Staranais

It must be a cultural difference thing then. I think the Oz and NZ styles of heeling must be quite different. I got my LAB a little neater by routinely treating in the middle of the turn (dropped the treat where I wanted his head to be, if his head wasn't there, he didn't get it), wasn't long until he worked it out. Also tidied it up by sometimes either doing a 270 instead of a 180, or taking a few steps back immediately after the turn, ensured he had to give me attention and stay in heel position through the turn since I could do something unpredictable immediately afterwards. So perhaps those ideas are something to play around with while doodling? Not that I'm the heeling pro or anything.

If he picks up kindling, then can you set him up to capture that with a clicker and some really really great food treats?

That's some nice attention and attitude you have there, Dogdude! He does seem to be going out a little wide on most of the about turns, but not sure if that's a bad thing (i.e I know you have a slightly different style of heeling in Oz than we do in NZ, so they might be completely acceptable to the judges where you are, even though they'd be penalised here). Good luck when you start to trial!

Most things I've read about raising wolves as "pets" suggest that it's very different to raising a dog - e.g most sources suggest that the pup should be taken away from the dam at about 2 to 3 weeks old and allowed very little contact with other canines for several weeks afterwards, that this is necessary for the pup to bond with people. And most also suggest that the wolf is never let anywhere near small children since you're unlikely to be able to train the wolf not to see a small child as a snack. Most also say that wolves and even wolf-dogs are too shy to guard anything from strangers. I don't know much at all about LGD, so don't really know if these traits and requirements are similar to those of LGD. I have heard that LGD definately unusual and not suited for most homes, as you say. I don't think I could properly handle one (or a wolf either for that matter!)

I think that's probably true. Although all breeds of dog have been domesticated (gone through the initial selection process from wolf to dog), as soon as we started using them to do different jobs then some have been bred to be more or less aloof to humans, be more or less dominant, more or less predatory, etc. So some dogs and some breeds may have more wolfish characteristics than others, although I doubt you'll find any normal domestic dog breed that is as wary of humans when adult, & as hard to socialise, as a true wolf is. There's a trend in America to keep "wolf dog" hybrids (although apparently many of these "wolf dogs" are just nice huskies sold for an inflated price to stupid people who want to be able to brag about their "wolf"). Most "wolf dog" organisations stress that true high content wolf hybrids are much more work than a normal dog - they recommend keeping these animals under much higher containment than you do a regular dog, socialising them much more intensively, not expecting the wolf dog to ever be fully obedient or fully housetrained, and never trusting the animal around any prey species including human children. So I don't think most homes could cope with a dog that had too many "wolf" characteristics.

That presumes that the pack instincts are still there and haven't been lost? I'm not sure if they all are still there, in some cases, they have genetic components & we've actively selected against them (e.g culling dangerously dominant dogs), so the desire and ability to form true wolf-like pack structure may no longer be in most dog's genes. It would be interesting to find out how much of the wolf-like pack structure would come back after several generations in an environment with no human contact at all, but like you say, there's probably no way to do it humanely. If dogs (or wolves) strongly need a pack structure for some reason, that makes sense. And I can see why wolves need a pack structure (and communication skills) if they hunt big game, since an individual wolf can't do that, so it's advantageous to each individual to be part of a group. Also I can see why they form a strong pack structure if they have more success rearing young communally than by doing so individually. But it still doesn't address why feral dogs would need a pack structure at all if they are quite capable of feeding themselves and breeding individually (which they seem to be)? Thanks for arguing with me, it's interesting, I always learn a lot. Even though this discussion is probably never going to be proven one way or another, since we can't see inside our dog's heads (or totally isolate them from humans to see what they do). Kelpei-i, I must have misunderstood you. Happens sometimes! Thought you were saying that dogs and wolves must behave very similarly since there is "only" 1% difference in genome. Sorry!

That's a good point, but that also assumes that dogs can survive without access to humans? In all the studies I've seen (and from what I've seen in real life!) feral dogs seem to instinctively prefer to hang out near human settlements and scavenge our waste, even when they have the opportunity to form a real pack and hunt, even if the humans in the village actively drive the dogs away when they see them. Would dogs even survive if we forced them away and ensure that they had absolutely no access to any human settlement? I'm not sure if they would. I sometimes wonder if being around human settlements is now the "natural" habitat for the dog, and forcing them to exist on their own in the "wild" might be "unnatural" to them and go against many of their instincts that we have selected for over the last ten thousand years? Interesting idea that strong stable pack structure is a result of wolves hunting not scavenging. But doesn't this depend on exactly what they are hunting? e.g hunting big game successfully needs more than one wolf so that promotes pack structure, whereas in areas where canines have to survive on small game such as rabbits that one wolf can easily catch, that probably doesn't encourage the formation of pack structure, right?

Not arguing with you Kelpie-i, but my inner geneticist just wants to point out that we share approximately 96% of our DNA with the chimp, and our behaviour is really rather different. You can't really equate a % DNA difference to a % behavioural difference, these things just don't correspond in a linear fashion. One gene can have many effects on the behaviour or physical strucure of an animals, or very few. Also, to a rough approximation, we share half our genes with the banana. Kind of puts things in perspective. I do think it would be fascinating to release a group of domestic dogs into the "wild" and see how they establish pack structure and how well they survive. But I doubt a study like that would be funded, and doubt even more that it would pass an ethics committee. Observational studies done on feral dog populations are probably the best we're going to get, since these animals are dogs which have already reverted to the "wild" state. I've got an hour off from study, and I'm a geek, so I've gone and grabbed those studies on wild dog populations (I really should be learning the extrinsic muscles of the canine forelimb, but this topic is much more fun!) OITANI L, CIUCCI P COMPARATIVE SOCIAL ECOLOGY OF FERAL DOGS AND WOLVES ETHOLOGY ECOLOGY & EVOLUTION 7 (1): 49-72 APR 1995 Pal SK Parental care in free-ranging dogs, Canis familiaris APPLIED ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR SCIENCE 90 (1): 31-47 JAN 2005 DANIELS T J [Reprint author]; BEKOFF M [Author]. POPULATION AND SOCIAL BIOLOGY OF FREE-RANGING DOGS CANIS-FAMILIARIS [Article] Journal of Mammalogy. 70(4). 1989. 754-762. Behavior and ecology of a small group of urban dogs (Canis familiaris) Fox, M.W. / Beck, A.M. / Blackman, E. , Applied Animal Ethology, 1 (2), p.119-137, Apr 1975 I can't copy and paste those here, they're copyrighted, but if you live near a uni you can look them up. There are probably a few more out there, these were all I could find today. But basically, these say that, although many of the instincts have "resurfaced", the feral dogs that people have studied have looked at still don't live just like wolves. They don't form a stable pack with communal offspring care for the alpha pair's pups, like wolves do - they tend to hang out in unstable groups and most of the females breed. They don't hunt in a pack - feral dogs tend to cling round human settlements scavenging for our garbage. But sometimes (although not commonly) they do form a pack that defends territory from other dogs though, just as wolves do. And they do appear to have a loose social structure, they seek out others of their own kind, and prefer to live in pairs or groups, possibly with some hierachy structure involved. If we prevented them from having any human contact and left them alone for a few thousand years, perhaps they'd turn more "wolfy" again as only the strongest survived? Or perhaps we've changed them so much that they simply can't survive without people, kind of turned them into a "parasite species"? I love topics like this, they're so interesting. ;) Thanks for starting it, Jesomil!

I think that's a really valid point Rom. I mean, isn't it a worry that a "professional behaviourist" doesn't recognise aversives and reinforcers when she sees them? I've read a couple of Jan Fennell's books, one of which was partially a biography, and her method appears to be have been developed after she watched a few videos of wolves, read Monty Robert's stuff, then she experimented with some mildly problematic dogs with her newly invented method and got success. Her bios never state that she's done any recognised courses on dog training, apprenticed or trained with any good dog trainers, or even competed successfully in any dog sports, etc. I guess what I'm trying to say is, IMO, if you have a mildly obnoxious dog then I imagine using Jan's "Amichien" bonding rules sensibly probably won't do much harm to most dogs, any more than applying any other form of ground rules would. But I don't think I'd trust her with a severely problematic dog. From what I've read of her, she just doesn't seem to have the knowledge base to understand or deal with dangerous or really problematic dogs. Perhaps I'm doing her an injustice, but that's the impression I get. I really liked that book too.

That makes more sense then! In some ways that's probably true - but the problem with studying captive populations is that they're often quite different to wild populations (a bunch of unrelated individual wolves places in an unnatural and often stressful surroundings aren't necessarily going to behave the same way as they would in a wild situation - I've read some recent criticism of the older wolf studies based on that very fact). I've seen a few studies on feral dog populations that aren't in captivity, but they're hard to come by. Funding just isn't there, perhaps? The ones I've seen seem to indicate that dogs have a much looser pack structure than wolves, and are less scared of humans, which pretty much makes sense from what we know of the domestication process. That's also what I observed while living in asia a few years back, the feral dogs would come scavenge round the villages, individually or in ones or twos, they often got chased off by the villagers who thought they were vermin. But I never saw any wolves! Guess if there were any in the area they were just too nervous to come near, plus they could probably hunt for themselves. True. I think many dogs would be happier if more people realised that they aren't just little people in fur coats.

Well you're lucky then, you have a dog to experiment with. If she's been getting little structure or exercise or training at home, then you'll probably see improvement in her behaviour no matter what method you choose to try. Both of the method that you mentioned are pretty similar - they both rely on giving the dog black and white rules, some pack structure, plus correcting or ignoring bad behaviour. Common sense & nothing new, it's just that these two trainers have reached a wide audience with their books and TV programmes. Just don't expect the change to persist once she's gone home. I looked after an ex-flatmate's dog for a few months earlier this year, same situation as your sister's dog. She learned to behave pretty well here (no jumping up, no barking at the door, waiting for dinner, no pulling on leash) but apparently is still a pain in the neck at home since nothing has changed there.

I think people have different ideas about what is overweight and what isn't. I keep my SBT with his last few ribs showing - my vet thinks he's verging on "too thin", but then again a few months ago one of the instructors at tracking suggested he was too fat. I suspect it all comes down to what type of dog you're used to seeing - vets see lots of pets that are overweight so a conditioned dog looks abnormally skinny, whereas people who are used to seeing trim working farm dogs might mistake a stocky SBT as fat? Anyway, I agree that overweight dogs shouldn't be able to compete in dogsports. They put themselves at much higher risk of injuries, especially when jumping. Obedience (in non-jumping classes) might be an exception, since there's less activity than in most other dogsports, therefore less potential for injury.

I looked into weightpull for my SBT a few years ago, it looked like heaps of fun, but unfortunately his conformation is too poor to safely participate. So I can't give you any informed advice, but just wanted to give you a link to I found to an article about weightpull training for bull breeds: http://www.apbt.info/tiki-index.php?page=B...ing+Weight+Pull

I personally think the take home message is that dogs are very adaptable animals and can learn from a wide variety of training methods. It's not so much that one author is totally wrong and the other is totally right, they probably both say some sensible things. I think it's also worth considering that different methods will work best for different dogs, (the cases that didn't work so well for each particular method probably didn't make it onto the DVD). Do you have a specific problem you need to solve, Joypod, or are you just interested in learning more about dog behaviour? In any case, I'm sure there will be someone on the board to help, either by giving you advice about your issue, or recommending some further reading.

Why did dogs get domesticated? Apparently the best accepted recent theory is that in the beginning dogs actually started to domesticate themselves (certain brave or desperate wolves attached themselves to the perimeter of human settlements so they could scavenge around our rubbish dumps) and we completed the domestication process after noticing how useful they were (watchdog barking, help with hunting, etc). Which sounds plausible to me. What have we learned about dog behaviour? I think we have learned quite a lot over the years just from observation and interaction with dogs. But more importantly I think our two species naturally get on rather well simply because we are very similar - early humans and wolves had similar social structures, similar foraging patterns, communicate in similar ways - so it's not too big a stretch to learn to communicate with each other. Plus from what I've read during domestication dogs have also changed genetically so that they're keen to make contact with humans and better at recognising human expressions than wolves are (read a study about that once but seem to have lost it, sorry!) Don't understand the rest of your post, sorry.

Of course dogs are like wolves in some ways - I don't see anyone here claiming that they're not. And of course dogs are all individuals and all have different temperaments, that's pretty obvious too, which is why I said so in my post. So if kind of seems like you're arguing against things that noone said? But I'm mostly posting since I don't understand why you think that domesticity is different to "inherent traits". Changes to physical and behavioural tendancies via domestication are changes to inherent traits since they are genetic changes (I mean, that's why domestication is different to taming, domestication by definition involves a genetic component and an entire population, whereas taming just involves the learned behaviour of an individual). So by domesticating dogs, we actually have changed many of their inherent traits. Some dogs do retain more of various wolf-like traits than others. But talk to anyone that works with or trains captive wolves, and they'll tell you that it's a very different experience to working with any normal domestic dog. It's the very rare dog that's as suspicious or as wary or as predatory as your average adult wolf, for example, and that's because we've selected for different inherent traits in dogs (and we've probably got other traits that were associated with the same genes and just came along for the ride - look at the Russian silver fox study where they got floppy ears and broken colouration as an unintended side effect of selecting for friendly behaviour! Pretty fascinating). I personally believe that if we want to know about dog behaviour, we're better off looking at the studies of feral dog packs, not wild wolf packs. The former are very similar to our domesticated companions genetically, having been through the same domestication process, whereas the later aren't nearly as close genetically. I don't know why authors tend to concentrate on wolf packs, except that perhaps the wolf is seen as a more majestic and romantic creature than the feral dog?

A couple of people have made similar statements, so I'm not picking on you, Gottalovealab. But from what I have read, wolves aren't necessarily all that rigid in their social structure. From what I have read, wolves have a reasonably fluid pack structure (for example "lower" members will often defend food from "higher" members), it's not a rigid linear hierachial pecking order as in chickens. And remember many wolf packs are formed from parents and their juvenile offspring, which means that any status is simply a result of a natural temporary power imbalance - juveniles often get kicked out of the pack when they reach full maturity. So some of the status differences you see in wolf packs are just the result of some wolves being younger, which is quite a different situation to the idea of unrelated adult animals living together in a permanent rigid dominance hierachy. Plus, no matter what wolves do, dogs just aren't wolves. Dogs have been domesticated for at least the last 12,000 years - that's a long time for behavioural differences to accumulate, especially when they're being actively selected for. Dogs have been selected for behavioural differences, both passively (only brave wolves came to scavenge at human camps) and actively (we culled any proto-dogs that were dangerous or not useful to us). In short, during the domestication process dogs have been selected to be neotenous, which among other things means they now tend to be naturally more submissive than wolves, less nervous and aggressive towards strangers, and less concerned about achieving pack status or dominating each other than wild wolves are. The fact we can take most of our dogs down to the dog park to meet strange dogs without expecting constant death and bloodshed points to the fact that dogs are now very different, behaviourally speaking, to wolves. So although I think looking at what wolves do is interesting and useful when considering domestic dogs, we can't necessarily draw exact parallels between how wolves interact and how our dogs relate to us or to each other. IMO dogs do display some interest in hierachy and status (some dogs more than others) but aren't a carbon copy of wolves. If you look at feral dogs, their pack structure is much less orderly than that of wolves, they do not collectively care for offspring, don't often hunt together, etc. So IMO dogs do have some interest in hierachy, do have a drive to seek companionship, and will recognise the authority of a strong leader, and sometimes will take advantage of weak humans in order to get their own way (which is what we call "dominance problems"). But they don't necessarily have a strong rigid social structure between them - from what I've seen, social structure in dogs often changes depending on circumstance. And from what I've seen, most well adjusted dogs aren't obsessive about status. I'm not a guru either, of course, these are just my own thoughts.

That's kind of what I think too, except how does that tie in with the idea of thresholds etc? My idea of a threshold is how much stimulation a dog needs before he goes into drive. So can you have a dog with high drive but a high threshold (doesn't easily go into drive but when he does he's very obsessive about the object?) or low drive and low threshold (goes into drive with little stimulation but just isn't that obsessive). Or does having a high drive always go with a low threshold to going into drive and vice versa? Also how does the idea of drive tie in with nerves - what about dogs that are very high drive at home, but fall to pieces in unfamiliar environments, so you can't use that drive in any practical way? Do they still count as "high drive" dogs? And can a dog have high prey drive for some things but not others - e.g dogs that kill livestock and small animals, but couldn't care less about toys. Is that just learning, that the dog hasn't learned that the toy is a prey object yet, or are some dogs just permanently different in how their drive is expressed and focused? Interesting question, I look forward to the experts joining the thread, since I don't know much about this stuff yet.

The idea of a hands-free leash has always kind of worried me - what if your dog sees something really great (or something really scary) on the other side of the road and takes off? I get the impression that you could end up on your butt being dragged down the footpath. :D Mind you, we've only ever had big dogs at our house (nothing smaller than a staffy bull). If your dogs are smaller then it might suit you fine.

That's what we do too - my boy has a mat command that means he has to stay on his bed (or on anything else that I nominate if we're at another house) until released, which is quite different to a formal "down stay" command where I expect him to not move and to keep the right position. That means he can relax too, curl up, whatever he likes, as long as at least one body part remains on the mat. Very handy command, it's about the first thing I'll teach a new dog when it comes to stay with us. You're welcome. :D

It sounds like you are saying that she understands what you want, but that in this situation she isn't motivated to do it. i.e, she is happy to do a long down stay in the evening on the bed while you are watching, but isn't prepared to stay when you're not paying attention to her. Is that right? If that's the case, then I'm guessing it's because being on the bed is boring, and coming over to you is rewarding. She finds your attention rewarding - even if you don't ever pat her when she comes over, just touching her and making eye contact in order to put her back on the bed might be reinforcing the behaviour if she's that keen on attention. Even if you just sit there and don't even look at her when she puts her head on your lap, then her being able to make body contact with you might be enough reward for her to keep coming over. Solution IMO is to either make the bed a more fun place to be, or make getting off the bed less rewarding. So either periodically reinforce her while she's on the bed in the evening (get up and go over every five minutes and give her some affection for being there), and of course ignore her when she's off the bed - that makes being on the bed more rewarding compared to getting off it. You can gradually extend the time between going over to pet her until you're only going to see her in the ad breaks. Or else make getting off the bed less rewarding, e.g march her straight into "time out" for ten minutes whenever she gets off the bed, after all sitting in the corner with the family is way more fun than being in isolation in the hallway or yard. Or try both. Or else get her a crate instead of a dog bed.

It's great fun Anissa, I really recommend it. & improves your heeling no end. When you can go backwards and sideways, forwards seems heaps easier.

Hi Pax! What are you up to these days?

Teach them separately. If you walk them together, then it will be hard to correct one dog without confusing the other. E.g if you refuse to walk forward when a dog pulls on the leash, then if you are walking two dogs and one dog pulls and you stop walking, then the other dog that wasn't pulling when you stopped is going to be very confused about what you want.

Retrieving becomes much harder if you teach your dog the name of different items (duck, ball, tug, etc) and then ask her to bring the correct one back from a pile of things. I've only managed to teach my dog the names of a few items, but a smart dog like a border collie could probably learn more. Like Anissa, I hide treats in the house and send my dog to find them. If your dog has a good nose, you could teach her to find less smelly things too (your keys, your wallet, useful stuff!) Heeling is fun too (really, it is!) In winter I spend a lot of time doodling in the living room - doodling is just heeling in a really small space, doing maybe a step forward, a few steps sideways, a small figure eight, pivoting on the spot with the dog, heeling backwards a few steps - really requires the dog to focus and wears them out. Dog loves it as he gets constantly reinforced with clicker and food.