Willem

wrt 'the dog CAN'T respond to it': just not true, a dog can respond if it's high aroused and trained to respond at this arousal level....it is just much harder to train. High aroused dogs respond to clicker if conditioned....or my dog to 'Leave-it' when training with the flirt/flick pole. The problem is to maintain high arousal in a controlled environment so you can train the dog. Think about Schutzhund training - even Karin Pryor states this ...'The dog must be able to hear and respond to its handler when in full fighting drive'...

you mentioned before that ...'All I wanted was for him to stay close to me. Instead, he had no clue I was even there. He couldn't respond to the heel cue until he was calm enough to process it and act on it - i.e. once he was already starting to calm down after passing the dog'...I think he still had a clue that you were here, he just ignored you. When the other dog pinned him down for sure it was something that didn't make him calmer, still, when the other dog let him go and you said 'Kivi' he came straight away...suddenly he could hear you very well. So the 'decreased unwanted behaviour' was 'ignoring you' or 'selektive hearing' :D. In this moment, the unintended positive punishment worked in your favor and the result was that Kivi was suddenly very obedient. Look, I see this as a discussion, I might be right or wrong, and as this is not a lab environment where everything can be repeated and analysed, there will be always different views...and lets not forget that we are all 'conditioned' and see what we want to see hence we all fall into this trap of subjective perception all the time.

...same here, can't say that she gets overexcited when we play ball or fetch...but a rag on a rope and she goes nuts. Maybe the flapping rag reminds her of a bird. Rag, rope and plastic pole - running the rope through the pole allows to accelerate the rag by pulling (a little bit like fly fishing)...cheap as chips and easy to replace if it breaks and it allows to train also the drops and sits in a controlled environment while she is high aroused... ...was contemplating about why she was a 'bad' fetcher...well, I have to admit I never really taught her, when we played fetch everything happend more or less by accident. So today I took a stick and started the training. First, na, she wasn't interested in the stick at all. I put a rope on the stick so I could pull it and voila, different story, at least she took it in her mouth (reward)...repeated it approx. 5 times, then I removed the rope...moved the stick with my hand...she chased it and took it in her mouth (reward)...repeated it approx. 5 times. Dropped the stick and kicked it with my feet...she went for it (reward)...kicked it further away and run away when she had it in her mouth so she followed me with the stick (reward)...after a few repetition she fetched it pretty good; next step was to throw something else...same procedure, lots of rewards ...same result...tomorrow again. She doesn't get high aroused as it is the case while playing Leave-it-Take-it with the flirt/flick pole...but she knows now it earns her treats :) ..

I'm not trolling and I might not have studied dog behaviour for years like you guys, but I can recognize that Corvus description what was taught to the dog is somehow contradictive....and the incident with the other dog was just that: positive punishment by the other dog, which resulted in a very obedient Kivi.

Exactly! :) And, as mentioned, Kivi wasn't much interested in coming close. I would walk him past while holding him tight against me, so he got that closeness anyway, but he wasn't in a state to particularly notice. The eye opening moment was when he accidentally triggered another dog at the river one day and the dog forced him to the ground and pinned him there. He yelped and struggled, and when the dog let him up, all I said was "Kivi..." and he trotted into heel and stayed there until I was able to get us clear of the other dog. It was a very different scenario to the dog-behind-a-fence scenario, but I guess he perceived it as the same. It's quite cool when you have behaviours triggered by how the dog perceives the environment. You learn a lot about how they see the world and what happens to them. The only downside is he's stopped helping Erik when Erik is having a problem with another dog. He used to intervene on Erik's behalf, but now he falls into a heel instead and it's on Erik to get himself to safety between my feet. ...as a response of the positive punishment by the other dog he wanted to be close to you and of course followed your recall...just proofs the effectiveness of positive punishment.

Kivi would probably struggle to make the generalisation. He does when my partner walks him. He responds to the heel cue, but not as well. The behaviour was trained with me as the handler all the time, so he needs more practice to generalise to other handlers. It's a different behaviour with someone new. My other dog, Erik, is a different story. His preference is to direct his safety behaviours at me, but he's crazy good at generalisation and has in the past directed them at other people if I'm not close by. He has also run about 20m to find me so he can start some kind of safety behaviour. Safety behaviours are good if they bring the dog close to you, so it's hard to tell what role closeness plays. ...not if he 'evidently associated the heel with his decreasing arousal and increasing sense of safety'...

so he just had a bad recall?

mosquitos?...they are everywhere at the moment.

...'my dog's tail swirls too much dust up...and I'm allergic to dust'....hm, never heard this argument from docking lovers before...

...desexing for fashion?... ...worse than docking IMO....

puppies play this 'game' and chase objects that move away from them...and then they move away from objects that charge at them, so it is a pretty natural behaviour preparing them for hunting and escape. However, if the puppy is not taught that he is not allowed to do this with people, cars, other dogs, bicycle etc. it becomes a serious behaviour issue. When you say 'it happens in the last minute'...I assume that he doesn't charge at people / bicycles etc. as long as they are approaching and he does it only when he recognize that they pass / move away?...so it seems it's not aggression due to anxiety being intimidated by the trigger? No matter what the cause is, you respectively the dog owner has to address this otherwise the dog will likely bite someone one day and then you have to deal with a dangerous dog and that doesn't help to improve the reputation of dog owners. Did the dog owner any kind of obedience training with the dog?...I would assume no as otherwise this unacceptable behaviour would have been picked up and addressed. Hence I would start with basic obedience training plus - to address this specific problematic behaviour - would train 'passing other dogs, people bicycles etc.' (you need some decoys, helpers for this till you sure it works for normal walks)...when passing (you train this also in obedience classes) the focus of the dog has to be on you / dog owner...no launching or chasing at passing objects allowed...if he gets it right he gets the treat as the reward. It is an area where positive reinforcement is pretty effective. Note: if the cause is anxiety / fear you have to be careful and use a different approach; also in this case I would join a obedience class and get advise from the instructor. ETA: just saw your last post - so yes, doesn't seem to be anxiety.

...that's a pretty steep success curve for just 6 weeks...if you keep it up it will getting better and better now that you found the keys and see that they work.

that would be indeed interesting...can Kivi really associate the heel with safety or is it only a measure to stay close with Corvus?...hm... Wrt your dogs: IMO it is a little bit different as the legs (or arms) provide somehow real protection, a little bit like hiding behind a tree or between trees so I'm not surprised that they find this safety also with other people, however there is no obvious safety in 'heel'.

Lets assume that I walk Kivi instead of Corvus and Kive notices a thread...according to you Kivi will feel safe because he knows 'that he can control his fear' in heel...so he will just choose heeling to feel safe. Well, I don't believe it...he won't feel safe because there is no Corvus...as long as I can't replace Corvus as the attachment figure the heeling means nothing....

sorry, but that sounds a little bit weird for me :) ...the natural response to the threat was that he wanted to stay close to safety which was only possible - due to Corvus interference - in heel. ...'a behaviour he could choose'... that would be a very conscious approach, I doubt that this was the case. ETA: in other words: for Kivi the heel was the only door open to safety (to be close to Corvus)...of course he took it, and then he calmed down, not because he used this door, but because he could stay close to Corvus...

...isn't this a normal respectively pretty natural response?...creature is threatened and feels scared...creature looks for escape respectively protection via pack, den, mother, father, siblings...finds it...feels safer and calms down. Regarding this chain, what would have changed if you wouldn't have used the circumstances to teach him heel?...with your guidance he associated the heel as a method to stay close to you and that's all what he wanted. I fail to see why the heeling itself should have increased his sense of safety? ETA:..He evidently associated the heel with his decreasing arousal... he learned that the heel was the method to stay close to you and staying close was / is what calms him down, not the heel...?...

...same here, can't say that she gets overexcited when we play ball or fetch...but a rag on a rope and she goes nuts. Maybe the flapping rag reminds her of a bird. Rag, rope and plastic pole - running the rope through the pole allows to accelerate the rag by pulling (a little bit like fly fishing)...cheap as chips and easy to replace if it breaks and it allows to train also the drops and sits in a controlled environment while she is high aroused. I don't think it is voluntary - this stare phase is when the dopamine level increases ...if the level is not high enough you might be able to interrupt it before it bursts. Somewhere I read that the aim should be to train for 20 minutes while the dog is high aroused (you have to keep the first sessions shorter, 20 minutes is pretty long) - I guess it is to make sure you train her at peak level.

they indeed stink badly, very badly ...and they might soon come in thousands... ETA: I like wildlife, but I don't need these guys as neighbours https://www.ehp.qld.gov.au/wildlife/livingwith/flyingfoxes/living-with-flying-foxes.html

FYI Willem: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/titre The version spelt titer is US English Hopefully Scottsmum will be able to come back on when she's been to the vet and tell us how the Kiwis pronounce it :laugh: ah, French-British heritage...

what about hard drive :D ? classical conditioning: your dog sees another dog she can chase and that triggers a very high dopamine discharge in here brain...now your best treat is only second best as the reward is already happening in her brain - she doesn't need you anymore for getting rewarded and you lose your control. You need something to reward her which has a similar or even higher value (means even more dopamine) than the chase of this dog...obviously you can't use the other dog as the reward :D , but you can use the flirt / flick pole playing Leave-it-Take-it to imprint the 'Leave-it' command so she responds to it also if she is high aroused.

I guess she switches into drive mode and you struggle to get her focus back ...ours does it when she sees the guinea pigs or birds or cats - like an arrow in a bow ready to be shot. I train the 'Take it - Leave it' with the flirt / flick pole ...the moving rag in front of her must be torture when she is high aroused, but she keeps the 'Stay' pretty good in the meanwhile ...then 'Take-it' and the hunt is on...'Leave-it' and she has to stop the hunt, which she does...the reward is another round or even a treat and another round. I believe it is a very good method to make 'Leave-it' a powerful command even if the dog is high aroused - it won't transform her in a decoy dog for anxious dogs so.

it's 'titer' pronounced 'TIGHT er'... 'titre' is French, I noticed it is often used here - no idea why.

http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/pests-diseases/animals/risk/dirofilaria-immitis.htm ...according to this website heartworm is not an issue in NZ...they also don't have paralytic ticks ...so that makes you wonder why they sell nexgard spectra (addresses ticks and heartworms) in NZ and not in Australia???

According to their website..Petstock have this in stock. I am off there tomorrow to see if I can buy some. I washed my deck down with Phenol & now it & the dogs smell like cow poo phenyl or phenol?...phenol is a metabolic product found also in human urine...so ... :D

the problem was that she pulled like an ox whether she was on my side, or meters ahead on a long leash and just ignored the tension in the leash no matter how much discomfort it caused. That's why I trained this crazy walking and that is where she has to be at my side which gives me the leverage so it doesn't become a tug of war, As you don't need much force (due to the leverage) she learned to respond to very little tension in the leash - I guess that's the big advantage over choke and prong collars where the dog learns (?) to respond only to high tensions ....it took approx. 1 week and she stopped this obsessive pulling. When I walk her, most of the time I use a long leash and depending where we walk it is ok if she is a few meters ahead - as long as she doesn't pull. I use the long leash as it gives me more trainings opportunities while walking her (recall...leave it when I anticipate she goes in drive mode because she sees a bird etc.)