Staranais

If what you're doing is working, and your dog is happy, and you are happy... keep doing it! I personally really enjoy threads like that, I love talking to other trainers, seeing what they're doing, and what they think of what I'm doing, but it's not at all necessary to understand all the different methods out there or the wacky trainer terminology to have a well trained dog. :rolleyes:

Well to me, it sounds kind of like you've answered your own question - for you, and for your dog, right now, balanced is not better. :rolleyes: My girl is a sweet girl too, but has a lot (as in a lot lot lot, a working line malligator lot) of energy. If I used a positive interrupter, I swear I would continuously be telling her what to do and reinforcing her for doing it whenever she wasn't crated. I'm too lazy for that! And I'm not sure it would be much fun for her. Plus, I actually quite like being able to tell her clearly that I don't like some things. Constantly interrupting her and asking her to do something else gets the same idea across eventually perhaps, in a much more indirect way. But with some things I think I'd rather be direct (kind, but direct), so there's no question in her mind that they're not approved behaviours in this house. So for me, and for my dog, right now, "balanced" suits us best.

Welcome to the forum Mark, I've heard you spoken highly of by a few trainers that I respect, so look forward to reading your thoughts in future. :rolleyes:

Perhaps I am a balanced trainer then, because I take that approach quite often! I think it can be kind and effective. I just sometimes feel that telling my girl what she's not allowed to do, then letting her do anything else and tell her she's good, is kinder than telling her what to do (reinforcing an incompatible behaviour), since it gives her more freedom. I don't know if I explained that well. I've just come in from studying sitting in the garden (yes I know, I tore myself away from DOL to study!) and while I was out there I had to ask my girl NOT to lick my face and walk all over my notes when I was reading. I could have just come inside, I guess, but I wanted to spend time hanging with her. So I told her what NOT to do (conditioned punisher!) and then let her decide what she wanted to do instead (in this case, chase bumblebees), and told her she was awesome for doing it. I dunno. She seemed happy enough, and seemed to understand. Mind you, we did just have a ten minute clicker session before that where I was trying to shaper her putting her hind feet on a phone book, can't get much more positive than that I guess. So perhaps I'm more "confused" than balanced or even eclectic. :rolleyes:

I think the same thing about "positive" training, which I believe many trainers really just use as a PR term. Cos people will then say... do you mean "reward based" with corrections or without! I mean, in the past I've heard people (on this forum) claim that the Koehler method is reward based, on the basis that it recommends trainers use a lot of praise and generally only recommends corrections after the dog has had a chance to become familiar with the exercise. The handler who posted felt that this qualified the Koehler method to be called a reward-based system. I'm just not sure if it makes sense to group Koehler trainers with the "use aversives only when absolutely necessary" type people. I don't know, I'm probably kidding myself that people here will ever agree on accurate, sensible, non-offensive terms to call each other. I just think it would be handy if we could!

Well, it would make discussions pretty difficult! If we don't have labels for different types of training approach, then we either have to describe them every single time we want to talk about them, or else be resigned to people getting upset or confused when we inadvertantly call them by the "wrong" label. And personally, I find typing "I am the type of trainer who likes to base my training on reward but who is also happy to use aversives regularly so long as they're not damaging my dog's enthusiasm for training" a bit long to type.

Ah, but that's the problem, isn't it? Terminology is always a problem. Many times on this board I've seen this topic come up. Someone mentions the phrase "purely positive" and then a "I don't use punishment if I can possibly avoid it" type trainer points out that they don't like being called "purely positive" or even "anti-aversive". The "I don't use punishment if I can possibly avoid it" type trainers apparently prefer just "positive" if they must have a label. Fair enough, but that raises its own difficulties in that then according to some "positive" trainers I've talked to, I shouldn't call myself "positive", even though I use mostly positive training, since unlike them I use mild aversives on a daily basis and have no issue with using stronger aversives if I think they'll be useful. Apparently that means I am not a positive trainer. Now, if I call myself a "balanced" trainer it's apparently offensive to some positive-only trainers by implying they're not balanced or something (I think it was Sky Soaring Magpie who thought the label was obnoxious, and the article above clearly does not like trainers like myself using the label), but I refuse to call myself a "traditional" trainer or a "punishment based" trainer as some trainers would prefer, since I am neither particularly traditional nor do I base my dog's training on punishment. Perhaps I should just call myself a trying-to-be-sensible-and-kind trainer, but that's not exactly informative, is it? So what should Corvus have called the "I don't use aversives if I can possibly avoid it" style of training as opposed to the "I use aversives whenever I think they'll be helpful and not harmful but use heaps of reward too" theory of training? Describing them each time is rather a mouthful, it gets people upset, and IMO it would be kind of handy if everyone could agree on labels that offend noone.

Happy birthday!

I use correction since my dog appears to learn and behave better with them. If she learned worse with correction, I wouldn't use it. My puppy escalates when her "bad" behaviour is ignored. She appears to quite cheerfully push the boundaries on purpose, to find out where they are. If you don't give her boundaries, she keeps on pushing and escalating her behaviour until she finds them. She learns quickly, and happily, when I give her clear boundaries using verbal (mostly) and physical (sometimes) corrections. An example from a few months back? I ignore her being slow to get out of the drivers side car seat on request (which she has been taught patiently, gets praised for doing, and appears to fully understand)? Then she'll start to refuse to move unless I physically push her out of the seat. I ignore that? She'll bark at me when I push her out. I ignore that? She'll snap at me when I push her out. I ignore that? She'll growl then bite at me on the arm with lovely, fast inhibited bites when I go to get in the car. I ignore that? Actually, I don't know where she would have gone from there, since I stopped the behaviour right there with correction (verbal warning followed by water bottle squirt in the face next time she didn't move over on request, followed by huge praise when she moved over). She was immediately happy to move from the seat upon request after that one correction, and has been ever since. She also seemed more relaxed that I'd laid down boundaries. Really, she did. She was a happy, relaxed little puppy who still loved car rides and still loves hanging out with me, and who now listens when I ask her to get out of the car seat since she knows I'm prepared to back up my request with a consequence. I suppose I could have given her food or a toy for getting out of the car seat on request without biting me, but I personally don't: a) want to have to carry food and toys every second of the day to pay my dog to do routine tasks b) think that doling out food constantly helps our relationship at all. I pay my dog very well for doing new or difficult things. But I also expect her to comply with simple, easy, well known tasks like moving over on request just because I've asked her to, the same way I would do with my own parents or anyone else I respect. That's not unreasonable, I feel. If your pup learns better using positive/ignore only, then I think you should use that. It's daft to use corrections if they're not helping. But if we swapped pups for the weekend, I'm fairly certain you'd end up agreeing that some form of correction is best for my pup, just like I may agree that positive only was best for yours.

Sounds more like it should be called distance decreasing behaviour to me, Aidan - wasn't Kei lunging towards the other dogs?

Good ideas there. Or you could clicker train him to bring his bowl back when he's finished. More work, but would solve your problem, use his brain, and be double cute.

I've heard that story too, not sure if anyone's actually researched it, but it sounds sort of plausible. The idea is that if the immune system matures never having to fight off any real pathogens then it never really learns what is normal and what isn't, so it overreacts later when it encounters harmless things. Kind of like not socialising a puppy and having it freak out when it sees people roughhousing, I suppose! Allergies in dogs are considered a genetic predisposition, there is a far higher chance of your dog developing an allergy if any of his near relatives is allergic, some breeds are far more prone to skin issues than others, and dogs with one type of allergy are much more likely to develop a second allergy than a non allergic dog is. But that doesn't mean that there can't be a strong environmental component as well in some dogs.

http://www.diamondsintheruff.com/healthandbehavior.html (short version) http://iwsthyroidstudy.com/documents/Kenne...dated_02_07.pdf (much more detail) Thanks Aidan!

The thing is that with some dogs and some owners, they are so into the "positive" without any balance that their dogs can reach the stage such as the above. These dogs may then require a higher level of correction than they otherwise might have needed had "positive" been balanced out with "consequence/correction" in the first place, and the dog might not have escalated to learnt behaviour of (eg) aggression which of course in itself can be complex. I'm not saying this is the case for your mother's dog, but I am using it as an example. Many of the problematic dogs I am called upon to assist with have got to the stage they have due to the lack of balance in terms of positive and discipline, even if that comes in the form of a well placed physical correction. So I disagree with the argument of 'mistakes caused by using only positive can always be fixed'. It's actually not rare that they can (indirectly or otherwise) lead to more extreme behaviours that aren't so easy to remedy. And I'd disagree that potential damage to the dog is always going to be worse with punishments than with rewards. Yeah, maybe for our own personal dogs. But the worst that can happen to a dog when reward is inappropriately used is that the dog makes no progress or gets worse, the handler gets frustrated, and if they don't know or are discouraged from researching any other options to control the dog, then the owner can give up, and the dog can end up at the pound or PTS. Sure, none of us Dolers would do that. We'd research other options. We'd try other methods. We'd hire a professional trainer. But IMO we aren't necessarily representative of the general public, who often just want a well behaved dog as soon as possible and with the minimum of effort, and will simply not keep a badly behaved dog, or who will not put more effort into training than perhaps one season at the local obedience school. The potential damage to a dog can sometimes be just as bad from poorly used reward as from poorly used punishment, since the real issue can be that the training is ineffective, and many owners will not persist indefinitely with an unruly dog without seeing progress. Sure, it's an "extreme" case that doesn't apply to most dogs. It's also a case that's close to my heart, since it could very very easily have happened to my last dog, if someone less persistant had adopted him and taken him along to the first obedience school we attended together. Irrelevant to the OP, of course, since I'm sure she'll persist with her dog no matter what method she picks.

I too would be interested to hear if the dog has a low thyroid hormone level, and if so, if the aggression resolves after the thyroid issue is treated. Are Jean Dodd's claims based on published research, or are they just a hypothesis so far? The full moon angle makes me a little sceptical, no offense intended to you of course Erny.

Where? Honest question, because I've looked, and I haven't yet found it. Give me a few days, and I'll dig it up for you. Catherine O'Driscoll? Bob Rogers? Dunno, forgotten. I got interested in this some years ago (10 - 12??) - a friend who is a vet nearly lost her 7 year old staffy to parvo, when she bought hooe a pup which was incubating parvo. Saffy had been anually vaccinated. Had a really good discussion with another vet who had some theories why some vac pups got parvo and some not, and he wondered whether the annual vaccinations "cancelled" each other out. I was then interested to find out if that was the case, because my dogs only had 3 vacs and we had a few pups visit with parvo (not mine) and none of mine caught anything. But it WAS a staffy, and they are more prone. I always remembered that discussion, and years later, I found out a lot more about it. And it's stuck with me. I'll find it for you, it's probably in my favourites, but there are a lot of them. And it would have references, because I tend not to believe everything I read on the web, old cynic I am!! But it was years ago I read it too, so I've forgotten the salient details. It might even be on here somewhere, with references, so I'll check there too. Thanks v. much, would really appreciate it. Had to write an essay about canine vaccine side effects/duration of immunity earlier this year and didn't come up with anything like that, but could have missed it - there was lots to read. And yes, references are a must for me too. I have heard so many completely made-up "facts" about canine and feline vaccination, the whole subject is rather like Chinese Whispers!

When I was breeder shopping last year, I got warned by many people to be wary of poor nerves in the breed. Several of the mallies imported and bred over here over the years have apparently had to be put down as they were too unpredictable, had terrible nerves and fear issues - basically either too scared to be any use to anyone, or just ate people whenever they were nervous. I have heard of this "issue" occurring in both show and working lines. I have no idea if that was a trainer issue (couldn't read and handle the dogs), or if these really were problem dogs, since I have only met a few of the individuals (and none of the dogs) concerned. Am very happy my little girl is bold as brass. Amanda is great.

Lol, thanks Tomas!

Yeah, that would be interesting to research. You could survey pet owners, I guess, and try to see if different types of diet were associated with different types and rates of cancer. You'd have to somehow allow for the fact that people who go to the trouble to raw feed their dogs might conceivably on average take better care of their animals than the average australian does. So if you find a lower rate of cancer in raw fed dogs, that could relate to raw feeders doing other things differently (exercise, housing, medication), and not actually be caused by the raw feeding itself. Correlation doesn't prove causation. You could even find more cancers reported in raw fed dogs, for a couple of reasons: a) if raw feeding helps a dog live longer, then you could easily see more cancers in raw fed dogs, since older dogs tend to get cancer more often than young dogs do. b) if raw feeders are on average more likely to take their dog to the vet than the average dog owner you may also see more cancers diagnosed in raw fed dogs, since dogs that don't go to the vet when they are ill won't be diagnosed with cancer even if they have it. Just thinking out loud here. Surely, this should be 'have to allow for the assumption' rather than 'fact'? Well, that's why I said "might". It might be a fact, and if it is, you'll have to allow for it. Sorry if the english was not clear.

I wonder if the trainer came to that conclusion after he saw dogs being food aggressive around raw bones? Many dogs I've seen (including my own) aren't food aggressive at all except that they have big issues about people touching their raw bones. I'm not sure what it is about bones that makes some dogs so defensive of them, but I've seen it several times. And perhaps he falsely attributed that food aggression to the dog eating the raw diet itself, rather than the fact that many dogs see bones as super high value food items? Grasping at straws here!

Yeah, that would be interesting to research. You could survey pet owners, I guess, and try to see if different types of diet were associated with different types and rates of cancer. You'd have to somehow allow for the fact that people who go to the trouble to raw feed their dogs might conceivably on average take better care of their animals than the average australian does. So if you find a lower rate of cancer in raw fed dogs, that could relate to raw feeders doing other things differently (exercise, housing, medication), and not actually be caused by the raw feeding itself. Correlation doesn't prove causation. You could even find more cancers reported in raw fed dogs, for a couple of reasons: a) if raw feeding helps a dog live longer, then you could easily see more cancers in raw fed dogs, since older dogs tend to get cancer more often than young dogs do. b) if raw feeders are on average more likely to take their dog to the vet than the average dog owner you may also see more cancers diagnosed in raw fed dogs, since dogs that don't go to the vet when they are ill won't be diagnosed with cancer even if they have it. Just thinking out loud here.

No research as far as I know - and I've looked. It would be hard to do that sort of study, since there are so many versions of a raw diet - if you test the long term effects of one person's idea of prey model, who can say that another person's idea of prey model is just as healthy, or that BARF is just as healthy? And which criteria would you pick to say which food was "healthier"? The years the dogs live? The number of vet visits they have before they die? What they eventually die of? The number of dentals they need? The number of gut impactions or tooth fractures they experience? Which criteria you decide to pick would impact which food was "healthier". There are a few studies out there where people analysed the nutritional content of "typical" raw diets to the NRC guidelines for what dogs "should" eat. All of the diets fell short of at least one or two nutrients, some very short, which had the anti-BARF lobby jumping up and down. Of course, then you have to ask, perhaps the NRC are just being paranoid, since most dogs do seem to thrive on raw diets regardless of what they're "supposed" to need in their diets. There is plenty of research about the benefits of various different types of kibble on dental health. It would be easy enough to set up trials of that sort to investigate whether raw diets are as good (or better) for teeth as dental kibble or regular kibble is. Would just take someone with motivation and a scientific background, and a moderate amount of funding. It would also be reasonably simple to pay to have one or two "raw" diets tested to AAFCO standards, which are rather basic - as I recall, 8 dogs kept alive on the diet for a few months without obvious changes in weight or serum biochemistry gives you the AAFCO tick of approval. Pretty basic. But I can't see any huge long term diet studies being done soon. The commitment of time and money would just be too large. No one will step forward to fund it - no kibble company, and no group of raw feeders, has volunteered to fund such a thing so far!

Where? Honest question, because I've looked, and I haven't yet found it.

Ouch! As for resource guarding, I don't think it's necessarily a matter of just not tolerating it, or just not putting up with it. Sure, with a softer dog you can bully them into relinquishing their bones (my last dog would give up anything on request) but a harder or more stroppy dog isn't necessarily going to put up with you taking their things away once they realise they don't have to let you. Even if a dog respects you, sharing doesn't come naturally to dogs. Even wild wolves don't naturally share things with the boss. Sharing needs to be taught. My young girl has moderate resource guarding issues with bones and I'm working on resolving them by trying to build a more trusting relationship with her - regularly calling her over and giving her something nice in exchange for touching or holding the bone, calling her away from the bone instead of going up and nicking it from her if I ever have to remove it, etc. Sure, I could bully her into just giving things to me since I'm still bigger and stronger than her, and the lesson might stick even after she's grown, but I'd prefer to have her learn to relax around me and trust that I'm not going to arbitrarily nick her stuff. Especially since she's going to end up both tougher and faster than me, and it's going to get progressively more difficult to boss her round. I'd rather save the confrontations in our relationship for the really important things that I can't resolve peacefully!

The pups would have got some immunity through mums antibodies but would need their vaccinations to ensure they maintain this immunity as they are no longer being fed by mum. Yes that's correct, the pups are initially protected by the antibodies in mum's colostrum (the "milk" which is produced in the few days after birth) but this wears off gradually and the pups must be vaccinated to induce them to produce their own antibodies etc after that. The pups won't have any long lasting protection from the antibodies in the colostrum, the very longest I have heard it lasting for is 14 - 16 weeks (and protection wearing off by 8 - 12 weeks is much more usual).