Staranais

Hey, Flatcoat's not getting my dog! Seriously though, I think it is an emotional decision. I love my dog, there are so many great things about him, and have learned so much by training him, I'd never give him up for such a small thing as dog aggression. Other people in this situation might not feel so attached to the dog, or might have zero interest in dog training, or might just feel no obligation to help him (since he was adopted as an adult who already had problems) so would not want to work with the dog. That's OK too. Although I can't imagine you would be able to rehome him (so many nice staffies in the pound, who'd want a DA one, unless they were the sort of dropkicks who are interested in dog fighting?) Only other alternatives would prob be responsible management (never ever let him near a strange dog) or euthanasia.

Well done!

No, I don't consider that a cure. I can't imagine he would ever ignore a strange dog sniffing him or getting near his face if I didn't ask him to focus on me and give him a job to do. And in that situation, if I were to give him the release command (i.e told him that he's not getting a reward from me, and that he's allowed to choose what he does next), then he would still quite likely want to challenge the dog to a fight and then excitedly proceed to injure it. So no, even if I achieve my goal, I would not regard him as cured. Just as more obedient. I've made the mistake of confusing those two things before with scary consequences, and won't be doing it again. It's tempting to think: "my dog is so obedient and calm around the other dogs when I am working him, he must be getting less aggressive!" but at least for us, it's not necessarily the truth. But this is kind of off topic.

I agree. I don't want to go back to the days of Koehler, when the only motivational tools available were praise and then corrections. It's good that we know how to use food and markers and toys more effectively these days. I can't imagine it being much fun training in agility or competitive obedience or any other type of dogsport, or even just teaching a dog tricks, if we didn't have the motivational tools that we do today. And you're probably right that a lot of the time, the fact the dogs often don't learn much at some dog schools might just result from poor teaching, not just the fact that the school refuses to allow any punishment of unwanted behaviours. But I guess that raises another question, which is, when did it become acceptable to have a dog graduate an obedience school and still be almost entirely untrained? Have we really come very far with dog training if many owners give up in frustration and many dogs don't actually get trained, despite our modern methods? Would in some ways be better perhaps if dog owners who just want reasonably obedient pets were directed to a traditional 12 week "Koehler" course for their basic pet obedience, just so their dogs actually do get trained, rather than getting them to struggle with more modern methods and risking having them quit in frustration? (Yes, there's a question that could start a nasty flame war! It's not intended to, though I do think it would make an interesting discussion.) Ah, but the extremist positive-only trainers have great marketing skills too. I have been told by positive-only trainers and students that correction collars are abusive and unnecessary (prong collars are "disgusting"). And that punishment might "appear to work" but really just a short term fix, and it ruins your dog's trust in you. And that trainers that use punishment are only doing it because they lack the knowledge to use reinforcers effectively. So as an extreme-PP dog school student, you can be happy in the knowledge that even if your dog isn't trained, at least you didn't abuse him like the nasty balanced trainers down the road would have. I imagine that feeling like that is a pretty good incentive not to join a balanced training school, even if your PP school didn't work out for you particularly well.

Glad I gave you a laugh. It's really not that funny when you're actually there, though! :p Nope! Not ever! I'd love to say yes, but it's just not going to happen for us, with or without the toy. Though he does have a few dogfriends that he is safe around, they are without exception very very submissive dogs with great "calming signals". He will never be able to be safely allowed offleash in a bunch of strange dogs, since he simply can't cope with normal canine interaction. The last few years I have been concentrating on teaching him to ignore other dogs and focus on me instead. We've currently started competitive obedience classes and are doing great working on or offleash, a reasonable distance away from other well controlled dogs, so that strategy seems to be working fine for us. However, his improved focus does not mean he's any safer with strange dogs if I let him freely mingle with them and decide how he wants to behave with them (yes, that's the voice of sad experience talking there...) If he gets an opportunity to start a fight, he normally takes it. To be safe around other dogs, his focus needs to be on me. My goal is to have him be able to focus on me and work even if we are encountered by slightly rude or pushy dogs (not genuinely threatening dogs, just ones that might normally tempt him to launch an attack, e.g ones that sniff his butt, get close to his face, etc).

I wouldn't call Hills premium. It's better than some supermarket brands, but still not exactly premium. I googled Hills puppy small bites for you, and the ingredients apparently are: Corn meal, the first ingredient, isn't very digestible - i.e, it comes right out the other end! The 3rd, 5th and 6th ingredients are fillers too - i.e, come right out the other end. My advice is to try switching her onto a more digestible food (slowly, so she doesn't get the runs), and see what happens. Something like Canidae is pretty good, if you definately want to feed kibble (first six ingredients are: Chicken Meal, Turkey Meal, Brown Rice, White Rice, Lamb Meal, Chicken Fat). Or else you could try a completely moist diet (I really like the "Butch" blue label dog roll, but not sure if you can get it in Oz.) Or you could try going all BARF/raw food. Basically, the more digestible your dog's food is, then the less poo you should get (within reasonable limits, of course!)

I don't know about that. Seems to me that if that were true (i.e. if people don't use corrections because most pet dogs are "softer" now and don't need corrections) then shouldn't that mean that positive-only training should be working very successfully for pet and show dogs (even if it can't work for the harder working line dogs)? As far as I've seen, it's just not. Many dogs at the positive-only clubs I've been to have been reasonably unfocused or even quite out of control. In my experience, at the end of the 8 week basic course, many of the dogs will still not have a reliable off-leash recall or a stay. Many will leave the area pulling their owners behind them on the lead! That makes me think that positive-only training just isn't helpful for the majority of pet owners, who simply want to achieve a reasonable level of control over their dog within a reasonable time frame. I think the craze for positive-only training stems from a couple of things. First is our change of attitude towards our dogs - people generally treat their dogs more as members of the family now, compared to fifty years ago when a dog was considered "just a dog" instead of a little fur-person. Hence, most modern pet owners feel guiltier about correcting our dogs, and don't want to do it. Secondly, positive only training is so popular that corrections are just not well understood by many volunteer instructors, many don't even understand the difference between a fair and unfair correction, or understand the difference between the teaching, training and proofing stages of learning - so they don't want to teach corrections or even allow corrections in their classes. I'm not saying that positive-only can't work, I know for sure that it can work for some dogs, especially under the guidance of skilled instructors. Just saying that in the clubs I've seen, positive-only generally isn't working for the people who attend, not in the time frame that the courses run for. I think most pet owners would be better off learning balanced training, so they know how any why to correct a dog, as well as how and why to reward. Even if they do just have soft show-line dogs. JMO.

I think I have a dog like this. If given free rein to associate with strange dogs, he'll generally "head hunt" - challenge the other dogs one at a time until one reacts to him, then he'll launch an attack - he start fights with other dogs just for the thrill of it. Or in the past when he was very frustrated in prey drive he has redirected onto other dogs, not interacting with them in any way before the fight, just using them as giant squeaky toys in order to get drive satisfaction. And of course things like killing small animals = very exciting and rewarding for him. He's now calm round cats, but any other small animals that wander into our yard if I'm out had better watch out! But he doesn't realise these things are regarded as "bad". He just thinks they're exciting and fun. I guess dogs that chase stock are similar, they're just doing what they find rewarding.

That would be interesting, thanks. :cool: (At least, it will be interesting as long as the study is concerning the proper usage of prong collars, since I think we all agree already that abuse of any training tool is a bad thing. I read a nasty study on e-collars once where the researchers completely abused the poor dogs with the collars, used them at high voltages, applied the shocks as non-contingent punishment, etc. Then when the dogs got stressed they concluded that e-collars were bad. I mean, duh! That's just bad science. But I'm sure your friend will be a better scientist than that.)

Crates should be at least big enough for the dog to stand up, turn round, stretch, and lie flat out on his side. IMO there is no "maximum" size for an adult dog's crate, it all depends on your and the dog's preference. My stafford has one M size crate and one XXL. We use the medium for sleeping in at home, and taking on holiday (it fits in the car!) I keep the XXL for when we visit my parents, as since they do not have a fenced yard, I sometimes have to leave him crated for hours at a time, and so I like him being able to really move around in that crate. He likes them both just fine. :cool: If you're training a pup, you should have quite a small crate to facilitate housebreaking. You don't want the pup being able to decide to poo on one side of the crate and sleep on the other! If you want to buy a big crate right off, you can get crate dividers to make it smaller for a puppy at first, until it is housebroken.

As far as I'm aware, it's not a normal policy. All but one of the clubs I've attended have encouraged the students to use muzzles if we wished (the exception was one agility club, since they were worried about the dog's ability to breath while exercising in muzzles, which I guess was fair enough). However, if this class has an environment where offleash dogs will run up to you, it's not somewhere that I would take an aggressive dog, regardless of their policy on muzzles. When you're attempting to desensitise or retrain a dog aggressive dog, taking the dog to an uncontrolled environment is IMO the last thing you should do. When you are working with a dog aggressive dog, you generally don't want to put the dog in a position where she can't help but react to another dog aggressively, as this just reinforces the behaviour you are trying to extinguish or control. Plus if you put your dog in a situation where an uncontrolled dog can run up to her and confront her, then she could easily conclude that you can't (or won't) defend her - and that she better defend herself. There are classes out there that do good work maintaining an atmosphere of safety for reactive dogs, where all dogs are under control, and you will be allowed to keep your distance and wear a muzzle - good luck finding one.

Theoretically, I think few dogs are untrainable. Perhaps some dogs with behaviour problems stemming from incurable medical issues, or dogs that completely missed out on any sort of socialisation during critical periods, could be considered untrainable. Apart from that, I find it hard to believe that most dogs are not able to make behavioural progress using one training method or another. What I do think is that there are often situations where there are not enough resources to train an otherwise trainable dog. Not everyone has enough time, enough money, enough knowledge, enough patience, to retrain a severely problematic dog. Some people have ethical issues to the type of training a dog needs ("rather put a dog to sleep than use an e-collar" etc). And like Poodlefan says, some people have children or elderly relatives, unreliable flatmates, or other pets, which can make an otherwise trainable dog into a huge liability. A small aggressive dog might be regarded as "trainable", unless you had young children. A stock chasing dog in a rural district might be too high a risk to be considered "trainable". Closer to home, in a multi-dog household with owners who weren't dedicated to crate-and-rotate, my male stafford might be regarded as too high a risk to be "trainable". I guess what I'm trying to say is that although I believe almost every dog is trainable, it's not always possible or practical for someone to train them. I'm by no means a professional behaviourist though, so I could be dead wrong.

My friend had a dog like this. Whenever she was in a high stress situation (e.g meeting new people, particularly men, or if anyone ever growled at her) she would roll over and cower and often pee in submission. Sounds like this is what your new rescue boy is doing. You might not want to let it slide, but telling the dog off will probably just make it worse, since the dog will possibly feel even more desperate to appease you by showing submissive behaviour (such as peeing). Only thing I can suggest to you is try to build the dog's confidence. i.e don't growl and him, don't physically or verbally punish him if this causes him a great deal of distress. Do train him using a clicker or other purely positive methods, just to get him used to communicating with you in a positive way. Do enforce consistent house rules (e.g NILIF, TOT, no dogs on sofa, etc). It might seem "mean" to enforce strict rules on a scared rescue dog, but if he sees that you are a competent leader, his confidence may increase. If he pees when he meets new people, it can help to ask them to completely ignore him when they come around. If they greet him, ask them to do so non-confrontationally (crouch down to his level, extend a hand without making direct eye contact). If you have the time I'd personally also consider crate training him just like a new puppy, possibly tethering him too (a la Leerburg) in order to build the bond between you. Hope that helps a little.

Flooding is when, if a dog is afraid of a particuar thing or situation, you force the dog to confront the situation head on. Take the example of a dog who is terrified of walking on a slippery floor. To use flooding, you could pick the dog up and put him right on the floor, and make him stay there until he (hopefully) realises that is wasn't so bad after all and (hopefully) calms down. It can work, but can also go wrong and make the dog's fear worse if the trainer doesn't know exactly what they are doing. Many trainers would suggest slower methods of desensitisation, such as encouraging the dog to gradually explore the floor and rewarding it every time it moved closer to the floor, but not forcing it to go or stay anywhere near the feared situation. Slower, but safer and less traumatic for the dog.

Thanks Poodlefan! Your links said that adult human skin is pH 4.5 - 6, whereas canine skin is pH 5.5 - 7.2, or sometimes even higher. So I guess that means that some dogs will naturally have a similar skin pH to humans, and some won't - perhaps that's why some dogs have problems with human shampoo, and some don't (plus the fact that some human shampoos are a lot gentler than others)? Anyway, I'll switch my boy to baby shampoo from now on. We've never had problems with the adult human shampoo, but using baby shampoo will definately match his pH, plus will list the ingredients on the outside.

I own the mouther from hell. I got two destroyed dumbbells before I found a way to teach a consistantly nice quiet hold with no mouthing. In the last couple of months, I've been teaching him to retrieve a scent cloth, in preparation for the scent discrimination exercise, and that was was really ugly to start with too. He seems to have a natural inclination to not only mouth each retrieve item, but to chew it, rip it apart, and shake it until it is stone dead (well, he is a staffy!). First piece of advice I give you is the same as what Dogs4fun said - teach the hold first, and never accept mouthing. I used the clicker method, so I started by asking for a half second hold, and clicked/rewarded before he could even think about mouthing. Next time, I asked for a whole second hold. Build up the time really slowly, giving her consistant feedback on what she is doing. If she starts to mouth or spits it out before you reach for it, immediately let her know that you are not pleased by providing a negative consequence - for us, this was me giving a no reward marker and then ending the training session for a few minutes - then make it a little easier next time so she acheives sucess. It took my dog months before he properly understood what I wanted from him, but now he performs the formal retrieve with a consistantly calm mouth. Second piece of advice is something I learned from K9 Force, and it's pure gold. That is to make sure the dumbbell retrieve isn't its own reward. If your dog is retrieving for the fun of it, she'll quite likely try to enhance the game - mouth on the dumbbell, play with it, perhaps not want to give it back to you. So it's important to make sure the dog is retrieving in order to earn something that it wants much more than the dumbbell (to earn a game of tug for example, if your dog is toy motivated) so she has no incentive to play with the dumbbell or keep it from you. Good luck!

Congratulations! Any photos?

My dog is also very anti-social towards other dogs. We still attend class, since IMO the point of obedience training is to have a dog that obeys you even when there are other dogs around. A dog that is only obedient sometimes isn't a trained dog. It took a while to find some classes that would both accept aggressive dogs, and that maintained a well controlled and safe atmosphere, but now we go every week, as well as training at home every day. Take your time to find a class that is safe for your dog (where dogs are kept onleash until reliable and aren't expected or allowed to constantly "socialise"), and where the instructors are knowledgeable about a wide range of techniques and tools, and are willing to help you work with your dog using any method necessary to reduce his aggression. High prey drive is great, since you can use that to motivate your dogs. Working my dog in prey drive is the only thing, besides corrections, that will keep my boy's attention on me around other dogs. We simply could not work offleash in class if he did not have that high prey drive, so I count it a blessing. I third the recommendation to go visit K9 Force if you want to learn to develop and use your dog's prey drive to enhance his obedience and focus. If your dog gets very stressed around other dogs (as opposed to merely being belligerant or predatory towards other dogs), I recommend that you could get a private lesson first to help reduce his fear. When he is desensitised to the presence of other dogs, then you can attend group classes.

Lol, that's really very sensitive! My staffy will not work happily if he is growled at or physically corrected (which is why I save that type of thing as a response to dangerous or very naughty behaviour), but is quite happy for me to tell him "uh-uh, try again!" He gets more upset if he is confused about what I want, than if he is told he was wrong and made to repeat.

Well, I guess that just goes to prove that all dogs are different. My stafford would be extrememly confused and probably never learn a single exercise correctly if I didn't make it obvious to him when he was right and when he was wrong, but then again, your dog would possibly be quite offended and upset by my approach to training! ;) Thanks for explaining.

But JulesP, if you never tell your dog that his performance isn't good enough, then how can he be expected to refine his performance and improve what he is doing? ;) For example if the dog sometimes sits crooked in the front, if you reward him all the time, he would never learn exactly what it is that you want. Whereas if you only reward good straight sits, and make him redo crooked ones before you reward him, then he'll work out what you are after. Please correct me if I have the wrong end of the stick here, but what you are saying confuses me.

I've washed my dog in human shampoo monthly for nearly 3 years with no ill effect. I stopped using dog shampoo after the first time, after I realised they didn't list the ingredients on the bottle. At least with human shampoo I can read the ingredients and choose a very gentle shampoo, the same as I do for myself. People who say that dog and human skin has a different pH, can you please link to articles that says what those pHs are?

Depends on the timing of the negative cue word, surely? If you wait a number of seconds after the "wrong" behaviour before giving the negative marker word, then I can see how that might be very confusing for the dog. But that is exactly why we use marker words and bridges. Whereas although I'm not always in time to prevent my dog from making a mistake (and to be frank I don't try, since he seems not to learn as thoroughly if I constantly help him to be right instead of sometimes letting him be wrong), I can normally get an "uh-uh" in within half a second of him making an incorrect decision. That marks the incorrect behaviour, and then I can show him the alternative and praise it. He seems to understand. Although I choose to use a negative marker word, IMO it's not always necessary to use one, depending on how the dog has been trained. If the dog is expecting to always get immediate praise for a job well done, and it gets no praise, the dog will probably realise that it hasn't done a wonderful job, even if the handler does not immediately correct the dog for the mistake. The difference between what the dog expects and what it gets will make it quite clear that the behaviour wasn't the right one. I know some "purely positive" trainers who use this method (I don't like the method myself, since I think it has the potential to frustrate and confuse the dog when you wean off the praise for competition, and expect the dog to keep performing! But apparently it works for them.) Yes, that's quite true - if the dog is heeling in the right position and sits promptly when you stop, he'll be sitting in the right place. Unless he decides to crab sideways while sitting in order to see your face, of course.

Actually yes, believe it or not, I have read quite a few books on learning theory. All the books I have read have defined anything that leads to a decrease in behaviour being punishment, and defined reinforcement as any consequence that leads to an increase in the behaviour. If you stop reinforcing a behaviour, making the dog being less likely to try that behaviour in future (as you do) then that's called negative punishment. So my question still stands. Perhaps it is a problem in translation (I take it your first language isn't English?) This is quite a good link on the topic, with all the relevant vocabulary: http://www.wagntrain.com/OC/#Operant If you must make sure he is never in a position to fight or hunt, then I wouldn't personally call that dog trained. It is management, but not training, since the dog is only not indulging in the behaviour since you have taken away the opportunity to do so. To me, a trained dog is a dog that can be trusted not to indulge in the "bad" behaviour even if given an opportunity to do so. If I always kept my dog muzzled and on a leash then he wouldn't ever have the opportunity to fight, but he still wouldn't be trained (and it wouldn't exactly be much fun for either of us - to me keeping him perpetually leashed seems crueler than using positive punishment to help fix a problem. But different strokes for different folks, I guess). As far as I can see, you can train a dog not to perform a very self rewarding behaviour either by providing a better reward for an alternative behaviour (if a better reward exists, which in the case of stock chasing it often won't) or you can devalue the "bad" behaviour by using an aversive, so that your rewards are more attractive in comparison. I can't see any other solutions, though if you want to suggest some, I would be interested. Eta: Jeff Jones - I'm pretty sure that study is an urban myth. As far as I can tell, it was never published anywhere, and noone has any details on where it was done or who carried it out. I even emailed the woman who ran the seminar where the study was supposed to have been presented, but got no response. If you have more details of the study, or some proof of its actual existence, please post!

I do both. If I catch my dog in the act of doing something incorrectly, I will interrupt him, then ask for it again or guide him into the right position, then praise. If I'm too late to catch him mucking up, for example he's done a finish and sat too far back before I realised, then I will often tell him "uh-uh", gently move him into the correct position, then praise him for being there. He seems to understand that. The only thing I think is unhelpful is rewarding a dog while being in the wrong position - at least, unless you are deliberately teaching just the bare bones of the exercise with the intention of polishing the details later. For example, when I was first teaching the auto-sit in heel, I praised and rewarded whenever his butt hit the ground at the right time, even if he was a bit crooked. I only started to straighten him up when I was sure he understood the concept of sitting whenever we stopped. Otherwise he would just have been confused and frustrated, and probably lost interest in the whole thing, since I was so hard to please!