corvus

Incidentally, I remember seeing on tv once a dog that obsessively drank water and was consequently having accidents all the time. They started only giving him small amounts of water at a time instead of a full bowl, and gave him ice cubes in his water to slow him down. That way he could still have all the water he wanted, but only in small amounts. It did successfully break the OCD pattern. The ice especially broke his focus on drinking vast amounts of water.

My dogs always have a drink before they go to bed and it doesn't make them want a toilet break halfway through the night. Sometimes when Erik is unsettled his body doesn't wind down properly when he goes to bed. THAT might lead to a midnight toilet break. So it seems to me if anything is going to make them sleep through the night it's making sure they are properly settled.

Birds are very susceptible to stress, and what's more, if they are hit by cars they often break wings. Sometimes they can be saved if they have broken bones, but often their flight will be compromised. Then again, sometimes they're lucky. We found a maggie on the side of the road when driving through Broken Hill a couple of years back. It had just been flipped through the slipstream of a car and was just dazed. Took it to the RSPCA so they could keep it quiet and safe for a few hours until it recovered its senses. Actually, when we went to Port Douglas on holidays we also rescued an injured bird. Got the hotel to give us a box and a towel and had several goes chasing it down. It was injured, but still mobile! The worst I've seen is a car that clipped a monitor lizard just out of Darwin. They barely swerved to avoid it then didn't even stop even though it was safe to. We were right behind and pulled over and got the poor thing off the road. It was obviously in a great deal of pain and didn't have long for this world. Couldn't believe the folks that had hit it didn't stop. It's so wrong to be unaware of the damage you do to other animals, even if it was unintentional.

I agree with Nekhbet. Good advice .... don't know why you're so easily dismissive of it . Because it's based on false assumptions.

I'd rather keep Kivi out of the picture than continually allowing Erik to do something I don't want him to do, be rewarded for it, and then punished right after. I like to think I'm a cleaner trainer than that. I don't think that setting him up to go over threshold is conducive to teaching self-control. That was the only point I was making. Lower arousal would help him nail the self-control with minimal stuff-ups. You try to stop him! He is too fast for me, and I have the reflexes of a cat. Anyway, it's a moot point. We don't use the flirt pole at the moment. Trust me, he doesn't need more drive for chasing. He just needs to learn new objects are chaseable. But that's my problem. He won't run towards a toy because he doesn't see it as a reward until I have my hand on it. He doesn't want to run to it any faster than I run to it. I actually want him to have more value for the toy in this scenario because I am physically incapable of moving fast enough to get myself where I want to reward him. I have to send him from point A and reward at point B, but at the same time motivate him to move as fast as he can towards point B without training him to only run towards me. The tug is already on the ground where I want to reward him by the time he gets there. Putting it there beforehand is not going to make any difference. Vickie is bang on for why I started the thread. Incidentally, Kavik, maybe we should do a little experiment? We could try sneaking tug toys in with toys that get thrown at a ratio of, say, 20% tugs and 80% throw toys and see if we can get our dogs to come to view tug toys and throw toys as the same sort of reward. Or do we not want that?

Bah. Never mind.

He has a modicum of self-control around balls. He can down and shut-up, and he can sit and shut-up on cue and hold it for, well once he's in a sit or down he can usually hold it until released. He barks a bit in between throws or being cued sometimes. Not every time, though. It's just Erik being a Vallhund and expressing his high levels of excitement and frustration. Ideally I guess he'd be not quite that aroused. He can still hold it together, though. Just. I don't think he needs to build drive for chasing. He has PLENTY. It's just tug toys he doesn't chase. We don't use the flirt pole much because he keeps destroying the toys I put on the end. The last one only lasted three sessions. He is a flirt pole destroying machine. Once that one comes out all other rewards fade into insignificance as far as he's concerned. I had a play this afternoon using 4 balls to keep him from running off with them. He truly loves his Orbee ball on a rope because it's a ball AND a tug. He is wild about it. He gets to catch and then tug! *esplodes* It's bewildering to me that he is like that with the Orbee ball but a regular tug if I throw it may as well not exist. It doesn't exist until I put my hand on it. Do you think it would help if I snuck a tug into the ball collection and periodically threw a tug amongst the balls? Clearly I've conditioned him to see tugs as exclusively tugs rather than something that can potentially be chased and tugged. He will chase them if they are in my hand, but not so much when they leave my hand.

"Stopping" behaviour would indicate suppression, i.e. punishment. It's impossible to train in a "consequenceless" manner. Training is a PRODUCT of consequences. I went to dog training club, and it single-handedly ruined my relationship with my dog. My mother went, and that's where all her problems started. She went to several and the problems were compounded each time. She no longer goes to training clubs. Little wonder. It was never enjoyable for her. She was alternately abused and ignored. Even flyball left her bitter and jaded and sworn off all dog-related activities. A dog is being trained every time they interact with people and other dogs. If people understood that, maybe they'd be inclined to take a more proactive approach.

This fascinates me! My Vallhund is verrrrry touch sensitive. He goes weak at the knees and throws his head back in ecstasy when you scratch his back. This was very cool to me, as my mother's Vallhund does the same thing. I thought it was just him! I always ask Vallhund owners if their dogs love a brush or a scratch. Haven't had anything other than "YES!" yet. I wonder if is for some purpose or if it's a funny side-effect of other selective breeding? My Lappie has a bird obsession. He is just so excited by birds. I am not sure what his motivation is, but he just seems to want to get close to them. He used to bark at the magpies when he was a puppy and they would come and sit in trees above him. He so badly wanted them to come down. I have since been told that it's common for Lapphunds to have an odd fascination with birds. Kinda odd for a reindeer herding breed.

Kivi is so friendly and striking that he attracts a lot of attention from all sorts. He has it figured out. If he goes and sits in front of someone and looks up at them he gets a cuddle and maybe even a treat if he's REALLY lucky. He's a funny dog. Sometimes he just is determined to greet someone. Particularly if they are meditating or sitting quietly apart from the action. Erik attracts young men with small dogs and women that have big, tough dogs for some reason. He gets people smiling at the dog park because he just has this way of running around full of life. He is good fun. People like a fun dog, although they don't want one! He looks like a handful and he is. Kids like Erik as well because he's small.

He LOVES catching balls. I taught him to do it one night and he was just so freaking determined he was going to master that skill. Every time he missed it he grunted to himself, grabbed it and spat it out at me for another go. I don't know if it's possible for a dog to have a sense of achievement, but once he nailed the catch he stopped giving it back. He still loves doing it, but just can't bring himself to give it back, even if I walk off and leave him or play with the other dog instead. He doesn't care if I'm not interested in his ball. He still wants to hold it for a while. I will stick to a smaller area, then. Preferably that's not my backyard where I will likely aggravate the neighbours again. Oh, I see. Why didn't I think of that? He's doing better all the time. It's good enough to use in this context. The problem with agility is he's not revved enough around the obstacles and is easily brought down instead of up. If I could get him to chase a toy more reliably, that would change I imagine! Along with helping him understand what the hell he's meant to be doing. If I were doing this with my other dog he would have given up by now. It's a nod to Erik's willingness that he's not only still at it but improving as well. I think by now he should be running through obstacles he knows. Instead he's kind of trotting and jogging with the odd run. He's doing it at my pace. Seems to like doing it, but more bemused than excited. He's much smarter and faster than this as a rule. Don't tempt me!

Animals have a remarkable ability to adapt to handicaps. My hare was in a cast for weeks when he broke his leg and once the pain subsided he was getting around plenty fast enough, thanks. His leg was crooked when the cast came off and still looks not quite straight, but he doesn't favour it at all and it has actually straightened a bit since the cast first came off. Or maybe he just built up more muscle tone so it's not as noticeable. Anyway, my point is, there's not much you can do for a hare but bind it up and hope for the best. With a dog you can get them doing physio and help them condition their muscles to best overcome the injury. Without knowing anything about what has happened to your girl, I think it is fair to expect that she will be pain-free soon enough even if she does still limp. There was a 3-legged dog I knew that could jump 6 ft fences with no worries. I think it's actually better that this has happened when your dog is young, as her muscles will be more adaptable. You just wait, one day you'll look back and wonder how you could have ever thought it would have a long-term impact on her.

Ah yeah, we've done some of the 2-food game. We do have an i-squeak and a few similar balls. Don't play with them much because he seriously goes MENTAL and I have to have Kivi locked away for his own protection. I used to do a bit of something like the 2-toy game with the balls, but because Kivi really wants to play too but thinks the game involves chewing on Erik and Erik thinks if he doesn't get a ball instantly he should bite Kivi, I kinda did it pretty sporadically. I think a lot of the problem was the lack of room I had to work with. I've done it at the park before and it worked much better as Erik could keep clear of Kivi and that seemed to take care of a lot of the tension. Unfortunately, the only time I've really had it working at the park was when we went to the local fenced park where there is not much to do except kick balls around. At our regular park Erik is more interested in other things. He will tug, though, and is happy to clicker train, so maybe I just need to teach him to chase balls at the park like I taught him to tug at the park. Thanks.

Erik tugs nicely, but he has not much interest in toys that aren't in my hands. I'm finding this to be a bit limiting in agility training. The idea is I throw the toy as a reward when he heads in the right direction and he runs after the toy, but it's not really an instant reward for him. He doesn't race after it. Most of the time he doesn't even try to pick it up until I reach for it. It is quite strange. Usually he will chase moving objects, but apparently not if they are tug toys. He will chase balls, but I haven't tried them as rewards. He tends to run off with them and we're not allowed to take them to training because they get away from dogs and dogs fight over them. I have been teaching him to retrieve, but we are a ways off yet. I've been thinking maybe I should do releases to me and then throw the toy past me. If he's already running fast he will chase the toy and grab it. I guess I have just never played fetch games with him much and he's not used to seeing toys as something to chase. He certainly gets excited when he sees someone with a Kelpie and a Chuckit at the dog park, though. He's got it in him and he LOVES chasing things fast, I just haven't ever tried to tap it before. I think our training is going really slowly because he doesn't see the toy as something to chase unless it's in my hands. Ideas?

I haven't read that one, but I've read "Reaching the Animal Mind" and it's one of the best training/behaviour books I've ever read. Great stuff.

Oh, there is much exclaiming. My dogs just don't generally care if someone exclaims in horror. I love that about them.

Depends who you ask. I don't know of any specific references that establish it as fact, but I'm not very familiar with learning theory literature. There is A LOT of it. I know a lot of people a lot more experienced than I am that hold that opinion. Aidan was right in pointing out that I didn't say I didn't believe negative consequences had any effect on reliability, I just don't think it is a pre-requisite. My hope is I'll be smart enough not to use a recall when my dog isn't going to come, but Kivi has his spitz moments that are very difficult to predict. What can I do if he's belly deep in the swamp at the dog park? I'm extremely reluctant to go in after him for obvious reasons. If I walk away he will come back on his own when he's done. The best thing I can do is prevent it from happening in the first place. If we are not confident we can keep him from going somewhere we don't want him to go, he goes back on leash. Why? What has he done wrong? He's just being a dog, and clearly my training hasn't been conditioned strongly enough. He used to spit out the tastiest of slimy morsels when someone said "leave it!", but we didn't maintain that level of reliability and so the only ones we have to blame if he won't stop is ourselves. If anyone needs correcting it's us for a) letting it happen and b) not maintaining the training required to overcome the problem. I'd just grab his harness and lead him away.

The small dealings I have had with AWL left a good impression. The small dealings I have had with council shelters suggest those that are trying to reduce the euth rate are still quite new at this? Not sure if it's the same for Ipswich. To me, it makes sense to get someone experienced to manage a shelter, or at least seek help from more experienced people if it is available. I have a great deal of respect for local councils that want to make changes to the status quo. That's where it all starts! I came across some fantastic local councils back in my environmental consulting days. Real leaders instigating useful change. Unfortunately there were many more that didn't have much of an idea what was going on in their environment. Some didn't even have a State of the Environment Report.

Did you access this on campus by any chance? I can't seem to access it from my home computer. Did they mention anything about tryptophan deficiencies in dogs fed corn as the primary protein source? No. I just checked the link and it didn't work, so I did a search for it and found it again. Weird. Here's the link I just looked at it from: http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php...f42f347c677729f I don't think it says anything about corn in particular. You know, I couldn't get that link to work, either. Might have to search for the title on Google.

What mess? I think dogs are less socialised nowadays than they were when I was a kid, which seems to lead to more aggression problems. I don't think that is because we are afraid of what a dog is. On the contrary, I think we take it entirely too lightly. It's incredible what people do to dogs that should by rights see them get their hand or face taken off. Yet it rarely does, because dogs in general just aren't like that. They've had thousands of years of selective breeding to take it out of them. But just because we CAN do something doesn't mean we should. I think puppy preschools are a fantastic idea that is being let down by unskilled trainers. My partner loves having dogs but doesn't love training them, grooming them, or medicating them. Nonetheless, once he learnt how to train them he came to enjoy being the one in the park with the most obedient and attentive dogs that can perform tricks that make him look cool. As a result, he has got better at training and more things he'd like his dogs to be able to do are within the realms of possibility. Sometimes people ask us how much time we spend training our dogs and we just kind of shrug and say whenever we take them anywhere. Whenever they want something. Any time we are with them, really. I think if people understood that training is something that happens whenever you interact with your dogs, not just when you load yourself with treats and leash the dog up and take it into the backyard for drills, then maybe we would get somewhere. Lack of reliability does not come from lack of negative consequences for 'disobeying'. It comes from weak conditioning. I'm never going to correct my dog for not coming when called because it is not a scenario that fits my criteria of a situation suitable for corrections. I can't guarantee that I will be physically able to correct every time. I can't do it with precise timing. I can't ensure that it is not being associated with objects I don't want a negative association with, or behaviour that I don't want to suppress. On top of all that, I'd never correct Kivi anyway. He's too passive and not aware enough. I'd ruin what we had like I did with my previous dog. The world would be a better place if people thought twice before correcting their dogs. I have seen dogs ruined by well-meaning people that think a dog needs to be told when they have done something wrong. They tell them the same way they would tell a kid: with a shout and a smack. I have faith in effective corrections, but I have no faith in the average dog owner knowing what one is.

I don't know. What's an average person? I'm average amongst the people I usually spend time with. No. But I am aware that I have improved as a trainer. I hope I will continue to improve for a good while yet. I attribute much of that improvement to knowing more theory. No need to get snippy. The fact that I'm doing formal studies in animal behaviour has no real bearing on how I learn or how I organise my mind or whether I find theory confusing or not. I was interested that you said it was confusing because my experience has been quite different despite being quite new to this myself. Differences in experiences interest me. I like whys. This is no exception. I was hoping you'd elaborate is all.

just curious, are you saying this is impossible to ever resolve or just not possible with the range of solutions you have tested so far? Well, there is getting him away from a dead bird. I can go and get him, or I can call him away before he finds one, and sometimes if I'm close enough he'll recall away from it, but I usually only try that if I'm really close. His recalls are as good as nearly 3 years of regular successful practice can make them and I don't have any complaints, really. I can live with the odd failed recall, and it's not a big problem seeing as most of the time there are no carcasses to tempt him, so I haven't tried very hard to improve his reliability around dead birds other than just plugging away at his recalls.

Really? Maybe I'm weird. I find the complete opposite. The more theory I read the better it all comes together as one unified system in my head. I go "Ah! That makes sense because I had already read this..." It's like joining the dots. I started "training" my hare before I knew about learning theory. But I am so much more successful with him now than I've ever been, and I attribute that directly to knowing more about behaviour in general. Although it probably helped that I had already learnt to pay closer attention to what my animal was signalling (thanks Erik). Not to diminish the importance of practice or simple experience, but I guess I feel like I can't do much until I have a good idea what's happening and why and whether I want to change it and how to achieve what ends.

That's okay. One of my dogs loves to look for dead fish and birds on the high tide line at the beach. So I started carrying dead fish. He digs Whitebait as a recall treat. There's no getting him away from a dead bird, though, and I don't think I can get a steady supply of day old quail chicks for recall treats.

What do you think will gain more attention in dog training in the near future? What would you like to see become common place? What do you think needs more development or better understanding?