Wobbly

Yeah, at this point I don't feel I have enough understanding to really explain it clearly yet, I have a pastiche of different understandings of behaviour that I struggle to fit together in a cohesive way. Chicken camp's emphasis on Learning Theory will help a lot I feel. But basically, when I got Jarrah, playing with other dogs was her highest value reinforcement, unfortunately she also displayed a very strong tendency to exhibit what I now believe to be "predatory drift" toward other dogs when over excited, Steve K9pro suggested her behaviour there was prey related, although he could not absolutely confirm since he never saw directly. Over time I have had a lot of success with a counter conditioning, desensitisation program based on premack principles (yes, you can say hello to the other doggy if you are calm and polite) that Steve gave me back when I first got Jarrah. That has worked wonders, and given me some really valuable insights and I've managed to effect his program really well in respect to other leashed dogs, but a leashed dog is a completely different trigger to a running dog. The Swim/Fetch/Tug gave me an easy way to control her that didn't involve severe correction, but I misapplied and patterned it in too hard i think, the lack of an out exacerbated this a lot. It was the right thing to do for me at the time, given the limits of my understanding then, but I think now I have a good out, which gives her so much more focus, and have developed a deeper (if far from complete) understanding, I can do better here. I haven't started to apply it yet, since I know my incomplete understanding could lead to further mistakes, which I don't want to make and the status quo is really quite effective atm, if not the ideal I am aiming for. I hope that makes sense, I know my explanations are convoluted, that's due to the fact my understanding is so incomplete, I need a lot more study time as yet before I can feel really confident about what I think here. Sorry for the OT. But maybe it's the right thread, I am one owner trainers may want to have a rant about - Steve is probably thinking "But I explained this for you! How can you not understand it!". :laugh: But I just take more time to understanding some stuff that others might be able to grasp quickly. XD ETA: I think my problem is that I had so many problems to start with, and so little knowledge, I really did get a dog who is "too much dog" for my experience level. So when I saw Steve it was remedial catchup time, I never got to ask him about this more advanced stuff, because he was pretty flat out just trying to give me enough knowledge to control the more basic issues I was having. Now he's given me that understanding, my situation is really pretty good, as a pure pet owner, I reached a good spot. But I want more! I want to actually gain the understanding that people like Steve and Denise Fenzi and others have. It's good to have a goal, although I don't think I will get to those heights since that requires years and years and years of study with many different dogs.

I will find out more, it's something Denise Fenzi has told me in the online course when I explained Jarrah is completely undistractable, there's nothing on the planet that could break her focus on this game. As I understand it, it's still a rewarding behaviour in the sense she loves it, but though she is enjoying herself immensely, it's uncontrolled overarousal. Her brain is completely stalled in this state. In McDevitt terms I think something like Snap when he was running round like a lunatic in overarousal, no control. I never stopped to really ponder about what was going here on because it was so handy in respect to keeping her focussed on the game in the face of massive distractions, but it's undesireable to me now since she is too far gone to make a choice, so still rewarding for her I guess, but no longer useful to me as a method of reinforcement since I want her feeling as though she has made a choice. As Denise explained, she is incapable of realising she has choice in that context. So she is forced to ignore say the running dogs in order to concentrate on the game, but since the decision to ignore the running dogs is made by force (she feels she has no choice) she is still in conflict about that. She might really want to go and check out the running dogs, but feels she can't abandon her game. Where what i want is for her to know absolutely that she has made a clear choice to not investigate the running dogs, so I can condition that in to be automatic. She's still interested in running dogs, since she has only ever been compelled to ignore them in this way or with leash restraint. I hope I have understood right and am passing on correct info, I think so. Sorry if my explanation is a bit wiggy, I am still processing so it's still shaky in my mind.

Just to continue my turbo posting, what I forgot to mention there - is that when it's compulsive like that, it's hardly a reward.

Yeah, still trying to digest that news. It's horrific. What happens to mastiff crosses caught in the net? Bull dog crosses, Bull Terrier crosses? SO many unrelated breed crosses can end up conforming quite closely to the visual ID.

Getting a collar and leash on is a pretty good in house reward here. The power of premack - collar rules because collar = walk. I bet I can do that with the clicker too - clicker = pure awesome rewards! But first I need the chicken camp to sort out my ignorance about clicker training. XD

On the other end of the spectrum, there is also the issue of compulsive drive. Which I only get outside the house (in specific locations where I have conditioned it - yer I didn't understand the generalising locations concept for years, so I kind of messed that one up). I have done this with my dog in regards to swim/fetch/tug game. I have conditioned this game in so heavily over so many years she is compelled to "play". She has no choice in it, from her perspective she MUST play it if I'm offering it. It has been handy of course in the past, if there's other dogs around, running, playing, piquing her chase instinct then it's easy to get her focus off them, nothing at all can distract her from swim/fetch/tug. Useful as it's been when i didn't understand anything apart from compulsive training (most of her life) I have been avoiding it since I learnt about it (only a couple of weeks ago or less even), because I am all about offering her choice right now (and setting it up so she chooses what I want ofc).

OK back to the tugs then, luckily I have managed to generalise them now, she loves whatever I offer be it synthetic, linen or leather.

O wow, OK i really do need to reassess the fluffy toy thing don't I, thinking about it, you are probably right, she is a possessive dog, again for this mea culpa. And it's something that in other contexts I have been working so hard to overcome, and I have been really successful. But here I am again unwittingly fostering it. Derp. Well the more mistakes I make, the more I learn I guess. Thanks for that Nekhbet, so much stuff I need to learn.

Remeber eagles will pick up the baits and drop them too, so an area that is not baited still may have baits. Travelling around Australia I tended to leash her in areas that would have been fine for her (wildlife wise I mean) except for baits.

yeah I remember teaching Jarrah tug - she had no clue what it was about at first, and no interest whatsoever. Early on in the piece, I concluded she had no prey drive since she wouldn't tug (I am derp). She totally did, I just had to learn to harness it with her, and show her it was fun. What's rewarding is so individual for a dog, I am just learning it now. I still like to offer her choices to see what she goes for, devon or cheese, french linen tug or leather tug, and she may choose differently under different circumstances too. I am still trying to establish an order of how different reinforcements relate to different environments and different distractions too - eg balls in the house are of no interest (too many lying around the house for too many years, so too ho hum to reliably get her to chase inside), but though a thrown ball in the house is of no interest, a thrown ball out of the house is better than kibble or rolling in duck poo (for example). It's actually quite amazing to me I can have owned her for over 5 years now without actually having a really firm grasp on her individual order of preference for rewards in different environments. You can't decide this, you can condition stuff ofc, but ultimately an individual dog likes what it likes.

O yeah, I see what you're saying. We play tug with the soft toys - it's interactive! I generally get 5 rewards out of a toy - they mostly have 4 limbs and a head, each to be torn off individually. XD From a prey drive perspective, African wild dog hunting techniques are a bit of a model for me here, they way they tear up a carcass together. One dog has a leg, the other dog may have another leg, and both dogs are working together to tear apart the carcass. Its a cooperative effort. I think it's all about the interaction (I hope) we both win when we finally rip it up up together! So Jarrah will get a leg off (usually pretty quickly, she adores it and really puts her all into it), and she finds that so incredibly satisfying, I don't think she gets as much of a sense of "WINNING!" out of a tug because it doesn't rip up like the soft toys. Since I conditioned her over years with swim/fetch/tug as her primary joy, just tug, or even just tug and fetch (without the swim component) is not quite the be all and end all for her. Mea culpa conditioning wise, I could have directed her gusto to just tug, but I didn't because I simply didn't have any depth of understanding then, and our swim/fetch/tug games also really suited our lifestyle. Lucky I don't have kids though, teddies wouldn't survive long in this house, they are a cooperative reward, but they could still be nearly as good for a solo self satisfying reward for her too, were she to happen across one without my input. Definitely not something you'd want to use for tug if you have kids dropping their toys around the house. XD

Thats hilarious you can use opportunity to pee as a reward, is that a boy dog thing? That'd never cut it with Jarrah as a reward. On the other hand for mine, jumping in the car serves as pretty great reward, weird dog is weird, I guess she just sees it as a forerunner to a walk, rather than the peakhour traffic trap I regard it as. One of the biggest rewards I have at my disposal in the house is permission to sit on "The Forbidden Chair". She's not allowed in it under most circumstances, and it's piled with stuff so she can't get on it, but every so often when she's really outdone herself I've used it as an ultimate inhouse jackpot treat. Most delighted dog you could ever imagine once she's on the forbidden chair.

Ooh yes TSD - that's another one of my issues, incessantly rewarding sub par performances. I am hoping the chicken camp in a few weeks will give me a clearer concept of effective criteria raising.

I think one thing people don't realise i s that if you keep rewarding a behaviour, eventually the behaviour becomes so inextricably associated with a reward the behaviour itself becomes rewarding too. So while I want ot stop rewarding a sit all the time, she loves sitting because to her it means treats. Crate is an awesome place to be because it's a well known spot for excess treat delivery. Someone very proudly told me they didn't use rewards for training. I felt so bad for the dogs, because I know those dogs are very heavily corrected on correction collars in the normal scheme of things, so training for them is going to be all about a choice between complying or being hurt. IDK, in that particular case the people really do love their dogs, and care for them. Just somewhere along the line they really bought into the whole "dominate your dog lest he dominate you" ethos, rather than realising that a human and a dog are a team, and both can and should love training. Just for those whose dogs adore tearing stuff to pieces for a reward and live near Tuggerah, the Salvos shop there has soft toys for sale, $1 for 10 of them! I got 20 of them, my dog is in heaven! :D

I reward waaaay too much. :laugh: On the up side of that, my dog adores being trained. I ask her if she's ready to work and she gets very excited about the impending cornucopia of reinforcement she knows she's about to get. XD

Oh he's looking fantastic there! Great job! Whatever you're doing differently to before, it's working brilliantly! Only thing I would say is you're making the same mistake as me in regard to relying on hand signals rather than verbals.

Farmer will have multiple bitches in whelp at a time, churning pups out en masse, hence the names Mill & Farmer. A BYB won't. The difference in terms is differentiated by volume of pups produced, as I understand it.

IDK I think I paid about $120 for my dog, that fee covered desexing, vaccinations, microchipping and lifetime registration. $15K is completely nuts IMO, but there are plenty out there with more dollars then sense. In considering the depth and breadth of human stupidity I've witnessed, frankly it wouldn't surprise me much if they did find buyers at that price.

I guess it's context specific. My off leash walking spot (aboriginal land) is an old quarry, and it has been cleared, so sadly there is no real wildlife there apart from the odd visiting duck (no shade because no trees either which is a bit of an issue for me sometimes in summer), there is more wildlife in my backyard than there unfortunately. But I do know of some State Forests where I most certainly wouldn't allow my dog off leash.

That's great Raineth! Just some idle speculation here which may or may not be correct: I often think that the fact we are paying really close attention to the things that upset our dogs, and then taking proactive control is very noticeable to dogs, and they appreciate our attention to the source of their distress. They are so aware of little body language nuances we aren't consciously aware that we are displaying. They know we've noticed the trigger, and they know we aren't freaked by it and they know we are responding to minimise their distress. I notice with my dog, if she is having a yap and hackle at whatever (she used to freak at imaginary cats when she was at her worst a few years ago) when she knows my attention is on the source of her distress, and my response is calm and firm, she considers that I have the situation under control and calms down. Whether I notice a cat first, or whether she does has a definite impact on her response, she is less disturbed when i have noticed it first (mostly I do). I know I have seen a big reduction in my dogs distress over cats, despite my ignorance of formal behaviour modification, since I have developed a strong history of proactively responding to her distress, giving her something else to think about and moving her calmly, firmly away. Collectively, despite my ignorance, everything I have done has really helped lower the intensity of her reactivity. She certainly doesn't have a problem with imaginary cats anymore. I think dogs really do understand more than we realise and can recognise the efforts they see us making to help them in response to their triggers, and that can give them some peace of mind that we are looking out for them. IDK, one of the things that makes me consider this is the issue of thorns in feet. Jarrah has learnt to hold a foot up if there is a thorn in it and I will remove it. I have a built a history that means she knows that delegating the handling of painful and distressing stimuli offers relief. The same with distressing psychological stimuli. LAT may be the psychological equivalent of the dog learning to hold a paw up for thorn removal - letting you know there is a problem so you can take charge of fixing it. If any of that makes sense.

I hope you're managing OK Doggleworth. Life is so unfair sometimes. :hug:

Impact on wildlife is definitely something to consider, some dogs will give a serious and determined chase, some won't. My dog will, so it's something I assess pretty carefully. Generally in the State Forests and Aboriginal land I walk, the wildlife has already been shunted out by logging, quarrying, dirtbikes and other commercial and recreational activities that degrade the land too much for it support anything in the way of native wildlife populations. The wildlife my dog has disturbed and harrassed has been all in my own backyard, including an echidna a few weeks ago that I had to get the local wildlife park to come and rescue. Poor little echidna, happy to report the day after they rescued it from my yard, it was eating and appeared healthy and undamaged, they are pretty hardy little creatures.

Pretty much Mini Max. I don't think we can pigeonhole all breeders into neat little categories and expect them all to fit without any overlap. I know of breeders I would consider to be puppy mills that are sporting ANKC registration - they qualify as puppy mills from my perspective due to the amount of bitches whelping at any given time, and very, very suspect pedigrees on some of the dogs. Definitely not responsible breeders, yet still registered and issuing papers with pups. On the other hand I know of very responsible breeders with no ANKC rego, but still the dogs are bred carefully to standard with temperament, health and performance all deeply considered before any breeding is undertaken. Still these would be considered BYB technically. It's difficult to define "responsible breeding", the breeders would have to be contacted directly and questioned on their breeding planning and goals, return policies, health & temperament tests etc. Hard to say where these Bulldogs fit, since the ad doesn't give enough info to ascertain the amount of care and planning the breeder has put into the litters in respect to health and temperament and long term breeding plans. I would tend to think that all things being equal, assuming they are adhering to all the ethical standards we generally accept as mandatory, if they can get $15000 per pup, then go for it.

The only bright side I can see about the situation is that it's completely unsustainable for councils to continue failing to win in court. Each failed prosecution may cost in the region of five figures, a particularly messy case may exceed that, these figures are not supportable in the long term. To preserve finances councils will be forced to turn a blind eye to the law, and ignore dogs of Pit Bull appearance in their jurisdiction. The stupid law may not be repealed for a while, but at least inevitably, they must stop seizing family pets as the burden of court costs begins to weigh more heavily.

Oh wow, she's gorgeous! You are an awesome person for helping both Roo and Mia like this!