Staranais

You are right that dogs from any lineage can show sporting or working potential (although, as I'm sure you know, you can't really judge whether a dog is going to be a good worker merely from its ability to jump a fence - good working dogs have much more than simple physical agility). However, if you are buying a pup with the intention of working it, then purchasing a pup from parents (and grandparents) that have actually worked or been titled in a working sport is the safest bet, as these pups are most likely to be good workers. That's why working dog people buy pups from working lineages. They are going to invest hundreds or even thousands of hours training the dog, so they want to pick a pup that has maximum chance of having the goods.

FIL is being a real 'man' about it and doesn't want his dog to lose its balls. No taking the hint after his dog has already sired 3 litters You can do vasectomies on dogs, perhaps he'd be more interested in that? That way the dog could keep his balls but stop siring litters...

Depends how intensively you want to treat it, I think. It's always costly to treat parvo due to the nursing involved. But there are options that can increase or reduce cost somewhat - there are expensive or budget options for antibiotics, fluids & anti-vomiting meds; and you can add in expensive new treatments like interferon omega if you can get it & the owner is willing to pay. Our small animal med lecturer reckons 90% of infected animals can survive, if you are given free reign with treatment. But even if the owner can only pay for a budget job, it's still worth giving it a shot.

I'd love to hear more about this too, if you care to share. Can you do it with just one dog?

Yes, that is true. A working dog does need good conformation, and show dogs do have good conformation. But conformation is not the be all & end all of a working dog. There is a lot going on inside a dog's head that contributes to whether a dog will be a good working dog. And if you don't test the dog's ability to work, there is no way of knowing whether the dog has it. Buying a puppy is always a gamble. It is a much safer gamble if you buy a pup from parents, and grandparents, that have done the job you want your dog to do. That's why most people looking for a working dog purchase a dog from working lines. If the parents have been worked, then their temperament obviously suitable and their conformation sufficiently robust to do the work, even if they would not have won in the show ring.

I don't know if it counts as latent learning or not, but on several occasions I've observed my dogs not understanding what I'm after in one session, or having great difficulty with a concept, and then the next time we train they seem to get it very easily, or sometimes just go ahead & do what I wanted with no further training at all. I doubt that they are consciously thinking about training sessions in their spare time, but something is somehow making connections inside those little brains while we're not actually training. Patricia Gail Burnham calls this the "magic trick" in her book Playtraining your dog.

My last dog was not a candidate for breeding either (unregistered with huge health issues & temperament issues too) but I still enjoyed working him & trialling him, & learnt a lot from doing so. In some ways, I think there is a bigger achievement & a bigger sense of pride in getting a title or a win with a dog that started out with huge issues, rather than a dog that you get as a blank slate. And hey, if people like myself & my old dog didn't compete, there would be fewer people for all you good teams to beat! Some people probably do use titles as a justification for breeding an unsuitable dog, but I haven't personally seen this happen in agility or obedience. I think people who do these sports know they're only sports, and although just about any good dog should be able to get at least lower level kennel club title, most people know that the title doesn't make a dog automatically suitable for breeding.

LOL, so are we! And I'm bringing along my secret weapon (... the leather bite rag of doom). Thanks for clarifying.

I agree. Show breeder "reject" pet quality pups tend to have nice temperaments, and in my experience make great pets. But for a working dog owner, or farmer, or hunter, the finer points of conformation are of much less value than the finer points of working temperament, and show titles don't prove a dog has a working ability. If a breeder can do both things (work a dog or achieve high level working titles in the dog's traditional area of work and do conformation showing) then good on them, but in my experience few breeders do. When I was shopping for a puppy, I was looking for working titles in the pedigree, not show championships. If I were looking for a show prospect, I guess I would have done the opposite.

Ugh, I was going to say we didn't encounter this much where I live, but have just come back from a walk where we did! Was walking my malinois bitch down the pavement and we got charged by a tiny, fluffy, noisy, territorial dog in a pink jacket that obviously didn't realise it was punching way out of its weight class. When the dog stopped barking at us and disappeared back into the gateway, I crept up & called out to the lady inside the house that excuse me, but her dog was out on the footpath. She cheerfully says "oh yes, he always does that". I say "no offence, but that is a good way for your dog to get hurt!" She says "oh no, he doesn't go on the road." I say "no, no, but he was running up and down on the footpath, he came up and barked right in my dog's face" She says "oh well, he thinks he is protecting us" I smile sweetly and say "no offence, but my last dog might have killed him" I still don't think she got it, though. Maybe I need to be more confrontational. I bet she would have been pissed off if her tiny dog had gotten bitten or stepped on and hurt by my dog. No advice to give, just felt like sharing my rant. I'm glad it's normally safe to walk dogs where I live!

I certainly don't think so. There are many ways of proving breed worthiness that don't involve showing. Although if you don't title your stock at all in any venue at all, or work them to prove their worth, then I'd query as to the standards of the breeder.

Agree with Cosmolo. It's fair enough to say that you think K9Nev's suggestion is unethical (if you feel that to be the case), but to say that somehow proves that ecollar "users" have dubious ethics is illogical, and insulting to the trainers on this forum that do use e collars but do not cheat in obedience. Or perhaps you meant to say "some ecollar users" not just "ecollar users"? As for the original question, I wouldn't personally think I'd use even a low stim ecollar on a dog that was breaking stays due to nervousness, regardless of what the rules allow, since I've always been taught not to add pressure to a dog that was already nervous. That's not to say it can't be done or wouldn't help, just that I'd be nervous of getting it wrong & causing more harm than good, so I wouldn't be game to try it. I'd be building the dog's confidence as much as I could instead with successful repetitions & big rewards.

At vet school we get whole lectures on how to help clients deal with euthanasia & the loss of a pet. They do suggest sending at least a card to clients. And not in the same envelope as the bill, either! It is good business sense, and it does help keep the client. It's also just a nice thing to do. And in my experience it also makes the vets & vet staff involved feel better as well, since we do often feel genuinely sympathetic (and sometimes sad ourselves) when we lose client's animals, it's nice to know you can comfort the owner a little.

I agree. I love the look of a dog that moves really well. Don't care what it looks like, it is the movement that catches my eye. Sky, only one person in this country has picked my dog's breed - everyone else has asked what my GSD is crossed with! I'm always tempted to say "dingo" and see if they believe me.

They are very cute. Who are the sire & dam?

:rolleyes: Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder and thank God we have so many different breeds of dog to choose from.

I've actually gotten more nasty looks and comments when I have been walking my "police dog" looking malinois, than I ever did when walking my stafford. This has really surprised me! Although perhaps people were just too scared to look at me meanly when I was walking my gorgeous bull breed. :rolleyes: I did have one woman at obedience school casually say "oh isn't he ugly!" about my stafford once. She was handling a poodle, but I was too polite to tell her pot... kettle... black...

OK, hang on there a minute. Where are the intermediate steps between training at other parks (week 10) & actually doing trials? Seems to me that going straight from a park to a trial is a huge leap in criteria! Especially since she specifically has an issue with the trial environment. Between week 10 & the actual trial, I'd spend quite a bit of time going to different places that resemble trials & doing stay practice there. Can you get to other obedience or agility trials and do some stay practice there? Don't enter the trial, just go along to practice stays outside the ring in the trial atmosphere. Or go to a few different dog obedience schools, or agility schools - don't do the class, just ask them if you can practice your stays at the periphery of the field. Or how about your local farmers market? Get a friend to go with you to watch over your dog while you duck round the corner, to make sure nothing scary happens to her in your absence.

But wait... there's more! About the original question, I don't think the behaviour has become self reinforcing as Vickie suggests since it's rather boring stuff I'm talking about (lie down, or wait, or come over here and give me whatever you're holding, etc). Not an exciting event in itself, like an agility trial. Possibly the reward is still somewhat unexpected, as Aidan suggests, but I doubt it - she's a smart cookie, she knows what she gets if she does good (usually an excited sounding owner, sometimes a life reward, occasionally a kibble piece). On average, she knows how "good" the reward is that she can expect for these things. It's never spectacularly exciting. :rolleyes: Thinking it through, though, I have realised that I do punish mildly if she decides she's not going to do something I ask that I KNOW she knows. So perhaps that is my answer right there. The rewards get less once she knows a behaviour, but she learns she gets a cranky sounding owner if she refuses. I also wonder if there is something here to do with amount of effort vs level of reinforcement. As in, the rewards get less when she knows the behaviour. But from her point of view, perhaps the behaviour is easier, since she now knows it and has done it many times? So even though the reinforcer gets crappier, perhaps the effort:reward ratio doesn't get less? Does anyone know if this is possible? Also, could you expand on this, Aidan? I have a basic understanding of matching law & I've read it in Lindsay again, but would appreciate you explaining your above quote, if you have time. The more versions I hear, the better I tend to understand. Sorry, that rambled.

Thanks for your thoughts, everyone. Will read through in more detail later! Just wanted to say that I do not think the phenomenon that Kavik describes is necessarily created only by an extinction burst. I can see what Aidan is saying, and think he is entirely correct in some ways. I guess I would think of it as following: a dog that does not get a reward when expected at his first trial may run faster in frustration (the extinction burst). If he finishes the course & earns the reward when he is still running faster, then he may eventually begin to believe that he has to work extra hard on trial day in order to get the reward. Voila = a dog that runs faster in trials than in training. :rolleyes: But I think this is not necessarily the whole story for what Kavik describes. I think the dog can feed off the excitement of the owner, becoming more aroused themselves simply because the owner is aroused, and that this increased level of excitement can by itself cause the dog to give a more animated, better performance. Kavik is not the only person who has noticed this phenomenon. I was watching a Michael Ellis clip the other day on Youtube & he described a similar thing. He was talking about sharpening up sits for advanced schutzhund obedience. He said he had very little success in getting really lightening-fast sits on cue by using differential reinforcement of the fastest sits, although he knew that method should work according to theory. (His theory about why it didn't work was that the dogs were already performing so well; he thought that the difference between a sit that took 0.8 seconds and one that took 0.6 seconds was just too small for the dog - or perhaps the handler - to be able to distinguish effectively). Anyway, he said that one thing that worked very well to create the very fastest sits was to increase the dog's arousal level before they were even asked to sit. They then consistently sat faster, without him having to differentially reinforce anything. This seems like a similar thing to what Kavik is describing. There's probably some sort of physiological mechanism to explain it. For example a dog does naturally become more aware, more alert, more switched on, when adrenalised & aroused, & I think it is reasonable that this could automatically translate into faster running or faster sitting.

Agree with huski that most dogs have the ability to compete at lower levels, although with some dogs it will take more work than others. I know some dogs have such poor nerves that they are simply too nervous to work in a competition environment, even with the best training, and some dogs will have other issues (such as dog aggression) that preclude them from safely competing. And I suppose there are some dogs that genuinely have little to no drive for toys or food, so that the only practical way you can motivate them to work is serious deprivation or corrections - not fun for anyone, so why do it? But I think most dogs I have met or trained with have the potential to compete at lower levels of competition, if the owner put in enough work. Another issue can be that some dogs do not have the physical potential to compete. My last dog had crappy forelegs, got arthritis quite young so couldn't jump. So any level of agility, and any obedience competition involving jumps, were ruled out for us. He had the nerves & drive to do these things, but not the physical ability. Yes! I saw a t-shirt on line the other day that said "My malinois is handler impaired". I think I need one! :D

So, I'm re-reading some Steven Lindsay. Here's a quote from volume 1: "During the training process, dogs definitely form certain predictions and expectations about outcomes associated with their behaviour. Extrapolating from the foregoing analysis of classical conditioning to instrumental learning, if a dog receives a reward that is significantly smaller than expected, the outcome is perceived as punitive (disappointment), resulting in the trial rendering the response weaker. If, on the other hand, the reward exactly matches the dog's expectations, then the instrumental response that resulted in reward is neither rendered stronger nor weaker than it was before reinforcement. A reinforcer that does not result in additional learning (acquisition or extinction) might aptly be termed a verifier, serving to confirm the status quo but not resulting in any new learning. This general theory suggests that a third instrumental outcome exists in learning besides rewards and punishers (i.e., verifying events that function to maintain behaviour at the same level of probability). For new instrumental learning to take place, the reward must exceed a dog's expectations..." Now, so far as I can figure it, this is saying that to simply maintain behaviours, the reward must always at least as good as the dog expects. Giving rewards that are less good than the dog expects actually promote extinction. If the dog thinks it will get roast meat for sitting, and you give kibble, you've just weakened (punished) the behaviour, not reinforced it. And to strengthen the behaviour, the reward must always be better than expected - either more frequent, bigger, or qualitatively better. Now, can someone enlighten me as to how this works in actual training! Although this makes sense in some ways, in some ways it seems counter intuitive to me. I think I actually do the opposite - I fade rewards as my dog gets more fluent at behaviours. I think this is the goal of many trainers. With us, the really good rewards are saved for hard behaviours (such as brand new behaviours, scary behaviours, or behaviours around high distraction environments). When she's fluent in one behaviour in a particular environment, we mostly drop the roast meat or sausage & she just gets praise or petting or kibble for doing it. I'm no world class dog trainer but this seems to work for us? These behaviours do not appear to go extinct, despite the reward getting progressively crappier. What am I missing?

Oh OK that's fair enough WoofnHoof!

I too think this is very poor behaviour, especially on the part of a vet. For one thing, vets are supposed to have a special duty to promote animal welfare (it's written in our code of professional conduct - I presume it's the same for Oz vets), and promoting the purchase of pups that may have come from a puppy farm is hardly doing that. For another, buying a pup of any large breed without checking health clearances is something any vet should know better than to promote. And anyone should know better than to buy a dog as a present! (OT, but what's wrong with neuticles? I agree they're rather silly and are of no benefit to the dog that receives them, but as far as I've heard they don't do any harm. & if they cause a certain type of pet owner to feel happier about desexing, then they're more likely to desex, and that's fine with me since I hate being involved in putting down unwanted animals).

I don't see any issue with that, as long as the dog is already happy with the command "gentle". If he is not 100% with "gentle", I would teach that first before introducing it into clicker sessions. My girl often chases the treat around when I clicker train (I wiggle the food & make her chase it a little before giving it to her to make it even more exciting), but she's still only allowed to take it with a soft mouth, even when she is really excited. Setting those boundaries don't kill her desire for the food at all.