Santo66

Another great post......I am beginning to like your insights very much Nekhbet What annoys me is it's fine to promote and legislate for community safety and responsible dog ownership, then they ban by legislation the products required to achieve responsible ownership of powerful breeds. They ban prong and Ecollars, bite sports and protection training for the betterment of the dogs and the community so effectively it leaves owners of powerful breeds all dressed up with nowhere to go They ban protection type training because it can teach a dog to bite sure it can, but what they don't take into consideration is that protection type training with dogs of high level social aggression teaches those dogs to discriminate between threat and non threating situations, it can also teach fear biters to re-assess their desire to lunge and bite when shut down a few times by an experienced decoy, so many positives can be made from protection type training to rehabilitate the very dogs and breeds they are legislating against. Same goes for equipment, they ban prong and ecollars, the very tools often best suited to train and control the type of dogs who do cause problems in the community........what do these idiots making the legislations expect

Why? You have experience in large, powerful guarding breeds that are sharp as a knifes edge? You have experience in protection and dominant dogs? You have the power to choke off or slam down your own dog when it decides to have a go at you? No. Few people in Australia do. These romantic notions of nawwww I wanna breed the banned breeds BS sometimes makes me glad we DON'T have these dogs in the country. We're incapable of controlling the watered down stuff we have let alone strong breeds like this. BSL is crap yes, but 1) idiots keep breeding pound fodder and 2) people keep buying these dogs and then crying when they get seized. Yes it's the dog that suffers but we can't get the whole dog management thing through our thick heads in this country at all. We are miles behind a lot of western countries in training and management I think work on education before beating the same BSL is bad drum. .......good post Nekhbet. +1, excellent post

Good luck........she's a beautiful dog, thanks for sharing......I am a bit of a drive junkie :D She does have plenty of that lol. Makes training her very addictive! If you like working with dogs.......training a truly high performance working dog is must do.......they are addictive in the way they adapt to work like they have done it all before in previous life :D

Good luck

If no one has been bitten by a Dogo or Fila lately, looks like it's working don't you think?

What's wrong with the pup, she was doing or not doing what?

But it's not extreme - I've seen plenty of dogs that go into shutdown or complete panic when a flat collar is put on. As for being nailed by correcting a dog with a prong, that means it wasn't a correction it was too low to stop the behavior and it redirected. That can happen on a lot of equipment and I've seen it again happen to a few people because the correction is under threshold and the dog is already wound up. As for your scenario, if the dog found it more acceptable in a prong collar and learned better then the flat collar why not? I am training a rottweiler at the moment that goes into shutdown mode in a flat collar so easily, yet on a correction chain is happy and wagging it's tail and we don't get that shutdown. On a sporn harness it acts absolutely ridiculously and it's direction cannot be controlled, all it does it pull against it and it's owners. Horses for courses, you say I can't make assumptions and use outliers but you're horribly averaging equipment beyond belief. Saying the equipments aversiveness is up to the dog is not the extreme end of the spectrum it's reality. For every dog. You can't rate equipment over the entire canine species because the dog decides what it likes and doesn't like. I have a dog that originally panicked and ran/pissed in terror if you made a happy voice to praise her, whereas the deeper the male voice the more she was relaxed and happy to be around them. Through training we can sometimes change the level of aversion the dog finds the equipment be that one way or another. A dog can hate a prong and learn to love it, or enjoy a flat collar and learn to spite it. Reality is: If you want to walk your dog in a public place you need some form of equipment and you obviously have to select something and begin somewhere in order to see where the dog is at to begin with. If you can tell what equipment to use for a particular dog before taking the dog for a spin, you are better than me Nekhbet. Having said that, I have reached the letterbox from the front door on a flat collar and swapped it for a prong after a big boisterous confident bundle has tried to modify my shoulder socket :laugh: The point I am making is you have to begin somewhere with something before you can make an informed decision on what equipment may be best suited to the particular dog. The dog most certainly determines equipment selection which you don't know until you try something first and see what happens.

Good luck........she's a beautiful dog, thanks for sharing......I am a bit of a drive junkie :D

You are totally correct Nekhbet I agree, but you are quoting extreme ends of the spectrum. I can recall ONE dog in thousands where a flat collar caused a serious aversive, unlikely in most cases. I have been bitten by ONE dog from a prong collar correction who came back at me from the aversion, another extreme unlikely in the majority. It's highly unlikely anyone would switch to a prong collar to train a dog finding a flat collar highly aversive, in reality it's the opposite of that, dog doesn't respond to flat collar correction so a more aversive collar is implemented for that dog's threshold. Quoting extreme case possibilities I don't think is really helpful for people making an informed decision on equipment IMHO?

So a rescue dog that looks like a pit bull has less right to a happy forever home than other dogs? Regardless of temperment? That sounds wrong to me. What about cases like the old lady who's elderly bull terrier was kept from her because council officers said "I think it's a pit bull" Some crosses may not have any restricted breed in them, but can still be mistaken for them. I remember watching some footage from Britain (from the councils perspective) they'd been driving around to pick up some reported "pit bulls" this woman saw a guy playing with his dog in a church yard, walked up to him and said "your dog looks like a pit bull, I'm taking her now" and the poor guy had to let these strangers take his dog. He was devastated! The dog looked like a lab x. The saddest thing for me was all the dogs were all so happy to get in the van, I could just imagine them thinking "yay! Car ride!" This is why legislation based on physical characteristics should be fought at every turn. People in the article even say they thought the restriction had lapsed, they'd been allowed to register their large breed dogs! The legislation is WRONG I totally agree, but whilst the legislation is in place to continue acquiring dogs who resemble or could be mistaken for restricted breeds is an exercise vulnerable for potential devastation for the owners and the dogs is what I mean. The point I am making is that people can avoid potential devastation of the legislation by making better choices when selecting a new dog. It's obvious to me when legislation is in place that allows the seizure of dogs resembling restricted breeds, having a dog fitting the criteria that seizure could be the result of owning such a dog.

Thanks GSD that's very nice of you! Still a fair bit of work to do before we compete though, at the very least I don't feel ready yet :laugh: I want to take my time with her and enjoy the journey, no point in rushing it I think. She's still a baby too really. Very nice, great focus :) What type of competition are you training for?

IMHO there are three ways to train a dog to walk nicely on leash, one is with rewards the other aversion or a combination of both. Collar wise, reward based training can be achieved on an ordinary flat collar, a martingale for added mild aversion or a prong collar for aversion based training.......the rest, halties, harnesses and other like gizmo's are a load of crap unless you want to merely manage an unruly dog and not train it :D

No. You are wrong. If your decision is to get a rescue dog, you can make an informed, well considered choice, but you will be unable to identify breed. Plenty of rescues don't look like restricted breeds is my point.

I have noticed more on a global front that especially gun dog training is very strong on Ecollar work more than any other discipline it seems?

The article says large dogs have been long banned in the city, yet they still get large dogs? Bit like the Pitbull scenario which have been a long restricted breed yet they still keep getting dogs who may resemble them and be subject to seizure or further restriction? Bit like the pissy driver who is only a little bit over they know they have had a drink, don't drive? Too many people sail on the edge of law and then blame everyone else when the wheels fall off when all of this could be avoided with some responsible forethought. I do really feel for these people having their dogs seized, it's devastating to the point that I would never own a dog or breed subject to seizure or restriction. I recall years before the Victorian Pitbull fiasco, quite a few people had orders placed on dogs of Pitbull resemblance, although not seized, they had dangerous dog requirements placed, roofed enclosures, muzzles in public, striped collars etc. For years I had advocated when people spoke of getting BYB Bully breeds and crossbreeds to get a proper one papered from a registered breeder as there was always the Pitbull thing hanging in the balance to cause potential grief. No one by necessity needs a dog they can't identify what it is, we all have choices, some are informed choices, some are not

Balabanov tends to shape more than Ellis I think .......perhaps I am thinking luring is beneficial in bite sports as the reward is always on display when maximum drive is desired as in strong focus on the decoy, sleeve etc.

The difference in tug work is that the Schutzhund or police dog eventually has to have the drive to go after an opponent and bite, so it's limited in what a handler can do in tugging biting with the dog not to blur the line.......you can't have your dog wanting to fight you, but in obedience and relationship building I think Susan's methods are still a good foundation even for essentially biting dogs, the basics of what Susan teaches like wise with Ellis and Balabanov in foundation training is on a similar platform really?

Teaching a dog how to satisfy its genetic instinct through complying with a command. Correct........the dog has a genetic instinct to eat food so complying with a sit command to get a treat reward to satisfy it's instinct for food is a fundamental level of training in drive........most of us probably do this everyday multiple times and don't even realise are training in drive

Huski, the dogs you are referring to have drive by the truck load.......ramping drive is NOT something that needs to be handler induced, drive is part and parcel of the dog........capping or suppressing drive for specific tasks is the essence of control, drive suppression doesn't mean the dog is no longer working in drive, it's just working at a lower rate of arousal to suit the exercise. There is a massive difference in drive level required to produce an animated heel compared with the drive level required to face an opponent in a protection routine where the dog needs the ability to switch from prey into fight and defence and back into prey........that is controlled by the decoy not the handler anyway.........the handler controls drive as in a heeling exercise and if too much drive is ramped into a heeling exercise the dog will be launching it's self at the handler.......a good animated heel is actually quite a low level drive application in order to get the precision. Obviously Steve will have good foundation training on these Kollenberg dogs, but you take a green dog like that with no training and try a heeling exercise activating instinctive drive, the dog will be wrapped around your shoulders in a self reward frenzy.....thus drive suppression learned in foundation training provides the control to work at lower arousal levels to suit the specific exercises, that's from my experience with these types of crazy driven dogs anyway You actually are suppressing the dogs drive otherwise they will blow over threshold, getting the reward suppresses the drive also, the anticipation of the reward is what builds the drive.....as I said previously, the balance is to provide the reward just prior to blow out or just before the behaviour deteriorates then increase the duration in a repetitive cycle......the dog learns to cap drive in order to be rewarded?

That could be well the case and it can also be the case of a dull dog without enough drive to be disobedient which limits it's trainability. Ultimately the OP needs to source a Lab from a line that has a record of success in assistance roles.

Training in drive is merely using a dog's drive (desire for something) as a reward for displaying a desired behaviour. Training a dog to sit on command for a treat reward is training in drive. Drive suppression is for example a young dog seeing a food treat and starts launching him/herself at you to snap the treat from your hand, instinctively the dog's drive for food is to lunge and snap for it and what we do is teach the dog to sit instead and the treat is forthcoming. So the dog learns to suppress it's drive from instinctively lunging and snapping for food to sit quietly being the fastest way to receive the reward. The same principal is used training in prey drive, however training in prey drive requires a dog with enough genetic prey drive like Kollenberg's Malinois Huski is referring to for the method to work at maximum advantage. Drive suppression is achieved by negative reinforcement withholding reward until the desired behaviour is achieved, however with high drive working dogs some Malinois, GSD's, etc especially in particular dogs where prey drive can easily switch into fight drive, the balance is to provide the reward before the dog blows over threshold and starts biting the handler or spinning chasing it's tail or something crazy for drive self satisfaction which requires a conditioning process to gradually increase the duration of reward withholding on the good side of a drive blow out until the dog learns to cap it's drive for the required exercise or routine. Speaking of high drive working dogs of protection breeds, without the ability of the handler and the training on the dog to suppress a drive blow out and the dog switches into fight is a scary experience to loose control of a volatile dog at full arousal with aggression......dogs like this are not fun for inexperienced handlers

Because the priority in show breeding is winning shows which has little to do with workability. Ideally a show should be a presentation of the best working dogs if the breed is working based, workability should be the qualification required to enter a show in the first place IMHO. Speaking Retrievers as in this thread, I know of several show Labs and Golden's petrified of noise......for a gun dog, that's a dud that should never be bred or shown regardless of looks and compliance with the standards physically, the character is faulty, yet they continue to show and breed faulty dogs? The worse I have seen are GSD's between show and working lines, other than their ears stick up, they are virtually completely different dogs to the point it's hard to imagine they are essentially the same breed?

The Bull breed is under the microscope like it or not, so highlighting other breeds will do what to save the Bull breeds? The Bull breed supporters if they were sensible IMHO is admit to the fact that people are out there screwing the breed up and some action needs to be taken to stop them doing it. We all know that there are scores of well bred Bullies out there even Pitbulls that WILL NOT ramdomly attack people, there a scores of good dogs out there so: nail the people breeding crap and help get the rubbish off the street. Leave Bully breeding to people who know what they are doing??

Absolutely and totally true, the owners of these dogs are to blame however, the other side of the coin is if these roaming dogs were not aggressive dogs, the people encountering them may have escaped with a good licking instead which creates the breed factor and let's guess the breed.....Bull breeds again, what can you say in their defence when it's the same type of dog over and over again?? I don't advocate to ban the breed, what needs to be done is investigate who bred this crap and who's got them........the old breeding free for all strikes again......law needs to stop these BYB's and random breedings in the hands of people that haven't a clue how to breed a stable dog fit for community habitation.

A I think if the puppy reacts to teasing with biting, teasing is the trigger to bring out the genetic response to bite. A different pup may cower and run away to teasing where the other became aggressive which I believe is genetic. If the trigger is contrary to the genetics of the dog caused by environmental factor or training, this can be easily undone or retrained. If the environmental factor aligns with the genetics of the dog for example, encouraging a genetically DA dog to go after other dogs and attack them, this is much harder to re-train for appropriate behaviour. Temperament does have a wide spectrum of what is good or bad dependant on what the dog is used for I guess? A dog with strong genetic stranger aggression groomed for a guard dog could be said to have a great temperament for a guard dog, however the same dog taken to family reunion wanting to bite everyone he/she didn't know, would be more likey considered to have a shocking temperament of the highest level. I agree with Corvus in that regard, what is temperament, who really knows??