Weasels

Now I'm going to have the Shangri-Las song in my head all day :laugh:

Congrats PME and Superminty! :) Great work

Aliwake, PD and Oso you are my kind of peoples :p Hazy I wonder if a vet would give me a discount for bringing in all 3

I'm actually more worried I'm going to end up treating our baby like i do the dogs O.o *click, milk*

Agree :) I don't use it but I it doesn't bother me. I do sometimes call mine kids, in my mind that's referring to them being very young rather than being some sort of faux-humans. I also call them the wiggles, the kelps, trouble-monkeys, roggles and innumerable individual nicknames. Doesn't reflect anything about how I treat them, it's just me having fun with descriptive language. E - I also call my OH "squid-socks". I have no idea what that means.

Hi Nige, not sure where in WA you are but there is a good trainer south of Perth who owns an anxious ridgeback herself, she might have some suggestions for you if the vet check comes back clear - http://www.dogcharming.com.au

Hmm are you sure!? I almost got licked to death by a particularly vicious pair yesterday And then they tried to finish me off by smothering me in loose fur! Don't trust 'em for a second, dangerous dogs IMO :p Pinchy he is gorgeous :)

Didn't look overly stressed to me either, that might not even be his real cue for getting in the crate, just a game they play. Weez makes a similar noise when I tell him to stop barking, and I reward it because it's cute as hell and a much better alternative to annoying woofs :laugh:

It bucketed down here! Just an hour after it hit 45 degrees too, weird day. Weez was getting a little stressed by the thunder so we went out and had a party in the storm :) Seems to have worked, he's a happy man again :)

I've spent more on a load of groceries than i spent buying Weez, who's made me smile every day for over 3 years and hopefully will for at least another 10. Bargain of a lifetime IMO.

There's a fair cohort of cattle farmers who don't do any dog control because they feel the benefits of the dogs controlling the kangaroo population outweigh the loss of calves. Varies from area to area of course (probably from property to property) but that can be another source of resistance to implementing management measures. Edit - the invasive animals CRC are most likely to have the data you are looking for if it exists. If you can't get in contact with the author of the document linked earlier, the national wild dog facilitator Greg Mifsud is also an incredibly helpful and switched-on guy you could ask.

Children can have invisible disabilities/pain too, and also may not want to disclose this to every stranger. Not that I've ever been in a vet clinic where seats were in high demand. There has always been far more seats than butts in the waiting room.

We have a Subaru liberty wagon and use a Walkyguard barrier - https://www.ozpetshop.com.au/product_info.php/products_id/1964 Keeps our 2 in the back, they are 19kg and 26kg. It's pretty easy to add and remove as needed :)

Poor Weez lost all his doggy friends when he left WA and it takes him a long time to make new friends, so my husband takes pity and will play bitey face with him on occasion Dog-people eh :laugh:

I know a lot of people do this and it is a helpful experience for many pups, but I always ask that people not use my dog for this. Yes she will tell a rude dog off and has excellent bite inhibition so I don't worry about dogs she is telling to back off, but it causes stress to my dog and a subsequent decline in behaviour so isn't fair on her. It's also gotten her attacked (stitches for her, not a mark on the other dog). So i just ask this 'let them sort it out' approach only be done with dogs and owners known to the puppy owners and who are ok with it :)

I gotta say I agree with the last 2 posts - reading your post PME it struck me your main issue is a people problem rather than a dog problem If it were me I'd focus most on trying to get her locked away when he is there, we have had electricians here regularly recently and I've spent quite a bit of time locked in a room with Weez either giving him massage or with a pigs ear. They are too unpredictable to use for training, but at least they mostly ignore him so for the last 2 visits he's managed to eat an ear in his crate instead :) But with this guy doesn't sound like he will ever be an asset for training, I would stick with management as much as possible :/ It's a sucky situation, poor Kenz

I've been in this situation quite a few times with my girl and although no I don't correct her i also don't want her taking initiative to tell off other dogs because IME it escalates situations that don't need to be escalated. If she gets tense I tend to move backward saying her name then we do some tricks or heeling exercises. The picture I want out of the scenario is for her to focus on me and let me keep her safe. Correcting her wouldn't help me achieve that picture. I really have a personal dislike of instructors handling and correcting other people's dogs without permission. I was at a training class earlier in the year when a dog got away and did zoomies around the grounds and an instructor finally caught the dog, took the dog back to the owner, and THEN hit the dog twice yelling "No" Effing useless.

Always the way with things that work well isn't it - by the time we realise how useful they are we've forgotten how they were done :laugh: We did D&CC, and once we had enough reduction in his reaction to start training new stuff I added LAT. We discussed BAT but in all honesty the implementation of it still confuses the hell out of me - and what we were doing was working so well we stuck with it. It's always something new though, most recently horses *eyeroll* but we've sorted that out now I think :)

I don't mind Raineth I find all this stuff really interesting :) And I feel very fortunate to have had the perfect trainer for our situation, who really observed and helped us break down exactly what was happening, video everything we did and set up all kinds of scenarios so we could get to know his reactions well (she even borrowed another client's child for us for a few hours in exchange for ice cream :laugh: ). Also because he was reactive to 'things' rather than dogs it was easier for us to set up scenarios for him. But man, when a racing bike goes right past his head unexpectedly and he turns to look at me without thinking instead of completely losing it, I almost cry with happiness Your automatic sit sounds like an excellent asset to have, that's awesome So cute with the statue too :p

(Here's a chart from the science of dogs blog showing the physiological changes in a highly aroused dog)

Interesting Hankdog - I guess think of it as a combination of temperament and inadequate early socialisation as TSD said, with the importance of each varying depending on the dog. Some dogs even with a perfect life are just wired maladaptively, and some dogs have just been so badly treated it's broken them, and there's everything in between. In Weez's case i do wonder if early desexing played a part too, and a bit of testosterone might have helped!

Oh hello :laugh: Yes I find with Weez it's an escalation: his hearing is the first thing to go, sense of touch then disappears at higher arousal, above that only clicking my fingers in front of his face works, then up to the point when all that can be done is drag him away. Reactivity is a chain of escalation that the dog has gotten into a habit of doing without thinking, sometimes a tap on the butt or shoulder will break the chain and leave the dog a bit confused (which is not dissimilar to suddenly having food appear!), and gives you a chance to train in an alternative behaviour. Incidentally, the prioritising visual stimuli thing is why stuffed dogs work to desensitise and counter-condition highly reactive dogs :) It doesn't stop to take in the details, just the general shape of a dog is enough to start up the reactivity process (really interesting to watch - my girl who's very slightly dog-reactive was much more taken in by the stuffed dogs than my dog-friendly boy). MDD speaking of superstitious, take Milan stuff with a grain of salt. From everything I've seen he works on instinct, and doesn't really unpack which parts of his approach work and why, and which parts are just along for the ride. As a scientist that irks me i gotta say :laugh: But also his complete lack of understanding or disregard for calming signals means he more than once has called a dog calm when it is really shut down. You know your dog, so I would say keep the stuff that works but be ready to ditch the stuff that doesn't :)

A dog in high arousal will prioritise visual stimuli, making their other senses (smell, pain reception, hearing) much much duller. This is one reason why a dog won't respond, but it isn't mutually exclusive from the act being self-rewarding. Dogs can be superstitious: I yell at that thing = it goes away without incident. Yelling is then reinforced and habit-forming. Yelling at the thing is suddenly the most important thing in the world, and the brain can't simultaneously process anything else.

Probably the fact that a lot of people on here have owned/fostered many more dogs in their life than the average person is contributing to that. Spend enough time with dogs and you'll see all manner of crazy behaviours! --- I answered no, no and fatal because we've had 3 bitches so far who've caught mice for us. Who needs cats ;)

wow that's really interesting LBD; certainly not something I'd have thought of and really makes sense in terms of reinforcing the owner's behaviour too. She sounds like a sweety, is she one of those dogs who can also calm down a not-so-friendly approach from another dog? (just the picture I'm getting) She's awesome :p Honestly I think we could train her with punishment, or just about any method, and she would still learn - she's just so clued into reading and communicating with humans. But no, the flipside of that is that she is just not good with other dogs. She would rather they didn't exist, just ignores them until they are up in her space then will tell them to p*ss off with growling and, if they really push it, air snaps. She's never played with another dog, despite all Weez's attempts. The boy is the opposite - he does calm down dogs and diffuse situations, but struggles with the people-world.