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Aidan3

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Everything posted by Aidan3

  1. Time-outs work, and they don't need to be long. 1 minute. But the problem for you will be catching him in the act, then linking his behaviour with the consequence. He would probably enjoy all the attention in-between the behaviour and the time-out. Better to limit access to your bedroom. Puppy-proof the rest of the house as best you can. Make sure you do some training at least once a day (even if it's just silly tricks). Exercise daily. Reward him when he's doing what you want him to do.
  2. Zen, IYC, and Triangle of Temptation pinned to this forum all use the same principle and it's an important one.
  3. Three things that should be at the top of your mind when training: 1. Timing 2. Criteria 3. Rate of Reinforcement The issues here are 1 and 2. Criteria is deciding what you are trying to get more of, so that you can reinforce it. You need to break everything down into tiny little pieces. E.g if your dog can't sit for more than 1 second without breaking to try to get the food, then click at 1 second (or before). Make it very clear that sitting is what will be rewarded. When she can do this 4/5 times, try 1.5 seconds. When she can do this 4/5 times, try two seconds. If she fails more than 1/5 trials, make it easier for her. Also, work your way through the Zen exercises here: http://sue-eh.ca/page24/page26/page10/
  4. Doggy Zen, look it up. I'm just stunned that this is even the slightest issue in a class that uses food, let alone that you were expelled! Don't instructors learn the most basic things any more?
  5. Agreed. I would say if she clearly prefers the food, build the behaviour you want with that.
  6. The number one mistake that I see people make is to move the tug towards the dog. Keep it moving away from your dog. Think "what would prey do?" And don't play for too long, especially with a pup. You want to build drive and excitement, by going on longer than pup can keep up with, you end up reinforcing sub-par behaviours. And if anyone tells you that it will make your pup dominant, or that you always have to win, just smile and nod and ignore them.
  7. I'd suggest teaching her to touch a target with her nose using the clicker. You'll be able to use this to tidy up her stack and gait, and also to keep her "thinking" or "operant" when she meets new people. Have her target their hand to earn a click and treat. She'll be happily going up to strangers in no time.
  8. Most aggression is ritualised aggression, so don't give them a reason to take it further and they will eventually back down. Others have learned to bite, and sometimes your only option is to try and drive them away or minimise the damage. Thankfully these dogs are relatively rare so it's usually best to just "be a tree". The dynamic changes if you have a dog with you, particularly a reactive dog. Thankfully, again, most aggression is ritualised and most probably won't escalate (statistically speaking), so try and read the situation and try to minimise the chances of a fight. As a behaviour consultant I've had a string of confirmed biters recently, thanks to some new referral sources. The situations under which these dogs bite are inevitably the sort of situations a dog-savvy person might expect a sharp dog to bite, at least the first few times.
  9. I don't think people were worried about this dogs potential adopter. I think they were worried about the precedent.
  10. I think frightened people just do stupid things, like the guy who called my dog then got upset that he ran over to him on the (off-leash) beach this week. I did have a guy tell me he'd knock my block off and actually kicked my dog. But he was just an idiot, probably goes around starting fights for all sorts of reasons.
  11. That's awesome, I had the best intentions of bikejoring with Toby but it's so much simpler just letting him run off-leash with the bike :laugh: (where legal, of course)
  12. Hmmm, found it. :) He's talking specifically about dogs with fears associated with painful or uncomfortable handling procedures (grooming, nail clipping, veterinary procedures, etc). To quote the entire paragraph: “Some dogs appear to be more sensitive to touch and prone to develop persistent fears associated with discomfort and painful handling. The usual procedures used for resolving such problems employ some combination of graded interactive exposure with RP-CC. Although conscientious efforts should be made to counter-condition a fearful dog with treats and relaxing massage while it undergoes progressive exposure to the feared activity, it is imperative that avoidance and escape be blocked. Very often in such cases counterconditioning efforts will achieve only a small portion of the desired effect. Response prevention using physical restraint followed by massage as the animal begins to relax can be very useful. It is important for the dog to become relaxed before it is released from restraint. In the case of dogs that become highly reactive, they should be held in restraint (with massage) for an additional 3 minutes after the last strong effort to break free.” No references given. Page 158 in my hardcover edition of vol 3. Interested to hear Aidan's take but that's certainly what I've done with dogs that require grooming but are highly resistant to it. A simple example is dogs that don't want their nails clipped for whatever reason, I will hold their paw firmly but not hurting them until they settle down and stop trying to pull it away before releasing it. Response prevention is reasonable in these sorts of situations (after all, we use response prevention in some way in nearly everything we do with dogs). As long as it's safe and well considered. Having trained dogs and other animals to do stuff they really, really don't want to do without any restrictive sort of response prevention many times I'd have to argue that counter-conditioning through differential reinforcement certainly can be effective, so I don't completely agree with Lindsay.
  13. I recently used a "CAT-but-with-flooding" approach with an intractable reactive GSD. They'd been seeing me some time back, quick initial progress that stalled out. I sent them off to a vet behaviourist. Meds didn't help much. Back to me after this last Christmas, no improvement by end of March. So we discussed it, laid out the risks, confirmed the function of her behaviour again, and within two sessions we had her sharing treats with my GSD, Toby. There's still a long road ahead, mostly because it's hard to find more Tobys. It's definitely not a first option. Or even a second or third. So much depends on the dogs you're working with you have to at least get the human part right, no stuff ups. After the second session I was starting to think "I should do this with more dogs" but after a few days I was feeling a bit more sensible :laugh:
  14. I think it would depend on the dog and it's history with the handler. I really don't see a lot of handler aggression (outside of rescues) so I may not be the best person to comment on this. Did Lindsay provide a rational argument for this claim, or was it just his opinion? There are no studies that I know of which look at it, but drawing on behavioural principles which are well understood and common sense, I'd say it would be a risky strategy. Although the pay-off for success is high, the price of failure is very steep! Like most things, I'd split it down, use a high rate of reinforcement, and shape appropriate behaviours under a variety of relevant situations without skipping crucial steps, setting the dog up for success at every step along the way. It's a low-risk, high-reward strategy that doesn't require a great deal of patience usually. Owners who are in that situation usually need coaching in many other areas and I wouldn't be encouraging them to use risky strategies that require skills that they have already proven not to possess.
  15. Maybe you should google "flooding" and "aversive", Amax? You are confidently asserting a position without a cursory understanding of what we're discussing here.
  16. This is not a difference of opinion. By definition your examples are not flooding and do not address my claims. We are discussing entirely different things.
  17. Yeah, nothing bad happens except for their air supply being cut off. Why are you talking about learned helplessness in this context? We were specifically discussing learned helplessness in the context of flooding. I didn't even make the claim that learned helplessness was likely, unless certain other conditions were met so I'm not sure where you're going with any of this? You said this: Learned helplessness is a response to aversives that cannot be escaped or avoided, repeatedly. In the context of this discussion, putting a reactive dog in front of another dog at close proximity with no simple opportunity to escape or adapt favourably. I am responding to the context in which you raised it. No, you're not. You're talking about choking dogs, and dogs who have learned to fight to relieve their anxiety and therefore cannot be flooded (in your opinion, which I disagree with) without an aversive restraint. That is categorically different to the context in which I raised it. In fact, you're actively seeking examples where a dog couldn't learn helplessness (in your opinion, which I disagree with), citing that they are given an opportunity to learn to be calm instead. That would be a "simple opportunity to escape or adapt favourably" (unless you are using "escape" in the literal sense of the word, and not as a technical term which anyone who has used a prong, e-collar, check chain, or slip collar should be familiar with). I have provided a reference for learned helplessness. It might benefit the discussion if you read up on it and try to understand it, rather than just trying to prove a point which doesn't even reflect the context of the discussion or address the claims I have made.
  18. I would definitely consider speaking with your vet or a veterinary behaviourist about medication. The single best behaviour modification for a dog like this is to teach them to touch a target with their nose or paw using clicker training. I have a client travel two hours every week because of the massive changes we've been able to effect using target training.
  19. Good question. Usually with a dog who has been punished for aggression you will see something eventually. The classic example is the dog who doesn't bark or lunge, but will bite if pressed. An animal with learned helplessness looks depressed and doesn't do anything to change their situation. The punishment for reactivity breaks the drive to attack.....Cesar Milan with his slip leash is subtly air blocking the dog if you watch closely so the dog is more concerned about taking it's next breath than reacting. The dog learns that reacting causes a breathing issue and to avoid that they revise their choice to react and in the process of that, they are exposed to their demons which in face of a calm decoy dog they learn nothing terrible happened by remaining calm themselves. Air blocking is more effective than sharp corrections or prong collars and the like as it doesn't escalate aggression that is air blocking takes the drive out of the dog not increases it. Along with this technique for reactivity, the dog is also rewarded for calm behaviour with treats.......treats are good in monitoring stress levels as stressed dogs won't eat.....if executed properly which not many trainers outside of working dog circles tend to use this technique regularly, dogs when conditioned to accept treats in a calm demeanour in face of other dogs when previously reactive I doubt would be suffering issues of depression or Learned Helplessness as a result. How do you condition a stressed dog to take treats? Give them a near death experience first?
  20. That's the strategy you would employ. Thankfully it's not common, more often the reactive behaviour just escalates until the owner or trainer give up on flooding. It's pretty hard to watch. I had a client who had another trainer come and do this with their dog. The trainer was resolute, but he got bitten and had to stop to deal with the injury. So the dog learned to bite, and after that bit everyone in the house. Working in a shelter, we sometimes (thankfully not too often) have dogs who at first at least just shut down and don't do anything. For a while they will let anyone do anything to them. They are the ones we are most cautious about as they tend to be the ones who get slightly more comfortable when nothing particularly bad happens but still feel the fear then go straight to biting with no warning because they have learned that the warnings get them nowhere. Could be a bit of both there, nothing is black and white. Seligman set up extreme conditions for learned helplessness, and in real life those conditions wouldn't be met. Well, I say that, but as we've seen, some trainers do some fairly extreme things.
  21. Yeah, nothing bad happens except for their air supply being cut off. Why are you talking about learned helplessness in this context? We were specifically discussing learned helplessness in the context of flooding. I didn't even make the claim that learned helplessness was likely, unless certain other conditions were met so I'm not sure where you're going with any of this?
  22. That's the strategy you would employ. Thankfully it's not common, more often the reactive behaviour just escalates until the owner or trainer give up on flooding. It's pretty hard to watch. I had a client who had another trainer come and do this with their dog. The trainer was resolute, but he got bitten and had to stop to deal with the injury. So the dog learned to bite, and after that bit everyone in the house.
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