Staranais

I can see both of your points. I agree with Erny that it's a damn shame that experts are perpetuating the idea that e collars are somehow inherently nastier than other types of aversive. It all too easily becomes a vicious and illogical cycle. "The ethics committee don't let us use e collars because they're so nasty" - "how do we know they're nasty" - "because the ethics committee don't allow us to use them". I see this attitude in vet school too, which is perhaps why it really bugs me. I'd rather see the experts leading the way & showing how these devices can be used ethically, instead of bowing to uninformed public pressure and putting them on the banned list. However, I agree with Corvus that it makes sense not to use a controversial aversive in her study, in case it overshadows the point of her work (which isn't anything to do with e collars). Back to the point, I don't think using a loud sound for this is very sensible, even if the ethics committee will allow it. I'd worry about you creating sound sensitivities or phobias in dogs that are already sensitive, or that are in a fear period. Those can generalise to other common noises, and take some work to get rid of. I don't like the ipecac idea either, really (no offence intended to the poster who suggested it). Causing a dog to feel nausea (even if it doesn't actually vomit) is IMO not ethically defensible, since it's such a nasty feeling. A dog with nausea looks utterly miserable. I'd personally much rather be mildly stimmed by an e collar, even shocked, than made to feel nausea. A bad taste, or a jet of air or water, seems much kinder to me & less likely to cause long term issues for the dogs. Not sure if every dog would find these aversive, but you could always try it out & scratch the dogs that didn't find it aversive?

LOL. You forgot the drive trainers version - the chicken seeks to achieve drive satisfaction by crossing the road!

I would love to hear how you do this Rommi, if you wouldn't mind starting a thread? I'd ask for a PM, but am sure other people would also be interested. I hope to jump my girl at some point after we have her shoulder issues all cleared up, & would rather start her right than retrain later.

My previous dog was like that when I first got him. It took me weeks to teach him to lie down on cue, and I'm not that bad a trainer. It was like he just didn't see the point. After a few months, he worked out what was going on, & eventually became a pretty keen learner. The first few behaviours are always the hardest to get. The dog isn't just learning the behaviour. He's learning the concept of learning - learning that you require him to do something, and learning that the sounds coming out of your mouth have some relation to what he is supposed to do. Once they learn how to learn, then adding other behaviours is easy. So I suggest is trying to teach a completely different behaviour. I suspect target with the paw might be confusingly similar to target with the nose, and she's getting frustrated since she's trying to do what you want, & she's not getting rewarded. If you teach something completely different, then the dog might find it easier to understand that you want a different thing. How about teaching spin in a circle, or come to heel, or recall? These are all very different to targeting a body part, and usually all are quite fun for dogs. Once she has worked out how to learn, then you could go back to teaching body parts.

LOL .... don't worry, Star. I'm proud of the Vet you are becoming . Come over here. Share house with me. My dog will give you plenty of Veterinary practice :D. LOL Aw, thanks Erny. I was actually seriously considering coming to Aussie in a few years, until one of the other vet students on DOL told me the pay was really bad over there, LOL. Perhaps I'll head to the states for a bit! Oh, how interesting. When I have seen animals with fat in the blood, the whole plasma/serum part of the blood looked cloudy instead of transparent (until you refrigerate it anyway, then the fat can separate off & look a bit funny). If the thin cream layer between the serum and red blood cells looks thicker (the buffy coat) then that usually means more white blood cells than normal in the blood, suggesting inflammation. If the serum was still clear but unusually viscous, then I honestly have no idea what it might be! So much to learn - so little time left to do it in *sigh*

It's for a scientific study, so it has to be approved by an ethics committee, which means I would have to explain why I haven't tried a less controversial aversive. And then people have to agree to let me put them on their dogs. And then I have to teach the dogs not to be collar wise. And on top of all that, I'm then in the dubious position of being a dog welfare researcher using e-collars, which is not going to go down well with the people that will be peer reviewing my work. Anyway, it's a bit complicated and I would need a bunch of collars, which I can't afford. Ah, controversial I can certainly understand. I suspect you could do a conditioned P- by repeatedly removing something nice from the dog just after giving a signal. Perhaps Aidan would have some good ideas how to go about doing that? But possibly a conditioned P+ may be easier to train. In which case I guess you'll end up with a dog that feels mild anxiety when it hears the conditioned sound. Is that the idea?

Yup. Me too.

Oh I'm sorry Erny, hyperlipidaemia just means lots of fat in the blood (hyper = too much, lipid = fat, aemia = blood) after the dog has been fasted. Fat in the blood is totally normal after a meal, but not so normal if the dog has been fasted for a while. If you can actually see it in the serum, I think it has to be actual fat (triglycerides), not cholesterol? Cholesterol is transparent, I believe. Keep us posted!

Fair enough, I don't see any ethical issue myself, I think e-collar can be one of the gentlest & most controllable aversives, but I imagine the cost would be prohibitive if you couldn't borrow one. So, why don't you just use a conditioned negative punisher? That would be fairly simple to do. & probably kinder than a nasty taste or scary sound. & what exactly are you trying to teach the dog to do? That would surely affect which aversives were likely to be useful. My dog apparently finds the smell of wasabi a little aversive after stealing a mouthful at one point. She also finds the sound of a water pistol loading to be very aversive after she got a few surprise squirts for cat chasing.

Bloods were delivered by Fed-Ex to the point of destination this morning (Saturday)! They were only taken to Fed-Ex by me at about mid-day on Wednesday. That's fast going. Well done, Fed-Ex. This transaction was the best and smoothest transaction I've had with them, when it comes to blood serum delivery to the USA, yet. Let us know how it goes, I am really interested to hear what they find. Fingers crossed the results are helpful. I have also been told that fasting hyperlipidaemia can be associated with hypothyroidism in dogs. It can also be associated with other disorders such as Cushings, DM, liver disease, pancreatitis, etc. I believe they like to take several fasting samples before getting excited about it, though. One sample doesn't really mean much, can just be a spurious result, e.g. if he managed to have a snack you didn't know about before the test.

LOL. Very low stim e collar? Fits all your criteria nicely, if you can borrow one.

For every breed someone suggests isn't good with cats, there will be a DOLer with a story about how they own one of those breeds and it is lovely with cats. So, on one level, it does depend on the individual dog (and the individual cat). But IMO breed does also come into it. All other things being equal, a dog with big prey drive will be more likely to chase cats than a dog with little prey drive. Some breeds tend to have more prey drive than others. So if I had cats, and was looking to get a dog that would be good with them, I would pick a breed that tended to have a low prey drive.

Depends exactly what you want to teach him, I think. Tracking or trailing - following a person's footsteps/scent trail? Scent discrimination - going into a particular area & finding items you've dropped? Or alerting on a particular scent, like a drug dog does? I'd train all of these things differently.

Ooops, wrong thread.

We are even stricter than Aussie. Sorry!

Greyhounds are lovely! I have a young working malinois - she pretty much embodies busy. She will settle in the house when told to do so, but it is definitely contrary to her nature. I'm considering fostering greyhounds for GAP when I'm less busy - perhaps they will teach her to snooze!

Like you have been told, there are no guarantees with H.D. You can get H.D pups from parents with good hip scores. Buying from a breeder that knows their lines really well, and that tries to hip score as many close relatives as they can (rather than just hip scoring the dam and sire they are using), can help reduce the risk. I do not believe that dogs usually develop hip dysplasia purely from environmental causes - from what I understand of the research, there is almost always some sort of genetic predisposition involved. Many good breeders will offer a health guarantee, to replace or refund the pup if it develops H.D or another hereditary condition such as E.D or OCD. That might be something worth enquiring about if you are concerned about H.D. Make sure you enquire exactly what the guarantee covers. For example some guarantees require you to give your pup back to the breeder before you are sent a replacemen animal, if you would not be prepared to give your pup back, then a guarantee that offers this will be useless to you.

I'm another one who thinks it gives some understanding to use a tool on yourself first. Not a perfect understanding - people and dogs perceive things differently, heck, even different people perceive things differently. But I do think it gives some understanding. If it hurts me - it's likely to hurt my dog. If it doesn't hurt me at all - it's unlikely to hurt my dog. etc. To the poster who got told off by the vet nurse for using a pinch collar - where I study, vets & vet nurses get no factual information about the prong collar at all. Only misinformation. Sad, but true.

I think Tess32 has a point. How safe they are depends a bit on the park, I think. We have a few off leash parks here which are really big, and designed for walkers & cyclists as well as dogs. They are large enough that you can take your dog for a run in them at off peak times, and rarely get very close to another dog. I think this type of park is much safer than the smaller parks where all the dogs are crammed in together and every new arrival is automatically expected to interact with the other dogs. On the whole I avoid official off leash parks, though. There's no benefit from an off leash park that my dog can't get in other ways, with less risk.

Happens to us reasonably regularly. My girl tries hard to avoid it since I give NRM and stop game immediately if she does so. But I don't want to get too strict on her in case it inhibits her & kills drive. So sometimes it just happens. Like the others, I do not believe there is malicious intent. Bigger tug would help, perhaps? & make sure you are holding it still when he goes to bite it, and holding it square to the dog too, so he can strike it precisely.

That would be my concern as well. I'd wonder if he was stressing his carpus or elbows as he jumped, simply because the leg is angled wrong? They put a lot of force on those joints as they land. I think you've got great suggestions on this thread, but at the end of the day, if the dog still doesn't want to jump, he's probably telling you something. If none of the suggestions fix the jumping issue, then I'd retire him - not totally, since activity is good for every dog, but I'd only run him on the equipment & jump heights that he will do eagerly & with no signs of discomfort. If it were my dog, I'd also go with the cartrophen to help prevent DJD further down the road.

I can't imagine we get paid that much better than you! What's the average salary for a vet in Aus? I should have pointed out that our average salary is NZ$70,000 - I think that's about Aussie $55,000. :D I was considering coming to Aus for a while after I graduate at the end of next year, but if the pay is really crappy, perhaps I will go somewhere else instead!

Perhaps it is different where you live. Over here we typically start our working careers on just over the average wage, and it generally goes steadily upwards from there for the first few years after graduation. The average vet here earns something like $70,000 per year. Of course that's not as much as many other professionals, but it's still a very comfortable salary, especially when compared to the crappy wages typically paid to kennel attendants & vet nurses & the like. I can't think of many other jobs where you work hands-on with animals & get paid as well as a typical vet.

That's true - from what I know, most jobs that give you hands on experience with dogs don't pay terribly well. Vet would be about the only exception I can think of. I'm currently studying vet science, and can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing. Like they say "do a job you love, and you'll never work a day in your life!" On the other hand, it is hard, hard work, it takes ages, you have to do some rather nasty things along the way, and you generally end up seriously in debt by the end of the degree. So, definitely not everyone's cup of tea. I'd say to the OP, if you think you might be interested in doing vet or vet nursing, volunteer at a clinic for a few weeks to see if you like it. Vet clinics are generally used to having vet students or vet nurse students there seeing practice, so most clinics will take you on for a week or two if you say you're interested in getting into vet school or becoming a vet nurse.

That depends who you talk to. Lately it has been common for people to describe aggressive dogs specifically as reactive, while others use it to describe any dog who barks, lunges and generally gets highly aroused by a certain stimuli, whether it be out of aggression or not. Yes. It's a good question, since it's a very ambivalent term. Some people seem to use it as a euphemism for aggressive, and some people seem to use it as meaning low threshold to drive (any drive), and others just seem to mean a dog that is excitable. Not sure how Corvus means it, but hopefully she will clarify. I have had one dog who is very reactive (excitable & alert & low threshold) but not aggressive. She is predictable, in that just about everything excites her. I have had one dog who was very dog aggressive, but not alert or particularly excitable. He was predictable too, once I'd learned what type of situation tended to set him off. IMO the more you get to know a dog, the more work you do with them, the more predictable they become.