Mrs Rusty Bucket

Or there's this page http://pantonepoodles.com/doodles.htm Alternatives sorted by size. Pug x Cav -> I reckon a beagle would work. Or maybe a corgi? Or a Papillion (I really like Papillions - they've got so much character and super trainable).

Ha. That's interesting. That would lead me to hypothesise she's a bit worried herself. You should figure out what she's on about. Dogs like that I start by asking for sits and figuring out whether more distance reinforces it or less distance. It is not always clear. Some of these dogs get themselves into a bit of a state and they like dogs but they hate the frustration that comes with them. Depends on the dog she's looking at. The anxious ones - I think she's just being a bully. The really big dogs (bigger than a golden retriever) - she doesn't do this at all - either goes up to them if she's off lead and does a grovel greeting (usually reserved for best friends), or ignores them. the herding dogs that look like some of her friends and family - she really really wants to say hello and gets upset-frustrated when she's on lead and cannot. Like her not all of them like a new dog in their face even if it is upside down. Either way it's easier to get her attention when we're further away. Sometimes it's frustrated greeting desire, so if she can calm down, reward by approach (if the other dog is ok with that). Sometimes it's "I'll get you before you get me" fear aggression but it's more like "you annoying bad dog, I will make you leave". Like killing a flea - has to be done. This morning I got surprised because there was an off lead poodle cross that I know she doesn't like on the other side of the oval - all good but I stopped to pick up some rubbish and it came up behind me, and my dog drove it off. A lot of noise, no touching but it surprised the owners. At least they didn't yell at me. Their dog approached mine and mine "sorted it". Erm. Not what I want.

'titre' I always pronounce it teeter (rhymes with metre - the measure) or teetra. We did titre tests in chemistry in high school - way before dogs got vaccinated... It involved a tall skinny tube and running one solution out of the tube into a beaker of another chemical until you got a colour change or some other effect you were testing for. The idea was to find out how much of the first solution it took to get a reaction in the second solution and then you could work out what the chemical structures might look like. Theres no way "titre" in French would come out as "tie ter". It would be "tee tre"

hard eyed drive... definitely... I can usually get her focus back if I notice and get her attention while she's still "thinking about it"... I think if she's thinking about it - it's not "classical conditioning" ie it's voluntary not involuntary. But again another semantic thing. I haven't tried a flirt pole with her unless you count the water hose. I'm not sure she wouldn't tear it to pieces the first time she catches it. We've got good "leave it" (wait-geddit) for ball chases. But she only chases the ball with enthusiasm about three times and then she loses interest. Fetch takes a lot of work too. What I would like to have stronger is random drops ie she's moving, I say "drop" and she drops and stays until I say go.

In Adelaide - there isn't really a difference between RSPCA/AWL shelters and the pound. All the councils send the dogs they collect to one of those if they can't find the owner within about 24 hours. They don't take surrenders, you have to go to RSPCA/AWL. And they don't like taking surrenders either.

drive mode. a semantic / word definition thing. I've definitely lost her focus when that happens. But I may not have had her focus in the first place ie we're walking and sniffing, and absorbing the neighbourhood, and her focus shifts from the path to the dog over there. We can have great "drive" and excitement around the agility course and she's completely focussed on me - tho I'd like her to be a little more focussed on where she's going and what she's gotta do to get there. High drive, low drive, prey drive, play drive... none of that makes a lot of sense to me. But I can definitely tell when she's got a wide focus - everything is distracting, and narrow focus, nothing can distract her. Definitely has a narrow focus when she fixes on the dog over there. And I can tell between high arousal/excitement and low arousal (sleeping).

This makes a lot of sense. The first sign I get of trouble is that stiff posture death stare thing. She sees the dog and does that. Sometimes she does that and wags her tail, but that makes no difference to me. Ie wagging tail does not mean the other dog is going to have a good time if I let them greet. So it would be great if I could train her do to something else. And it is context specific. She doesn't do it at the beach, or not nearly as often ie the dog has to be really persistent, charge up to her, get in her face and stay there at the beach, but at the park, it just has to be there minding its own business. Bizarrely - the more anxious scared dogs - she's much more likely to have a go at those than the happy confident dogs that keep their distance. And she's fine with all her friends (before my brother's poodle x). It doesn't help at the park that her small dog friends are always "driving off" bigger dogs and she wants to help. I'd like to hang out with the owners but they don't seem to understand how bad it is that they let their dogs do this. All the little dogs do it.

Maybe the local council needs to get some complaints so they take his licence away.

Hmm. So this is for a dog that is stressed by approaching another dog... So the pressure is approaching the other dog and the release is to move away if they provide the right behaviour? Where as when my dog is stressed by the sight of another dog - I move her away so she can calm down. If there is room to do that, if not - I just try to contain the outburst and praise any attention on me or calm behaviour. My dog wouldn't stop moving - she'd drag me up to the other dog so she could scold it in its face... and try to drive it out of her park. So she's more like the frustrated greeter/scolder. I only let her approach if she can be calm. And if she's shown aggressive behaviours I don't let her approach at all. Otherwise, she just does calm so she can do a surprise launch later. Tho sometimes, a 3 second greeting works ie we get in, sniff, get out, before her emotional bucket is overflowed. And then next time she can be better. So for yours, the approach is aversive and the reward is retreat and release of the stress pressure. Ok my head is not coping with that. I would not be approaching if the dog was stressed if I could retreat. If I was trying to desensitise the dog - I would do training drills on the edge of their comfort zone... ie I'd go as close as I could until the dog shows a bit of stress, back off (no behaviour from dog required) and play training games just on the edge of that.

That's how I saw it used... safety is with the trainer, pressure (from the collar) is released when the dog comes to the trainer. So the dog starts to see the trainer as a safe place. Despite the trainer being the one that applied the pressure in the first place. One part I do like is if the dog does decide to have a go at another dog while under this system - the pressure / aversive is self inflicted. But they were under aversive from the sight of the other dog anyway. I'm having trouble imagining how the dog tells you where they want to go and when if they're under pressure and trying to "escape" to safety. It's not like my dog sitting at the back door and woofing to say wants out. I guess the part I don't like about is that is that the trainer applies discomfort, and the reward comes from the release of the discomfort. However - this is how a lot of herd (prey?) animals get trained. Eg horse - the rider puts pressure on, and the horse moves - so the pressure is eased. I guess the pressure can be pretty gentle and if a cue can be included, then no actual pressure need be applied but the animal will still anticipate it I guess. Like always being frightened until you get home to safety and can lock the doors. I think that would be a stressful way to live (or train).

If the dog arrives at the pound very pregnant, and the pound can't find anyone suitable to take her home, what else are they supposed to do? I wouldn't be surprised if my dog was born in the pound. If not - she was extremely young when she arrived with the rest of the litter and her mum. The AWL was vague about the details.

The last time my neighbour had a pet sitter, I was the back up. I got to make sure they hadn't tipped their water over or anything. I imagine that it's very likely that the pets are very close to where this guy lives. Unless he was a professional pet sitter. For me - it's always the neighbour's pets, and quite a few other neighbours know about it.

"Good dog", pats and praise for the better turns would probably be enough... A reward doesn't always have to be a treat, just something the dog likes eg attention. The idea is to prevent the dog gaining its own reward (self rewarding) by pulling where it wants to go eg pulling to the next best smell or dog greeting or to the park... the dog is not getting the reward that it is seeking by pulling. It's not about what treats you've got. If the dog cared about that in the moment - they'd be hanging round your treat pouch - not pulling. Dogs have something called "opposition reflex" like teenagers. Ie if you pull on their collar - they pull in the opposite direction... and get really excited about it. Hence me holding my dog's collar when she's barking and lunging at another dog can sometimes be counter productive (she gets worse). Susan Garret uses a dog's opposition reflex to fire them up for running a course or to a person (ie restrained recalls) etc. PS I personally hate the crazy walk training style. I don't think my dog needs to be totally focussed on me when we're walking to the park or along the beach... I just want a nice loose lead which doesn't require as much focus as tricky healing. We do tricky healing but I cue that.

And the dogs like being there so much that at the first opportunity they nick off.

I think crazy walking or stopping if the lead goes tight is -P, you're taking something away (-) that the dog wants (reward) to reduce a behaviour (P punishment). If you keep walking when the dog is pulling you're doing +R: adding (+) something the dog likes (reward) by moving in the direction the dog wants, and encouraging (R Reinforcing) the behaviour of pulling. You might not like the pulling but you're rewarding and encouraging and increasing it if you keep moving in the direction the dog is pulling. I know what BAT is (Behaviour adjustment training) and LAT (look at that - and reward calm behaviour) is. But not CAT. With my dog when trying to teach her to be calm around exciting things - I cannot use food rewards but I can use pats and praise. I can use food if she stays calm without putting on the super excited performance... Had a bit of that going on this morning. Poodle cross at the park. Normally I would stay away but the lady missed her dog doing crap behind her and I wanted to help her find the crap. First couple of times her dog got in evil hound's face - evil hound was quite polite but the third time was just too much - her emotional bucket overflowed and she went off. But I couldn't reward the calm afterwards with food or she back chains. It ended well, evil hound managed to stay calm for a fourth in your face... and the lady picked up the crap. She was one of the ones who is happy to do that. But not so much she pays attention to her dog. Tho most dogs do prefer to go when owner not looking cos there is less fuss and interruption to the walk that way (+P the interruption and +R sneaky crap?). I try to counterbalance that by obvious rewards and praise when she goes in front of me. But then she gets the +P of the walk interrupted while I put the crap in the nearest bin. Maybe I should give her a reward again after that. If my dog is doing something I don't like - I have too stop and think about how I'm rewarding that (or how it might be self rewarding ie barking is self rewarding - it feels good).

I don't know how to explain to my dog that if it's not worth getting off the couch to bark at, it's not worth barking at. She's currently doing the lazy woof at my neighbour's visitors.

the "you don't get a treat for that" or "no reward" or even "try again" part of reward based training - is a grey area. It's definitely not +P ie adding an aversive to reduce a behaviour. It might be -P, taking something a dog likes (reward) away to reduce a behaviour. If the unwanted behaviour is reduced - then technically it's punishment. But if you're rewarding and encouraging an incompatible behaviour with the undesirable one - then it's a re-inforcer of the desirable behaviour, and punisher of the undesirable behaviour (eg training a sit to prevent jumping up - the sit gets rewarded +R and the jumping up gets co-incidentally punished -P no reward for that). It does depend a bit on the dog how they handle it. It depends on the dog and their training history how they handle frustration too. There is a balance between making a reward too easy to earn and too hard... with the right balance my dog loves training. Too easy and she gets bored and easily distracted and too hard and she gets too frustrated to learn or just nicks off. Experienced trainers call her soft, and under aroused / low drive. But if you saw her chasing a cat - you would not call that low drive. High drive is in there somewhere. Nobody has talked about "escape training" or the -R quadrant much. I really hate that one. I've seen it used really well but your timing and training steps have to be perfect. I can't do it. What that involves is applying something unpleasant like pressure on a slip chain, or prong collar, and releasing it when the dog gets the behaviour right - to encourage (reinforce) that behaviour. You have to make it super easy for the dog to get the behaviour right especially at the start. If you ask too much - you freak the dog out. Mine would just shut down and freeze up and avoid me for days. So I learned real quick not to try to use that quadrant.

I'd be looking for fresh dug dirt...

I can recommend avoiding the Panasonic lumix DMC-T260 We got it because it was small, and had a view finder - previous camera - you could not see the display when outside in bright light. And it took crappy photos inside in less light. The lumix took crappy photos and all of them look dull and flat - Maybe that was because northern Europe is dull and flat - but I wasn't there. The Samsung phone took nicer photos. it also had no way of naming photos by date - eg I like the camera to name photos by date eg yyddmm-hhmmss so they sort properly. This one didn't do that. Previous camera (and this one?) didn't have unique names for the photos. Drove everyone nuts. There are photography courses around now for taking great photos on iphone / Samsung. I've been meaning to sign up for one. But I always get a better photo if I take a few seconds to think about what is and isn't in the picture.

I wonder if the local vets would be able to help narrow it down. A pity the person didn't have a sort or record or schedule of who he was looking after - on paper or his phone.

Willem there is a really grey area in the middle, where "no reward" might become an unpleasant experierence or aversive. The whole idea is to not encourage an unwanted behaviour by rewarding it. Tho that is not the same as trying to discourage the behaviour. Depending on how you've trained your dog - your dog may get frustrated and try to leave training, or your dog may get really excited about trying new stuff. This is something you can (I have) move your dog on. Ie a dog that used to be frustrated by something can get excited by it. If your dog is starting to "expect" a reward... (Susan calls that "egg and bacon boy" the dog is ordering you round like his personal wait staff), you need to change something - usually increasing the difficulty of the task slightly. Slightly longer, or slightly further away, or slightly more distractions eg balloons bouncing by (ok that might be a lot of distraction). Another one of Susan's trainer helper ideas is about the vending machine vs the pokie machine. When you first start training something new - you are pretty much like a vending machine but as soon as your dog starts to get the hang of the "trick" (task, training objective), you need to start rewarding more like a pokie machine. Payouts need to be less predictable - eg always pats and praise, but not so much treats or tug rewards. The way I do this is aim to reward average or better performance. For some tasks/tricks - I've been brilliant at detaching from the "expectation of reward" but for other tasks (eg heeling) I've been crap at it. She pokes my hand like a pidgeon pokes the bar in the box and I pay. I don't even notice I'm doing it sometimes until I run out of treats... But our start line stay... I don't need any treats for that. And she loves that game. And she doesn't get upset if she doesn't get the reward, she just gets more eager to try again. Like the pokie player hoping for a jackpot. Or a kid on the footy field saying "kick it to me"... a good player doesn't leave in a sulk if he doesn't get the ball, he works harder, tries different things to shake his marker and be more available for a kick or get to the ball first. And that's down to good coaching/training. Cos the really little kids - will absolutely leave in a sulk if they don't get the ball. The scientists have specific definitions for re-inforcement and punishment and operant conditioning vs classical conditioning (which has a new name now like "respondant conditioning" or sometimes "involuntary conditioning") or just Pavlov on your shoulder. Eg a dog salivating in response to the sight/smell of food is "involuntary" then pre-cuing the arrival of food with a bell - leads to salivation in response to the bell. Takes a lot of repetition to get this response and it will lose effect over time if you stop the training. Anyway - what a layman thinks the word "punishment" means is not what an animal behavior scientist or a psychologist thinks it means. Eg most people would think that putting a person in jail is punishment but a scientist in the field only thinks it's punishment if the person's unwanted behaviour is reduced when they get released. Ie jail is not "punishment" for some people, in a behavioural scientist's book. You won't get anywhere arguing about the meaning of these words with those of us who have studied training science. There is a phenomenon that Susan Garett calls "transfer of value" where the joy of a particular dog's favourite reward - food or play or chasing sheep or sniffing, can be transferred to some task you want the dog to do. There's an anticipation of reward that goes with hearing a clicker or "yes" if you've trained that. They stop working as bridges to rewards if you use them without rewarding the dog. My dog likes to hear the word "yes" over and over when she's doing weaves - just so she knows that she's doing it right (I think that's what's going on). Otherwise she thinks she's doing something wrong and quits or comes and yells at me. Ie - this isn't how it's supposed to be - but I can repeat the word yes yes all over the agility course and she gets more and more joy and excitement from the running... and only gets the actual reward at the end of the course. She likes running and chasing me anyway. We just try to have more direction to it.

I only know about prostate cancer in human males. Nasty stuff. And if he's got prostate cancer you probably don't want to be breeding with him. He may pass that tendency on to the puppies. With humans - there is something called the PSA blood test - it needs to be done annually from about age 40 or so, so that the GP has a base line of what's normal for that man. And then if it changes - further investigation can be done. Further investigation may involve xrays, biopsy, ultrasound, and a digital exam (the finger). I don't know what the process is with dogs. Hopefully someone else can help. One of the problems with "further investigation" or even doing the PSA tests - is that abnormalities can end up being investigated or treated when they wouldn't ever have become a malignant cancer or caused any discomfort or bad symptoms. Ie you get freaked out for nothing.

Oh and this came via Steve White's FB page... language warning tho. I don't know what this person says when they hit their thumb with a hammer... http://dogwontsit.com/wordpress/why-competition-obedience-sucks/

HD Personally I don't like the way dogs left to their own devices behave. Mine would eat all the food in the house at once if she had the opportunity. As for dogs correcting each other - they frequently have trouble with this. Mine "corrected" a poodle cross but it took a lot of painful corrections to get that dog to back off and leave her alone and then she generalised that to all poodle crosses whether they gave her a hard time or not - she'd get in first. Bad. I should have protected her from poodle cross and not left her to sort it out because "dogs correct each other" can lead to undesirable behaviours. And some dogs don't learn from "corrections". Another example - mine still tries to bite bees despite being stung more than once. As for the shaping - it can be done much faster if you control the environment through the initial learning steps. Keep the dog on lead so it can't nick off and you're not tempted to scold it for nicking off (how not train a recall). And a dog can be trained to keep offering behaviours. You just reward every different behaviour. And if you're training for more than five minutes a session with a "balance break" of play between and only two sessions max - you're training too long. I got much faster and durable results with shaping, and setting the dog up for success, getting the behaviour and then testing it... than I've seen with old school trainers. Eg heelwork - much faster to train an RZ (reward zone or reinforcement zone) and then keep rewarding that than it is with yank and crank. For my dog - 12 months of yank and crank did pretty much nothing. RZ as taught by Susan Garrett - she got that inside a week and now I can do stuff that the old school trainers dream about. Like backing up in heel position, reverse spins, and sideways - both directions - really good for rally. And nice heel on either side. Or sometimes - between my knees... funny dog. Susan Garrett says "positive is not permissive" but even she doesn't mean positive only in the same sense as the four squares of operant conditioning. Neither does Victoria Stillwell. If my dog is jumping on stuff she shouldn't, I collar grab her (after training the collar grab and keeping up that training), and move her away until she calms down, put her on lead (at the beach), and then let her go to see what her choice is. If she's back to jumping, we move away again. I would probably get better results if I never let anyone at the beach give her a treat (when she's jumping on them), but that does suck the joy out for all of us. I do control access to the treats tho. She has to keep her feet on the ground. I've got video but it takes about three weeks to upload anything with this connection...

Podengo - really good article - that says what Huski said pretty much - it's more about how good your training is. From the article Willem - I think you're still a bit confused about the what the quadrants mean - it's easy to do which is why I avoid using the the terminology. The people who claim to be "positive only" are also confused. Hitting a dog - is the adding (+) of an aversive (something the dog doesn't like) in the hope of reducing/stopping an undesirable behaviour. Apply this to a human example - pinched from Susan Garrett... You're driving to dog training class... you might have been speeding. The police officer pulls you over and instead of giving you a fine - the police officer shoots your dog. Do you think you'd risk driving again? With your new dog? What about a child or friend? Is the behaviour the police officer was trying to reduce or stop - what you change? Shooting your dog is only +P if it successfully changes your behaviour. Actually shooting the dog might be -P - taking something away to reduce a behaviour or it could be +P - adding a bullet or an aversive - dead dog. I do really hate the jargon. Now imagine the police officer who hands out rewards big enough that you're happy to be stopped - maybe $10,000 cash? if he catches you driving nicely in way that helps the traffic flow? This is +R - if you drive nicely more often. R stands for "re-inforcement". Would you be happy to see the next police car or would you still have a little startle in your seat? So Re-inforcement is about anything that encourages more of a (desirable) behaviour. Eg pulling on lead and the dog getting closer to where it wants to go (reward) - results in more pulling on lead - self re-inforcing. Hence people with a pulling dog - really need to stop the reward of the dog getting to go where it wants when it's pulling. Three pops on the chain but the dog is still getting where it wants to go when pulling - isn't going to work. I agree with Simply Grand? who said that Cesar has been changing his methods. And with TSD about the body language of dogs in photos with Cesar. I watched one early episode where he "trained" a boxer to be "calm submissive" loose lead walking and the dog at the end looked frightened and stressed. Not relaxed and comfortable. I haven't seen many of the more recent episodes. I hope he's been keeping up with the newer techniques. Tho they are not all that new. The scariest thing about reward based training is it can be a form of "brain washing". The advertising industry use the techniques a lot and successfully. They're all about changing human behaviour and rewarding their product purchases with "feel good". Never mind if the purchases are at all beneficial to the buyer in the long term. The techniques work quite well on humans but does require a lot of creativity. Like how do you get an old school trainer to try something new? To even want to try something new. Some of them don't even want to own a computer or a smart phone. Telling them they're doing it all wrong and this way is better - doesn't work. I learn that the hard way. At the moment at our clubs - a lot of the top competitors who are regularly winning (at agility and obedience) are using the reward based training (reward / no reward and prevent/stop undesirable behaviour), but they're not instructing. The old school instructors won't let them. At the beach this morning - I saw a lot of dogs pulling on lead. My dog did too occasionally - when we were too close to someone handing out treats for nothing - ok treats for barking and jumping. But most of the time she was good loose lead walking. Sometimes the pulling dog people ask how I got that. Most of them think it's something to do with my dog, not training and that their dog will "grow out of it" even if it's 6 yo already or then it's a breed thing. I've even heard labs are impossible to train. WTF? And others just pull on by as if it is hopeless. But I can't tell them different unless they want to hear it. How do you get someone to open their mind to something different?