Staranais

I think abandonment training might be mentioned in the book Feisty Fido by Pat McConnell? Don't quote me on that. Perhaps it would work for a dog that actually cared if you left, a dog of a more clingy or nervous disposition? Very much doubt it would have worked for my previous dog, he never cared if I was present or not once he was "in the zone" and spoiling for a fight. For the record, I also had no success giving almighty leash corrections for aggression to my dog (and neither did trainers I consulted). Like Deelee, once my staffy was "in the zone" he simply couldn't care less about any type of physical punishment (and yes, I'm sorry to say we tried some very harsh corrections over the years). If anything, a hard correction razzed him up for the fight even more. Which I guess makes sense, when you think about it - would a staffy that gave up when pain was administered be any use in a dog fight (or fighting rats or bulls, as his more distant ancestors were bred to do?) I suppose it may have helped if someone with exemplary timing had managed to correct him very harshly before he got even slightly razzed up about other dogs, when he first started to think about getting aggressive, however trainers skilled enough to do that accurately and consistently are few and far between in my experience. I also wouldn't want to try an almighty correction on a dog who was aggressive because they were fearful, like Corvus's dog. That has the potential to make the situation so much worse, by teaching the dog that he really does have something to be afraid of around other dogs. Now giving an almighty correction to a dog that's just being an adolescent snot and disobeying you in order to go eyeball some other dog, well perhaps there's some merit in that.

Actually, can I pick other? I'd let Kayce Cover, Patricia McConnell or Steve from K9 Force take the lead from me (is Steve famous enough? Perhaps not, sorry. The others aren't actually on telly either, I don't think, although they are both quite famous). But only after they've explained to me EXACTLY what they're going to do, and believe me I'd be watching them like a hawk the entire time.

This is a funny poll (funny ha ha, not funny peculiar!) I couldn't decide between Ian Dunbar and just shoot me. Mind you, after a few very bad experiences with my previous dog, I now hate other people training my dogs, no matter how "expert" or "qualified" they are supposed to be.

I'd personally recommend that you put the puppy on a good quality commercial diet that is formulated for a growing large breed pup, while you do some research about what to feed puppies on a raw diet. Feeding a growing pup right is important - it can lead to all sorts of nasty problems down the track if you don't get the diet right while pup is growing. There's far less room to "experiment" than with an adult dog. You could supplement the commercial diet with chicken necks or chicken mince, red meat, and a little bit of organs such as liver, until you've done enough research to be confident in making the change over to a fully raw diet (if that's what you want to do). You could feed the pup a couple of meals of commercial, and one meal of raw a day, for example. There's absolutely nothing wrong with a raw diet when it's fed right (I feed mostly raw myself), but it's important that it is done correctly, especially for a growing large breed pup. JMO.

I wish ours still had head and neck still on! I hear brain is just chock full of taurine, great for cats.

I think you're right about that, lots of people make their minds up about tools on first impression, without doing the research properly. But I think it's very disappointing to see a professional, televised dog trainer do the same thing, since it's her job to be educated about how and why to use a tool humanely. Just to be clear, I saw the episode too. Victoria Stillwell didn't say "that crate's too small" or "the dog needs to spend less time in the crate", neither of which I would have any problem with. She actually cringed away when she saw the dog in the crate, and said something like "oh, oh, that's terrible, get him out, I can't even bear to look at that!" Which IMO is both ridiculous and melodramatic. It's not just crates. I've heard trainers who should know better rant against prong collars, against check chains, against e-collars, against clickers, against headcollars, and against using food in training. IMO all of those tools can have a place in the training of some dogs, and it's the job of a good trainer to know when and how to use each tool appropriately, even if they choose not to use that tool themselves. A good trainer doesn't just have one or two favourite tools, and remain ignorant about and biased against the others. So yes, Victoria Stillwell may use some types of punishment, but I still have no respect for her since I think she's uneducated and ignorant.

My comment was directed more towards the correction collar, but any aversive method kills drive to some extent, so I would not use it on a trialling dog when it probably isn't necessary. Agree entirely about aversive methods reducing drive. But I suspect Cosmolo is talking about using the e-collar at very low levels so that it's not aversive (it's purely informational, like a NRM), so therefore it shouldn't kill drive?

I trained it same as Ptolomy. My boy anticipates my hand about to touch his toes but you get the idea. Thanks Caffy! Did you stick that video up just now for me? I appreciate it!

Yes, I think you can too. Seems to me you could use the e-collar stim basically as a NRM - apply the stim to tell the dog they're getting further away from earning the drive object, release the stim to say they're getting closer to getting the drive object, etc. Don't really see the advantage over using low-stim e-collar over a verbal bridge though, when the dog is right beside you? Though perhaps different things work better for different dogs, if the dog understands it better then how can you argue.

It may or may not be a flea allergy - the pattern of scratching doesn't sound entirely characteristic to me, but I wouldn't want to second guess your vet who has actually seen your dog. Since flea allergy is one of the most common allergies that dogs suffer from, & since they are relatively easy to treat compared to some allergies (just get rid of the fleas), ruling out a flea allergy is a good place to start IMO. Dogs that are allergic to one thing are commonly allergic to several, so even if you get rid of any fleas, it might be a good idea to play round with a diet change & looking at environmental or contact allergies etc if his symptoms haven't completely resolved.

Thanks guys. No PAX, she's pretty fussy with food actually, plus has a much shorter attention span than I'm used to! I get no more than 1 or 2 minutes of training in at the moment if I use gourmet treats (tiny bits of warmed sausage), then she's off to find something to bite. We'll train in drive eventually, of course, just trying to get her understanding the concepts with food first. Will definitely teach walk backwards, Ness, that was a great exercise for my last boy's hind end awareness. Perhaps I should teach that first? I just wanted to do stand as something else to alternate with down and sit - she's getting pretty good at guessing what comes next when we do position changes, lol!

I think that was Ian Dunbar's idea, wasn't it? Or perhaps I'm just confused. I think the idea was more of gradually shaping a softer and softer bite, rather than the dog just growing out of it by himself. I wouldn't call the method unfair, unless all of shaping is unfair, since all of shaping involves changing criteria on the dog like this. Have no idea if it's effective, though.

I'd brag too. Congratulations!

Yes please Ness & PAX, a video would be great! Taking photos of wee Fledge can be difficult, she simply doesn't sit still long enough, most of our recent photo attempts are just an unidentifiable yellow blur... but here are some from a week and a half ago. She's gotten rather larger since then!

I have never heard the worms theory - most pups are born with roundworms, but I can't imagine that would cause their breath to smell different? And haven't noticed my pup's breath changing in odour after she got her first worming pill either. I've always just supposed it's what dog breath smells like when you still have perfect teeth.

I can't imagine what I'd do with a dog that decided to mark on me, but I can tell you, it wouldn't be pretty. Even though I'm normally a pretty laid back person, there's simply no way I'd put up with a dog thinking that was acceptable! To me, it really sounds like she can't handle this dog by herself, and she needs professional help to learn some training strategies that will work for her and this dog.

Sorry, not a stafford baby this time, Shoemonster! A little malinois girl. Thanks very much everyone else for your suggestions. We will experiment and see how we do.

Thanks Cosmolo, be interested to see what you come up with! Nope, she hasn't done any shaping. I'll go there if I have to, but the lightbulb has just come on in the past day or so with luring/targeting and marking, so I want to stick with that for now if I can. Seems like it "should" be an easy thing to lure, and easy to fade the lure from, just can't work out how to do it (and no success on Youtube so far either). Plus I hate shaping.

Has anyone got any links to videos, or perhaps can just explain, about how to lure a kick back type stand? I know how to lure a walk-forward type stand, but want to teach a kick back type stand in case we decide to compete in obedience later on. Puppy is only 11 weeks old and is doing really well with luring/marking, so that's the method I'd prefer to stick with rather than lifting her hind quarters up or just waiting around to capture it.

a marker is a sound to praise, like a click from a clicker or the word good boy?? Almost. A marker is a short, consistent, neutral sound that means the dog has done the right thing and will get a reward, or sometimes that he has done the wrong thing and will get no reward. It's different to praise or telling a dog off, as it's not supposed to be rewarding or punishing in itself. It just signals to the dog that he's done something correct (or incorrect). You may have heard of clicker training? A clicker is a type of reward marker that means the dog just earned a reward, by doing what he was doing exactly when he heard the clicker sound. There is lots of good information about clicker training on the internet if you google. The advantage of using markers is that you don't need to carry the reward around all the time - the marker buys you time to go get the reward. So in training you can mark your dog for a good behaviour, then run and get the reward from the sidelines, and he'll still understand exactly what is being rewarded. Using markers also means you can stop luring the dog with food more easily. Once you have marked the heel position several times, your dog should go there even when you are holding the food in the other hand. One of the first things I've taught my new puppy is that even when I'm holding a treat in my closed fist in front of her nose, she needs to make eye contact with me to earn it. I did this by holding a treat in my closed fist and just waiting (while she knawed and licked!) until she happened to look up into my eyes. I then marked this and gave her the treat. Wasn't long before she started offering eye contact instead of attacking my fist, when I was holding a treat. Now when we train, she's looking for ways to earn the treat by pleasing me, not by attacking my hands (well, she's not perfect yet, but she's getting better daily!) Hope that makes sense.

Are you using markers? Sounds to me like he's not 100% sure what's earning the treat. If you mark the correct behaviour (walking without nipping), and ignore or mark the wrong one (nipping) he'll probably figure out what you want much more easily. If you use a marker you can also move the food off your body more quickly and into your pocket - which means you'll be rewarding, not bribing, the dog.

Well, the issue is that if you just stick a PP collar on your dog and don't know what you're doing, then: a) you could hurt the dog, or (perhaps more likely), b) it might not work at all and your dog might learn to just pull through the PP collar. Those issues aren't unique to the PP collar, of course, they're shared by any correction collar or headcollar if you don't know how to use them properly. Even though I do personally prefer the PP collar to the checkchain or headcollar, if you have someone local who can teach you how to use a headcollar or checkchain correctly, I'd suggest you go get a lesson with them rather than experiment with a PP collar by yourself. I think K9Force has a distance learning program you can do about loose leash walking if there are genuinely no good trainers near you, and you just can't travel.

You've already had my opinion - what's appropriate depends entirely on the dog and your relationship with them. In my view, my dog's mouth is the equivalent of my hands. There's a difference between him gently taking my arm in his mouth and him biting me - just like there is a difference between me tapping you on the shoulder and punching you in the face! However, if the dog just doesn't get the idea of being gentle with his teeth, I too would insist on no mouthing at all on human skin. I also don't allow my past or present dogs to mouth other people (or actually, to play with other people at all except my OH, for several reasons).

I think she wants one which is really similar to wrestling, only without the teeth. All the other games we suggested were a bit different to that. Not sure how you'd teach wresting without teeth, with it still being fun for the dog. :D

I've heard Ziwipeak canned is really nice, but probably too pricey (if you can even get it where you are)?