Jigsaw

Stubbornness usually equates to the dog possibly not knowing what's asked or the reward or consequence is not relevant enough IME, so dog doesn't do the behaviour. Have you tried different contexts of asking him to "sit". He may only associate the command with certain behaviours on your part, ie standing at the back door or perhaps in the kitchen (where a lot of us do our initial training). Lying down and asking the dog to sit is very different to standing up straight and asking the dog to sit. Think about how different you would look to the dog! Make him work a little harder, make it more black and white for him so he understands better, if he does something right he gets his toy or treat, if not he doesn't get it and he doesn't get your attention either. If he values toys and treats more than pats and praise use these when training. Lastly practise in different places and in different positions.

He's very cute!

I prefer to use soft treats when training. As said before kibble is sometimes inhaled and then coughed up. Not much fun if you're working on heeling duration and your dog has to stop and cough up kibble! I sometimes use a treat bag and sometimes use a vest with gritty pockets. Depends on the treat sometimes. I buy small roasts from Coles and cook them up, kangaroo sausages are a favorite, sometimes the dog food rolls and there's usually a bit of cheese mixed into it along the way. I do use kibble when training at home or some other dried treat. I steer clear from Devon and chicken rolls now after my dog had a pancreatitis attack after I used a small amount of Devon roll (1/2 cup) as treats during a training session.

My girl had a grade 1 murmur at 7 weeks. Vet thought it may fix itself but it didn't. At twelve months I took her to have a Doppler ultrasound, which showed a mild murmur and some constriction in blood flow to the heart.. The last check up vet couldn't hear a murmur. She is very lean and fit and has no restriction on her activities. In old age she may develop some problems.

Well done!!

Paid!

All part of their plan to take over the world I'm sure!

It's hard to see them diminish in vitality as they age. For me it was making my old dog (toy poodle) comfortable and safe. As he lost sight and hearing and his arthritis worsened and pain increased he became unpredictable in his reactions to other people if approached suddenly. He was treated as a respected elderly member of the family, which he was and thus accorded leeway in his behaviour. Keeping him safe from falls etc was paramount. It was only when his dementia worsened dramatically and he lost weight rapidly that I pts. I still miss him and I still have his favourite and only toy.

Saxon we believe was born with his problem - he has a detached retina. We first noticed it at around 17-18 weeks old and the specialist advised me that it was "long standing". He started out having about 5% sight, however now he is totally blind. Unfortunately there is no surgery to correct it, so he (and I) have learned to live with it. In saying that, he is now pretty well adjusted...sometimes he just forgets to concentrate and walks into things LOL :-) It is amazing to watch him grow as all his other senses have heightened! He is showing a lot of promise with the tracking...and it is fantastic to watch him do something that comes so naturally.

Yes the nose works overtime here too! Paxy loves to look for things I hide for her! We also have the occasional head bang when she just doesn't realise what's next to her and she turns suddenly. I also have the occasional lapse and ask her to do something when I'm training at night and then realise that she's not responding because she can't see my hand signal because it's in my shadow! Smack the trainer!

Excellent news!

thanks!!

Aggressive conflicts amongst dogs and factors affecting them

Link's not working for me.

He is one super cute pup! I really, really like paps and maybe I'll have one, one day!

I do occasionally lose her on right turns if she is distracted. Was Saxon born with vision problems or was it acquired through injury or illness? My girl has micropthalmia. We have depth of field problems with catching stuff! I love it when she actually catches something! I don't think she's too bad until I see someone else's dog snapping food out of the air! I don't push her to do jumping at night either just in case.

I like the Ivan Balabanov DVDs for heel position and head position. I didn't train exactly like that but tweaked it a bit and certainly some great ideas.

Something that is not noisy that might help your dog know where you are is to use a scent on your wrist (like lavender) or perhaps dabbed on your pants, but remember this will be pretty strong for your dog's sensitive nose. It maybe something to consider with initial training and once he's got the position down pat and is more consistent wean off the scent.

Hello

I am currently obedience trialling my three year old weimaraner, Saxon, who is blind in the right eye. We have successfully titled in CCD, however now that we have stepped up into Novice, are having difficulties with the heeling. The main problem is that because he cannot see me at all out of the right eye, he severely lags in his heeling and I have difficulty with him doing about turns, right turns and the figure of eight. I have changed a few things to help him out and of course encourage him during training, but obviously in the trial ring, you are unable to use additional commands or speak to them. Does anyone have any suggestions I could try and/or know of anyone else who has trialled a dog with a vision impairment?

I know the difficulties you have. My own dog is blind in her right eye! We too have our CCD title and we're just about to start Novice trialling!

I would firstly take a look at whether the dog truly does know heel position. If you leave him in a sit and walk a metre away and call him to heel, does he go to the correct position? Can he do the same thing if you are walking past him and call him to heel? I would suggest reinforce, reinforce and reinforce with lots of food, praise, toys that hel position, ie on your left seam, is where the good stuff happens. I have taught my girl to heel close just touching, in a slightly wrap position, her head is up and so she can just see my face (problem of having big boobs) with her good eye.

I do have some trouble with left about turns but that could be my footwork! I train my dog as if she is not "vision impaired". She doesnt think she's got a problem! When I do run into a problem in general though, I think through whether it is me or her vision. I have to remember to keep my left hand in a certain position as on occasion she's jumped up while in position and she's got a poke in the eye, poor thing! I cannot get her to come in super close for a front so I've accepted more distance than I'd like, but again I'm continuously working on it.. I do have a problem with distractions as she is inclined to turn her whole head and stare rather than glance but I'm working on it and there are times I wonder whether this is more because she is a working breed (koolie) than a vision problem.

It sounds pretty extreme. Is the dog on medication for the SA? I think I would be talking to the vet, behaviourist etc as others have said and finding out what behaviour mod has been undertaken so far. If he's a stressy dog kennels may stress him even more.

I remember years ago when vet nursing, a cat who had to have an injection straight into the heart. Two intravenous injections did not work, I can't remember now why. Fortunately (sort of) the owner was too distraught at her cat needing to be pts to stay in the room to witness any of it. Will always stay with me. I assisted with the autopsy and the poor thing was filled with cancer. Probably the saddest pts was a budgie with a tumour, it was so quick.

Hope all is well for you and Indie.

I just saw it on FB! He looks like he's having a ball! Love it when he jumps in the puddles!

In my own area I have within 100m a house on a corner with territorial barking dogs within it so I feel your pain! IMO this is sometimes harder than dealing with dogs on a training ground barking and reacting, where the dogs etc can be seen and you can increase your distance rapidly. When you're on a walk you sometimes don't know that there is a dog in the backyard and then suddenly there is this frenzy of barking at the fence and you may only be a couple of metres away!

With my own dog who is not leash aggressive (nor generally a puller) but gets aroused and starts to whine and become anxious when dogs start to bark behind a fence, I have started in my own driveway (actually I started in the garage with the door up), building up the value of a loose leash and gradually extending the distance we are walking within our own street. At the moment we cross the road a little way up and walk a little distance in the opposite direction from the barking dogs. Lots and lots of reinforcement for redirecting to me for various sights and sounds. We're doing it slowly and taking our time. We are also practising chilling out in various places like our front verandah and I hope to work up to some shopping centres shortly. I do find even 10 minutes of this sort of activity can wear her out mentally as well as lots of training and games in the backyard.

The CU Yahoo group has some great ideas and explanations on LAT and relaxation. Getting someone in to observe you and give you some feedback about your technique, your own body language and what's happening at the other end of the leash is also a good idea. (Which I have done with some trainer friends.)

Study comes up with some interesting findings:

Link has video footage.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011...ily-fooled.html

Female Dogs Aren't Easily Fooled

The battle of the sexes has just heated up—in dogs. A new study finds that when a ball appears to magically change size in front of their eyes, female dogs notice but males don't. The researchers aren't sure what's behind the disparity, but experts say the finding supports the idea that—in some situations—male dogs trust their noses, whereas females trust their eyes.

The study, published online today in Biology Letters, didn't set out to find sex differences. Cognitive biologist Corsin Müller and his colleagues at the University of Vienna and its Clever Dog Lab wanted to find out how good dogs are at size constancy—the ability to recognize that an object shouldn't change size if it disappears for a moment. But they recruited 25 female and 25 male dogs for the study, just to be safe.

When a dog came to the lab for the test, first it got to play with two balls: one the size of a tennis ball and one that looked identical but was about the size of a cantaloupe. Then the dog and owner left the room while a researcher set up the experiment. When the dog came back, it sat in front of its owner, who was blindfolded so that his or her reactions wouldn't influence the pet. One of the balls sat to the left of a screen in front of the dog, and an experimenter, hiding behind another screen, slowly pulled the ball with transparent string. As the dog watched, the ball went behind the screen. Then the ball reappeared on the other side. But in some cases, it was replaced by the other ball, so the ball seemed to have magically shrunk or grown (see video).

Overall, dogs looked at the ball longer when it seemed to change size. But when Müller analyzed sex differences, "I was quite surprised," he says. Male dogs looked at the ball for about the same amount of time, whether or not it appeared to magically change size. But female dogs looked much longer at balls that changed size than at balls that remained the same—about twice as long, or 36 seconds on average. Müller warns that when animal cognition researchers put together their study groups, they may be missing this kind of effect if they aren't including equal numbers of male and female animals.

Müller and his colleagues think it's unlikely there'd be an evolutionary reason for female and male dogs to have different visual skills. But psychologist and dog expert Stanley Coren, a professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia in Canada, disagrees. "Whenever you find sex differences, you can usually find an evolutionary reason as to why these things occur," he says. He speculates that females might need to rely on sight more when keeping track of a litter of puppies, which pretty much all smell the same. Or maybe there's some kind of trade-off for males. Males are more scent-oriented—people prefer them over females for tasks that require trailing and tracking—so they may pay less attention to visual differences, he says.

To test whether females are more reliant on vision because they need to track their puppies, researchers could try the experiment on female dogs that are pregnant or have new litters of puppies, to see if they're even more attentive, says psychologist Emma Collier-Baker of the University of Queensland in Australia.

Müller and his colleagues aren't pursuing the difference between the sexes. Instead, they're trying to learn whether dogs get better at understanding space if they're given educational toys when they're 2 months old. The results could show whether dogs' shortcomings in spatial understanding are ingrained or have to do with the environments they grow up in.

Müller can't try this out on his own pooch, because he doesn't have one. He figures it wouldn't be fair for his dog to wait alone at home all day while he goes to work and plays with other people's puppies.

Can I put in a late request for 1? Thank you!

Good luck!! Fingers crossed for you, although I'm sure you'll do well!!!!

Hope your girl and her pups are all ok.

Definitely a vet check first. It's also possible that he's become so anxious about guarding the food he's not eating it. Drug therapy helps increase your dog's threshold to stressors and is best used in conjunction with a behaviour modification program. Drugs used for anti-anxiety do not make the dog dopey or sleepy generally. Having a dog that is less stressed helps lower the owner's stress too. :D. When you feed them separately are you just widening the gap between them or using different rooms?

Crate training can be introduced at any age, done gradually most dog's are quite happy to accept a crate even later in life. I would be tethering the marker to you so you have more control over what he's doing. Maybe treat him as if a puppy again and take outside every half hour lots of praise and reward for marking outside.

It may also help if you have a professional come in and assess the dog's too. They should liaise with your vet and should be able to map out a plan for you which may help you feel more in control of things too.