Staranais

Yes, I think he probably is from the Koehler lineage. I suspect his methods do work very well, at least to teach certain things to most dogs. However, it did disturb me that his student was happy to trash talk clicker training/food reward training without having any understanding of the system they were disparaging - from the things he said, it was pretty obvious to me that the trainer didn't actually understand any of the principles behind what he was trash talking. Being so close minded that you refuse to even learn about a different tool or a different method isn't the mark of a good trainer, IMO.

I have never trained with this trainer, but have talked at length (and trained alongside) someone who claimed to have trained extensively with him. I got the impression that this person was aiming to train the dog basically by creating really strong habits, plus a belief in the dog that it would never get away with not obeying so it might as well obey. He used physical placement to teach, check chains & a degree of social isolation to create motivation, but most of I think his method was absolute consistency (never ever letting the dog get away with not obeying a command). I don't know how accurately this mirrors how his trainer trained. The trainer might have some great skills, I have no idea. You can be very closed minded and still good at what you do, after all. I just reference his site to point out that, it's not just positive trainers that are very black and white about dog training. Not by a long shot.

Can you explain this please, Ptolomy? By snatching & grabbing, do you mean picking up and putting down cloths that aren't the right cloth before making a final selection? She is doing that a little bit sometimes, but I'm hoping that behaviour will fade as she gains more understanding of the exercise. And, why do you add the unopened food containers? What do they do?

I have met many people like that, I'm afraid. They are slowly becoming fewer in number, but they are still out there. One of our local professional trainers is very vocal in proclaiming that he won't use a clicker or food treats to train dogs. On his website, he calls positive reward training the "Bullshit Industry of the Century". You can't get much more black and white than that! http://www.paulhutton.co.nz/industry/index.html I have also talked to more than one professional trainer who didn't know what a clicker/marker was actually for, as well as several people over the years who have been convinced that all dogs need corrections or they won't be reliable. Look at Ed Frawley, he openly admits that he used to trash-talk clicker training only because he was closed minded and didn't understand what it was about. Now, he is a convert. People on both sides of the argument can be arrogant and closed minded and unwilling to learn.

After two sessions we're at the point where she's consistently happy picking the "right" cloth out of two cloths when I send her to retrieve. She's definitely doing it visually at this point, but I'm happy she's got the basic concept that one cloth in the pile is right and one is not.

Yes, I wonder about that too. It might be a far sadder story than it first appears.

Oh sorry, National Research Council's "nutrient requirements of dogs & cats". The most up to date edition (early 2000s I think) only shows part of it for free, luckily for you the free pages seem to include most of the copper stuff! Page 171-ish. http://books.google.com/books?id=aqeCwxbRWvsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=national+research+council+dogs+cats&hl=en&ei=znPgTfORGJCKuAOvxqz9Ag&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Poor Mandela. He really keeps you on your toes, doesn't he? All I know about this is that it's supposed to be caused by a type 3 immune reaction - antibodies bind to an antigen forming immune complexes which lodge in the little blood vessels causing vasculitis. I've heard it can be linked to vaccination, but also to lots of other drugs, bacteria, viruses & associated with other types of allergy. You've probably discovered all that already in your research though. Interesting that it seems to coincide with introducing non-z/d food to his diet. I wonder if that was the trigger. Please keep us posted.

Copper is needed for the enzyme that creates the black colouration in the coat. But, lack of Cu is certainly not the only thing that can cause loss of colour in an animal's coat. The only real way to tell if an animal is Cu deficient is with a blood test. ETA, we do these on cattle reasonably often, since they often suffer from Cu deficiency & loss of coat colour is a very insensitive way of detecting it. Sandgrubber, the NRC nutrition guidelines will have a summary of Cu deficiency studies in dogs and cats. The old version is available for free at Google Books. If it's just the tips of the hairs, though, I'd suspect environmental bleaching or something causing hair loss retardation before any kind of dietary deficiency.

Do they need more copper than pale animals, or is it just that you can see the effect of Cu deficiency reflected in their coat whereas you can't see it affecting the coat of pale animals? Liver is one of the very best sources of Cu, but don't go overboard with it, it's very nutrient rich and too much can lead to over-supplementation (of Vit A as well as Cu). I wonder if it's also possible that this is just old coat that needs to be shed? Unlikely but could reflect an underlying disorder retarding hair shedding.

Thanks Ness & Ptolomy, I like that DogScouts link - it's very similar to what we're doing, with the addition of initially throwing the scented cloth as another clue that it's the "right" one, which I hadn't thought of. Lots of the other ideas are interesting too. I won't have to do scent matching unless I ever make it into the top obedience class over here, which is rather unlikely since it's very competitive. I don't envy you guys if you need to do it in the lower classes, it sounds like a very hard concept to teach!

That's a very pretty lamb you have there! What breed is it?

I think you Aussies do this exercise too? Basically the dog is sent out to a pile of cloths & she must select and retrieve the one with the owner's scent on it. I haven't taught this before, but decided to give it a go this week for fun (the dog is on heat so we're pretty much under house arrest). We started off well, but have hit a few issues! Over the last few days we have shaped a nice retrieve of a washcloth, which I'm really quite happy with. Tonight, I thought I'd introduce one decoy cloth. I figured that since she's been retrieving the same wash cloth for the entire past week, if I placed a different-looking decoy cloth a short distance away, she'd undoubtedly preferentially retrieve the right cloth & then I could slowly make the decoy cloths closer/more similar. Was a good theory but have had no success with it - I've just tried it 6 or 7 times, every time she's preferentially retrieved the novel cloth first. Even when it was quite different (a bath towel!) and several meters away she wanted to retrieve the novel cloth. Very strange. How do you guys teach this exercise? What am I doing wrong? Do you have any tips or tricks? The only book I have that describes a method to teach this is "PlayTraining your Dog", which describes using a tie down board that I'm way too lazy to build.

I think that is true. My last dog sounds more like your Diesel, my mally like your kelpie. I do use guiding with her, in a fashion, but tend to ask her to target to my hand rather than physically moving her. But on the other hand, I think you still have to teach them to tolerate being manhandled to a degree, even if they dislike it. If a strange person ever has to handle my girl, I don't want her stressing out, or even worse, taking offence and nailing them in the arm. I remember that as a pup she looked very shocked and upset when I first took her to the boarding kennel and the attendant moved her by grabbing her collar, as we just didn't do that at home. So when we got home, we had to train her that this was OK.

I agree Sezz, I find it very sad. The owners should have their dog under control, I'm not disputing that, but it's just sad that some people seem to jump at the chance of blaming others so they can milk every little misfortune for all it's worth. I heard a story a few years back about a woman who tripped on the steps outside a shop in America, just from being a klutz, and twisted her ankle a little - and she was immediately hustled inside where an employee of the shop offered her a considerable sum of money if she'd sign something agreeing not to sue them. I hope we don't get that bad over here.

I'll be interested to hear what answers you get. Over here where I am, a vet legally isn't supposed to compound medicines or prescribe a human medicine if there's a commercial veterinary one available to prescribe. So either your laws are different to ours, or the companies have found a loop hole somewhere? Will be interested to find out what the story is. Over here we do have to give a prescription to a client who asks for it, although we're allowed to charge for the work in writing it up (usually taken to be ten minutes of vet time). I'd imagine Aussie would be the same.

Can you examine the ewe & find any clear canine marks (often helps to strip the skin & look underneath), then measure the inter-canine distance? This is what we do to distinguish ferret, stoat & cat bird kills.

+1

It's an interesting thought. A dog that didn't survive on whatever food was on offer, probably didn't live long enough to breed (or perform well enough to be selected to breed). So, dogs that could thrive on whatever diet was available probably were preferentially selected when our breeds were being developed. I expect the process has been going on a long time - back in the day, wolves that couldn't stomach human waste probably wouldn't have hung around our campsites to become domesticated in the first place. However, I think it's also relevant that going back decades or hundreds of years, dogs weren't as well contained as they are today, so plenty of them were probably able to supplement their diet with scavenging & hunting. Unlike todays pets, where what you choose to give them is all that they get. We do tend to be a little precious about our dog's food, I think, myself included. It's understandable - we want to give them the best. But I've travelled in the 3rd world & seen street dogs in a lot of places, and some look reasonably healthy while living on garbage and scraps. One lecturer of mine even liked to claim that dogs could probably survive and thrive upon human excrement. They really are highly adaptable creatures.

Maybe some dog training course students would help as part of their course? Not sure where the NDTF guys are based.

Very cool!

He's pretty

Poor wee baby.

Sounds like you have a collection of issues and might use some professional help. Hopefully someone here can recommend someone good in your area. My old dog was obsessive with toys too, although possibly not as obsessive as yours sounds. I used that obsession to train a stellar recall, among other things. So, there is hope.

If my dog saw me fighting someone, I'd fully expect her to come to the party and join in. Would be my fault for not locking her up before I had a barny, not her fault for being a dog. Wouldn't think it was headline news - that's just what dogs do.