Staranais

Congrats Cosmolo & Cosmo! It must be nice to see your hard work paying off in both obedience and agility. Can I ask though - what's a members trial? Is it like a ribbon trial (where you get ribbons if you win, but your score isn't official so you can't win out to a higher level?) And I want to see the staffy video too, please!

I also think it depends on the dog, but also on what you're trying to achieve with the dog. If you want to reach the top levels in any sport, then I'd imagine you'd want a very young dog so you can imprint is as you please and control all of its learning experiences as it matures. If you just want a pet who does some competition too, then as long as your dog is keen and healthy, IMO it is never too old to start training. My staffy and I started tracking last year (age 7) and this year we have started properly training for our first obedience trials (first competition at age 8). We're training working trials this year too, but I think his arthritis might prevent him doing the jumps before we're ready to actually enter any trials. So if 3 years is too old for a dog to start, then we're definately in trouble!

Sorry this is a late reply, didn't see this thread. I only have one experience with owning an entire male dog, but I can tell you that when I desexed him, the amount of time he spent marking decreased markedly (no pun intended!) He still sometimes likes to mark where other dogs have recently marked, but he doesn't try to mark the garden constantly and randomly like he did in the years before being desexed. So no guarantees but IMO, your Dad might be on to something. If you don't want to desex, you could consider the contraceptive implant suprelorin, which does pretty much the same thing but is temporary. However, having said that, I see no reason why you couldn't train the dog not to mark the veranda. Can you restrict his access to it when you're not there to supervise him? Similar principals as housetraining a puppy - don't give the dog a chance to make a mess unless you're there to interrupt/redirect/correct him the instant he starts to lift his leg. My entire male dog never marked in the house after the first few months I owned him, since I supervised his house time till I was sure he had got the message that marking my house was simply unacceptable to me.

I agree that the prancing, glued-close, head-up style of heeling is more of an impractical 'dance' than the demonstration of a useful skill. But isn't that true of all obedience exercises to some extent? You can lose points in each obedience exercise for things that you wouldn't generally care about in "real life", such as a crooked sit in front, picking a dumbbell up by one end, or shuffling his feet in a stand stay, etc. It's not just heeling that is stylised for the ring. I guess in one sense that makes obedience less practical. But on the other hand, obedience is a sport. If the judging was so generous that everyone who completed the exercise reasonably well scored full marks, then how could we determine who the winner was? The judges need some way of deciding who the winning team is, and picking up on these minor points of style is, I guess, as good as any other way. I think our NZ heeling must be similar to UK heeling then. My obedience instructor says the same thing, that the judge doesn't want to see any daylight between you and the dog. The dog shouldn't impede your movement at all, but he's meant to be close and he's certainly allowed to touch you as you heel along. As for it being "easier" to train a dog to heel while touching you, well perhaps that's true for a tall breed, but as owner of a smaller breed, I think it can be harder to get very close heel. Walking right next to your rapidly moving feet can be quite difficult and quite intimidating to a small dog, and IMO a smaller dog would often naturally prefer to heel a little further away.

Why don't you use the chance to bite the bite rag as a reward for retrieving the dumbell then (or is that a no-no with bite rags? I don't know anything about them so this could be a completely useless answer!)

Giving a dog clear, fair, 100% consistent house rules goes a long was towards building confidence, IMO. I think nervous dogs can feel much more secure and safe when they know the "rules" of the household, so that they are quite confident that they know how to avoid punishment, and how to earn reward and approval. For the last month I've had a friend's dog staying at my house - an extremely nervous, submissive bitch who normally greets strangers by grovelling and urinating. Over the last month, she's gotten a lot more confident around strangers. The other day, I had my entire extended family around to the house, and although she was still a little shy at meeting all the people, she didn't submission pee once. Just about the only thing I've done differently with her is enforce consistent house rules and NILIF (the friend is terribly inconsistent with what he expects from his dog). The positive change in her attitude from such a small effort on my part is nice to see. Seeing a professional trainer is always a good idea if you're concerned about your dog's behavior, but IMO applying NILIF (and triangle of temptation) can't do any harm in the meantime.

Now I wish I lived in Australia! You couldn't get a more dog aggressive dog than my little stafford boy.

I too think it was an interesting post, but I don't know if I can agree with the idea that with dogs that have learned to enjoy aggressing, their initial reason for trying the aggressive behaviour was always anxiety (anxiety over the dog's personal safety, or loss of a resource, etc). I fully agree that this is probably most often the case, but can think of a couple of examples where it might not be. For example, consider a confident young male dog just reaching full sexual maturity, who naturally starts to throw his weight around to see what he can get away with (I think we've all seen this happen!) If his stroppy behaviour is heavily rewarded at this stage, the chance of the dog being stroppy/aggressive in the future could increase. That would be an example of aggression that wasn't initially caused by anxiety. Or how about redirected aggression - if at some point an aroused dog is blocked from displaying predatory behaviour, and in his frustration he redirects onto a companion dog, he'll obtain a reinforcing stress release, and that could result in a dog that learns to deal with frustration by aggressing. Again, no real fear or anxiety involved, merely predatory frustration. I'd also argue that even if the first aggressive incident in a dog's life was prompted by anxiety or stress, that doesn't mean that later aggression will necessarily be prompted by the dog feeling fear or anxiety. If the dog finds his initial aggressive behaviour to be rewarding (e.g excitement, adrenaline rush, endorphins), then that can lead to the dog actively seeking out occassions to fight even at times when it's not feeling at all anxious or threatened. Just nitpicking.

Yeah, the public library wouldn't get them for me, but then I found them at a university library. Great great books, though pretty heavy reading. No question that my problem dog has taught me heaps about dog behaviour and training. And I do believe we'll get there in the end. We started tracking last year, and we've just started obedience training this year, and I figure when we finally get his CD title (or his UD, if that's easier for us) then I'll be content with how far we've come (or at the least, I'll be able to brag about him to the people who told me I should PTS). Was your aggressive dog fearful? I can imagine positive-only methods working really well for a fear aggressive dog, since the dog presumably wouldn't really want to be fighting in the first place, and would be eager to learn some other method of resolving stressful dog-dog situations?

Thanks. That's the point I'd like to be at with my dog. I sort of gave up the idea that my dog could be totally "cured" the first time I read the 3rd Steven Lindsay book. In the section on intra-specific aggression, he describes a type of dog that, though genetics or learning, actually finds fighting inherently rewarding. I kept reading that section going "Hey! I'm not crazy! This exactly describes my dog!"

If your dog feels scared or threatened by the other dog, then I imagine it would feel relieved when it was taken away from the other dog. Feeling relief is rewarding. If as soon as your dog acts aggressively you turn and take it away from the other dog, thereby rewarding your dog, couldn't this encourage your dog to display aggression whenever it felt threatened?

Yes, I moved onto trying the toy after leaving the clicker class. They discouraged using toys since apparently they were harder to use, and disrupted the class. But the toy seems to keep his attention better around other dogs, though he's by no means perfect yet. I use it with a verbal bridge, not a clicker, but same idea. Plus corrections for ever starting to focus aggressively on another dog, though that's not very often these days. Still can't trust him to interact with strange dogs, I've accepted I probably won't ever be able to, but he's much much better at ignoring them on request.

Not me! I think food is great for getting a dog's attention when you're teaching something new. The only trainer I know who objected to using food at all was a very traditional trainer. From what I've seen most trainers these days seem quite happy (IMO sometimes too eager) to use food. Having said that, I don't use food treats round the house as a reward for basic manners and simple requests. He gets praise and petting and "life rewards" for complying with simple requests round the house, since I just don't think I should have to fork out food rewards for that type of thing. Spotted Devil, what are you teaching your cats to do? I got my first proper "sit" from my si-X male the other week, he's a pretty fast learner where food is concerned.

When I was trying to clicker train the aggression, I was hanging round classes where the other dogs were mainly being worked on leash. Since the other dogs were on leash, it wasn't too hard for us to stay at a distance where my dog was happy to focus on me and work for food treats. On the occasions when another dog did get too close, and I noticed my boy start to stare or tense up, I'd walk him away in the opposite direction and try to refocus him on the treats (as encouraged by the instructors of the class). At other times (e.g walking on the streets) it was harder to keep outside critical distance from other dogs, and we often had to cross the road or run in the other direction to avoid getting too near to strange dogs. To totally avoid the possibility of another dog breaching his critical distance in the months when we were trying the clicker retraining, I guess I would have had to stop taking him out walking, but that just doesn't seem like it would have been practical or fair to him. Can I ask why you asked?

Yes, I've found that to be very true. In my limited experience, if you wait till a dog is in full "fight" drive (for want of a more accurate term), he will be so adrenalised that even a huge correction won't get his attention, let along disuade him from repeating his behaviour. When he's in that state, in my experience, neither punishment nor reward will do much to get his attention. To change the behaviour, you have to catch it way before it gets to that point. I tried something that sounds very similar for about six months at a clicker class - hanging around the outside of the class, keeping a good distance away from the other dogs, clicking good behaviour, gradually taking him closer to the other dogs, etc. This routine had an effect on my dog, but not the effect I wanted. I found that the end result was that when my dog knew he couldn't get to any of the other dogs, he'd stay calm and perform nicely to get his treats like I'd taught him. When he figured he could gain access to a dog he wanted to fight, he'd completely ignore me and the treat bag. For example, we had beautiful on-leash group stays at the end of our 6 foot leash, and completely untrustworthy off-leash ones at the same distance. It was a hump that we just couldn't seem to get over. I've heard of this method working really well for other aggressive dogs, which is why I gave it a shot. And perhaps it would have worked for us if I had persevered for even longer, or tried it again with the help of an extremely experienced positive trainer. I can't say for sure that it wouldn't have. In any case, I didn't have access to such a trainer, and I didn't want it to be years until my dog was safe enough to walk in public, so I started experimenting with other methods and tools. For us, after much experimentation, what I've found to work best is to try to keep my dog's attention in the first place with the promise of play rewards (I'm currently working my way through one of K9Force's distance learning programmes, trying to learn how to do this more effectively). My dog seems to get a similar rush from earning play rewards as he does from fighting, so the promise of a game is generally pretty effective in keeping his focus on me. On the other hand, if my dog ever does start to fixate on another dog, I've found it best to immediately correct his behaviour before he's fully adrenalised, in order to snap him out of his spaz. I can then ask him to do something else, and reward him with a toy for doing that. It seems to be working. A few months ago I was able to take him to a two day tracking/obedience seminar, and was able to work him offleash at a short distance from many strange dogs, keeping him focused and happy the entire time (yup, I was dead proud). That's just what I've found to work best for us, though. I certainly wouldn't be confident enough to recommend this to anyone else, or to try it with any other dog. I'm no professional behaviourist, not by a long shot. It took me ages to work this out for myself, I wish you'd been able to tell me this a few years back, Cosmolo! When I first started taking my staffy to training classes, it took me simply ages to work out why his behaviour was getting worse around other dogs, when I was being really conscientious about not ever allowing him to fight and really consistent about clicking/treating his good behaviour. I eventually worked out that the very act of focusing on and firing up over other dogs seems to be rewarding to my dog, even if he doesn't actually get to engage them in combat. I think it's an adrenaline/endorphin thing, and it seems to be very addictive to him. I guess he'd been doing it for years before I adopted him. But I agree that this is very OT - sorry Lablover for hijacking your interesting thread about positive training. I just love hearing about everyone else's thoughts on dog-dog aggression, since like I said, it's an ongoing problem for us, and there are so many experienced and learned dog people on this forum.

My answer is that I personally don't think there really is such a thing as "purely" positive training, since like you say, all training must include aspects of punishment. I think calling any training "purely" positive is kind of misleading, since the trainer will still be punishing the dog by withholding rewards, withholding attention, putting the dog in time out, maybe giving NRMs, etc. But what if fighting (or the adrenaline rush from fighting) is the best motivator for a particular dog? It's not exactly something you can make the dog work for, it's something you never ever want the dog to do. And although in this situation you can teach and reward alternative behaviours until the cows come home, if you never reduce the value of the predatory/aggressive behaviour with some sort of aversive, then what's to stop the dog indulging in it whenever he has the opportunity? And as long as you're also constantly reinforcing correct behaviour, then what's so wrong with using a correction to show the dog that particular behaviours simply won't be tolerated? (I don't want to hijack this thread, so Leopuppy, please feel free to respond via PM instead of posting here in response. I have read & attempted to use the Click to Calm book, and am always interested in informed discussions about dog-dog aggression, since it's pretty much an ongoing challenge for us.)

I don't see why you couldn't use "almost" purely positive methods to train most dogs in obedience (e.g. the only punishment being things like denying the dog a reward, or ignoring the dog). All you'd need to do would be to figure out what really motivates your dog, and then make his obtaining it contingent on him performing for you. I wouldn't be suprised if many people have trained their dogs to very high levels using "almost" purely postive alone. It's an interesting idea for a thread. :D I think it's sometimes a different thing when retraining adult dogs with already established behavioural problems, though. That's just my personal experience, and I admit we might be a rare case. All I know is that when I first got my current dog, I took him to a few positive-only training schools, and his behaviour around other dogs actually got worse - although he did learn to play along to earn rewards when he was in the mood, he also learned that he could indulge in aggressive tantrums whenever he liked without any real consequences. Only with a combination of reward and punishment has his behaviour been improving around other dogs (and yes, he's still a keen and happy worker). Like Arya, I don't think that using verbal or physical punishment, fairly and in moderation, is a bad or morally wrong thing. Abusing a dog is another matter, of course. But I've talked to some trainers who think that even saying "uh-uh" to your dog is abusive, and personally, I find that kind of silly.

Really? I've always got the impression that it was the other way around - I think sometimes busy parents simply don't have lots of time available to devote to socialising and training their dogs. In any case, I've met heaps of badly mannered dogs belonging to people that have kids or grandkids (including some really out of control, aggressive little terrors). I guess you can't make a fair or accurate generalisation that dogs normally have better (or worse) manners if their owners have kids.

Cos they're full of sugar & salt - they're basically just doggy junk food. Read the ingredients panel on the back! I certainly wouldn't be feeding them to your dog in large quantities, or feeding them every day.

Hi Steve! You can often buy really good ready-made portable dog runs at farming supply stores. Worth checking out. I think you're doing the right thing by getting a dog run. You do have a responsibility to contain your dog, it's not fair on your neighbours to let him roam - plus he could easily be declared dangerous if your neighbours report his attack (it sounds like they're exceptionally nice neighbours not to report him already - I hope you sent them a huge bunch of flowers as well as paying their vets bills!) My (dog aggressive) stafford has a roofed portable run, and it's great to have peace of mind that he's not ever going to be able to get into trouble when I'm out, even if some trespassing moron leaves the gate open or something. Good luck!

Thanks heaps, Steve & Lou.

Thanks Lou & Erny. I'm not sure if that answers my question or not. I mean, I understand that it's easier to interrupt prey behaviour at the very beginning of the predatory sequence when the dog has just started to feel the urge to chase (before the dog is fully in drive, I guess). I understand that with this protocol the dog learns he had to turn his head to turn off the stim, and I understand that after turning his head he simply can't chase the prey item. My only confusion is, even if the dog "understands" that turning his head will turn off the annoying stim, why should he care about turning off the stim when the reward is so very potent? If predatory behaviour is so intensely rewarding to the dog, why doesn't the dog just put up with the mild stim in order to chase the stock? Even if the dog "understands" he can turn the stim off by turning his head, why would he do that, when his other option is to endure the mildly annoying stim but also get the huge reward of stock chasing? Please note, I'm not trying to argue that your protocol doesn't or can't work, if you've both used it successfully then I'm happy to take your word(s) that it works. I just can't 100% grasp why yet.

That makes sense to me Erny, but in that case why does the crittering protocol work? Since from what I've read, the stim used is very mild, so the aversive shouldn't weigh heavier than the very potent reward of stock chasing. Or is that too simplistic a way of looking at it?

Oh yes, that was exactly my experience! When I got my current dog (very dog aggressive, very confident, rather prey driven), it really frustrated me when I went to my training club and the trainers discouraged me from using anything except food treats & maybe a halti to control him, especially since these things clearly didn't have any real effect on his behaviour. His antisocial behaviour definately caused me to look outside the box and to explore methods that my first club considered unorthodox or even cruel (e.g - playing tug, using prey drive rewards, verbal corrections, pinch collar). I sometimes think, if I had only ever owned non aggressive, less driven, less confident dogs, perhaps I too would look down on people that used drive or correctional methods, the way that the trainers at my first club did? I'm sure that's the reason that some trainers don't keep an open mind about using different techniques - because their method has worked at least somewhat for every dog they've trained so far, so they don't see why anyone would want to use anything different. I should add that I don't train other people's dogs for a living, though I have helped out with a few shelter dogs and dogs belonging to friends/family, so I may not be Cosmolo's target audience for this thread.

Yes, and yes. Seperate your dogs when you're not there to supervise their interactions. Also, please get a good behaviourist in to look at them and help you sort out what's going on.