Staranais

I think most if not all dogs will react to wandering dew if the plant reaches their skin (so dogs without much hair on their bellies or inner thighs tend to get it - dogs with fluffy bellies are more protected). So I suspect it's more to do with the plant being an irritant, than the dog being allergic. Like Persephone though, I have only seen wandering dew reaction all over the area where the dog has sparse hair, e.g., all over the belly or inner thighs, not just in one little discrete patch on the leg. Wandering dew is hard to kill! I had a summer job gardening a few years back, had to clear this garden of wandering dew, & it was a nightmare. Took weeks to pull the stuff up. You can't compost it as fragments survive & will re-invade the garden.

That is terrible. Was he a registered breeder? If so, I hope they give him a lifetime ban.

Oops, double post.

It may be plausible that retrievers cause fewer attacks than many other dog types, or that they on average do less damage when they attack than some dog types, but to assert they couldn't hurt someone even if they wanted to is incredibly naive. Tell that to this poor lady: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/07/internat...ope/07face.html And this child: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/...x-1111115594618 And this one: http://www.veroliability.co.nz/dirvz/liabi...wing+Dog+Attack

It's something people will never agree on. If you believe there is a god/soul that goes on after death, you will feel sorry for the people who can't see this truth. If you don't believe in it, you will feel sorry for the people who have to believe in fairy tales in order to cope with life. Either way, telling the other group you feel sorry for them is only going to make them feel patronised, since they don't pity themselves! Felix is right that you can't definitively prove god exists, you can't definitively prove s/he doesn't. If you believe god exists, you will interpret everything you see or read as evidence for his/her existence, since you already "know" you are correct. If you don't believe god exists, you will see the flaws in the evidence, since nothing short of god personally appearing to you will be enough proof of his/her existence. Just the same as with ESP, or faith healing, or aliens coming to earth & making crop circles. :D

Well I still want beagles! And I think it will be fun to start off on the right foot from eight weeks instead of two years (when I started doing TID with Daisy). Oh, they still throw plenty of curve balls at you when you get them that young, I'm finding! I think you'd do well with the right WL shepherd.

Depends what you mean by a soul. If you mean something that survives the death of the body & goes to heaven, then I don't believe dogs or humans have one. But if I'm wrong and humans have an everlasting soul, then I would fully expect dogs to have one as well.

Yes, agree 100%. Far easier to deal with these issues when they've just started, than after your dog has spent a year using the aggressive behaviour successfully. Get yourself to a good behaviourist, recommended by someone you trust. Doesn't matter what methods they use so long as they get results. Sounds to me like your dog has started to come into maturity, started throwing his weight around a bit starting with your housemate's pesky adolescent male, then got himself into a more serious fight & is now freaking out or firing up when he sees any other dog. But no one here has seen your dog in person - only heard your interpretation of what's going on - so no one can responsibly suggest a course of action over the internet.

That's fascinating, thanks TrinaJ! Also very interesting that both docked & larger bitches were found to be more likely to be incontinent. I'll be interested to see if/how our recommendations at uni change after that is published (it's in press now, it says) & more widely read.

Yes. I believe it is legally correct that the breeder does not need to offer to refund/replace a pup with a congenital or genetic defect unless the original pup is returned, just the same as any other product you buy and find to be faulty. But since most good puppy buyers won't want to return a puppy they have bonded with, no matter how ill it is, this policy also allows a breeder to offer a guarantee that sounds good, but that they're unlikely to ever need to honor.

It wasn't a bull terrier...

Well, I'm not expert, but it sounds to me like you're quite effectively training him not to sit on cue when you are walking him. Sounds to me like you were in a new environment (one where you don't normally ask for a sit), dog will be checking to see whether the old rules of reinforcement apply in this new environment, and when no reward happens, your smart dog will very quickly decide that it's not worth performing in this new environment. Ooops! There are probably lots of ways to solve the issue. How I handle it is I try to keep training/performance separate from day to day commands. I think if you insist on the same level of performance from the dog all the time, you end up with a middling level of performance - too sloppy for competition, too intense for round the house. No dog can be in drive 100% of the time. But there is always a reward (or a punishment) of some type when I ask her to do something. Otherwise, why would she do it? The one thing I would never do is take her to a new environment and not reward her for her obedience (or punish her for disobedience). I think that's teaching the opposite of what you want the dog to learn. PS, Huski, I think they're spectacular. I have never seen such a focused beagle! :D

I don't know if I'd want to believe that what was reported in the papers always reflected reality. Case in point, this was just posted on DOL: "According to numbers that I obtained through an FOI request a couple of years ago, in the time period of July 1, 2004 - August 15, 2007, 'pit bulls' accounted for 17.7% of all of the dog bites recorded by San Francisco animal control. So while bites by 'pit bulls' accounted for 17.7% of all bites, they accounted for 65% of all dog bite stories - -and 100% of the stories where the breed type was mentioned in the headlines." http://www.dolforums.com.au/index.php?showtopic=205117 I read a similar article a few years back, although I've sadly lost it now, but it reported how pitbull attacks were often over reported, whereas attacks by non-pitbull dogs were ignored or only reported in the local papers. I would be interested in seeing what proportion of council registered, responsibly owned, bull breed dogs were involved in attacks, compared with the proportion of other breeds. But to my knowledge, that research has never been done. I had a bash getting info from my local animal control 5 or 6 years ago to do a study like that, but the info just wasn't recorded appropriately for it to be analysed.

Yes, right on.

Malsrock, there is no drive to chase skateboards or bite postmen, that's usually prey drive, and the dog has learnt those actions satisfy its drive. My dog has a pretty considerable scent drive, but I learnt to harness it and use it in another outlet (food drive). I've got to say I agree with that. When I first bought my little girl home, she wanted to chase and bite just about anything that moved - kids on skateboards, people on bikes or scooters, flapping trousers or coats, anything that made a rustling noise, any people that were silly enough to just wave their arms or move quickly around her, everything was prey & got chased. With time & training, she's learned that most of these things just aren't acceptable or aren't rewarding to chase & bite. It was all just prey drive, so she gets to satisfy that by biting her toy (these days, at the end of a track or after a recall). A dog without drive, or who is too nervy or inhibited to express it, that's a different matter. Huski, you should post some before & after video of Daisy working in drive (if you feel like sharing on a public forum), since the difference is pretty spectacular. ;)

Oh wow, that is a lot of tracking. I feel virtuous if I manage to do one track per day! :D Are you doing the food drop method or retrieve method in the book?

Me too.

What are you trying to achieve with the dog, Fiona? Will you be competing or working in a particular discipline? I train round the house obedience rather differently to how I train competition/work stuff, although as Bedazzled says there is always some bleed through (if you reward the competition stuff heaps, the dogs are keener to do the same behaviours around the house even if they know no reward is likely to be forthcoming).

When I got my first dog, I just wanted a nice, friendly dog to hang out with. Really, that was as far as I thought. My first impulse was to go to the SPCA, but the friend of a friend was giving away a stafford that he really did not have any time for, so I ended up taking him instead. Luckily, he was awesome. I think 90% of the general public would have no idea about why you would want a purebred dog, or how to go about getting one, or why you might not want to support a petstore.

Oh, you posted as I was posting. That's why I said, in many cases. There are some things your dog will want that you will never want it to have. I am not adverse to correcting my dog, or distracting her. But as a general rule, I think making her getting what she wants contingent on her doing what I want is a good habit for us to be in. So if you never want your dog to greet another dog on leash, I'd never let it do it. But if you sometimes want it to greet other dogs on leash, then I'd make sure it always earned the privilege by acting politely, never got to meet other dogs after acting like a complete pork chop.

Yes, congratulations to Shell & Zero! I wish I could have gotten the same results with my old dog, also very aggressive, who ended up very well managed, but never cured. You should be tremendously proud of yourselves. Yes, the proof is in the pudding - if it works, it works. Lots of people think they can cure aggression - and probably many can in some cases - but in my experience, most trainers I've consulted can talk the talk about what they would do, but can't walk the walk when you really do show up with a dog that seriously intends to kill the other dogs. And most people who haven't experienced owning a truly aggressive dog don't understand how absolutely horrible & heartrenching it is to live with a dog that you love, but that continually terrifies you with its behaviour towards other animals.

I think that with my girl sometimes, the consequence of losing something is far worse for her than the consequence of getting a correction. If she really wants the tug, she does not deal well with losing the chance to get it. Same with downing before we start tracking, she learned pretty quickly that dogs that don't down, don't track. So sometimes I think, if you can control the dog's access to the reinforcer (which is quite often true in daily life), then that can be a more powerful & memorable consequence for the dog than correcting the dog.

Agree with hind end awareness, focus, heel position, front position, heeling turns, & learning to learn. I tend to teach things in little drips & drabs. Obedience isn't my main focus, so we just do whatever seems interesting whenever I feel like a 10 minute clicker session. But we have great basics & are 80% there with our dumbbell retrieve, drop on recall, etc, so we must be doing something right. Little games really help keep it fun & make them understand IMO, we do things like heeling between my legs, flipping between heel position on the left & right side, finding front position when my back is turned towards her, doing a DOR and then running backwards after she has dropped, etc.

I have not done the Glen Johnson method myself, but have read the book & got a lot out of it. It's a classic. I think it possibly depends what style of tracking you're interested in doing, as well, as to whether his method would be suitable. I didn't think there were 9 daily tracks though, I thought there were 3? Maybe a I read it wrong. Will be interested to hear how you get on using it, please keep us updated.

I don't really agree. My malinois learns things way, way faster than my stafford. He was still a pleasure to teach, due to being very easy to motivate, had great focus & loved just about any reward. But she just requires far fewer repetitions to learn things & seems to connect the dots far faster than he ever did. Teaching her is a very different experience to teaching him. She really is exceptionally bright. Whereas he could really want to earn a reward, but it would take him far longer to work out how to earn it. He would always get there in the end, but he taught me a lot of patience. I don't know if it was genetic or how they were raised (got him as an adult & he knew nothing, got her as a puppy & she's been doing clicker since day 0). I would suspect a combination of those factors, though. It is partly owner match, too - I have heard that some people find mallies hard to train, since they are sensitive, and they don't forget mistakes or unfair corrections in a hurry. So if you have a temper, or teach the wrong thing, you can be set back for quite a while. But IMO intelligence differences in dogs definitely exist.