corvus

The problem with time outs is that it's hard to make it happen quickly enough after unwanted behaviour for the dog to learn the association between the unwanted behaviour and time out. As much as Gary Wilkes is kind of crazy sometimes, "bopping" dogs with something soft like a towel or pillow is a pretty god way to punish IMO. It's mild but startling. If you can hide behind a couch when you do it, the dog need never know you were the one that threw it at them. I wouldn't use a leave it cue as well. Pup just has to learn that going after the cat results in pillows coming from the sky. Of course, if he likes to rip up pillows, use something else! Always make sure you reward profusely for the next acceptable response. Doesn't matter what it is. If you'd rather try positive reinforcement methods first, go ahead. It might work, and then you've not taken the risks that come with punishment.

I took my dog to a vet behaviourist for hypervigilance like that. He is much happier on Prozac long-term. No more hypervigilance. Sometimes no amount of training is enough on its own.

If he is a cheerful, resilient pup with no trace of anxiety or conflict about the cats, I would honestly punish it. Why? Because he has to share a space with the cats, and there are zillions of behaviours he is welcome to do in the house and just this one that he's not to do. It may be much quicker and make a lot more sense to him to learn "chasing cats is not that fun" than "there are a zillion things I am rewarded for doing around cats". To make the latter work, you can focus first on decision points, like, he looks at the cat but doesn't go over. Things like LAT are great for that. You may ultimately have to work on duration behaviours, though. Like, lie quietly on your bed. This can be pretty hard for a puppy if they are not ready to chill and have energy to run off. Having said all that, I am currently helping a client with a kitten and a dog. The dog is unfamiliar with cats and the kitten is liable to suddenly jump on the dog's head, hence, the dog is very antsy around the kitten and tends to want to bark and lunge. So, absolutely no negative consequences at all. Instead, the dog is learning what kittens do and how much of it is non-threatening (i.e. all of it). There is only a small amount of food involved. The dog will work for prolonged periods just to get a look at the cat, so we're shaping behaviour with that as a reward and simultaneously desensitising in very short bursts. Management is important. It helps a lot to be able to control both cats and dog so that they can't learn and practice unwanted behaviour. Teaching the cats station behaviours is not a bad idea!

I would look for evidence of socialisation with other dogs. When I was a kid, we adopted a very sweet dog from the pound. For 2 years, everything was fine as she slowly came out of her shell and settled in. Then she got into a fight with my dog and it became apparent that she did not know that fights with other dogs are meant to be all ritualised aggression. She fought to injure, every single time, and eventually it seemed like she might be going to fight to kill next time. We didn't know it was there for 2 years, because that's how long it took for the conditions in which it would be observed to eventuate. Maybe I'm biased because I think dog-dog social behaviour is amazing and an endless source of fascination for me, so I NEED my dogs to have reasonable social skills, but it also means they are probably buffered against negative experiences with dogs if they have had some positive experiences, and if there is reactivity, it is often easier to manage and retrain (with some exceptions). I suppose our experiences suggest that information is power, and I'd be asking the foster carer about any scenarios the dog has been in that caused distress or aggression. It's not a deal breaker if they have displayed those things, but if they have, at least we know how hard they are going to bite or what their favoured coping strategy is and what it takes to tip them over the edge. Dunbar used to say he would take the dog from the shelter that had bitten, because then he knows how good its bite inhibition is. ETA, my brother took in a dog early last year from rescue. It soon became clear he was a compulsive nipper. I took him for a week to see what was going on, and seriously, it was extreme and at times he would nail you several times just because something unexpected had upset him. The rescue eventually agreed to take him back and put it around that my brother had not kept up his training and he had gone back to his old ways as a result. They recommended him for a home with children. I don't know what became of him, but I dearly hope he did not go to a home with children. I got him to a point within the week he was here that he was not leaving new bruises on me every day, but I know what I'm doing. It was sad, but he had some very deep rooted problems that were not going to go away in a big hurry.

Might also be that letting him settle into a walk somewhere quiet before he sees strangers helps him. I am in southern Sydney if you need someone urgently. I don't usually go outside the Shire these days because the drain on my time is difficult to justify and I have to charge extra, but sounds like you need help and I'm available. I specialise in reactive dogs. The more complicated the better! :D http://www.creatureteacher.com.au I always tell clients that if it's getting worse and they can't figure out why, it's time to call help.

Well... I believe you can get in trouble if the advice you give could be construed as medical advice if you are not a vet. As in, you can be sued. I would not presume to suggest medication. I suggest a client might wish to speak to their vet or a vet behaviourist about medication. I can tell them how it might help, and I can give them an idea of what to expect, but I can't tell them their animal needs medication, or what kind of medication. That is for a vet to say. You really need some video of the dog's behaviour when they are alone to determine whether it is separation anxiety or not. Some signs of distress may be invisible if you just look at the resultant destruction. It matters when it occurs, where it occurs, and for how long the activity goes on as well as the dog's behaviour before the owner leaves and within half an hour of the owner leaving at least. Context is highly relevant.

PPGA: http://ppgaustralia.net.au/ "Pet Professional Guild Australia Members Understand Force-Free to mean: No Shock, No Pain, No Choke, No Fear, No Physical Force, No physical Molding, No Compulsion Based Methods are employed to train or care for a pet." They go on to talk more about what this means with reference to the humane hierarchy and their guiding principles. This organisation is attracting membership in Australia, and I believe it has replaced one of the organisations for pet dog trainers that were already in place.

This article is full of misinformation and demonstrates a general failure to understand the basic principles of behaviour and learning. It's nice when you find things you can agree with, but that is not the same as finding things that are correct. If you are interested in the latter, start with a text book, not the opinion of a dog trainer with unknown qualifications publishing little thought bubbles about how they think training works on the internet. Seriously, this industry needs peer review.

"Force free" is not a literal term, Willem. ;) That's pretty much the end of the story. I train for positive emotional states and improved welfare. How I get there depends on what I've got to work with, but adding aversive stimuli is typically counter-productive for these goals. I am not a brilliant trainer, and so I don't always get the results that I hope for. It is a risk when making decisions for another being that you cannot easily communicate with that you let your own shortcomings dictate the options available to you and feel justified in whatever decision you make as a result. It is easy for this to become a cycle you never break out of. I used method x, because I could see no way to use y, and x worked well. I will use x again in future because y is too hard. To grow as a trainer, you have to be prepared IMO to always push the envelope and seek ways to use y, and when you do use x instead, that is not where things end. You revisit again and again as your skills grow and think "Was there a way to use y after all?" Why y? Because it's the fastest, easiest route to positive emotional states and improved welfare of course.

The LAT game is a great idea, particularly because it does not require the dog to interact directly. I am not keen on strangers giving people-leery dogs food. That's how dogs get pressured into going closer than they are comfortable with, which can lead to bites. Better to let them feel safe and in control and let them collect information in their own time. LAT offers a way to do this with structure. It also adds some counter-conditioning, which is another good idea. I think it's fair to assume that if your dog is going backwards in socialisation, you need to go slower and do less rather than more. I don't mean take the dog out less so much as pick less intense exposures (fewer people or dogs, less bustle in the environment, more distance) and work back up as the dog gets less reactive. I don't pay much attention to fear periods myself. You never really know if that's what is going on or not, so best to just take one day at a time and act according to your dog's needs.

^^ this There are consequences if my dogs behave badly. e.g. if they wouldn't stop jumping up at visitors they would either go outside or in a crate. But is this punishment? If it reduces the frequency/duration/intensity of the behaviour, then yes! :) If it isn't affecting future behaviour, then it's not a meaningful consequence to the dog, is it?

Always hard to know how things will develop with a young dog. I would suggest the following: 1) The Look At That game (from Control Unleashed - look it up on YouTube for a tutorial) when on leash and people are around. The trick is to reward him for a quick glance at people so you interrupt him before he gets fixated, but you're still giving him the opportunity to check on them. That way, you know he's processing the oncoming people and not just being distracted. 2) You can either decree no greetings on leash or allow him to greet on cue. It's up to you. It's probably easier to do the former so he doesn't anticipate the release, but be careful he's not getting frustrated. If having him sit and focus on you is working now, I would continue to do that, make sure he is rewarded well for this, and start sneaking some Look At That in if you like to make sure he is learning that this is what we do in response to people. Where it is not working because it's too busy or whatever, you can switch to shoving food in his face if that is successful. I would avoid those situations, though, because that is beyond what he has the skills to handle at the moment. Can you wait outside Petbarn a little ways off where he can chill until it's less busy? 3) I would not stop the group class if you think they are useful. Just move him farther away again. It's hard work to hold yourself in check when you really want to go and play with the dogs. So, don't ask him to do it for extended periods when the dogs are so close and tempting. Move him far enough away that he can give you at least 80% of his attention and the rest to the other dogs and whatever else is going on around him. If he can only do that for short periods, take him well away for a quick play to release his tension before he starts getting antsy, then come back for another go. You should be able to gradually come closer to the other dogs in the class as the weeks progress. If you can't, chances are he needs shorter sessions near the dogs and longer sessions away from them. Or he needs to be farther away again. Or it's possible the classes are just really challenging for him and he might be better off not being there.

I have one dog who has never guarded anything in his life from anyone, and one who guards with increasing intensity as his anxiety increases, but strictly against other dogs. The most he will do if he's worried about us is eat very fast. And that is problem enough, really. Generally if he's worried we are going to take his food, it's because he just nearly choked on it and we want to make sure we find the bit he nearly choked on and take it away so he doesn't nearly choke on it again. Wolfing it down at that point just about guarantees he will nearly choke on it again. I highly doubt either dog non-aggressive towards us around food because of anything we have done, particularly. That's just who they are. The new one nipped my partner a while ago when he walked past her while she was eating a bone in the hallway. She growled at me, but was more easily reassured. I had forgotten about this when I was taking a pig tail out of her mouth the other day to move her to somewhere quieter to eat it. She was fine, but I expect she was fine because we have been giving her plenty of space since the incident to the point where it had become habit to set her up where she wouldn't be disturbed and give her the food when she was settled. I have heard of dogs that will roar into the house from the yard and deliver multiple bites to someone because they went near a dresser that had a ball underneath it 2 days ago. There are some anecdotal suggestions that it can go off the rails particularly in retrieving breeds. Is retrieving a very mild form of resource guarding at its heart? We can only guess. And it doesn't matter as long as your retriever is happy to release the items they carry. Some people kind of expect it in herding breeds or livestock guardians. Whatever the case, it does seem to be inherent much of the time. It can also be easily overcome a lot of the time with good management and some counter-conditioning and/or desensitisation, but there are definitely cases where it's crazy and that's the dog wired wrong. You can't fix that with training.

Dogs are not always rational! They don't necessarily understand that just because they have had enough food every day of their life, that they will have enough food today and they needn't protect what they have now from all perceived competitors. They don't know that we don't want their coveted items. Many dogs learn that we don't, many dogs are so eager to avoid conflict that they don't really guard in the first place. And some dogs are more willing to enter into conflicts to hold resources, and may feel their resources are threatened more easily than others. It's not necessarily something you can just "not tolerate" and it will somehow resolve, even if you work on it. And it absolutely can be influenced by anxiety and a heightened sense of threat in general. Sometimes it resolves on its own if you do nothing and just avoid triggering aggression. The dog learns that they needn't worry about you. Other times, some counter-conditioning is helpful. In extreme cases, it can be off the richter scale and there aren't many options. Point being, broad generalisations about how to fix resource guarding, what is "normal", and what can be safely managed or tolerated may be way off the mark sometimes, and the treatment may vary depending on the severity and interactions with broader emotional state. I have come to see this as a potentially complicated phenomenon.

Some dogs - particularly those with noise sensitivities - don't need any particular trigger. They will just suddenly come to hate a sound that has been around all their lives. My Erik decided he hated the dishwasher clicking when it was running probably after about 4 years of living with it and not showing any signs of concern. Soon after, he grew anxious about tiny noises around the house in the wind. Now the other dog gets stressed about them as well. No explanations. He just woke up one day and objected to sounds that had never bothered him before.

Denise Fenzi and Shade Whitesel might be notable exceptions. Neither use aversive stimuli to train their dogs in IPO, and both are competitive. Shade has been pretty successful. Denise seems pretty busy with her dog training courses these days, but her blog is fun to follow. She goes through some of the troubleshooting she has done to fix problems without aversive stimuli. It suggests what it takes to succeed in any sport at high levels without aversive stimuli, which might explain why it's not common. She is coming to Australia next month. I think it's disingenuous to suggest IPO is an enlightened field these days. Maybe in the same way Obedience is. Or field retrieving. Which is to say, there are plenty of people using a lot of rewards, and plenty of people that are probably creating trouble for themselves with an over-reliance on aversive stimuli, and many of those people have learnt from instructors that don't necessarily understand learning theory and arousal/emotional states. There is still a culture in working dogs (not necessarily unique to working dogs) whether it be security, police or military that puts a lot of responsibility on the dog that should lie with the trainer. I expect dog selection is a factor as well. Regarding the original question, the fact that this only occurs when no humans are present makes me think the dogs are creating their own stimulation. Can they have treat dispensing toys when unsupervised? If a busy dog does not fence run, the answer seems straight forward, although not necessarily easy.

What kind of training are you looking for? I service Padstow if you're looking for behaviour modification (Creature Teacher). Paws Up in Engadine is indeed good. So are Canine College in Menai. I think both do classes and private sessions. Polite Paws is also good. More private sessions around here. Based in Alford's Point, but no doubt will travel to Padstow.

Are you in the Sutherland Shire or nearby? I know dog walkers, sitters, trainers, and behaviourists in the area. And I'm here as well. There are options. :)

Provided I don't post any photos of my adorable puppy. ;) It's okay, Jumabaar, it was not really a muff up and I'm sure most people understood.

Thank you, Willem, for sharing your degree of agreement with me. I'm sure that is useful information to someone. Nearly every dog owner has to answer these questions themselves at some stage. If they get the dog as a puppy, sooner rather than later. My puppy has times when her whinging means "Where are you?? I'm all alone!" and times when it means "I want to sit in your lap and eat off your plate" or "I want to play a mad game of tug with you and pounce on you repeatedly while you are working." I don't have to respond the same way to all her demands, and I should not. Consistency doesn't need to be applied so broadly. But, if I want her to develop independence and confidence, then I should be ready to dash in and hold her paw when she thinks she needs it, just like your parents were right there when you first learned to ride a bike and they would catch you if you started to lose your balance. But equally, if I want her to learn to control her impulses, think through her frustration, and accept that sometimes she doesn't get what she wants, then I pick my times when I think she can handle this without it compromising her developing confidence and independence. And she has just decided she is going to taunt my older dog, so it's time to go and rescue her from her own developing confidence.

*ahem* Behaviourist speaking. Everyone hold your breath. The only way you can tell if an action is reinforcing a particular behaviour is to record an increase in the frequency, intensity or duration of the behaviour. It's possible to reinforce barking by responding to it, but there are a zillion nuances to take into account. Barking is the sound of a language, and it is often a behaviour that emerges in response to an emotional state and/or accompanying arousal levels. It drives me nuts that this is so often overlooked by trainers, because oftentimes the dog CAN'T stop barking. They get in trouble and all it does is cut them off from any owner support they might be able to access. If you think the animal is distressed, and responding to their barking seems to relieve that stress, reinforcing the barking is not something I would be worrying very much about. The priority is to address the distress. A compassionate carer IMO would acknowledge the dog's distress and immediately try to help the dog feel less distressed. That may result in more barking, or it may result in less. Do we care? There is a balance here between being available to your dog when they need you and helping them need you less and less. My advice is generally to meet the dog's most pressing needs first, which are generally making contact with their owner, and then work on reducing that need to make contact once they are less anxious about whether you will respond to them or not. Probably being consistent is more important than what you do. So in summary, I support what Jumabaar stated. It's not strictly strictly accurate as a broad statement, but it's probably true in this case anyway. Some barking is attention-seeking, but even there, some attention-seeking barking should probably be responded to. For example, it may still be driven by distress. The sound of the bark is usually a good way to tell. It's just behaviour, people. If you find the barking is increasing, you can just backtrack and stop reinforcing it. If you stop giving attention and the barking keeps going or even gets worse (after the first trial or two - extinction bursts), you have a good case for assuming the dog needs you. Understanding what the dog is trying to communicate helps a lot. There are certainly ways you can compromise so you are responding to your dog and your dog can 'ask' for your support in quieter ways.

Wow, Buzz made it to Australia! :D He is notorious in some circles. We used to be friends, but I went and said something about formal dominance hierarchies in dogs and he never did get over that. I am just the worst. I think that perhaps a functional assessment is more useful in these cases. What is the dog trying to achieve? Is it distance increasing behaviour or frustration? What is contributing to the arousal? These are questions we can answer to some extent, by observing how the dog's behaviour changes when we change the consequences, and will be useful in treating it. Get the arousal down and you're usually halfway there with this kind of thing. Prevent practice, reinforce an incompatible behaviour, make sure the dog is getting suitable outlets etc.

Sometimes reacting even in a negative way can be a mistake. One of my dogs went through a period of raking his claws across live power boards if he wanted attention. He was quite right - that does get instant attention. I'm an "interrupt and redirect" person, because I think it is the least likely method to backfire, as long as you don't accidentally create behaviour chains. My rule of thumb for clever dogs is count to 10 between the interrupt and the redirect.

You basically just described the foreshore in Cronulla, only the path is MUCH NARROWER for a lot of it. There are stacks of dogs, runners, kids on bikes. On a nice weekend morning, it's very busy. The dogs don't cause any trouble, though. They pass each other, bikes, and runners on the footpath calmly, and there are bag dispensers so they are cleaned up after. Dogs that are brought up walking that path several times a week are unsurprisingly very good at it, just like dogs that are raised walking paths at the beach in California are very good at it. The problems we encounter in Cronulla on the dog beach or in the mall are with dogs that are making their first outings. They do have to learn how to handle these environments, and they won't learn it if they aren't ever allowed there.

I think you should get her assessed by a behaviourist. I think it's likely there are some underlying issues that might be hard to pin down without sitting down for a couple of hours and asking a zillion questions. I'd be picking a VB if I were you. Busybusy dogs are not necessarily dogs that just need to be trained better. Sometimes they are dogs with deep emotional problems and training won't be very effective until those emotional problems are addressed. I speak from experience! My busy dog was not terribly destructive, but I really did get tired of people telling me I just needed to train him to settle. He couldn't settle. He was too busy keeping an ear out for potential danger. I could not train him to stop being vigilant. He couldn't even sleep properly during the day. Seeing a VB was the best thing I ever did for him, and I only wish I'd done it sooner.