Just Midol

This also worries I. One thing that pisses me off though, is how hard it is to find a place to get practical experience. I'm doing the NDTF course as you know and wanted to go to my local rescue and excersize the dog and practice training techniques on them but they keep ignoring my offers I only want to practice my positive reinforcement side of it but they still won't let me, my dogs aren't suited to luring and what not and I want to become better at the basics. ---- I think requiring a uni degree for a dog behaviorist is going a bit far though. Many of the behaviourists on this board don't have uni degrees yet are far more knowledgable than any vet behaviourist and they have a degree. It's not even that hard to obtain a *pass* in a degree imo. AFAIK there are no specific animal behaviour degrees anyway - I've looked.

Ummm, that's because it IS dancing with dogs, or canine freestyle to be technical and I think it's an extremely wonderful thing to watch. These people put in a lot of time and effort to achieve this with their dogs, with some routines taking up to 12 months, sometimes more to perfect. The commitment and training time is not much different to that of a sniffer or police dog really. Thanks for sharing Tangerinedream. Ohhh, so why not just call it dancing with dogs? Did you watch the clip? If so you would know why TD put dog dressage instead of dancing with dogs. It's bloody obvious, really! Of course I bloody watched it. How is it obvious? Oohhhhh :p Please tell me you aren't being serious? :D Perfectly. I know it's dressage now because of the funky clothing word WildatHearts said but to someone who has no interest in horses & has never watched a horse event in their life... How is it obvious? It's dancing with dogs, call it what it bloody well is. No need to use pretentious names.

Ummm, that's because it IS dancing with dogs, or canine freestyle to be technical and I think it's an extremely wonderful thing to watch. These people put in a lot of time and effort to achieve this with their dogs, with some routines taking up to 12 months, sometimes more to perfect. The commitment and training time is not much different to that of a sniffer or police dog really. Thanks for sharing Tangerinedream. Ohhh, so why not just call it dancing with dogs? Did you watch the clip? If so you would know why TD put dog dressage instead of dancing with dogs. It's bloody obvious, really! Of course I bloody watched it. How is it obvious?

Ummm, that's because it IS dancing with dogs, or canine freestyle to be technical and I think it's an extremely wonderful thing to watch. These people put in a lot of time and effort to achieve this with their dogs, with some routines taking up to 12 months, sometimes more to perfect. The commitment and training time is not much different to that of a sniffer or police dog really. Thanks for sharing Tangerinedream. Ohhh, so why not just call it dancing with dogs? I never said it wasn't as hard or as amazing, I said I personally prefer looking at examples of sniffer or police dog work.

I was a little off.

I don't think it's much different to dancing with dogs? Personally, I find a well trainer sniffer or police dog more interested

Not entirely sure. Probably around a week? Josie will be back soon with a specific length but I'm fairly certain I remember 6 days.

I've stayed for one block of around 10 days, and this was 5-6 days. Her dad has looked after Chelsea for periods of time, but she wouldn't eat or drink at all when she was left with him from what I recall so they avoid doing that now. When I am staying there we probably are semi-flooding her, but I thought flooding her with me would be if I was the only one to do everything with her?

Then I wouldnt be walking the dog. If you are not doing anything to decrease her anxiety or show her the right way to cope with stimuli while out on a walk then you are 1) not building a well foundationed trusting relationship between you and the dog and 2) cementing her behavior. Socialisation can be quality over quantity. Better to work on her at home then take her out and stress her more. After two years of this behavior I would be getting a professional behaviorist to come in and see whats going on. She may even require medication whilst she is being trained in order to get her over any peaks she has difficulty crossing. No she may never be the picture perfect dog, hey actually very few dogs are. But living in anxiety and fearful reactions is not very nice and two years with slow improvement for me would warrant professional help. It's either walk her or make no progress. In the house when Josie and her Mum are around she won't come to me & I make no progress. I can't kick them out of their house. It's josies dog but I'd be 100% against medicating in this situation. I think I get where you're coming from. Loki is exactly the same. Whe he goes into shutdown all he wants to do is shrink and hide between my legs in major avoidance and the only thing that breaks this behaviour is to get him moving, then it is like he snaps out of it and starts thinking again. The important thing is to have control, it shouldn't be a headlong flight. Personally I made it a recall or heel of even just a few steps and usually parallel to what we were working with. I agree with Nekhbet also about potentially not walking her. It may be worth thinking about the kind of stress you're putting Chelsea under for what results you can realistically expect and deciding if it is really worth it. Sure you can do the hard yards and try to solve the problem, but in some cases it's easiest on the dog to manage the behaviour instead by simply avoiding the situations in which the issues occur. This may or may not be possible with Chelsea and it may or may not be what you want to do. In most cases I'd advocate training and socialisation, but in a few genuinely severe cases, where you're looking at a literal lifetime of stress and work to get and then maintain a standard that will probably never be much more than uneasy tollerance that can be avoided simply be keeping the dog at home then I'm all for a management soltuion if it suits all parties. She's already improved to the point where she is relatively comfortable with me in the house, rather than requiring her to be crated every time I am in the main room. It's really for her benefit that we get her comfortable with a few select people. With the stress on the walk, since I run her once she gets stressed it doesn't last long and to me, the stress I've put her through in our walks was acceptable for the gains I've made. Even talking to her initially would stress her, same with looking at her. Acknowledging her in any way would stress her out which is why I took it very slowly and ignored her & gave no interaction on walks. After a few, I noticed her starting to calm down which is when I'd speak to her & touch her. As I said, if I didn't run her she wouldn't calm down and then the rest of the walk would be wasted and I might as well go straight home. I'd either run her BEFORE the "scary thing" so she never actually got nervous or afterwards to calm her down. I was very careful with my timing so I wouldn't reinforce running from "scary" things. I've never patted her over the head at all, in fact, I make Josie put the leash and collar on as the movements to put them on requires a hand over the head which is indimidating. I've patted her side and under the chin/neck. To tell you the truth, I'm not comfortable pushing her away from me. I ignore her when she does it, but pushing could cause the gains I've made disappear as she is only chosing me as the lesser of two evils. When new people go to Josies house she is crated. When I'd walk past a scary person I wouldn't walk around them. Though I walk on the road so they'd be a decent distance away but if she tries to pull away I don't let her, but anything other than that (aka my physically doing something) could result in backwards steps rather than forwards steps. She won't approach a flat hand at all, she'll only take food from me if I'm holding it in my fingers towards her, but when I first met her I could sit there for hours with the food and her on a leash and she'd just either stare at me, or keep looking away. I don't think food will help with most people. She's definitely not a fear biter. IMO, she'd never bite. I don't live with her though so I've only a limited picture of her behaviour. I don't get nervous/upset when she doesn't behave how I want so I don't have that issue with her.

Did you even read my post? When you increase a dogs drive to the point he'll do anything to obtain the prey item, like in greyhound racing, is it still a choice when the dog chases it or have you increased his instinctual desires and conditioned him to the point that you no longer believe he has a choice. It's not a question of whether you are physically forcing the dog to chase. It's a philosophical question and nowhere near as simple as you're making it sound. Jesomil, how isn't that forcing him to? Did you build his drive and condition him to do it? Having you trained him so that there really is no other option? Couldn't that be considered force? If I train my dog with an e-collar to sit, every time he doesn't sit he gets a zap. Done properly once I remove the collar he'll still sit. I don't touch him, I don't do anything. When I say sit am I forcing him to sit? He can't reason, in his mind, if he doesn't sit he is going to get a zap. Isn't this sort of the same thing? Corvus, that's a completely different scenario. Lets say you were sadistic and used live rats in building drive. Every day you'd throw a rat out, you somehow controlled the rat. You'd let the dog chase it for a few minutes and when he looks like he is trying hard you let him get one bite and then remove the rat. You repeat it over and over day after day, for years. Your dog gets no other stimulation through the day except chasing this rat. One day it's raining, you release the rat outside and open the door for your dog to get out. You've built his desire to catch this rat to insane heights, possible 100 times higher than his current prey levels. Does your dog have a choice? The instinct to chase the rat is going to overcome everything. He won't be able to think.

Her recovery time is fairly quick if I distracted her, without a distraction I doubt she would have recovered before we returned home. This is where I jogged, she seemed to forget about the bad thing she just encountered and settle back down. She did come to me for "protection" but I didn't want to spend the entire walk with her scared shitless between my legs and me ignoring her because she was being fearful. I still don't see how that'd be a favourable outcome but maybe I'm looking at it from a weird perspective. Chelsea doesn't seem as bad as your boy was with me, she hasn't always been okay with taking food from me but will approach me for high value treats. I'm not a very intimidating person as well which helps a lot. Josies Dad is much bigger and more solid and probably appears more intimidating/dominant to her. Personally, I don't have a real issue with flooding but I don't know how to do it properly so imo it'd be an unacceptable risk, that and she isn't my dog and Josie obviously doens't like flooding Bed time now, will post more later if I remember to. Haven, I don't expect that Chelsea will ever be completely rehabilitated, I just can't see it ever happening. She is improving with me, but shows zero improvement with randoms on the street but then my goal while walking her was never to fix that, so I've done nothing to fix it.

I don't think that the dog having no choice is necessarily synonymous with the handler 'forcing' the dog. It's really going to come down to your definition of 'force'. Even if we decide it doesn't meet the definitions of "force", it doesn't make it morally acceptable. Language is so inadequate. Philosophy is so fascinating My definition of force isn't limited to physical, which could be why I consider it forcing. Dog's aren't people. They don't have the ability to reason.

So to further your posts, if a greyhound trainer puts his dog on the track, and the thingy ma jig starts to move really, they are forcing the dog to race. If a hunter takes his dog outs, and hunts, he is forcing the dog to retrieve. If a sled dog owner takes his dogs out, and throws on the harness, they are forcing the dog to run.

Just after the opinions from those who train their dogs in drive, or have high drive dogs which they have developed. When you increase a dogs drive to the point he'll do anything to obtain the prey item, like in greyhound racing, is it still a choice when the dog chases it or have you increased his instinctual desires and conditioned him to the point that you no longer believe he has a choice? For example, many high drive dogs will keep working after they feel pain. Police dogs are one, someone can be beating on them and they won't release. Once you've developed the drive to such a high level do you still think your dog has a choice on whether he acts or not? This is mostly about greyhounds, but I am interested in other dogs. This isn't about reducing drive, it only applies to those where chasing has ALWAYS been encouraged.

Those who have followed ILTBYs Chelsea issues will know what's going on, but for those who don't, she has an extreme fear of people, especially males. She's improved slightly every time I've come but this time I've implemented some ideas. This post is in chronological order, so if something later in the post contradicts something earlier, it's because things changed since then. For the last few days, I've taken her for walks. I have not spoken to or touched her at all and just let her get comfortable around me. I've let her sniff trees and investigate things. I've sat down a few times on the walk and just sat there to let her get comfortable, she did not pull on the leash when sitting down. I limited how far she could move away from me to about 1m. She usually went as far out as possible with gentle pressure on the leash but not pulling. When she started to get nervous on these walks I'd break into a jog/slow run and it calms her down as she loves running. She gets nervous very easily, a person walking past, a car, a noise. A dog barking can also cause her to get nervous. I try and get her jogging BEFORE she gets nervous but sometimes it's sudden and I don't have time. If I see someone approaching I move over and jog. She'll see them and get visibly distressed but not to the level she would have. In between walks I've let her approach me to get treats. Usually just schmackos. She has gone from not wanting to approach me to being willing to approach me if she can visibly see she'll get a reward from it. Today however, when we first started she wouldn't come out of the house with me. Josies Dad is also here though which added to the stress. We ended up getting Josie and her mum to encourage her out, then on the side of the road I took the leash and slowly moved away. She was semi-happy to walk away with me but turned back a few times for a few seconds. But once we started moving she was happy enough. On the walk I started using gentle praise. She will hold the heel position (not heeling, but in that position) with a loose leash, which is a huge improvement. If I sit down and she moves to the leash end (6ft I assume) and call her name she'll actually turn and come to me, but won't stay next to me - she isn't moving to the end of the leash to get away from me but rather to sniff and look around. But she is coming to me without any pressure which is a MAJOR improvement. So she not only comes to me for treats, but she'll come to me without them. I also touched her whilst walking, she felt it, acknowledged it by looking at me but sort of "shrugged" it off. When she starts getting more distressed/nervous/uncomfortable I can see it in her body language, and she was rather indifferent with my touching her. This only applies when we are out of Josies house and alone. When inside, if out of her crate, she'll move away from me to somewhere she considers "safe". She comes far closer to me than she used to, and isn't overly distressed like she used to be. Before, she'd pace around the house constantly and would stare at me 24/7. She is still cautious, but is happy to remain in the same room and will come within 1.5-2m of me, even walk past me sometimes (brushing up against me). I can visibly see improvements, so I know for certain that I am not doing things wrong. But what things do you think I could try or not do? Obviously you can't give specific advice as you don't know her nor have you seen her but I'll take your ideas in and make a judgment on whether I feel comfortable doing it to her. I leave tomorrow, so can't really do much more but I'm still interested. I reckon if I kept this up for a few weeks she'd be comfortable enough to approach me inside as well. I don't think it's possible to fix her around all males, but there is no reason to.

Cute! Mine is cuter though.

I'd do the ET for you for free if I lived close to you and you trusted me with your dog, which you probably don't

Actually all the ones I have worked with over the last 30 years have been, yes. Perhaps a poll would be in order. I was under the impression that most vets push food. My vet doesn't, but I was given the impression that most do.

Some roosters can cause a huge amount of damage when they attack. They dig their spurs in and rip. Very nasty stuff and not something to laugh at (no matter how funny it sounds). This is why cock fighting exists and why it is so cruel. Still pretty funny, even chickens can be pretty mean. Granted I doubt they'd cause that kind of damage. Imagine sitting with mates drinking. "Yeah, got attacked by a chook last week... Was in the hospital for days" Wrong I was sitting in a hospital waiting room a few years ago after my son had broken his leg A lady was rushed through covered in blood looking like she had just gone through a barbed wire fence We ended up in the same waiting room and she had been attacked by a rooster She had over 100 stitches *sigh* The IDEA of someone being attacked by a rooster is FUNNY. The damage they cause to someone or the pain they actually inflict is NOT.

And you really think the majority of vets are like yours in regards to pushing food? Diva, thinking back, I don't think this guys comments were covering his arse either as he said they are ineffective rather than dangerous.

Would desexing reduce a learnt behaviour? I'm making an educated guess that what he does has succeeded & is a learnt behaviour. From my readings, desexing later on in life also rarely corrects behaviours because they have become learnt and reinforced?

So in a way, such a recommendation could be considered a "cover my arse" thing (and I have no real issue with that) as he obviously wouldn't be able to explain it adequetely over a radio show. Perhaps a better response from him would have been to consult your vet. PF: I don't think vets would recommend against bones so they have to clean teeth, they are vets because they like animals... But I couldn't figure out his motives for saying this. I do think they blanketly recommend dry food because it's probably better than the crap 99% of people feed their dogs.

Holy shit. That'd hurt like hell.

I used to feed seperately, but I run my pack differently and allow them to tell each other off. They won't go near each other eating anymore. Lily won't go near Gizmo caus' he'll kick her arse and Gizmo won't go near Lily because he knows he'll get himself some social isolation. If they've had a bad day, or I skipped a meal then they are fed seperately.

Selling food in a clinic is no different to selling drugs. Vets get nothing but the retail profit (which is very little) for selling food. So they make money by selling us food... More profits for them... More money. There are plenty of dry food brands better than Hills and other brands vets stock, if they really wanted to supply the best diets they'd go out and sell those foods. Diva, makes sense. In a way I can understand why the vet said dry is better than raw, as you do need a little knowledge to feed raw appropriately but the bone issue got to me.