Luke GSP

only work or cash could stop me! I would sell a kidney to meet the cost and weekends tend to be good for me so probably count me in

how good is it :p ;) :D ;) ;)

Are you sure that it is the other dog being agresive towards your own without any provocation? The majority of dog fights I have seen have been the result of a more dominant dogs posture and demeanour (very subtle) and stragely enough the one that made the first "outward" agressive move ie barking/charging was actually the less dominant of the two originally. In my experience.

I think we need to be careful not to mix up behaviour and obedience? To my understanding Jan Fennels method is to alter behaviour and pretty much nothing to do with tricks or learned actions/obedience? I had a bit of a nightmare puppy untill we applied amichien bonding and within 48 hours it was like an alien had abducted him and replaced him with a saint. The best analogy I can think of is that behaviour it is like your child knowing that they should not push you aside or grab your food from your hand as opposed to my child reciting his times tables? IMHO, does that make sense??

He has a new episode in season two where he covers it as well. Season two is fantastic by the way.

The only problem I could foresee with this is that I want him to not just leave the snake alone but actually run away. All without any relation to me or my actions. My concern is that he may relate the lead to the reprimand etc and hence only perform the desired behaviour in my presence waiting for some kind of signal or input. I want him to sense a snake and evoke the flight response without any outside stimuli involving me in any way shape or form.

In the training that I have seen it is used in a controled environment where a/ several live snakes are used in cage structures that allow the dog to see them , smell them and approach without the chance of a bite occuring. the dog was allowed to roam a paddock and upon approaching the snake and becoming aroused/interested, nicked using the e-collar. this was done as soon as any form of arousal became aware ie scent based or visual, it was all controled by the dogs posture ear/tail position etc? Obviously it could not be only upon sight or else the dog may still look for snakes but just back of once it has made eye contact. The purpose of the training was to attach a negative to anything to do with a snake and evoke flight rather than fight.

LAst week whilst out at the dog park monte went missing for a couple of minutes and when recalled came back with a bit of a surprise, ie about 2 feet of Red belly black snake which he had obviously just killed judging by the amount of blood around his head and neck from shaking it. Of course he would not choose to go for the tail end he came over withe the business end( head) :D I nearly died and droive him as quickly as possible to the animal referal hospital in Strathfield. Thankfully the test was negative for venom so it would appear that he got away with it this time but this is the second time he has had a run in with a snake (No1 was a green tree snake). :D I have seen people in the states use e-collars for snake aversion as they do not want the dog to wait for input from them in the shape of a command or a signal just head in the opposite direction if they come across a snake. Does anybody have any advce on a way forward? I believe that e-collars can be used in NSW if you get a vets letter of recomendation for a specific purpose. Is this correct? Anybody know of a vet that may be open to this kind of training method? Any other suggestions? Please do not get me wrong I am not trying to open a moral an ethical debate on e-collars just saying that I have seen this method work.

Cosmolo, She has done some obedience training and can do all the usual ie sit, stay, lay down and come to either verbal or hand signals. I have not tried to whistle train her as yet. We have been very careful to carry out and maintain Amichien (spelling?) bonding and display strong assertive positive dominance. She is fine with me. We have had a fair bit of progress in the last 48 hours making sure to totally diregard her unless she is displying a calm submissive attitude and that seems to be building her confidence so unless someone has some other sugestions we will probably continue with that for the moment. As far as the crate goes we have changed her crate over from a wire one to an enclosed flight type and this seems to have cured the problem. I would assume she feels more secure as she is now enclosed.

I have two GSP's one male who is 18 mths old and a female 9 mts old. He is fine and typical playful full on GSP with no real issues other than natural excuberance, She on the other hand is really nervous all the time and keeps approaching anyone other than me in a mega submissive stoop and quite often pees (not a full wee but about the size of a 20 cent piece) This is even when the person she is approaching is sitting on the floor watching television and hence not taking any notice of her in any way shape or form and certainly not at all threatening! She is also very nervous at the dog park and will not play with most dogs but will resume normal play once she is alone with Monte our male. She has also started peeing in her crate on a fairly regular basis ie 1 to 2 times a week. We have thoroughly washed out the crate and used an odour neutraliser, but it still continues to happen.

I am so glad you posted this. I have been considering a similar thing for a while but had my doubts. How is it going? Did you get it in OZ? where from and how much?

I totally agree with Rachelle about the treats we used to randomly drop treats in the crate while our pup was not looking so they just appeared and also used to leave the crate open so they could come and go during the day adn again randomly ddropped treats in so every now and again when they went back to the crate surprise surprise theres a tasty treat. What a woderful place that would be warm, comfy and every now and again hey presto a treat appeaars out of thin air!

I have been considering pet insurance for my two but aam a bit short on time for research. I was hoping I could be cheeky and ask you to give me a run down of who you went with Westiemum and why? PM me if you don't want to discuss publically.

If your dog feels scared or threatened by the other dog, then I imagine it would feel relieved when it was taken away from the other dog. Feeling relief is rewarding. If as soon as your dog acts aggressively you turn and take it away from the other dog, thereby rewarding your dog, couldn't this encourage your dog to display aggression whenever it felt threatened? To me it depends on who the dog is trying to defend? Itself becasuse it is scared or, the owner/pack because the owner is tense (concerned about what thier dog is going to do) I would say thet it depends on what the dog does when it sees the other dog. There is not much point in a dog wanting to bite/ attack another dog for no reason. I would assume that the agression is due to one of a couple of things, Dominance/pack protection (from either side) or fear from passed experience (previously attacked). If the reason is dominance then it is not your dogs job to assert dominance over other animals that they come across IMHO. I believe that It is the ALPHA dogs role. If the reason is to protect the pack and repel a percieved intruder/enemy? then again it is the ALPHA dogs role IMO. To me if it is trying to get to the other dog for whatever reason it is confused about its role within the pack. by turning briskly away you are 1,removeing the threat, 2, the dog will realise that by being agressive it is getting nowhere just walking around in circles, and 3,you are also showing leadership of the pack ie: YOU have decided to walk away. YOU have taken stock of the situation and You have decided how the pack will deal with it. By doing this you have removed all responsibility from your dogs shoulders, all it has to do is enjoy its walk with it's pack leader safe in the knowledge that it's leader will deal with any issues that arise and take the appropriate action. Thats waht I believe anyway. I am not claiming to be right. As I have said before I am not a dog whisperer or listener or Dr doolittle, I just believe that that most issues are caused by us humanising our dogs and not understanding that they want /need very clear stucture to thier surroundings and pack make up.

I believe that the reason for your dogs agression when on a lead is probably one of two things either the dog believes that it is still the Alpha and needs to protect the pack ie you, or it is scared due to previous bad experience with other dogs whilst on a leash. If you have the time and a cooperative partner I would ask a friend to walk towards you with another dog from a considerable distance whilst you walk towars them. Try and get your dogs attention by continually talking to it in an upbeat and happy tone. As soon as your dog becomes aggressive turn away sharply from the oncoming dog and walk away saying nothing and giving your dog no attention /interaction at all. Once your dog has stopped being agressive turn around again and begin to approach the other dog agin. Obviously the aim is that the gap between the two dogs will become smaller and smaller until eventually your dog gets past the other without freaking out. You must make sure that the other dog is a calm submissive dog that will not react to your dogs aggression and you must make sure that you are in totally the right frame of mind. If your are tense waiting for the aggression to come your dog will sense this as a weakness and assume the alpha role and try to protect the pack. IMHO

We have never "strictly" crate trained our dogs but there beds were in crates so they would go to bed late ie23:00hrs and we let them out early 05:30hrs as dogs hate deficating in their beds I believe that this gets them in to a cycle. IMHO it also helps them develop better bladder/bowel control as they are trying to hold it . Obviously once they get past the chewing the sofa while you are asleep stage we let them sleep in a normal dog bed but still in the same place /position as where there crate used to be. I try and discourage the urge to begin Toilet duty at my dogs beck and call as you could be making a rod for your own back IMHO.

As I say, I find any negotiation is improved by having your case clearly set out either in your head or written down. In neurolinguistics they also encourage mental rehersals of the conversation so that you have a plan/response ready for any of there responses whether positive or negative. You will find that if you mentally rehearse the conversation and write down your points so that all you have to do is read them you will come across as very focused and sure of what you want. Best of luck

Other than the obedience training what are you doing to establish yourself and OH as the alpha pair within your pack? A dog will follow it's leader pretty much to the death unquestioned because they trust that what the leader is asking of them is the best for the pack. Obviously as dogs don't talk most of this communication is by body language, eye contact etc. We employed several key techniques to establish my wife and I as Alpha's to the oldest dog that I have currently (18 months old) and it radically changed his behaviour (in a good way) in 48 hrs. Martingale collars are great IMHO

It sounds to me like you know what you want to achieve with your dogs and probably know how to achieve it, or at least have access to the knowledge/techniques to achieve it. My wife and I attended a puppy class and found it very frustrating as they focused heavily on the style/length of our lead and whether or not we were holding it correctly with both hands, with our hands in the correct position. What we wanted was tips and techniques on how to encourage our dogs to walk where we wanted them to. We still attend the classes as we would eventually like to enter either obedience/gun dog trials or agility and they will not let you in to these classes without going through there "puppy class". We have trained a lot at home probably 5 to 10 minutes a day using knowledge and advice from books/DVD's and asking other people who I see with well trained dogs. We have managed to train ours to Sit or lie down either next to us or remotely through verbal or hand comands, they do not jump up at us or our guests or steal/beg food of the table. They only eat on command they also walk nicely on leads without pulling. They will also return 95% of the time when called now unless there is a serious distraction. I am proud of them as they are becoming a real pleasure to have and work with, I am not a genius or gifted dog whisperer,listener or Dr dolittle. I think that part of your issue is that you need the confidence to have a go yourself. there is plenty of advice available at all levels and in various ways/styles of training reading and writing on this very forum. If you come up with a problem that really stumps you ask on here. If you look at the forum most of the topics keep coming up this is because dogs are not as complex as humans and they have a fairly limited number of responses to outside stimulus, hence they can all display similar behaviours depending on the way they are treated/handled. Once you grasp what they are it is just a case of finding a way to make your dogs responses work for you. Please do not feel that this is a personal attack on you, you obviously love your pups and want to do the best things for them and anyone who loves dogs is all right by me. Sorry for the lengthy reply.

unless he lived next to a chicken farm!

Looks like I should give them a go.

When you say chicken frames do you mean whole chickens or just the bone frames that I have seen at the supermarket? :cool: A couple of you have said that your dogs have them straight from the freezer, does that not make them brittle and prone to splintering? I have two GS pointers and one of them absolutely loves knuckle bones but he eats 90 % and only leaves the tiniest pring of bone all the cartilidge is gone he has a serious set of chompers. my concern would be frozen bone fragments from the chicken frames. Maybe I am being pathetic please do not hesitate to tell me if I am being over protective.

I was refering to this post by the administrator concerning the legalities of ecollars in a high prey drive thread concerning posts about the legalities of ecollars in each state. (Direct quote)Please no more discussions of the legalities or otherwise of the ecollar (this has already been discussed numerous times before). This topic is being taken completely off topic.Any future replies regarding legalities will be deleted. Hence I edited my original post to apologise for raising the issue of legalities again. As I hope that you can see, I fully understand the rules of the forum and by apologising in my first post I was trying to comply with the wishes of the forum administrator and so was shocked to be questioned as to why I thought that I should be apologising.