corvus

No fun police, but Erik is incapable of keeping out of anyone's business. If two of the pack are doing something together, Erik will be involved, dammit. ETA My last dog was known for her "Everyone! The other dogs are breaking out of the yard!" bark. My mum didn't know what she was going to do without her when I moved out with her. The dogs got out more often. She did get herself in trouble with her controlling ways, though. She'd relentlessly tell another dog off if we called them and they didn't come immediately. She'd go after them and when they finally did make it back she'd be all over them. Inevitably, the other dog would get sick of it and tell her to bugger off once and for all.

The thing is, if the dog will take food or play at all then you're doing more than merely distracting them or rewarding them. You're also classically conditioning them to be in a less fearful state around their triggers. I think one of the reasons why LAT is so effective is that it gives people and dogs a simple procedure to follow in the presence of the trigger. The addition of the operant portion is nice, taking the whole counter-conditioning process one step further. Now the dog is not only in an appetitive state, but in a training state. Neither of my dogs are aggressive or fearful by any stretch of the words, but I LOVE this quick ability to put them in a training state. The more it's practiced the easier it gets. Sorry, it probably all sounds obvious, but I sometimes I feel like people could be reminded how powerful counter-conditioning can be.

I'm counting days. Be verrrrry quiet.

A few thoughts: I think that animals certainly can learn when they are over threshold, but are prone to scary one-trial learning of what to be terrified of or what they did to make everything better. And that learning sticks like glue and is REALLY hard to overcome. I think you have to know when to get your animal out and know when you can wait it out. My dogs go over threshold sometimes (e.g. swans seem to send my Lapphund into a glassy-eyed, tunnel-visioned frenzy) and I find their default behaviours come out sooner or later. Kivi sits and Erik drops. This is a response to extreme frustration for them as it's the only thing that really gets them going. I sometimes haven't waited it out for whatever reason, but 98% of the time they go to their default behaviours before they can think properly and generally within ten seconds. Once they do their default behaviours, they calm down a tiny bit and are capable of hearing me again. Then we work through it. The theory behind classical conditioning is that some emotional states are antagonistic to each other, i.e. one will always overshadow the other. The reason I bring this up is because I think it's worth remembering that evidence suggests play (as well as consuming food) is antagonistic to fear. Talking in terms of drive is frankly confusing. I know what the last police dog trainer I spoke to meant when he was talking about defense drive, but I'm not convinced it's the same thing folks here are talking about when they say defense drive. Perhaps it is valuable to consider aggressive behaviour in light of the opponent-process theory, with the distress of the situation being counter-balanced by the relief when that distress is alleviated. Over time, perhaps it is the case that the actual distress is not as powerful as the sense of relief after having responded in the usual fashion to alleviate the stress. With that in mind, I think perhaps R- would be more suitable as a tool towards the end in changing habitually aggressive behaviour than P+.

I'm studying Behavioural Science with a Psych major. You might be better of with a Bachelor of Science, there is a certain course outline for Psych that is more relevant to human psychology. If you go through a biology school I think it pays to check out who is on the teaching staff and what their research interests are, because it affects what you're taught. I somewhat haphazardly walked into the most behavioural ecology/bird researcher rich department of biological science in the country without realising that if I hadn't, I would not have had all the opportunities I did in undergrad to work on two of my all-consuming passions: animal behaviour and birds! What they teach you in behavioural ecology is an evolutionary basis of behaviour. I still find it a valuable approach even though I've crossed over into ethology now, but I struggle with the psychology side of things at times.

You could shape a stronger tug... with food. I've been doing it with my boy. He was already a strong tugger, but it would all disappear when food was out. So I shaped tugging like any other behaviour by clicking and treating when he pulled the tug out of my hand. I made it really easy to start with, then held on tighter as we progressed.

Or wait it out. In CAT (Constructional Aggression Treatment - like BAT but slightly different) I think they wait it out. Sometimes increasing distance is reinforcing, so they just stop to make sure the dog isn't reinforced one way or another. You should see my hare after his safety signal therapy. I recently went on holidays, usually a surefire way to end up with a skittish hare that hides from everyone for at least a couple of days. This time I had his sitter use the safety signal and came back to a hare more bold and relaxed than I'd seen him in years. It was completely incomprehensible to me. In the 6 years I've had him I've never seen him like that after a holiday. He normally hates it when I mess up his routine by going away, and gets progressively panicky until his routine goes back to normal. I don't know if I'm doing the right thing, but I've started using his safety signal kind of as a marker for responding to pressure the way I want him to - mildly and stopping in the open to assess the situation further before running blindly into the side of his cage. I think it keeps him calm and thinking. There are definitely limits, especially with a wild hare, but coupled with operant conditioning I think it has a lot of promise. Steven Lindsay uses a relaxation training protocol he suggests is good to teach a dog before treating fear or aggression. He couples it with a scent, a verbal cue, and a visual/tactile cue (a blanket).

The literature says getting another dog is not likely to help. If the attachment is towards a person or several people, the dog won't feel any better having another dog around. Separation anxiety is a complicated problem because there are several possible reasons for the symptoms. IMO it's best to get a vet behaviourist to diagnose SA first. If the only symptom is paw-licking, there's no guarantee SA is even the cause. It could be allergies, for example. If it were me, the least I'd do is video tape the dog when everyone is away to see what he's doing. If he is getting anxious when he is left alone, get a professional (not just a vet or trainer) and go from there.

You know, it's kinda rude actually for a dog to walk right up to another dog's butt without first at least making eye contact. My boys are extremely well socialised and they honestly do not really like this. They greet nose to nose, then nose to tail. A dog that lets them know they have arrived by sticking their nose up their butt gets the "how crude" look. Incidentally, I would never stick to this rule. You know why? Because IME most people don't actually know when it's a good idea to let a strange dog greet their dog. The number of times I've asked specifically because a dog has looked a little uncertain, been told it's fine, then had my dog snapped at... I don't believe anyone anymore. I've learnt not to ask, but to use my own (or my dogs') judgment. We just don't bother anymore. I'm yet to meet anyone who has said no. I think it's hard to apply any rules about dog behaviour. Every dog is different. I would just like people to pick up after their dogs. If they did that, I'm sure I could deal with everything else.

Sorry, I realised a bit late that trial has a more common meaning in training circles.

I meant "trial" in the testing sense. Presumably rehabilitation sessions would involve the handler doing something with their dog. Each time they do something where the dog is expected to respond, that's what I meant by trial.

Is it just an agility-related problem or does it occur in other scenarios as well? Is this agility-specific plan the whole thing or just part of the treatment? It seems to me that rehabilitation attempts sometimes go on forever, but I wonder if they would with a super systematic and anal record-keeping approach. I mean recording the dog's response every trial and videoing every session to make sure the handler recognises tiny behavioural responses that might indicate bigger responses to come and where they have made mistakes in previous trials. Maybe even breaking everything down into more detail. Like how aroused is the dog from trial to trial, are we working on quiet behaviours or active behaviours, quick or slow, reward rate... If you know how long (or how many trials in what state of arousal) it takes for the dog to get from one level of tolerance to another, I think you have some idea of how long other steps should take. If a step takes much longer under the same conditions, you might consider you are going through several steps. Doesn't help much in setting time frames, but it gives you an idea.

We had the same problem a while ago, but none of the other flea treatments were working, either. Even tried flea bombing and it only knocked them down for a week. I was just about ready to pack up and leave. Then Comfortis was released and we were flea-free in 3 months. It is at the moment 100% effective. It is a bit hard on their tummies to begin with, but IMO worth it to say goodbye to fleas. It works so fast. I get it from the Vet Shed. We use preventic collars for ticks.

Erik does this. We call them baroos. It's quite easy to get Erik to do it. Questions work well, but he'll do it sometimes if you just talk to him normally. He's very interested in what we have to say! Here's a video of it when he was a puppy.

I meant asking too much too soon. If he won't take one step than maybe you need to go RIGHT back to the very beginning and concentrate on just getting him comfy wearing a leash at all. Counter-conditioning is a process used to change an animal's emotional response to something. By giving him lots of treats while he has the leash on (not going anywhere), you're forming an association in his mind between the leash and good things happening. You could start even further back and give him treats for just letting you put the leash near him if he doesn't take treats with it on. I would get a handful of treats ready, put the leash on, work through the treats in your hand, then take the leash off and repeat several times a day.

Do you mean the collar kind or the internet kind?

That's why I think an accreditation system is a good idea. To give people some idea what they are getting when they hire a behaviourist.

Anyone who doesn't have a GSD or Rottie, apparently.

I remember trying constantly to judge the ratio of good moments to bad moments in my old girl's life, anxious to make the best decision for her. Everyone told me I would know, and I didn't know whether to believe them or not. How would I know? They reassured me that my job was to love her and because I did love her I would know. I knew. But I also realised that if I'd made the same decision a month earlier, it would have been the right decision then. If I'd held on another month, it probably would have been the right decision then, too. I gave her wings when she was still capable of experiencing happiness, and I believe it was the right thing to do. I didn't let it get so bad she was hardly ever happy. She died surrounded by people that had loved her all her life and I will always treasure that moment when I felt all the pain leave her body. I only wish I could be guaranteed the same when it's my time.

I don't. How many of these duped people were duped by a KPA graduate? If you have an issue you think needs to be discussed, start a thread about it. This one is about KPA, of which you appear to have zero experience.

What's the difference?

Maybe you are going too fast for him? Perhaps you could try putting the leash on and just feeding him treats constantly for about a minute and then taking it off again. Leave him alone for a while, then put the leash back on and give him another couple of handfuls of treats one at a time, then take it off. Do it several times a day. My guess is sooner or later he will be comfortable enough with the leash on that he'll start to forget about it and move around with it on.

I was grumping about circular discussions and look what happens! 55chevy, you are good value. Unfortunately, you seem to be a bit masochistic. You clearly don't know any KPA graduates and you seem to have been all riled up by what is pure speculation. Just calm down. It's speculation, not fact. You apparently don't have any facts to contribute to the discussion. I'm guessing what material you have read from Karen Pryor is pretty thin on the ground because you appear to be missing pretty much every point she's ever made. But who am I to get in the way of entertainment? ;) I accept that none of it is your fault. Presumably you have some kind of character trait that drives you to hijack threads to get on your soapbox and draw a big target on your chest and stir the pot. We are happy to help you achieve drive satisfaction until it all gets too much for you and you quietly disappear again. Someone remind me what phase of the moon we're in? It seems like a good place to start to map the cyclical nature of these 55chevy-esque characters that rise up periodically and go through the same visible cycles on DOL before setting again some time later. I think it would help in developing a behavioural modification plan to help them get beyond crashing other people's threads. Don't worry, I'm confident that if we find the right rewards and use them to reinforce the right trick, we can make it purely positive.

I would also be considering whether one dog should be rehomed. Not because it's the only way by any means, but because it sounds like it would be best for poor Dog 2. For that matter, it may well be quite upsetting to Dog 1 to have you trying to change the rules as well. If I were going to do it, I'd be thinking very hard about exactly how I was going to go about it. I would guess it's going to be hard to change this relationships without a very comprehensive plan that you know you can be very consistent with. Every single time Dog 1 gets to push around Dog 2 it's going to reinforce the pushy behaviour. You have to be able to stop it before it starts every time or find a punishment that is instant and strong enough to stop the behaviour in its tracks. But you would have to be careful that Dog 1 doesn't associate punishments with Dog 2, because that could create even more tension. I think if you go the punishment route you should get a professional to help. Your timing really has to be very good. My guess is one reason why the timeouts aren't working is because they aren't instant enough. I would instead try to concentrate on rewarding behaviour from Dog1 that is not pushy when Dog 2 is around. You say they are not always like this, so surely there are times when they are reasonably harmonious? Not rewarding that behaviour is missed opporunitities IMO. My little guy can get a bit pushy. I cue downs and reward him while I'm rewarding the other dog. We can all get along. It has seemed to help. He needs fewer down cues and more often offers a down without a cue when he wants in on the loving. Having said that, my last dog was much more possessive and I never did figure out how to stop it. I was consistent with punishments, but not with rewards. In the end I had the most success with giving her more one-on-one time. She was old, though, and I think often didn't even know why she was snarking towards the end. My other dog need only walk past her to cop it. She was almost blind and deaf, so who knows. I sent my younger dog away on holidays with my parents for my old girl's last days. Best thing I did for both of them. Kivi was noticeably relieved when the poor old girl was no longer around to torment him.

I have very much found this to be the case with Erik. I have said before he just doesn't like inactive or calm behaviours and I think most people just think I'm not training it right. That is possibly true. It's not to say he won't do them, I just think he doesn't really enjoy them and I do tend to mix it up with active behaviours or else he starts getting this "Oh no, she's going to tell me to sit" look about him and he starts to do displacement behaviours if I cue a sit when we're out and about. I find that amazing considering what an all-consuming need he has for reinforcement usually. I keep the reward rate really high and that seems to help. My agility instructor said he has to be really solid with his sits before we start cueing him to release from a sit from a distance or else the sit will deteriorate. I wondered at some point if his sit-stays would get stronger if I started cueing a release from a distance anyway, but I thought it best to do what I was told. I've been doing sit and downs in tug and chase games forever with him and I can't say his reliability fills me with pride. He does a default down, and about 90% of the time he holds it, quivering in anticipation even if I dangle the toy on the ground right in front of him, but the other 10% of the time he just throws himself at the toy unexpectedly within moments of sitting or downing. I guess I am not very good at gauging how far he can go. Don't get me wrong, I adore him, impulsivity and all. He's lots of fun to train. His enthusiasm is infectious. :D