Weasels

Trainers can advise me to use shaping all they like but I know I lack the patience and memory to implement it well So I use luring heaps for teaching new things, although I'm sure the dogs would do fine with either we've found what works for the 'team' best (through no fault of the dogs, just due to my puny human limitations!) :)

Clever Grey :)

I taught my dogs an "off you go" cue (i.e. "there is no more food/training/play to be had here"), and they wander off to sleep somewhere. No more begging problems :)

Or these :)

Remarkabull did you find another trainer? How's Acheron going? :)

I just watched it online and I agree - I don't think mine have ever run 60km in a day! And now that I'm at home more I don't even walk them every day Training, play and attention are the real crack for them ;)

Especially for a kelpie! Most will turn themselves inside out for you if you are clear about what you want :) Direct, to-the-point training will get you awesomeness in a fur coat if you want it. I was talking to a friend very recently (another DOLer) who had to give someone else a telling because they wanted a "red dog", despite this person not being qualified to own a goldfish apparently. Heartbreaking

The last week I've been putting their dry food on a table and given it to them a bit at a time for heelwork, perch work, downstays and contacts. Every time they get up from sleeping they get a bit of training - and they're bloody exhausted :laugh:

What are you correcting though? If you correct the barking without addressing the anxiety all you have is a quiet panicking dog instead of a barking one. That anxiety is still going to come out somehow, in destroying, soiling, self-harming, escaping or one of the other horribly creative ways dogs can devise. If the problem is fixed by a few corrections I would question whether it was actually separation anxiety rather than a cued, attenion seeking, or boredom behaviour. No-one with a genuine mental illness was ever fixed by a few slaps to the face (no matter how many times it works in the movies!).

:)

I just saw on the APDT calendar that she will be in Perth in late July too. It sounds very interesting! Between this and chicken camp I feel like I should hang around in WA a bit longer.... (and then move to SA in time for guinea pig camp :) )

Do rescues ever let a dog out with a just a vasectomy? We've been pondering our next pup, and it seems like we have to choose between rescue and early desexing or a WKC dog that we can desex at 18 months. I would prefer to get a rescue but I'm worried about the physical strain on a working + sports dog, and that early desexing might exacerbate joint risks. If we could get a vasectomied rescue pup which we can desex later that would be a nice compromise.

Jelly, crates were probably the best purchases I ever made for my anxious dog, he sleeps in one at night and moves out to the lounge-room crate most of the day :) Loves 'em. So glad it is working for Roo.

Then I would have found some nice fluffy/leather toys for her :) ..and reinforced the "This is MINE, and you are NOT allowed to bite it" rule . (then again I don't have much experience, having never had a chewer ..... ) I agree :) Weez was a champion chewer when we first got him home, it was even written in big letters on the reasons-he-was-returned-to-the-shelter form. He was never going to just stop chewing things, so we taught him that everything in the toy basket is his to chew, everything else is not. Chewing non-basket items got a "hey!" and the item taken, replaced with a dog toy. Chewing on appropriate dog toys got him a game of tug :) Took about a week and a half of vigilance.

There's a bunch of e-books, videos, podcasts, articles etc. at Dogstar Daily

I use one on my black-nailed dog, works well, easy to grip and has enough 'grunt' to do the job :)

We tried some perch work on a phone book the other day, now that Weez has started Rally. We encountered some unanticipated setbacks O.o Hope it goes better for you Paddles!

Yep that's cool, lots of places aren't set up well for tethering a dog. Just responding that you said you were amazed ppl were doing it, but there are always differences in individual cases. For the spot I described, by the time it's clear someone is heading in her direction I can reach her first, so it's not a high risk scenario like tying a dog at the entry to a supermarket where it can't be seen, heard or reached in the event of a problem.

What are the odds that someone is waiting to steal a dog at any given place just in case someone comes to tie one up nearby? I tied my dog outside the servo again on Monday, after this thread started, because I could see her head the whole time and I could see anyone coming towards her well before they'd reach her too. She was on grass behind the air compressor, well away from the door and none of the 3 other people in the complex gave her a second glance. Obviously her owner was the one in the shop watching her, there's no shortage of security cameras, no clean get-away route. Less risk of theft or interference with her in this scenario than there is of an accident happening every time we get in the car IMO. Edit - and no, I wouldn't leave them where I couldn't see them or get to them in a dozen steps if needed. But the risks of trouble in this scenario seem quite low to me.

Yep that's the best part - once you're both improving the association and teaching an alternative behaviour, then you're really motoring Awesome awesome awesome! Remember if she does react then you will take a step back, but you can always regain any losses you've made with patience and repitition :) Sending good vibes for your poor OH too!

As much as I love LAT, with a dog as anxious as Stella I would always use just plain old counter-conditioning first. LAT requires a choice to perform the behaviour, I like to work on the unthinking 'just-react' part of the brain first through classical conditioning (when you see the bad thing, ALL you have to do is eat this chicken. After enough trials, the dog will automatically see the bad thing and think "Chicken is about to happen!!" instead of "Aahhhhh that's freaking me out!"). Once that reactivity habit is short-circuited, then LAT and other learned behaviours are great :) I wouldn't worry about rewarding the reactiveness either: once she's reacting she's really in no state to be learning much. And even if it is rewarding the barking, a learned behaviour is SO MUCH easier to extinguish than a behaviour which is just a manifestation of a strong emotion :)

This is true. I've even had people assure me their dog is friendly when all its hackles are up! Hackles can just mean arousal rather than agression - my girl dog's hackles go up at the drop of a hat, and a pretty poor indicators of her state of mind. I use other cues to decide whether she needs to be recalled like her tail position and the speed/stiffness of her walk. If my boy's hackles go upon the other hand, I'm intervening immediately. Edit - not that I would ever yell out that my dogs are friendly. They are polite, which I think is much more important.

I would recommend K9 Positive Works (http://www.facebook.com/K9PositiveWorks), very smart and dedicated behavioural trainer with lots of sep. anxiety experience.

Yep I understand completely, the trick is to get in just at that tipping point after they notice but before they go over-threshold and their brain goes awol! Choosing the thing they react to least at the distance they can handle is the best way to start, it's like getting a crowbar into that wedge between reacting and not reacting, then the more you work in that space the more time they will give you in between interest and reaction!

Will do, it's 14 minutes long but really goes through the whole process. The other thing I found really helped was to give Weez his own 'job', for a while he would just chase my other dog around, but once I got him to chase his own ball he stopped trying to chase kids - tug would work better to redirect him, but he still won't tug outside the house. The water bottle would probably work with overexcitement or similar to distract a dog, but my approach to fear-behaviour is to make previously scary things a cue that only awesome stuff is going to happen :)