why different training methods work the way they do. I'm saying I expect to go to a training class and be able to ask moderately involved questions about applying training to my specific dog (in a quiet time or after class) and get an informative answer.

;) Patricia McConnell loves herding and I am pretty sure she attacks it with the same scientific scrutiny she attacks every interaction she has with animals. Some people just work best that way. I like to know the goal and then I work backwards in my head and fill in all the blanks. Without knowing the goal I am a handling disaster. Thanks, Aidan, that makes sense. I know you don't need the details to train a dog, but I don't think I will ever understand passionate trainers that don't love theory. There are lots of things I just do without knowing the why or how, but all the things I love I research the hell out of. :D That's how I get better at it. And practising. It's a mechanical skill. :D As enlightening as this has been, I still don't really know what to expect from trainers. :D I was sort of starting to give up on expectations all together. I am frankly too scared to ask a trainer about anything particularly technical at least until I know them pretty well. It seems like the quickest and surest way to make an enemy of them. If I were to come into your class, would you want me to pretend I don't know anything and keep out of your way? Or would you want to know what my background was? How would you feel if I wanted to modify an exercise you set because I thought I knew how to make it more effective with my dog?

Don't fear the fear period. My youngest was in a fear period for a year. They may learn what to fear during that period, but they also learn what not to fear. Carry treats for emergency counter-conditioning and take it very slow and steady. Both my current dogs found the dog park terrifying the first couple of times they went. Now they are so comfortable in it that it is quite educational to watch how they handle other dogs. IMO it's difficult to predict what puppies at that stage of their life will suddenly find frightening, so to me the important thing is to be prepared to deal with it. I always work them through it then and there. If they cry, struggle, or cower and don't recover right away, we get some distance and feed, then take a few steps forward and feed, and then do that until we're right up close to the object that caused the reaction and the puppy is comfortable checking it out. I am dead serious when I say you can tell with my 18 month old dog now what he did not experience as a puppy. He reacts to it by barking at it, usually. Not just barking, but hyper vigilance, maybe over-reactions, and it takes work to get him through it. More work than it would have taken to expose him when he was a baby. If you plan to use dog parks, IMO view it as part of your socialisation regime. List all the things you see dogs and people do in the dog park and systematically isolate each one and expose your pup to it. If you see the slightest signs of fear, lots of happy voice, let the puppy move away if it wants to, and don't forget to use any reward your pup is into, preferably food because you can't beat a primary reinforcer. Scary noise? Well, look! A treat! And another! And keep doing it until they look comfortable again.

Sorry to hear it is so hard for you. :p It's not fair. I think I would be hard-pressed finding a place where there are no off leash dogs around here, too.

I propose that Sid photos be regulated in the interests of public health. I am quite sure he can cause cute clots on the brain that can be deadly when they shift.

:p You haven't met Erik! I guess I have trouble accepting that my idea of training is a specialised area of training in the industry. What drives me to gather more and more theory is the never-ending quest to find explanations for the things I observe. To me, training hinges on that. I can't imagine how I could train without it. I can certainly explain to someone with zero learning theory knowledge how I trained my dogs to do something, but I can't fathom being asked to go into more detail and not being able to. Vickie, I don't think I'm ever likely to get a stock dog, so don't worry! I'm not really sure what you were getting at, though. Even instinctive behaviour can be broken down into small parts and has the likes of affective neuroscience, motivation and drive theory to explain it. I do not know how I could ever live in harmony with Erik if I didn't know anything about that. I learnt precisely because Erik was hard to manage with associative learning alone. I currently don't need a stockdog. I do a mean job of moving my hare around without touching him and without provoking him to bolt all on my own. It's all in the balance of body weight and reading his body language, but I'm much better at it now that I understand the theory behind pressure release training! I used to think working with him was organic and instinctual. I've changed my mind about that. Bedazzled, next time I'm over that way visiting my sister I'm gonna make you introduce me! My idealistic face can light up a whole room when fully radiant.