Mrs Rusty Bucket

Link to the loose lead walking seems to be working. Labs are such space invaders but yours doesn't seem to mind. Mine would have stopped four times to check out smells and once to pee in that length of time. I tend to say "Frosty, what ya doing?" if I want her to loosen up instead of "Eh eh eh" like an excited Canadian.

Nice. A few years back my cousin's whippet out jumped the kelpies and other dogs at the Naracoorte show... Boing...

I have to agree with that, and I'd also say as a training method for Willems it's been a complete fail. So either you don't find it aversive enough to change your behaviour or you have no idea what behaviour is supposed to change. Either way - it's not working. So it's not exactly a punishment either (in the scientific jargon), it's just unpleasant. Unless you have a masochistic or troll drive.

I report to council when I can identify the dog or the owner (by tag or car rego or I know where they live) but often I can't because the dog doesn't even have a collar on. When I ring council to report dog without a collar - the ranger does not come and do anything about it. Most incidents at the park happen outside business hours. There might be one ranger on duty if we're lucky and he's usually 20km away picking up a stray dog that someone has managed to catch. If you can't catch the stray dog - they don't come either - unless police ask them to cos the dog just mauled a human. If it mauls another dog - they don't seem as interested (council or police). Last time I reported a dog for biting me (as I stopped it from attacking my dog - no serious damage), There were four pages of duplicate paperwork that had to be filled out. The owners didn't even speak English properly (Just watched Fat Duck comes to Oz where one of their staffers had to pass an English test - not sure why people staying here long enough to rent a house - get to come without enough English to understand their dog is not allowed to attack other dogs or humans). Anyway - I think they got fined, their dog got declared and it never came back to the park - but the owners of the two little dogs that were mauled on the same day (blood drawn, trips to vets, and stitches) - did not want to report the husky. WTF? But most of the time - some dog barges up to mine - and it's impossible for me to get their rego if they're not wearing a tag.

This is quite frustrating Willem I can clearly see what the others are talking about but you can't. I have experienced this with other trainers - if what we're saying about corrections (doesn't matter whether you think they're gentle or not) is true - then what does that mean about your training methods. How is it that the rest of us have migrated to better methods scientifically proven not to mention on the competition and battlefield to be better and faster and you want to stay with correcting your dog for something you know is wrong but your dog has no idea. Imagine you started a new job and every now and again for no reason you could figure out, you got a nice gentle static zap. Nobody told you what you were supposed to be doing or where you were supposed to be going. Just every now and again or maybe quite often, you'd get zapped. And if you complained - they say if you chose the zap it would be bigger so that gentle zap must be ok.

What's an EH? I'm not going to win an argument about physics. Except maybe nuclear physics. Was reasonably good at that. Willem - you seem unfamiliar with what "reward" means and who defines it. If a dog is not food motivated it's either too well fed or the human is using the wrong reward. I have been told that a certain dog is not "food motivated" but had it working very hard for the right food. Eg won't work for roast chicken but will work for crisps - especially if I eat the crisp on a failed attempt... ie dog gets the task right - dog gets crisp, dog fails - I get crisp... Dogs get very excited about working in that situation. But it's not a reward if the dog isn't interested in working (changing behaviour) to get it. Doesn't matter what the stuff is. Food, toy, game etc. You also seem unfamiliar with something called "transfer of value"... where some how the game (or the cue) becomes as rewarding as whatever you used to train the game initially.

Might as well deal with this in here. in order for the dog to be in motion - the dog applies force to the ground and its own body... in any case - physics aside - the motion of the dog is initiated by the dog. I'm not moving. I am as the fence post. I don't use the lead to yank the dog in my direction and I don't do that fast change direction and yank that some recommend. I just wait for the dog to be paying attention to me and then encourage her to come with me - and reward that. I do tell her when I'm changing direction and she responds well to that. Most of our loose lead walking is done without a lead where it is safe to do so. So our on lead training is mostly to stop her nicking off to eat stuff out of the hedges or stop her from scaring the crap out of poodle crosses and their owners at the park - ie my recall there is not perfect so she stays on lead. When we're on the footpaths mostly it's entirely loose lead walking - unless we spy a cat. And then it can get exciting. But there's no way I initiate the force in that. She's pretty good at not launching at cats but sort of indicating instead. And then I can reward her staying calm enough to pay attention and there is no launch - hooray but an ongoing training challenge for us. If I beat her or yanked her around for trying to chase a cat - I think she would blame the cat and become more aggressive when she saw one.

willem Your method for loose lead dog walking - complete fail for my dog. I had used it "successfully" with other dogs but not with this one. She'd just shut down completely and I'd have to carry her home or drag her along the ground. That's why I had to learn about reward based training. The trouble with force or aversives - is fall out. The dog doesn't always connect the force with the behaviour you're trying to "stop". It's much much easier to train a behaviour you do want with something the dog likes as reward. And the studies are showing that this is also faster and more reliable and lasts longer than training by force. If you stuff up your reward based training - there's much less trauma associated with fixing your training. The agility dogs that win - need to be fast. They can't be fast if they're worried about what will happen to them if they stuff up (and they don't even know what it would take to stuff up). You can see the ones that are scared of what will happen if they knock a bar down or miss a contact - they're slow and very careful. I think that fan club goes both ways. And after last year's SG August Seminar - I think Steve White has become a huge fan. He's been looking for ways to train without using force since he started and got mauled by his first assigned service dog for trying to force it to drop. How much faster, gentler and safer that task would have been if he'd used marker and rewards.

Willem There is a not very subtle difference to the dog applying the force, and the human applying the force via the leash. But personally I prefer "reward based" rather than "force free". There are times when I use "force" not so much as pushing my dog into doing something but stopping her from doing something. But she's usually the one applying the force. I apply the equal and opposite force in the same way as if I'd tied her to a fence post. So if a dog launches after something it is not supposed to be chasing - I don't want the owner letting it go.

I did both of these things at my first club. And eventually they booted all the reward based trainers off their committee so we all left. It's made things a bit cramped at the agility club. I get quite upset when I see other people "correcting" their dog by scolding it, or yanking it round. And I don't mean when the dog gets to the end of the lead - not following - I mean that sharp yank on the neck. I've seen more than one *instructor* grab their dog (or worse - someone else's dog" by the choke chain and lift it off the ground because - "Dog knows what it is supposed to be doing". Maybe - but you don't. So I can't train around people who are violent with their dogs. There is always another way to get what you want. And yes - I pissed off a lot of instructors. They had a self destructive cycle among the instructors - the instructors that are in the instructor sub club are not beholden to the club president or committee other than the "chief instructor" who is not accountable to anyone except the other instructors. So they only recruit like minded instructors and keep others (reward based / force free trainers) out. The only weapon we really have is to beat the pants off them repeatedly in competition - which a significant number of reward based trainers are. Change is slow.

SA dog management law is - dogs have to be under effective control and that dogs may not harass other dogs or people or wildlife or stock etc. But most owners have no idea. I just yell "BAD IDEA" back at them. Gives them the clue that their dog might not be safe if it gets too close to mine... and they will look stupid if they ignore "bad idea". Works often but not always. Works a lot better than "Call your dog". I've also yelled "my dog injured" or "my dog rehab" or "my dog KENNEL COUGH". I got mad at someone who was letting her dog greet all the other dogs at our park while it was hacking away. She said "vet said it was just the doggy flu" - I said "like kennel cough" - and she said yes. Stupid stupid - never saw her again. Would she have taken her kids out with the flu to play with all the other kids - probably. There's always stupid owners. Sometimes I just let my dog go and grab their dog so it can't attack mine. Does confuse the hell out of my dog but she will drop-stay when I tell her to even if I'm holding a snarling Labrador. My dog does like to scare the crap out of poodle crosses tho - and I keep her on lead if they're around at our park. She is pretty good at the beach tho - unless one charges up and jumps on her head and then why should any dog put up with that? Our dog rules say our dog is allowed to defend itself or us.

Would you continue to have volunteers doing the heavy lifting while you spend money on lawyers trying to get back something done by another volunteer? I agree that it's nice if people working for charities got paid. But it does start to cause conflicts of interest. Some charities are better at managing the perceived conflicts and actual ones than others. That's when you start to look at the percentage of income (donations) that go to caring for and placing dogs vs that which goes on admin and lawyers.

The punishment questions I answered all the same - based on the definition of punishment given I would never "punish" my dog for anything. But a lot of the behaviours I absolutely would stop my dog from doing and train something else but no other options were available. And for the methods of "punishment" - I would not use any of those methods either. Wondered if the preceding questions were about bias - ie if you're primed with a bunch of ideas about what is disgusting or not - are you more likely to answer that you punish your dog more. Except - I don't use any of the techniques or methods listed to get my dog on the path to better behaviour. And she gets lots of compliments on how well behaved she is. Until she sees a poodle cross at our local park and then she scares the crap out of everyone. Managed to prevent that tonight. But I do use techniques designed to reduce repetition of an undesirable behaviour - and that qualifies as "punishment" under the definitions of operant conditioning. And telling her she's not getting a treat for that (or just failing to deliver a treat for poor performance) or laughing at her when she stuffs up - she considers +P but it's not a verbal reprimand. Verbal reprimands make her shut down.

can't see any pictures? Are there pictures? dogs get skin things. There are a number of common garden plants that cause skin problems for dogs. "wandering jew" and other plants in that family are a problem. And my dog is probably allergic to kikuyu grass - especially when it's flowering in spring and early summer. It gives me a rash if I lie on it with bare skin in contact. If your dog spends a lot of time in the back yard - what is she lying on? Maybe make a raised bed there?

I'm conflicted about it. I have put hours of work into not for profits and I'd be mad if they suddenly started becoming "for profit" or strayed from what it was I thought I was working for. And it would be clear as mud who owns what when volunteers made it without employee contracts. It's a bit like when organisations start off being about preventing cruelty to animals and then end up causing it. You would want to split off and start again - with clearer written goals and intentions. Tho Petrescue intentions are clear and if they're spending money on lawyers over copyright/IP where nobody is trying to impersonate them or present as them when they're not - and that takes away from dogs getting looked after and placed - erm. They will lose their core reason for being. And people will go make other arrangements. Eg facebook or piggy backing on some other rescues system.

So what happened in Australia? We know Aboriginies arrived between 45,000 and 60,000 years ago (depending which group you look at eg Tasmanians have probably been here the longest). And some of them brought dogs? Or were the puppies gifted to them much later by Indonesian traders? Because we know the dogs came with the humans. But when? Tho the relationship between aboriginals and dogs is not like owner and pet. It's more like flat mates.

so if there is an employment contract and that had a clause in it that all work created for the rescue belongs to the rescue - all good. For IT work ie building the website - there's a lot more behind the scenes than just the logo. If the logo is registered with organisation - it stays with the organisation. But if a volunteer created the website or wrote a brochure - that content stays theirs if there is no contract saying otherwise. They could re-use the code in their next project. They just can't say they are or represent the other entity. They need their own name and logo that won't be confused with the other one. It gets a bit clearer if the volunteer (or even a paid employee) uses open source software to create the website. Or uses content provided for the purpose of helping dogs find homes, created by other rescues (with their permission) - the work won't suddenly belong to that rescue. But you're right - if it goes to court - the only winners are the lawyers. And pretty sure that would go against all pet res cue's written intentions and missions - takes away from helping dogs get placed.

From their FYE2015 report don't seem to be quite doing that. And they list rescues as beneficiaries but it's obviously not direct financial benefit. Did they ever own the IP/copyright to the booklet that Shel wrote? How does stopping her from using it - help when one of their aims is to spread the word as much as possible?

just don't ask for assistance from the 60 minutes team. Hope he gets his dog back safe and sound.

probably going to be kookaburra food if it keeps that up. I had a blue tongue lizard that stayed up all winter last year - but it was also a skinny baby. I handed it over to wildlife rescue but I don't think it survived. My friend who lives on the road to Bungendore - says it's snake season all year round there. ie there is no time of the year that they don't come out. And it gets properly cold there.

That's outrageous. I used to recommend petrescue but erm... I will put warnings to contact rescues direct now. I never donated tho. It seemed clear to me that the donate button was for the website not the rescues. It's like the uber of pet rehoming. Urk. Are they for profit or not?

where did OP go? Would love an update.

evil hound doing the boot scoot on my mum's carpet - argh. She also does the thing where she pushes her toy under the couch and sings at it. Sometimes I find three or four toys under there. I think she does it on purpose.

I would not approach people who were busy showing or about to enter the ring. I go round the gazebos and when you see them having a coffee and a chat and all the dogs are relaxing in crates or pens... that's when you have a chat with them about what their dogs are like. I've not met one who wasn't pleased for an opportunity to talk about how great their dogs are. Once you get them started - trick is to get a word in edgewise about what it would take to get a puppy :)

Thinks a game of fetch means - chase the toy, grab the toy, shred the toy. And that thing where yells at me when I'm eating in public places. For some reason she thinks that works. (oops).