fuzzy82

the link is just missing the : http://members.westnet.com.au/peplill/AWBC1.html

If you shape it from a stand he's more likely to fold back into it, than if you shape it from a sit. Does he do it to begin with, then just move onto his hip? If he does, reward heavily for the straight drop and if he rolls onto his hip use your no reward marker and end the exercise. Another thing to do is to train it on the move/in drive, so you're constantly moving and doing very short drops. In anticipation of getting up very quickly, he should do a much straighter drop. I would still let him to a lazy down though, just use a different cue for it, as it's much easier for the dog to hold the down when rolled onto his hip. It's more comfortable, and it takes him longer to get up.

If you do a lot of shaping, is she simply trying to offer behaviours to see what gets her the click? Dunno if this will work with your dog, but my dogs tend to get frustrated if I don't click anything they do, and lie down, put their heads down and sigh deeply. You could always reward that. That's not how I taught stay though, I don't use a 'stay' cue, I simply kept rewarding while they were in the sit, until the sit had become so rewarding that they didn't want to get up. At that point, I started leaving a few seconds between rewards, and once you get to that, duration is easily increased.

How about teaching an incompatible behaviour instead? If she's already excited by people walking past, I don't see how adding treats will make her any less excited, more like the opposite. It could work of course, but as an alternative solution, how about people walk past = cue to go to mat/play with ball/sit at door or any other thing that involves not running up to the fence and barking.

My poodle x who had never met a cat before she was 12 months tries to tell the cats off as if they are dogs, with low growls when they do something she doesn't like. My puppy who has been raised with cats is much more tolerant. Our kittens will grab him and start biting him and pounce on him etc, and he will just let her. He never corrects her at all, I think he secretly loves the attention. The cats seem to understand the dog's growl, and the dogs understand the cats' growls, I guess they come from the same place (chest) and means pretty much the same thing (back off). I think it's pretty silly when humans growl at their dogs, because growls aren't part of our vocabulary.

I also use 'nose' and 'paws', 'feet' and 'target' come to mind too.

You liking or not liking religious people is irrelevant. Christians don't generally go around and burn animals, the Bible doesn't give them permission to do that. Obviously the woman was disturbed. I know loads of Christians, they are the nicest people you could ever meet, most of them have pets and treat them like part of the family. The Bible is not considered sacred in Christianity, not like Islam and the Quran. The Bible is merely a book, burning it or ripping it apart isn't a sin, it's only considered misguided.

Liger, rare?? Pffft. If they're gonna breed tigers, why not breed them to their own kind and try to save the species??

I don't like putting the dog into position, I like hands off. If you want to be realistic about it, not everyone is able to physically put their dog in position. Say if you have an old lady or a very small female with a rottie or great dane. Good luck physically putting it into position. That's why hands off is better, it teaches the dog happy compliance, no force involved (putting the dog into position is force no matter how you look at it. It might not be brutal or harsh, but if you have a dog that doesn't want to sit at that time, force is necessary if you want to use that method). What I do when a dog doesn't do as I ask, I assess whether or not I asked for too much. Eg, is it MY fault for asking for a behaviour that hasn't been proofed enough for the dog to be able to do it with the current level of distraction? If this is the case, I either let it go (if the dog is REALLY distracted) or I ask for an easier behaviour. If I think the environment isn't distracting and the dog is able to do it and just doesn't, then I don't let the dog go and do what it wants until it has done what I asked. Say if I take my puppy out to pee, but he would rather sniff the grass. I put him in the corner where I want him to pee and don't let him leave the corner until he has done it, then release him to sniff the grass. If I ask one of them to sit, and they would rather go and do something else, I keep them in front of me and just wait them out. Once they do it, I release them to go and do what they want. So I don't reward them if they don't do what I ask, and they don't get to go and self reward either. I also have "serious cues" and "suggestions". The serious cues I use when I seriously want the behaviour, now. The suggestions are 'do it, or don't do it, doesn't matter'. Like I can ask them to "wait", or "hang on". Wait is the serious cue, which means stop dead and stand there until I catch up. Hang on is 'slow down and let me grab you to untangle you'.

I'd say it's just a very rude play style. My adult dog does it to my puppy all the time, despite the puppy now being bigger than her (he's so tolerant of her and never tells her off for it). I just intervene, either say 'no' and break it up, or put her in time out or similar. But if they are outside all day mostly unsupervised you can't really expect it to stop... You'd have to spend some time supervising and get him every time he does it, until he realises that it doesn't pay off. Praise when he plays nicely.

Awwww he's sooo cute I love dobermanns.

Trouble with pads is they are similar to carpet in texture, so a lot of puppies get confused and will use any carpet/rug/mat as their toilet area. Personally, I would either get a fake grass one, or get a kitty litter tray and use turf. My puppy has gone outside in grass since day one, but when I occasionally put him in the laundry instead of his crate while we were out, I would put newspaper down for him, which he used. I prefer it over pads because he won't find anything similar anywhere in the house.

That sucks, I had a heap of stuff planned for Saturday. It'd be nice if someone could tell the rest of us poor, slovenly heathens that the world is ending and we shouldn't make plans. Hopefully Bunnings employs enough sinners that their stores will be open on the Saturday. Seriously though.. as much as I appreciate poking fun at the extremist god bothers, actually tricking money out of them doesn't quite sit right with me. Even if it was entirely fake, it would still bother me. I don't know if it can be classed as tricking them though, if God or Jesus or whoever does happen to come on Saturday the athiests may have every intention of doing as they promised, they just don't believe it will happen. If the Christians all go to heaven and the athiests don't look after their pets then yes they would have been tricking them but if it doesn't happen anyway we have no way of knowing whether they would have or not. It's Schrodinger's cat all over again It's taking advantage of people who are (in my opinion) vulnerable. Whether that vulnerability stems from something most of us would consider really scrazy is beside the point- these people are shelling out money to people who know they aren't going to be saddled with a bunch of dogs on Saturday. They are knowingly taking money from people who are scared and incapable of making sound decisions. If it wasn't christians, I'm sure people would be horrified. Things like this make me a little embarassed to be an atheist, I'd never want to be associated with the sort of people who'd happily rip off unwitting christians and feel no guilt about it because the victims are just nutty god botherers. No one deserves to be taken advantage of. I actually see nothing wrong with it. It's a bargain, caring for their pets for only $135 for 6 months. And that amount doesn't only cover May 21, they cover the next 10 years. And Christians believe that Jesus will return at some point, not just US fundamentalists, it's a biblical principle. One day Jesus WILL return, they just don't know when (most Christians think the May 21 thing is ridiculous because the Bible says no one knows when Jesus will return, so it's a bit silly that some cult in Usa claims that the Bible reveals when it will happen). So for the tiny amount of money, their pets are covered in the event of Jesus' return for the next 10 years. And Christians are not SCARED of Jesus returning, him returning is a good thing. If it happened Christians would be celebrating (before being raptured that is) and then they would know that their pets would be safe after they have gone. I assume that the atheists intend to keep their promise if it does happen, the reason they don't charge more is because they don't believe it will. There is an Aussie version too; http://www.earthbound-pets.com.au/

Oooh, I think I'll give that a go. How much flour do you put in? Dunno, I don't measure it... just enough to make it sort of thick without making it doughy. You could probably leave the flour out if you add an extra egg... I dunno, I just experimented a couple of times and adjusted accordingly. The first few times it was too crumbly, but the dogs still loved it.

Around the house we use commercially made treats from the pet store. They work fine in a low distraction environments. In training classes and on walks we use human foods, like ham, cheese, pepperoni, cheerios, kabanas etc. Lately I have been making my own dog treats, which is very quick and simple and the dogs love it. I get a tin of tuna or salmon (or even cat food, the dogs loooove it) mix in a bowl with 2-3 eggs, mix in some flour, then put in oven for 20-25 minutes on 175 degrees. Let it cool and then cut it up into small treats and put in small bags. I freeze what I won't need the next day, and each bag contains just enough for one training class.

But surely it will happen from midnight in Jerusalem (or wherever Jesus is supposed to return), and affect the whole world at once? Or do they think the world will gradually fade away, starting at the international date line?

Make sure you take loads and loads of photos during the first few weeks. In a few months when everything settles down you can look back and marvel at how tiny she was:) As for picking things up, the first cue my puppy learnt was 'drop it'. He was always picking up socks and other stuff he found on the floor, so I kept treats on me at all times and any time he picked something up I would hold a treat in front of his nose and say 'drop it' and now he drops anything (including dead animals and bones outside) without me offering the treat. It's important that you always trade objects, don't just take them off her. You'll have a resource guarder in no time if you just take stuff off her. Practice it a lot with toys and bones etc, give her a treat, then give the object back. That way she learns that it's fun when you take stuff from her, most of the time she will get a treat and/or get it back after a few seconds.

I felt very overwhelmed with my new puppy. The first two weeks were the worst, then we kind of settled into a routine that worked, but I was still so absorbed in everything puppy all the time that I had no time for anything else, and it made me a bit grumpy around friends and I felt like I had no energy for anything else. I did slowly start to bond with him though, I think he was maybe 5 months when I realised I was starting to really love his personality, and now that he's nearly 10 months I can't imagine life without him. He's not perfect, he has bad knees, which means I can never do agility with him (he was my little agility prospect) and he's shortsighted so he has trouble with recognition, especially in the dark, and as a result he's also reactive. But those things just makes him extra special, because it triggers a protective instinct in me and I wouldn't have him any other way. I hadn't had a puppy since I was a kid, and back then it was mostly my parents who dealt with all the puppy stuff, so I wasn't prepared at all. The puppy books make it all sounds easy and fun, and it wasn't fun at all to begin with. I adopted an adult dog about 6 weeks before I got my puppy, and she was the perfect dog, she would just lie quietly next to me when I wasn't doing stuff with her and never did anything bad or wrong, so it was a huge shock to get a puppy who didn't know anything and acted like he was on speed all the time and when given a choice of things he could stick his nose in, he would always pick the worst thing possible.

Our neighbours' dog is always getting out. One time we tried to call the dog over, but it wouldn't come to us. Hubby went over to let them know their dog was running around in the road and making the dogs across the road go off (they were being VERY noisy, and kept at it for about 20 minutes, which is what made us look outside to see what was going on) When they opened the door for hubby their dog ran inside, and the guy claimed he didn't even know he was out. Encountering loose dogs is pretty common around here, I have reported several incidences where I have felt that my dogs have been in danger of being attacked.

My 9.5 month old puppy is reactive, so I deal daily with a similar problem. My puppy is also shortsighted, so I suspect that's why he's reactive. But anyway, I still haven't figured out what he wants to do to the other dogs on walks, but we are working very hard on getting him to ignore them, and he's doing very well. I haven't been using Look At That, because he was way too reactive when I first started working on him. I would simply keep him below threshold by keeping my distance to people and dogs on walks. When he notices them, he gets loads of really yummy treats. As a result, he now almost completely ignores people we walk past (still working on people jogging past) and we are able to get a lot closer to other dogs than we used to. When he hears a dog bark nearby without being able to see it, he looks to me for his treat. If he can see the dog I keep him really close to me and continually feed treats until we are far enough away that he can think straight again. He will never meet other dogs on walks, because I want him to know that other dogs on walks mean nothing to him, there is no point in reacting to them because he will never get anywhere near them. We've only been doing that for 3 months, and have gone from him snarling, lunging and barking at anything that moved outside, to being able to walk past people in their driveways with him barely even glancing at them, and we can get within 10 metres of other dogs with him being reasonably calm (as opposed to 100 metres 3 months ago). Personally I don't think punishment is a fix for reactivity. (or anything else for that matter, you might mask the symptoms using punishment, but by using rewards you can fix the underlying cause)

If she's acting silly and being checked and then only gets worse you are basically rewarding her for being silly because she gets what she wants (meeting the other dog). I would team up with someone with a calm dog and work on her below threshold. Let her approach the other dog when calm, if she goes stupid take her back to the starting point and start over. Personally I don't let my dogs meet other dogs on walks. You have no idea if the other dog is friendly or not (and asking the owner is pointless because most of them will say they can meet even when they know their dog likes to growl and snarl at other dogs), so they only socialise with other dogs at training.

The doxlock ones look pretty good. I was going to say they don't have a strap between the front legs, but then I noticed that you can buy this separately. And they have his size. That's pretty cool:) I could always get the patch from somewhere else, while googling I have come across several places where they sell them, and I think someone mentioned I could just have them made here too.

He's a JRT x, and 9.5 months old, so not likely to grow much more. I could compromise on the Y-front, I really like the SAR harness mentioned above, but it doesn't come in his size. I like the look of the ruffwear, but like you said it doesn't seem to give much control + it seems a bit much to attach 3 straps just to go for a walk, and might be overkill. The most important features are the handle and the d-ring at the front, but must also have a d-ring on top. It has to be well made and comfortable (no thin straps) and have a strap that goes between the front legs. I have considered making my own harness, or finding someone who does custom harnesses, just not sure how to go about it...

I forgot to mention that there is another problem with the SAR one... the smallest size is 20'', and my puppy is 15'' (39 cm). So far it seems that the ruffwear harness is winning, just because they actually have one that is small enough....

Yes, that's the same one that I linked to above. It's pretty much what I was looking for, just wondering if there is a Y-front version...