corvus

If the reward rate is high enough and the rewards appropriate, the dog will want to work. I aim for compulsive training in my dogs. If they don't try to prompt me to train with them then I'm doing something wrong. Even Kivi will come and look for training. Actually, his chief way of "asking" to train is to come and glue himself to someone's leg and look up at them hopefully. Never taught him a formal heel, but he's been rewarded for coming in and glueing himself to a leg often enough that he does it a lot without being asked. He'll try it with anyone. It's kind of embarrassing when he sidles up to complete strangers on the beach and starts heeling with them. Thankfully most people seem more bemused by it than anything. He very rarely gets rewarded for it, but he has a lot of faith in heels, apparently.

I use a LRS instead of a NRM. I figure my animals don't need to know when they haven't earned a reward because it's pretty self evident. They haven't performed to criteria because they haven't got a click yet. If they are a bit stumped, I move them or myself to prompt a reset. I seem to remember Ken Ramirez showing a video of someone that was very good at NRMs to illustrate what it should look like if you use one. I don't see the point and probably never will. Occasionally I let my human need to verbalise get the better of me and I interrupt what was about to be a response I wasn't looking for. It's really over-controlling and counter-productive to everything I aim to achieve with my animals, and tragically, it works really well with Erik in particular who has good bounceback and is quite persistent. All I'm doing is feeding him too much information and messing with his problem-solving abilities. I try to keep my mouth shut when I'm training. Otherwise I start doing things I later regret.

Negative reinforcement. A fair bit of care was made to make sure everybody understood the distinction.

I attended this seminar yesterday. It was quite good. Enjoyed the presentations and found the attendees to be particularly open and friendly. The underlying message IMO was to consider how effective our efforts to modify behaviour in animals are, and whether the methods we choose are the most humane. There was also a focus on using science to guide our welfare decisions and be critical of claims made about how animals think or feel. IMO it was well balanced. There was a bit of anti-Milanism, and a bit of anti-dominance theory, but it was balanced out by talks on humane use of negative reinforcement in management and training.

This is a really funky and interesting phenomenon according to Panksepp's book on affective neuroscience. There have been some fascinating studies on it in rats. For many "drivey" rats, they can easily be switched onto obsessively carrying out another activity entirely by making the preferred one impossible. If they make the first one available again, the rats often don't go back to it, preferring the new outlet instead. This is part of the existing evidence against specific reward circuits in the brain. Ken Ramirez at the APDT conference last year said that an animal has to be taught to accept different rewards in different scenarios. Otherwise they will develop reward expectations and will have no interest in rewards outside of those expectations. To me, this falls in line with both the effects of psychological establishing operations and what we know so far of the SEEKING brain mode and the interactions between SEEKING and consumption. Sorry. I had a geek out. Going back under my rock, now.

Have you tried something more serious than praise? We found rewarding with food afterwards was quite effective.

Poor thing. Something similar although much simpler happened to Penny once. It is very distressing when they are in so much pain.

Thanks, good point. He's not very noisy when he's actually doing something as a general rule. Just the odd "Hurry up!" "But I want the tug now!" kind of thing. I'll leave it alone. I don't think it's a problem anyway. I would like to get on top of it. I did start mat work with him. I think I will go back to it, thanks Ness. And it occurs to me that I have a Manners Minder that would probably largely solve the problem of reinforcement rate anyway. I had forgotten about it because last time I tried to use it in this context his brain really wasn't engaged and I realised I had to do more work first. I did, and I think it would work well, now. He's much better. Valls have a lot to say. Some more so than others. Erik in particular! I've never used that as an excuse to let him bark himself out or anything, but if I get him barking all the way around an agility course I think I will be very happy. He only starts barking while he's running if he's really having an enormous amount of fun. We do have several ovals around here, but they aren't officially off leash areas. I find playing fields a bit frustrating. Sometimes they are good, but sometimes I just get set up and a sports team arrives! And that was before I was doing agility. I think I will just have to organise my time a bit more carefully and try to visit during work hours. Hoepfully the weather will cool soon so it's not too hot to do so. There's also a fenced dog park in the next suburb with three separate areas. We usually avoid it, but perhaps I can work out what the quiet times are and manage to avoid other dogs. I swear, every dog I've met in that park has been downright weird. You see some amazingly odd behaviour at dog parks. Thanks for the ideas, folks.

I am working on the barking. That's why he's there in the yard rather than in the house. It's not incessant. His brain certainly is engaged. Tell him to down and he slams himself down and shuts up. He just has to learn to maintain it for longer than a minute. Doesn't help me in the meantime, though. And it doesn't give me more space to train in. I can relate to my neighbours. That's why my dogs practically live inside. Still, I've had them shout at me after literally just 2 barks when we have had hours of silence beforehand. I don't think it's possible to have my dogs quiet enough to satisfy them.

I would try teaching him a behaviour to focus him. Targeting usually works well. It's easy to teach a dog to touch your hand on cue. Then you always have something you can tell them to do that's easy and has a good reward history and it can just give them the structure they need to settle and think.

I have a small backyard and only about 12 or so square metres of it is flat. It is pretty cramped and I've already spilled over into the front yard with another agility obstacle to practise, and I tend to do circle work in the cul-de-sac we live on. To make matters worse, Erik barks while he's waiting for his turn at training, and during training if I'm going too slow for him. I don't mind terribly, but my neighbours do and after they interrupted a training session this afternoon by shouting at me to shut the dog up I have come to the conclusion that I can't do much training in the yard at all. It's the third time I've had them shout at us during a training session and I have just had enough. I can't enjoy my dogs while I'm waiting for the neighbours to get cranky. I don't have any patience left. So I'm wondering where other people train. We have a vacant lot across the road under the power lines, but it's not flat and it's perpetually wet and the stormwater drain dumps all manner of wrongness that attracts the dogs. I do a lot of my training at the dog park, but sometimes it's a bit too distracting. It's big enough to find a little spot to set up some equipment, but dogs still sometimes come over and it is not as controlled an environment as I would like. We are not staying here forever, but we're also not moving to a place with a bigger yard (and fewer neighbours) at least until I finish my PhD in 2 years. What can I do? Where can I go for low distraction training?

Yes, Erik is extremely cute. I think it's those pixie ears. I've never met a more engaging dog. He is very switched on! Lappies are also gorgeous. I like my Nordic herders. They are a good compromise. Easy to train like a traditional herder, but a little less intense and lower exercise requirements. They tend to be very friendly, too. Not sure what I mean by "traditional" herder... Vallhunds are a very old breed and Lappies while getting a breed standard recently have been around as a type for a long time.

Corgi? Like Shelties but less coat and less noise and less prone to being highly strung. My corgi lived with a super active Kelpie cross for a while and they got on very well. Then again, my corgi got on well with most dogs. Played with anyone who was up for it, very tough and outgoing. Swedish Vallhunds are similar but at the same time completely different. I am not entirely convinced my Vall would classify as lower energy than a bouncy Kelpie. He sleeps most of the day I guess, but when he's on he's on and there's no ignoring it. He needs lots of mental stimulation. A very, very clever dog and heaps of fun to train. But even tougher than a corgi. He plays with the big boys. He is very strong for his size and very game.

It took me 6 months to get my foot in the door with zoology, but I worked with people who went through a year or two earlier and it was common to take them 6 years. They would just scrape around with volunteer work and animal attendant jobs and lab attendant jobs until they finally got what they wanted. But people like that hold onto their jobs fiercely even when anyone can see it's not worth it. It took them so long to get in they can't bring themselves to get out again. I've found that in fields where the staff are highly motivated and passionate, pay is dismal and workers get badly exploited because they will put up with it. Good luck to those that want in. I used to not care much about money, but I care more now than I used to when I was young. I can afford low pay because my partner is paid well, but if it wasn't for him my life would be a lot tougher. I took a 60% income cut to do my PhD. I don't regret it for a second, but it wouldn't be possible without my partner's support. At least, I wouldn't be able to enjoy things like gym membership and a house in the suburbs and going to conferences and the likes.

He sounds like a cutie! Well done getting him to train everywhere you go. It's one of those things a lot of people neglect, but it's the most important bit! I started my Vallhund in a pre-agility class when he was 8 months old. In retrospect, I think it was too early. He was a right handful at that age. He was intensely excited about most things out of the ordinary and I'd never taken him to a class before except puppy class for a few weeks when he was a baby. It was quite exhausting keeping his attention through an hour long class, even though most of what we were doing was just play. He started foundation agility a few months later and I soon discovered my reward system wasn't nearly as strong as I wanted it. As soon as I started relying on it more it all started to crumble. He didn't want to work with me all the time, which was truly shocking because he is such a little goer. Anyway, we are back at it now 6 months later and I'm really happy. He is much more mature and I think this is good for him. He is less easily distracted and he is much happier to work with me and just more emotionally balanced. Mind you, Vallhunds mature slowly and at 18 months he is about up to where Kivi was at in maturity at 10 months! So I guess if I had my time again I would do a few things. I would probably take him to obedience classes just to get used to the class environment. I'd make sure he was reliably working for any reward I offered regardless of distractions and that he could switch between rewards quite smoothly, and I would have started pre-agility when he was about 14 months old and was past the worst of the adolescent mayhem. Clicker training, rear end awareness, and self control exercises all stood us in good stead. Incidentally, I'm recently appreciating how shaping behaviours on random obstacles you come across in your travels together can be helpful. I think it makes them more adventurous, more comfortable interacting with new objects, and puts them in this nice positive state where they think training could happen any time and include any thing.

I have two supervisors. Does that count? I fell in with a group of trainers online that are all much better than I am. Much more experienced and with a broad range of types of dogs and so on. We have a collective library of training books and dvds and share our own training videos. I like having someone I trust to look at what I'm doing and offer constructive criticism. They are all on the same page as me and are committed to getting happy, animated dogs in training.

My sister, first time dog owner and cat fanatic, has a Greyhound. She went through an adoption program and they got her a smaller grey. The dog lives with 10 cats and has never ever chased one. She shares her bed with kittens and just tries carefully not to squish them. She is a bit of an odd Greyhound, though. She is also exceptional with children. I've seen strange children just come and sprawl all over her and she just sits through it. She's an odd Greyhound, though. She's very good off leash. You have to physically drag her away from my sister's side. She's a bit on the timid side.

There are a few studies that suggest a profound effect on coping skills of animals with different experiences in early development. Varying degrees of flexibility and "fixability" in the behaviour. It is extremely interesting. One day, maybe.

The million dollar question. It's debatable. Panksepp says no. Kind of. But also slightly yes. I'm starting to see what he's getting at.

If you're a breeder and you bred the dog, then you got the dog from a breeder. Or skip it. There's a trade-off between detail in data and powerful numbers. Too many groupings and I will inevitably have to pool groups because I won't have the numbers I need. I pre-pooled wherever possible because it saves time and effort. I have spent too many hours of my life entering data that is too detailed to use to inflict it upon myself lightly! Asking the difference between temperaments in dogs acquired at 4 weeks, 8 weeks or 12 weeks is a level of detail I decided would not get enough numbers to examine properly, and the rest of the questions aren't geared towards the effects of early experiences anyway. That's a survey on its own! Hope that helps. ETA "Play" is however you interpret it. There have been entire books written trying to define play!

I said that to my instructor and she didn't seem to think it was that big a deal. Mind you, when we were talking about this she had just seen him quite happily release from a collar hold and run through a couple of open weaves and tug at the end a few times. Different story later on. I did snap up that snub leash in member marketplace. I think it will help keep my collar grabs low. He's not so sensitive if my arm doesn't go over his head or flash in his peripheral vision. Anyway, so I'm not sure if it's in front of the equipment that we have a problem or just when he's particularly excited in general. I wanted to do some counter conditioning in front of the equipment, but my instructor wasn't keen on the idea of having him in front of the equipment and not having him go through promptly. I think the jury was out on that one. I have to do something because there IS a problem and whether it's equipment or excitement it's happening in front of the equipment most. I'm inclined to think he just needs to practise collar grabs near the equipment a little. My guess is whether I get his collar or get his body the effect will be much the same at the moment. We're taught that the dog's job is to do whatever obstacle is in front of him and it's our job to steer him to the right one.

I talked to my instructor last night about it and we think it's best for now to just keep working on his collar grabs. I didn't want to cue anything in front of the equipment because I thought I wanted my dog to be cued BY the equipment being in front of him. My instructors must have taught me well, because that's what they said, too. It is currently definitely slowing him down and making him more nervous than he otherwise would be, but I think I would prefer to try to get through it if possible rather than switching to other cues. I'm just going to approach it like training any other behaviour. I'm going to put "get your collar in my hand" on cue and hope that he comes to like it enough to overcome what damage I've already done. He's doing it inside already, so perhaps I got onto it before it made much of an impact on him. Baby steps.

Depends on how many responses for each breed. One of the reasons why breed rarely gets considered is that numbers for each breed are too low to draw conclusions from. I think it's fair to assume there are significant breed differences, but being able to prove it is another thing all together. Some researchers have tried to handle this by pooling breeds into Group.

AFAIK the only reason to not use the term "separation anxiety" is because we aren't sure that the dog is actually anxious. In the literature it is generally referred to as "separation-related behaviour" for that reason alone. It's an academic argument, though. Some people think that not all dogs with the symptoms are anxious and others think they are. It is a fascinating topic. Multiple possible causes, much the same symptoms, and sometimes treatment is elusive. One of the most broadly effective treatments is simple counter-conditioning. Erik has a mild case, as does my mother's Vallhund. Both were pretty much fixed by giving the dogs a special treat upon leaving. I can't give my dogs Kongs, either, as Erik is a hoarder. I can give them dried cow ears or pigs ears, though. Something that takes them a few minutes to get through is ideal. It takes their attention away from us leaving and they get through it too quickly to have an argument about it. It's definitely worth looking up Karen Overall's Protocol for Relaxation, which is good to do anyway and certainly won't do any harm. It is always a good place to start IMO. Also Aiden on this forum has a good exercise that is called the Calming Yo-Yo. You should be able to find it through Google.

Paul didn't write the survey. I did. As it happens, I spent the last 9 months researching it before I put it together. Weird. Most of the questions came from other studies and have been validated, which means I can be fairly confident the answers are telling me what I want to know, regardless of the variation in training history and life experiences. Pretty cool, don't you think? I used to think generic training questions were bollocks, but it turns out they really aren't. That is sooo... ;) Thanks everyone! :D It is extremely exciting for me.