corvus

Being a "leader" is simply training your dog to defer to you. That IS "obedience tricks for rewards". And that is not just my opinion; it comes from the literature. It's just a matter of fluency. For some dogs, if there's a void in direction they will fill it with something that will probably be proactive and obnoxious. I live with a dog like this, and I've learnt to not leave direction voids where there's a chance he'll start doing things I'm not keen on. If I don't even give him a chance to do something bratty then there is no problem. The times he's got ahead of me it's just a matter of taking a few steps back, making sure he can't practice the behaviour, and cueing and rewarding an incompatible behaviour. A dog that is acting to restore homeostasis in themselves is not necessarily the "leader" of the household just because interacting with the human doesn't do a thing to restore that homeostasis. Believe it or not, "obedience tricks for rewards" can be just the thing for restoring homeostasis. Training in my house is supposed to be a fun and safe thing. As long as we're training, the dogs feel in control, safe, and assured of a positive outcome for themselves. Don't underestimate the power of that. It has consequences beyond just the act of doing something for a reward. As for the OP, I think it's up to you. Maybe there are things that will sort it out, but who knows what exactly? It depends on exactly why she's doing it. I think if in doubt you take steps to MAKE SURE the behaviour can't be practised and work on conditioning an incompatible behaviour. If I were to get a professional for something like this I'd be very careful who I got in. Not many people understand the complexities of relationships between dogs that live together.

I trust dogs off leash more than dogs on leash. Leashes create barrier frustration. Normally friendly dogs get over-aroused and it's hard to say what they will do on leash. I have had several people tell me their leashed dog was friendly only to have the dog snap. I now assume leashed dog doesn't want to say hi regardless of his body language unless the owners say otherwise. We've been to Holsworthy dog park a few times. It seemed all right. But even there I've seen fence running and gate crowding just with one or two dogs! Fenced dog parks are troublesome IMO. Give me an off leash beach or walkthrough park any day.

How do you know he's being defensive? Is there a barrier involved, like a leash, fence, door, etc.?

Try to pick one that dogs and their owners walk through rather than one where dogs and owners hang around in the one area. The latter can be full on for a dog not used to it. Also try to avoid fenced parks. There's always a bit of tension at the gates. I hope you know what you're doing! Dog parks are pretty intense socialisation. You don't want your dog to get scared, and it can happen pretty easily. I'd pick a quiet time with at first, and work up to "lots of other dogs/pups".

A Finnish Lapphund. They are usually very socially intelligent. I have sworn several times I should be hiring Kivi out for help rehabilitating other dogs. He seems to know just the right way to approach a leery dog. He's as sweet as can be, very laid back, but loooooves to play. When he's not playing he's often snuggling. He is at the low drive end of the spectrum, but even him you could get doing agility and he'd be great at obedience. The girls tend to be a bit more active than the boys, I think. Or maybe I just know more girls than boys.

Ah, synchrony. Sometimes Kivi and Erik do that. I wonder if the Sheltie propensity for it is one of those funny selevtive breeding side effects or if it goes hand in hand with some Sheltie trait? My boys are both quite social and very close. Or maybe it's like mirror neurons in people. Although no one really knows what they do exactly or whether dogs have them. But there's an interesting article about them here that uses a dog example: http://www.talkingbrains.org/2009/09/what-...ally-doing.html

Oh, oh! I just thought of another explanation that's probably better. We'd been doing a lot of training and tug with Erik just before this, and he'd been on the ground sharing a stick with Kivi a moment before. I wonder if he was just in a particularly social state from all those happy social activities and that made him behave more submissively than usual and this other submissive dog coming along was unrelated?

I was at the dog park with Kivi and Erik yesterday and Erik got into this submission contest with another dog. It was pretty funny as they both determinedly tried to greet from the lower position. They ended up rolling around on the ground like fools. Photographic evidence: Anyway, it occurred to me that Erik doesn't often greet that way. He used to do it to all dogs when he was younger, but these days not many dogs get that treatment. I wondered why he would particularly do it to another dog that was behaving very submissively. We know this dog a little and he is extremely submissive to everyone. I wondered if Erik was mirroring him, kind of like other social animals sometimes mirror each other when they are together. Have you ever seen your dog act out of character to match another dog's behaviour?

What you're seeing is, I am guessing, emotional conditioning. It sounds like your Mal has been unsettled a few times by dogs running at fences as he goes past and this has got him aroused. Arousal in this sense just means more excitement, which means a higher probability of more active behaviours. For example, at low arousal he might just whine, a little higher he might bark and dance, and higher still he might lunge and appear aggressive. So after a few times where dogs at fences have got him unsettled and aroused, now he is ever ready to be unsettled about dogs at fences so much so that he gets himself into that unsettled emotional state and high arousal before he even sees a dog. He is preparing for a stressful situation that he expects is coming. To combat this, you will probably have to address his emotional state. When he acts out, that's a sign to you that he is too close to the trigger (the fence that may or may not have a dog behind it). My guess is he doesn't show much interest in the food because he is ALREADY over threshold. That basically means he will be very difficult to teach and will probably show a strong bias towards learning about negative things. If he gets scared in this state, it may well make him worse. What you're looking for is the point where he starts looking at the fence, but before the ears go forward and he starts pulling. My guess is you will have more success if you stop at this point and start working on getting his attention. What you do from there is best decided on with the help of a professional, I think. There are a few options, but ultimately you want to keep him below that threshold where the fence starts demanding his attention. He wants to look at it because he is worried by what will happen next. The aim is to allow him to learn in tiny little steps that he needn't be worried about it and can therefore afford to pay attention to you. For that to work you can't allow him to repeatedly get worried about it. The usual approach is to counter-condition, which means giving him food so that he learns to associate the scary fence with good stuff. Another approach is to take an operative approach and actively teach him to display calmer behaviours, rewarding those behaviours by taking him away from the scary fence. Or there are the shortcuts, where you teach him a simple incompatible behaviour, like to look at you, or Leslie McDevitt's Look At That game from Control Unleashed, for example. None of these are likely to work unless you keep him below threshold, though, which is why it's best done with the help of a professional. They can help you read him. Anyway, the long and the short of it is you need to dedicate some time to helping him. The longer you let him practise the behaviour the longer it takes to undo it, as a general rule. Sometimes these things can be addressed surprisingly quickly with the right approach. I've been watching Grisha Stewart's BAT dvds, and she says some dogs are turned right around with just a couple of setups and some work on walks. She uses the functional reward approach, where she walks the dog towards the trigger, but stops when the dog is still under threshold, then rewards the dog for looking at the trigger, then looking away by then walking the dog away. In that way she gradually decreases the distance between the dog and the trigger until the dog is comfortable walking up to it or past it.

I remember seeing almost the exact same thing with a 12 week old puppy that eventually became too aggressive towards people and other dogs to manage. Don't let him practise behaviour like this! Do whatever you can to manage his environment so that he can't hide under things. Consider letting him trail a leash attached to his collar for moments things go wrong. Or teach him what a fun game it is to come when you call him. I don't engage in 'battles' I might not win with my dogs. If they want to play silly buggers I will walk away and leave them to it. They generally find it's not so fun without me. If I really need them to do what they're told right now I shamelessly bribe them and then train them to do what I want them to do on command using lots of treats so I don't have to bribe them the next time.

Being a 'good home' is no guarantee that your dog won't be DA or have high level prey drive. Socialisation and training are not cure alls. That is actually what I meant, mackiemad, thanks. I certainly did not mean only good homes get the nice dogs. Erik ain't always a nice Vall, but we forget about it because we know how to handle him and it pretty much becomes insignificant. We forget about how hard it is to get reliability out of Kivi, too. We forget it took us about 18 months of constant practice. You do the right thing, you train a good dog, and then you forget how hard it all was. They seemed like that kind of doggy people. It's easy to forget when your dog is 12 and a complete angel. Anyway, doesn't matter, as the OP doesn't want one.

Guess I met one with a good home. The owners were from the UK and went to a lot of trouble to get their Bouvier. We talked about them a fair bit and I have since done a bit of research because I was really taken with this dog. The descriptions I read didn't match up much with what these other people with a Bouvier told me, let alone what I saw from the Bouvier herself. Maybe she was an odd one.

Not much! The one I met was quite old at 12, so was pretty mellow. We were camping next to her owners over a long weekend. They said Bouviers are a little strong-willed, but no trouble if you're firm about rules. They do need clipping periodically. Large, but not huge. Not hugely active, but happy to go on hikes and happy to chill when nothing is going on. Good with the kids, great with small animals, smart and biddable. They are a little protective. The one I met was not at all happy about my poor old corgi crashing in her peoples' tent one rainy evening. She wasn't allowed in the tent and was not about to let the corgi break the rules. She seemed to take rules very seriously. Other than that, she got along very well with a lot of other dogs and could be trusted to mind her own business and stick with her family. Never saw a leash on her and her owners said they don't wander.

Love Standard Schnauzers. And Bouvier des Flandres. Met a Bouvier once and she was pretty special.

Not sure what the conclusions were, Leema! I don't find either very easy to understand. It's not very fair of me to air my opinions on it all without them here to defend themselves. Suffice to say LCK aggravates a lot of people and many don't see much in his writing of use.

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So cute! I tried teaching Erik so I could just take a photo of him, but he seems to find it a bit difficult, I guess because his body is longish. He was doing all right with a wall behind him, but it's about the first thing I've ever taught him that he really doesn't seem to like doing. He was actually not bad at the beach yesterday when I started teaching him, even without a wall. Maybe the sand helped.

Preferably full body, but maybe I can work with something else. Don't mind if it's front or side on. Probably front is better.

Does anyone have a photo of their dog begging or looking intensely hopeful that they wouldn't mind me using on a website? I'm going to tinker with it quite a bit so it won't look much like a photo anymore, but need some reference material to start with. Preferably a short-coated dog with prick ears so it has a crisp outline.

Uh oh, not Lee Charles Kelley! We have a somewhat lively discussion with him about that article on another forum. Eventually Kevin Behan, the 'founder' of the training theory LCK uses came along and some people are trying to understand how what he says is particularly different to what Panksepp says better. That discussion is where the link to this video came up.

Would a Portugese Pendengo be too small? These guys have just been brought into Australia recently. There are three sizes, and I think the Australian breeder has the smallest size, but maybe the larger ones aren't too far away? They are pretty cute. This guy barely needs his handler!

Erik usually puts his front feet on any object similar to a phone book if we're training, but we have shaped a few different things from there, and shaped away from it a few times, so it doesn't seem to pose a problem not having it on cue. He'll try that first, but if it doesn't work he just tries something else. if worse comes to worse, I can gesture and he'll realise which direction he needs to move in. He's a pretty persistent dude, though. He doesn't give up on something if it wasn't rewarded a few times. If he did, I would probably put it on cue.

I don't use a cue, either. I just shaped it. I signal with my hands for him to swivel this way or that. The phonebook is only half of the behaviour, really, as you fade it out in time. So I put the pivoting on cue rather than hopping up on the phonebook. With the lying down, try offering the reward beyond his nose so he has to move to get it. He will probably stand up and then you're feeding the position, which tends to work pretty well.

I asked one of the companies that makes those all-rounder spot-on treatments that worm dogs as well as kill fleas about worm farms and they told me do not under any circumstances put droppings from a dog treated with that kind of thing into a worm farm because it could kill the worms. Our worms live mostly on the used wood-based litter from my rabbit cage. They LOVE it and it's much better than throwing it in the bin. But they can't quite keep up with it every week. Apparently the more you feed them the more worms you get and the more you can give them, but I haven't been able to work out that balance. I can't say I check on my worm numbers or how fast things are decomposing. I just keep chucking stuff in there until it doesn't fit anymore, then get the casts out and give them to someone with a garden.

I think I can appreciate where Huski is coming from. I have met some small dogs that were well trained but still had this compulsive need to be on you the moment you sat down. Lived with a well trained Chi for a week once who was like that. He just couldn't leave a lap unfilled. There are some SBTs out at the shelter that get excited the moment you make eye contact. They have to abandon everything and race over to jump all over you. My mother has a Boxer/Kelpie cross that is the same. I remember spending several months painstakingly training her to NOT jump on me every time she thought her name had popped into my mind. Seriously, sometimes you don't even have to look at this dog to have her feel like you called her in your head and she jumps up and comes over to put her head in your lap and wag her tail furiously. I find her intensely exasperrating. It took ages to teach her not to jump on everyone, and years later she still just can't resist sometimes. She would work until she dropped and she's incredibly fast and agile and only interested in playing, but I can't stand the fact that it takes her so long to settle enough to let you look at her without feeling the need to leap up and give you a kiss. She's a sweetie, and fun, but I couldn't live with her. I'd never have a dog that would be at my feet hoping to work every time I shifted my weight. Erik needs to work, preferably daily, but he doesn't spend most of the day waiting for me to do something with him. He's super easy to train and very enthusiastic and adores doing stuff with me and doesn't really care what it is as long as he doesn't have to sit still for ages, but he isn't just waiting for me to breath a command, or sleeping on my feet so he knows the instant I'm up. People focused, but I'm not his whole world.