corvus

You can, theoretically. For Erik that kind of thing doesn't take that long, but it's important to be consistent and keep being consistent. Steven Lindsay has a nice calming protocol that uses several cues with the expectation that any one of them will be able to calm the dog if needed. IME this works, but I'm still finding my way with it. There's a balance between emotional states and treating behaviour that has, I think, a lot to do with arousal and the mode he's in. I follow Panskepp's brain modes and find that helps more and more the better I understand it. Anyway, if I do all of one and none of the other I usually end up with partial effectiveness. Getting the balance right isn't immediately obvious or easy to me, although it's not a huge deal to go "Oh, seems like this ain't working this morning" and tweak. I haven't done it with my rabbit, because Erik barks at her and she's scared of him, even though she mostly ignores him. She doesn't like it when he barks. For me, it's not worth me putting her through some training with Erik at this point. When she's in her cage he leaves her alone. When she's out I have places I can put her where Erik can't get at her and he doesn't try. It just means she doesn't get to be a lap rabbit. I've tried a few things, but I'm missing something and haven't been happy with the results. I guess it's one of those "right mixture of emotion and learning" things. Maybe BAT is worth a go. I did do some work with him with my parents' cats recently and to be honest I think his only interest in them is something exciting to chase. As soon as he was calm and they were calm there was nothing to treat. It's hard to work on it safely when the pivotal factor is arousal. It seems easier to just work on arousal in general. Anyway, his interest in my rabbit is totally different. She gets him aroused. The cats don't get him aroused, they just act as an outlet if he's already aroused. If that is the case, there are heaps of things I can do to give him a more acceptable outlet.

One of my dogs didn't like to toilet outside when it was wet, either. I put it on cue and gave him treats when he did it. It just meant standing out in the rain under an umbrella with him on leash until he went until he got the idea. Now he happily scratches at the door to be let out to toilet even when it's raining. Whether it's normal or not is beside the point. It's what you've got, so that's what you've got to deal with. If reprimanding her upsets her that much then don't do it. You don't have to. I hardly ever reprimand either of my dogs. They get rewaraded for behaviour I like instead.

I was watching Grisha Stewart talk about this on her BAT dvd today. She tried using BAT to train her dog to behave appropriately around cats. She didn't say how far she got, but noted that even though her dog wanted to chase the cat, moving closer to the cat was not a functional reward, whereas moving away was. Interesting.

I actually disagree with this. I mark for movement and feed for position. I treat before release 90% of the time for two reasons. Firstly, I think it helps reinforce the position. Secondly, I think it avoids anticipating the release. Anticipating the release is fine as long as the dog has the self control to handle it, but early in training they can be prone to breaking because they get so excited about the release. I'd rather feed in position until they seem to understand that it is the position that gets rewarded and then they are more likely to have the self control to hold the position under high distraction (including the high arousal that comes from anticipating a reward). Like Malamum, I have found a lot of it is in the treat delivery. I have one that snatches and gets away with it because he is so damn fast and unpredictable. Just today he nearly got a beef ear by suddenly leaping up and grabbing it. He certainly knows sitting quietly is the way to get it, but every now and then he springs one on you and he often gets is. I've got pretty fast myself, but that it has ever worked for him is enough to make him keep trying it. I too put the treat right in his mouth and find that solves most of our problems. My other dog doesn't take them fast enough! He very carefully lips it out of your hand and drops it about a third of the time. Then the other dog gets it. He doesn't even try to pick it up. Once it's on the ground, it's Erik's.

I tried to convince OH that we wanted one, but he finds them too cute. There's only so much cuteness he can accept in our house, apparently. Says the man who was given a Cute Overload calendar for Christmas because he is always showing people cute things from that blog.

Kivi's been trying to make friends with the fishes lately. If anyone has a way to get one to tuck itself under a dog collar it's him! I assume a fishy would have to be super close to be affected if it could be, but we seem to have some really bold ones down at the river. The little guys are a bit sensitive. They don't need much to knock them out if my electro-fishing friend is correct. Imagine what would happen if a collar could do it. I bet you could make all sorts of creative bait fish traps with an e-collar. ETA Is it salt water or fresh water? It makes a difference in conductivity, doesn't it? Can ya tell I have no idea??

What's the voltage? Can it stun the fishes and other aquatic critters?

We have dogs, I have dogs, he has dogs. We both claim ownership of both of them, although both are in my name. He pays a lot of the vet bills, feeds them half the time, does his best to adhere to my training methods and teaches them fun tricks, and we usually walk them together. He buys them toys if he sees one he likes. I buy the online stuff. He helps me bath Kivi and will bath Erik on his own, but all the brushing is up to me. He cuddles them both probably more than I do! But I play with them more. He tries to sneak them on the bed when I'm asleep or away. I grumble about him messing up my training cues with sloppy criteria, but really I'm just glad he takes an active role in their lives. He adores them and couldn't imagine life without them. My dad can't be relied upon to look after the dogs that live at his house. He doesn't even know what they eat. I love that my OH doesn't need me to tell him how to look after the animals if I leave for a few days. He says they are his responsibility, too.

Do you think it's redirected aggression due to frustration, or resource guarding? Or both? Has he been taught good things come to those who wait quietly in general, not just for meals and the likes? If his behaviour is getting worse, could one of the more measures you have already taken be detrimental? For example, if he's used to getting what he wants and you try to change the rules on him, he might be getting frustrated. If he's a proactive kind of dog, frustration could have a high probability of leading to redirected aggression. I have a dog like that and he needed to learn (and at times needs to be reminded!) that it's not the way to cope with frustration. If he goes over threshold, though, he is quite likely to forget, I suspect because it's a bit like punching a punching bag and releases some of that pent up rage, so probably feels good on a really basic, emotional level. I can assure you, he only does it to dogs that will let him. Anyway, it might explain why corrections haven't worked. With some dogs if they are already upset for some reason, if you then change rules on them that have always worked, they have no means to handle this situation. I think they get frustrated, and being thwarted on top of that heightens the feelings of tension and that increases arousal and suddenly biting someone becomes a possible way to alleviate these unpleasant feelings. If it does, then even if you punish him right after he won't care. He's already fixed his emotional imbalance and that's exactly what he wanted. It's very powerful, I believe. So, maybe he associates people in the yard with being thwarted and that leads him to do what has fixed this for him in the past, which is to attack Demon. Or I could be completely off base! I'm always careful with frustration, which means that sometimes if I'm going to change a rule I do it in small increments or circuitously by teaching an incompatible behaviour so the dog knows the new rules before I make the old ones redundant.

Counter-conditioning. Take a handful of treats, start with feeding them to her as close to the door as she will go, then take a step and feed some more until she's relaxed, then take a step and feed some more until she's relaxed and so on. Don't just stop once she's outside. Keep feeding until she's relaxed, then go back to the beginning and see how quickly she can go through the routine again. Rinse and repeat until she is over it. Use a "safe" well-known behaviour if she knows one to get her outside. Something like targeting or maybe fetch. Personally, I think counter-conditioning is the way to go because it goes directly to the emotion driving the behaviour. The only way a safe behaviour is going to work is if it's so amazingly fun that just asking for it makes her happy. Takes a while IME to get a behaviour to that point. If you ask for it when she's in a frightened state before it can put her in a happy state, you risk diminishing her enjoyment in it and gain nothing.

I don't know how bad he is, so it's kinda hard to say what's suitable and what's not. If it were one of my dogs, I might go and sit just outside the park or somewhere quiet in the park and just watch and pop treats every time another dog goes past. But the dog park I go to is big and spacious and unfenced and you can sit somewhere quiet and reasonably expect that at most you will get maybe two dogs at once coming over to have a look and they won't run, but will just pop over for a visit. Most would ignore you. There are times when it's very quiet and when you will only see two dogs in half an hour walking through rather than stopping. That's the kind of environment that might help. Then again, there are always risks with off leash dogs. And it's hard to pick a quiet time when you'll turn up and there'll be two dogs and then suddenly there are 20. I think off leash parks take guts and vigilance just with confident, well socialised dogs. Do you think it's worth persisting with a dog that is not confident? What happens if you work him up to the point where he's just about comfortable again and then another dog scares him? Is he ever going to be okay with it for long?

I took the somewhat more convoluted route of teaching Erik rear end awareness so that I could signal him to rotate his back end in so he was nicely parallel.

That is quite cool. I played it to my dogs. Erik came rushing over to see what the deal was, but Kivi laughed back at me! At least I think it was a laugh. Maybe it was a breathy whiney almost-bark thing. You always have the coolest links. You must spend more time researching the literature than I do! For those unable to watch the video, Panksepp made the point that it wasn't enough or even accurate to say an animal's response is fear. Fear is the emotion, not the response, and the behavioural response is the result of the emotion. He then went on to talk about how basic emotions can be considered "ancestral memories" in that they are tools an animal is born with to help them learn and survive. Parts of the brain that are associated with instinctual emotional actions also mediate punishment and reward systems, and can therefore be punishments or rewards in learning. I got Panksepp's textbook on affective neuroscience for Christmas. It rocks!

Haha, I know what you mean! Erik will sit at my feet, wagging his tail and grinning at me, all bright eyed and tilting his head on the side every time I so much as mutter a word as if every thing I say and do is the most interesting thing he's seen all day and he can barely wait until I say or do something else. If at that moment he does a down and gives me the "can you tickle me? Please?" look, I'm pretty much undone. Who can not tickle the little gremlin! Sometimes I think tickles and rubs and cuddles are a good alternative to a game. Dog loves it, you love it, some nice bonding and trust building, but the dog doesn't get really ramped up and it's easy to bring them down again just with slower strokes. Kivi loves a good squeezy cuddle. He groans and flails and then I get lots of ear kisses. Erik likes the game where he waits in a down for me to signal something, then he does it, and I reward him by picking him up, scratching his butt, then plopping him on his back on the nearest couch or bed and pretending to eat his belly. Very social, a little play, lots of affection, and a little training. No wonder he likes it. :D It's kind of like swinging a kid around by the ankles, though. He only needs a few and then he's kind of exhausted.

What, just dogs? I used to use it with my hare when he lived indoors. It meant "I will get up and chase you if you keep doing that." Of course, being the independent creature he is, he learnt all the objects associated with "OI"s and if he actually wanted to be chased he'd go and pretend to nibble on one. If I ignored him he'd pick it up or scrape his teeth on it. Then he'd crouch and give me the "Oh noes, she's gonna eats poor widdle helpless me!" look and spring away at the last moment to create shock waves as he dashed around the room. One time he ran off with a pencil that somehow got tangled in a ball of string and for a crazy moment while I went into damage minimisation mode and grabbed the string, I had a surreal sensation of fishing in my bedroom as the hare kept running and I tried to keep the string from tangling in everything as it unravelled.

I think I see what you're getting at, Bub. We want to meet our dogs' needs, but where do we draw the line between a "need" and a "want". And how do we decide how much of a "want" to give our dog? Erik generally amuses himself during the day if I'm busy, but comes a time most afternoons when Kivi doesn't feel like playing with him and he really feels like playing. He comes in every few minutes to try to convince me with his cutest, most engaging faces and behaviour to go do stuff with him. I usually end up taking a break from work to play with him for a bit. He'll pull the same thing later on in the evening if he hasn't had enough exercise. If he only does it when he hasn't had as much exercise as usual, I tend to think he does actually need to be played with, even if he can survive without it. I guess that some dogs are pretty insatiable as far as play goes. My mother has a dog that gets excited if you look at her sideways just in case you're thinking of going outside where she can grab her rope toy and beg for a fetch game. She will play until she drops, then half an hour later she'll be ready for another round. If she got as much as she wanted she would seriously not be able to eat enough to fuel it! She's pretty skinny as it is, and eats a fair bit. I think it's best not to give her all the play she wants. The more play I give Erik, the more he wants, so in the interests of my sanity seeing as I'm at home all the time trying to work, we play at fairly routine times and there's a ritual before we do so he gets it into his head that the only thing he can do to instigate play is wait for the cue. Or come and give me cute and engaging looks in the hopes of getting me to give the cue. :D See how careful I have to be!

Really? I was quite worried that was going to happen with Erik. Kivi is extremely tolerant. He'd let Erik do anything to him, including stealing his food. Erik is about half Kivi's size, though. There's a limit to what Erik can do to him. To some extent I want them to learn to get along and leaving them be I think helps them learn where the boundaries with each other are. I found over a few months to begin with they both modified their behaviour to promote harmony between them. I am perfectly happy for them to get annoyed with one another as long as they deal with it with a boisterous wrestling game rather than snarking. But I will interrupt the wrestling game if it gets too rough and noisy. I really love Erik's good down. It is a bit inherently calming and he's so used to it resulting in things he wants that he does it without thinking. Obviously you know about NILIF, but I think it is sometimes not entirely understood. Karen Overall uses it extensively, but calls it a Protocol for Deference. There is an excerpt from her book that explains the ideas behind it here. I think maybe it helps to understand that it's more than just installing a rule structure where everything comes through you. It's also teaching dogs to habitually defer to you and be calm about not getting what they want immediately. It also gives them confidence, so helps anxious dogs as well as pushy dogs. It's very nice to have dogs that assume to get what they want they need to be calm and wait quietly. Unfortunately, Erik has to test this with every new person he meets just in case they don't know about the rules. I always warn people that he will pretend he doesn't know how to behave and they should get in before he does with a cue, but they rarely appreciate just how quick he is until they experience it for themselves. He will always fill a void with what he wants to do. I learnt to be very proactive and make sure I was telling him what he should do before he got the chance to think of something obnoxious. I don't let him practice behaviour I don't want him to keep doing. If I can help it, I will manage him so he doesn't even have a chance to try behaviour I don't want.

How old is he?

One time I caught Erik chewing on my $900 binoculars. I said "Noooo! Nononononono." He got up and came over to me with the "Did I do good? Maybe? I hope?" look and when I didn't immediately reassure him he started tongue flicking and spent the next ten minutes while I tried to calm down and not be angry at him trying anxiously but quietly to get me to give him a cuddle. Eventually I invited him up and he collapsed into my arms with a sigh and all this tension went out of his little body. He spent the next ten minutes cuddling and kissing me. Anyway, every time I've been really genuinely very upset with something he's doing even if I try to keep the emotion out of my voice he still stops instantly and comes over all submissive and affiliative. Wish that worked on Kivi! :D

Our hammock has holes as well, but we use ute tie outs clipped to the latch bar on the top of the seat. The clips on those ute tethers are monstrous. Erik used to think it was fun to leap over the front of the hammock and dangle behind the driver's seat where he'd kick the seat and get his harness and tether twisted into a horrible mess whilst destroying the cheap hammock we had at the time. I'm not sure that using a high anchor point instead of a low one helped that much, but it cut down on the sand that gets under the hammock through the seatbelt holes, so they stayed there. However, it did enable Erik to jump over the seat into the boot and he happily yo-yoed back and forth until we got a barrier to stop him. Erik makes his own fun. Thankfully, Erik grew out of his car antics and now just sleeps. Incidentally, the backseat hammock we have is really good. It's quilted, has a non-slip rubber back, leather straps, and it is high so that made it harder for Erik to dive over the front of it. We got it from the Vet Shed online.

But what are you actually punishing? If behaviour occurs in response to a stimulus, and the stimulus is your cue, and the dog responds by ignoring it, how can you be sure the cue was a stimulus at that moment at all? Perhaps what you have punished is looking at a person across the road, or sniffing an interesting scent. If you suppress responses to those stimuli, then mightn't an observed improvement in response to your cue simply be a result of most of the usual distracting stimuli now being associated with aversives? A cue from you may even take on the role of a safety signal, being one of the few things that aren't associated with punishment. I'm sure you see improvements with this method, but I question your reasoning why. As for nerve... I think it's an excuse. Whether a dog can "take" a tougher punishment or not has no bearing whatsoever on whether I choose to use a punishment or not. I know exactly where both my dogs' thresholds lie, and if I chose to use a punishment on either I would take that into account in choosing which punishment to use, how to use it, and when to quit. But just because my younger dog has a higher resilience to punishments than my older dog doesn't mean I punish my younger dog more. I don't "correct" either of them, and I don't find that I have a lot of trouble with reliability. My dogs are as reliable as my criteria are strict.

We put teeth examination on cue for our dog who was thinking about having our vet when she tried to look at his teeth when he was 16 weeks old. He REALLY hated it, but now after letting us look at his teeth for his dinner he will let anyone look even without the cue. It also made it a lot easier to get a bone wedged across the top of his mouth out. His conditioning held and he went still as soon as I put my hands on his muzzle, even though I didn't think to give him the cue. You could do the same thing for any problem part of the anatomy. Start with popping a treat for just letting you touch near it or put your hand close to it and work up.

I think far fewer behaviours are suitable for punishment than most people seem to. I think that most behaviour is not discrete. One behaviour kind of bleeds into another and I am very leery of punishing something when it could at that very moment be morphing into something else that hasn't become apparent to me yet. I don't like to punish a behaviour that I am making an assumption the dog is entirely focused on. It bothers me to think I might be accidentally punishing something else instead, or creating a negative association with something else the dog is aware of that I am not at that moment. In my mind, a behaviour that is suitable for punishment should be quite discrete and absorbing. Like, if I can distract the dog from it and he doesn't go right back to it immediately, I don't want to punish it. I don't really need to, because if that's the case I can reinforce an incompatible behaviour instead. Abed and I will have to agree to disagree on whether there is fallout for punishments if they are done correctly. To me the question is judging what the fallout is likely to be and whether I can live with it. There is nothing worse in training than deciding I can't live with the fallout after I've already created it.

I've been watching in 10 minute blocks over the last couple of days. The first speaker is Jaak Panksepp, who is the coolest thing in animal training at the moment for his work on emotional (affective) brain circuits. Here he talks a bit about the problems with Behaviorism, and a bit about detecting emotional states and things that are inherently rewarding, and emotional communication. For a much shorter and cuter introduction to Panksepp, here's a video of rats laughing when they are tickled. I think it is freaking awesome that there are scientists out there tickling animals for a living.

I hope the OP doesn't mind this going off topic. A closed door is not a good example of a behaviour extinction with mechanical barriers, really. A dog's world is full of doors that are usually closed, but when opened offer access to different areas, some of them super fun. Why should one door that almost never opens not follow the same rules as every other door in their life? My dogs will happily walk through an open gate, but the gate is not the barrier, the fence is. Gates are how you get in and out of fences, just like doors are how you get in and out of rooms and houses. No, it doesn't. But if the result needs to be that a dog won't try to break through a wall, well, solid walls do a pretty good job of that in most normal cases. Is it? What if you lead a dog into a situation where it can't or doesn't know to pay attention to your cue and then you punish them for "ignoring" you?