Staranais

I agree in that situation it's a good idea to keep the dog off the bed. In that situation, there are probably also other underlying issues in the relationship that need to be looked at or monitored. If my dog started to try to keep other people out of my bedroom, me & her would be having serious words!

That's very sad. I hope someone can intervene & change the lives of these kids, since I doubt they're heading anywhere good.

I have heard that theory before, but don't believe it either. I have seen predatory aggression displayed towards other dogs, & have seen redirected aggression displayed towards other dogs, IMO neither of these things are at all fear based. I'll give you an example. Many, many moons ago I was at a dog club with my old boy. We were training down stays, and he was in a beautiful down stay, but getting more & more frustrated & loading higher & higher in prey drive as the instructor tempted the dogs to break by teasing them with balls and toys as a "distraction". We eventually released the dogs from their stays, but were told not to reward them with the toys (don't ask!). After being released, a lovely, gentle golden retriever walked past my dog completely ignoring him, and he immediately & cheerfully jumped on her, seized her by the throat, & happily started shaking her like a squeaky toy. We all did things horribly wrong in that scenario - myself, the instructor, the owner of the other dog - looking back with what I know now, that is blindingly obvious to me. But my point is there was no fear there. None at all. Just frustrated prey drive. When we separated the dogs, my boy was wiggling and barking just like he'd been interrupted from an exciting game of tug. Ever since that day, I've been very skeptical of behaviourists who tell me that all aggression is really fear. Incidentally, that was the dog whose aggression got much worse with the advice given at the training club. He is also the dog who achieved his CGC and won two on-leash obedience competitions later in his life, after we found a much more appropriate training program to use.

Possibly. What other markers and rewards (eg. praise) did you use to indicate she had done the right thing? I used verbal praise. The exercise is repetitive and boring, but that is kind of the point? i think to test how responsive they are? she failed miserably then lol Why do you want obedience to be repetitive & boring? You've lost me there. Obedience should be fun for puppies!

I see your point - it can be very frustrated to just be told "see a behaviourist!" when you are looking for information, especially if money is tight for you, or you've already seen a behaviourist already & had no success. But aggression is a complicated subject, and what works for one dog won't necessarily work for another. It's not as simple as deciding that X worked for your aggressive dog, so it will work for all aggressive dogs. Dogs can be aggressive for lots of reasons, and what works to "fix" one won't necessarily work for another, may even make it worse. So giving advice if you're not very qualified or experienced can be dodgy. And the consequences of giving bad advice about aggression can be really bad. It can make the dog's behaviour worse (like Kavik, I have had this happen to me, the well meaning advice given to me at a volunteer run club made my dog's aggressive behaviour worse). Giving poor advice about aggression can also result in a dog or human getting hurt or injured. What happens if a volunteer instructor at a dog club gives poor advice about an aggressive dog, and it then bites the family's child in the face, or kills another dog at the dog park?

I think individual dogs from many different breeds could have extreme prey drive. The sighthounds, the terriers, & the dutchies & mallies, & possibly some of the other herders, stand out in my mind as dogs that probably have much higher than average prey drive. But how could you ever measure it? The manifestations of prey drive in these breeds are so different that I think it would be very hard to compare them directly. If my greyhound won't attack a man wearing a sleeve in prey drive, does it have less prey drive than my mally, or does it just express its drive in a different way? If my mally won't go to ground after a rat, does it have less prey drive than my JRT? If my JRT won't work all day herding sheep, does it have less prey drive than the border collie that will work all day herding? Etc etc. Just a few thoughts.

Agree 100%. You can be a fantastic obedience or agility or basic manners trainer without having any idea how to manage aggression or reactivity. IMO a good club will ideally have a relationship with a good local professional behaviourist (or behaviourists) to refer problem dogs to, and also have a policy about when & how owners of problem dogs are referred (so trainers are all on the same page, and so the odd overconfident volunteer trainer doesn't take it upon themselves to give advice). ETA: I have been given some useless, and even dangerous, advice from well meaning volunteer instructors before regarding my old seriously DA dog.

My girl has done this before, in our case it was frustration. She really wanted what I had, but was not 100% clear on how to earn it yet, hence frustration and barking. Once she realised what I wanted from her, and she learned that the barking wouldn't earn the reward, it went away. So in our case, it was a message I needed to simplify what I was asking from her, & reward her more often so she didn't get frustrated.

My dog sleeps in my bed because it keeps us both warm & snuggly. Hey, I'm a student! Electricity is expensive!

NZ also has several different purebred dog registries. The NZKC is the main one that recognises many different breeds, but there is also a working dog registry for trial winning huntaways & heading dogs, as well as some other breed specific registries of various qualities (mini foxies, american pitbull terriers, etc). I'm not sure if any of them are FCI associates. I am pretty sure many other countries are the same. The USA has the UKC for example, as well as the AKC. I would be prepared to register my girl with an alternative FCI associated registry instead of the AnKC when/if we come to Aussie, if one were to be created. But it would be a lot of work to create another quality purebred registry in Australia, and who's going to do it? Seems to me that it's better to concentrate on trying to persuade the AnKC to recognise working titles, and persuade them to join the FCI, than for people to break away and form another organisation unless absolutely necessary.

Go team evil beagle!

I have never seen a pet shop selling puppies responsibly. I have never seen a petshop selling their "purebred" puppies with pedigrees. I have never seen a petshop give hip or elbow score data for the parents of their pups. I have never seen a petshop offer to take the puppy back for rehoming at any stage in its life if the owner can no longer keep it. I have never seen a petshop do a homecheck on a potential adopter, or ask for references, before rehoming a pup to them. Of course, there are some registered breeders & some shelters that are also hellishly irresponsible. And it's not OK when that happens either. But, in my experience they are in the minority. Some petshops are probably better than others, but I've never personally seen one that I'd call responsible.

My mally is a bit like that, Fiona, she is not at all fearful, but is very alert and very sensitive and spins up very quickly in response to just about anything going on in the environment. She's about 14 months old now and has gotten a lot better behaved over the last few months - I suspect a combination of her just growing up, and me putting my foot down & introducing some consequences for acting like a spaz. I have taken her to training class before but we've never signed up for a class, we just do our exercises around the edge of the field using the other dogs as a distraction (loose leash walking, stays, drive & focus). As long as you don't disturb the class, most clubs are fine with that.

To my knowledge, they just go right through, doing no harm & no benefit to the dog on the way.

With my last dog, I mostly trialled since I love to train him, and training with no goal wasn't as much fun as having something to work towards. But also, since I'd been told by more than one trainer I should PTS due to his aggression, having his 1st place ribbons hanging on my wall made me (and still makes me!) enormously proud. We never competed at the higher levels, but still, it was an objective measure of how far he'd come in his behaviour. I may or may not trial my current girl (depends how the SAR thing works out). If I do trial her, it will be to make training more fun (give us something to work towards) and to earn titles for her.

Hmmm, I will be really interested to hear if they help him in the long term. My fingers are crossed for you both! LOL, he sounds like a challenge, but at least it's easy to tell what he's up to I guess! My girl never used to be subtle, we went through a patch when she was about 6 months old where she decided to start claiming various things & then protecting them from me & other people - with her teeth. After resolving that succesfully, we seem to have reached an appropriate level of respect for each other where she doesn't (often!) feel the need to test her boundaries. And when she does, she's a lot more subtle about it.

Depends how you define 99%, doesn't it. Is a 99% recall coming 99 times out of 100 that you call? If so, my old dog definitely had 99% recall. In the last year I had him, I ran him offleash most evenings, and he never blew a recall. If he had less than 99% recall, he would have blown at least one recall in every hundred. Or is it coming reliably on command despite 99% of possible distractions? That would be hard to measure, since if the dog doesn't blow the recall, how do you know it was a distraction? ETA: I really like bedazzled's idea!

My theory is that if our leadership is otherwise good, we can get away with little things like sharing sleeping quarters. I'm only a pushover on sleeping arrangements. Honest! Have you seen any positive effects on Mr M's digestion or skin issues or other health issues with the hypothyroid meds?

I know this is a sensitive topic but I agree with you, unless my dogs were at deaths door already because of age or disease I can understand the reasoning behind it but to PTS healthy younger dogs is just wrong IMO. My dogs would stay in the family one way or another, or if none of them were capable I would hope the breeders would take them back, if after all that still no success they would do the whole MDBA Pacers thing as they would both be extremely rehomeable......still gotta look into that though. But that is the point. Some of us who have chosen to pts did so because our pets are NOT rehomable in a traditional sense. Yes, that is a good point. As the owner of a very DA dog previously, I understand that it can sometimes be hard (or impossible) to find a suitable home to take them on after you are gone, and then PTS may be the only fair option to the dog. Better PTS now than bounced around the shelter system only to be PTS later. But in cases where the dog is healthy & behaviourally sound & otherwise adoptable, I have to say that I agree with Trisven & Tollerowned that I struggle to see why someone else would choose PTS.

Hooray! And hooray for not having bloat. I hope the hypothyroid meds help. I must say, I was wondering about that since you said his blood was lipaemic. Let us know how he does on them. Want a confession? Fledgie has been sleeping on my bed ever since her big operation. I was a really hard arsed dog owner when she was a baby. But when she had to wear the giant cone of shame I got all gooey.

It's not just the initial training though, it's the ongoing daily exercise they need, ongoing daily mental stimulation they need, and the fact that they are by nature very alert and very noisy and sometimes dominant dogs. My girl is very well trained. She is just high maintenance, and gets bored very easily. If she doesn't get her training and exercise in every day, she will pace incessantly all evening and get into everything unless I order her not to do so, simply because she's frustrated and bored. When I get home in the evening I can take my girl tracking, then do an obedience session, and then take her for a 5 km bike ride, and five minutes later, she will be jumping around saying "what's next?!" That's not abnormal for a WL. It is exactly how many experienced owners told me a WL would be before I got her! Most homes would not want to deal with that level of energy. I stand by my statement that doing obedience alone is not enough work for most good working line belgians. They want to really work. Some people get lucky (or unlucky) and get calm WL dogs that might cope with only a walk and an obedience training session per day, but I feel it's borderline irresponsible to suggest a person get one simply for obedience work. If you are only doing obedience competition, you can get a show line belgian, and still probably be very successful. A show line from a good breeder is still going to be smart and drivey enough to do well in the obedience ring. Hope this explains my position on the subject a little better. Edited to add, I have just noticed that you have Tervurens, and am now thinking that your idea of WL may be a little different to how working dog people use the term (no offence intended). We are talking WL as being dogs with a strong Sch/IPO/KNPV/Ringsport heritage, right? These are what I am talking about as being often "too much" for an obedience or pet only home.

My answer is in the training forum. But I would add, there is no way I'd test her recall without having a way to either correct her or at least stop her self rewarding if she decides to not return. Otherwise, you're setting your training up to fail.

Definitely pick a show line if you pick a belgian. Doing obedience trialling probably won't be enough stimulation to stop a working line eating your garden & barking at your neighbours until they call the council. Working line dogs want to work.

We don't have a 100% recall yet. My last dog was 99.9% but my current dog is a work in progress! Having said that, the people I know who have struggled with recall before & who now claim 100% (or 99.9%) recall use one of the following systems: * Drive training (Steve from K9 Pro has a very good distance learning program about this) * E collar (get advice from someone knowledgeable, K9 Pro is again a great resource) * Really reliable recall system (I think Corvus is using this to very good effect - apologies if I've singled you out incorrectly Corvus) There are probably other ways to get a very reliable recall on problem dogs, but these are the 3 options I know about. I used drive training to get an excellent recall on my first dog. But that relied on his personality - he lived to bite things. It would not work so well on some other dogs. My current dog, I'm using a combo of drive training & e collar. I haven't tried RRR, but have watched the DVD, I have some reservations about the method but can't really comment with any knowledge since I haven't tried it, and apparently some people find it very useful. Hopefully other posters can help you more.

Really? I know lots of AnKC registered malinois with working titles. I find it hard to believe that other mally owners don't care if these are wiped from their dog's pedigrees. If the point of pedigrees is to help breed better dogs, then surely the AnKC should be putting more information on pedigrees (hip & elbow scores? KNPV & ring titles?), not less information?