Aidan3

She's only had one dose of tramadol, no noticeable side-effects or benefits. Sertraline didn't help her appetence either. I think the only thing that will help is getting her blood calcium down. Now that we know we're looking for cancer I guess at least we have some options there.

Appetite stimulant would be good, she's on Sertraline at the moment but so far no improvement. She is also on Tramadol, but we could switch pain relief. Unfortunately her PTH levels came back low, 0.7. Oh mirtazapine, sertraline - these are anti-depressants! Funny how you miss stuff out of context. I didn't realise they were also anti-emetics.

Appetite stimulant would be good, she's on Sertraline at the moment but so far no improvement. She is also on Tramadol, but we could switch pain relief. Unfortunately her PTH levels came back low, 0.7.

Thanks everyone, some very helpful suggestions there. I'll just try everything until we find something. She is just vomiting up bile, there's nothing in it. At this stage she is purging, although earlier in the illness she was vomiting without drinking or eating grass. I have an appointment shortly to get some anti-emetic and pain relief into her. I think the pain is half the problem. I took her outside last night and she was very wobbly, I'm hoping that's just pain and weakness and not neurological. Thanks for all your support

Ginger, of course! I took her off the rimadyl for a week, shes vomited twice tonight. She hasnt eaten enough to be able to have it anyway. I'll get her some antiemetics and painkillers tomorrow.

The 10 year old I lost suddenly to cancer in June could only be enticed with Spaghetti Bolognese in her final week. I was also using Nutripet to try to keep her energy up while we tried some treatment but a week after diagnosis she went downhill and we realised she most likely had a brain tumour as well as all the tumours in her chest. In hindsight I should have put her down several days before when she stopped eating. Sorry for your loss, dancinbcs. We lost Django last month, it was very sudden. It would be a cruel coincidence to lose Sabella when I'm nowhere near done grieving for my dearly missed boy. I wouldn't make her hang on for me though, and I know her every breath so I'll know when the time comes.

Thanks Ams, I'll pick up both at the vet tomorrow.

If she is not receptive to opening her mouth for the syringe, place it as far back as you can between her lips but I would not advise placing the syringe right at the back of her throat. She will probably gag on the food which would be very uncomfortable. If she will eat from the syringe willingly then steady the flow. And grab a BIG syringe from the vet. Hopefully the suggestions will help and good luck. Thanks BBL, I wondered about that.

Shes nearly ten, we don't have a diagnosis yet.

Shes nearly ten, we don't have a diagnosis yet.

Thanks everyone, I'll pick up some A/D at the vet tomorrow and a roast chook. Silly question, but when you syringe feed is the idea just to get it as far down the throat as possible?

Sabella (GSD) has been sick for a few weeks and has lost a lot of weight. She is vomiting about once per day, and won't eat much of anything. I can hand-feed her chopped up lamb's liver and kidney (not much). She was eating a little canned Whiskas chicken cat food, but has gone off that. She won't touch mince, dry dog food, or any sort of processed dog food (roll, can, dried lung). I haven't tried Hills A/D, might be an option? I couldn't find Pediasure (thanks for the tip JulesP), so I made up some Sustagen Vanilla Pudding (is this even OK?) I got her to eat a little by smearing it on her muzzle so that she felt compelled to lick it off. Any other tips? I might try some vanilla ice-cream, that was always her favourite, but she can't live on that. It might be enough to get some food into her stomach so I can give her Rimadyl for her osteoarthritis. Does anyone have any tips for nausea reduction in dogs? I'm taking her to the vet for an anti-emetic tomorrow, but that's not a sustainable long-term solution? Has anyone had any experience with vit B supplements? Or something herbal to reduce nausea? For those interested, we're searching for cancer It's not Addisons (if you've seen my other thread), but it might be primary hyperparathyroidism (will know more soon, tests have been done).

I really enjoyed this, I'm certainly guilty of this sometimes (with dogs, and probably with people too). http://denisefenzi.com/2011/12/08/holiday-celebrations-and-dog-training/

Ok, I will ask the same question that I asked in the previous thread. Do you know of a method that can take a class of handlers and their dogs and get a 80% success rate in passing a AKC Novice test in ten weeks? Are you suggesting that there are Koehler method instructors who do this to modern standards? To say it again, obedience clubs are the very last place I would go to see people following the "same recipe". You probably need to visit a few more before you can make that sort of statement. Although to be fair to you, these days a lot of obedience clubs do recognise individual differences in dogs and have them do different things accordingly. Kind of proves my point though, you will not find two handlers and two dogs who progress at exactly the same rate. Different handlers, different dogs, different progress - and this holds true regardless of the method. Even where every detail is controlled (in the lab), two animals will learn at different rates. Variability is inherent, and necessary for adaptation and thus survival of the species. But why don't you know whether it is or isn't the exception? Surely a simple empirical study would very easily establish it one way or another. Why has such studies not been conducted by behaviorists? You make it sound so simple What exactly are we trying to establish? That Koehler relies on aversive conditioning? You can establish that yourself, I've already suggested how. I don't think there is really a big void in our understanding there at all. What theoretical basis would you have for suggesting that I'm wrong? Before we can conduct a study we need a reason. Believe it or not, the subject of pet dog training does come up in the literature quite a lot. You are quite right to raise the question of whether we know what works in the real world or not ("external validity"), and whether that differs from what we see in the laboratory, under tightly controlled conditions ("internal validity"). In a nutshell, the more we have of one, the less we have of the other. So we do test both, and there are studies that have done this although I can't think of any that specifically utilise the Koehler method as a basis for comparison. Needless to say, we are getting consistent real world results that methods based on positive reinforcement get better outcomes on a wide variety of criteria. Various working dog training organisations were using Koehler in the early days. I think everyone was for a while! Where results count, internal studies are conducted to determine the most appropriate method. You really don't see anyone still using the Koehler method for any sort of work where efficient, reliable training takes place. One other thing, because in science we can't test every single thing, we do rely to some extent on generalisability. If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, and flies like a duck - it's probably a duck. If you were able to come back to me and say "for these reasons, I don't think we can generalise when it comes to the Koehler long-line method, it's different because of x,y, and z" then, if you had a strong argument, I would say "you're right, we should investigate this on those grounds". But so far all we've got is your experience with Koehler, with a single dog, and some video of someone getting high scores (but no verification of how she trained that dog). Well, probability says the likelihood of one person having one great experience with one dog is pretty high. Some dogs are just good dogs. Some handlers are just good handlers. Some lives are blessed. As it is, we're having a hard time even trying to find anyone who uses the method "properly". What does that tell us? It could mean any number of things, but I'd suggest that the anecdotes we're hearing do shed some light on this mystery.

The science of learning theory is rigorous. We know how operant conditioning works, we know how to identify antecedents and consequences of behaviour. There have been studies showing that praise is (with rare exception) an ineffective reinforcer (http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pr0.1967.20.3.843) unless coupled with a primary reinforcer, but you can satisfy yourself of this in 5 minutes. Try teaching a new trick using praise and praise alone. Then try it using praise followed by food. Which one works best? We also know about the function of discriminative stimuli (for e.g you could look up what an S-delta is). We know about conditioned reinforcers (both positive and negative). We know about Sidman avoidance procedures (signaled reduction in the frequency of aversives functions as a reinforcer). We also know a tonne of stuff about the problems associated with aversive conditioning. But common sense would have to tell you - if you want to train a dog efficiently, to a level that is reliable, you do what people who have to train dogs efficiently to a high level do. That hasn't been Koehler for a very long time. How do you know this? I've never seen a dog club using Koehler long line in a group class, the comment was referring to any group of people following the same recipe, perhaps Koehler long-line is the sole exception? I doubt it though. Go to any dog club and see if every dog is doing exactly the same thing. Better still, follow up in 12 months.

Try the experiment I suggested earlier. If you can get equally good results without corrections as you can with, then you know that I'm wrong.

Sorry to keep asking questions, I keep seeing different things in your response. But my question is, on what basis should I accept the "behaviour analysts perspective"? You don't have to accept anything, but behavioural science is a rigorous process. We have literally thousands of experiments that try to dissect every little facet informing us. If you really want to satisfy yourself, find a fenced area. Use no collar or line. Use no verbal corrections or threatening postures. See how far you get with the Koehler method sans collar. Then, for good measure, repeat the experiment with a check chain, long-line, but in the absence of praise. I'm willing to bet this experiment gets much better results.

Everyone following the same recipe will get different results. Otherwise every dog at the local obedience club would progress at the same rate and get the same score in trial. Some are better at it than others. Good timing and a good sense of when to progress and how far can condition the dog to stop paying attention to the line.

The basic idea is for the dog to pay attention to what you are doing, that the right choice is to follow you. Learning theory makes this accessible to a wider range of dogs and handlers. By using positive reinforcement we can ensure that the dog is willing. We can step outside the rigid formulae and work on principle, rather than method.

But the long line is 15' for a reason. You are instructed to turn whilst the line is slack, thereby avoiding giving the dog any cues. An experienced trainer could use a shorter line without giving cues, but the length of the line was specifically chosen so that even a novice could turn without giving a cue. They know the line is there. Unless the dog is highly motivated by praise, you can't teach anything without giving a correction.

Could you explain more about "guiding corrections", please? Sure. Let's say we're using the long-line to teach a recall (this is not what itsa is referring to, but it serves a better example). It's difficult to achieve errorless learning in practice, so we're going to encounter some errors where the dog does not respond to the trained cue. We give a moment's grace to respond. Then, with a harness or flat collar, we give a little pop. When the dog starts coming in, we take up the slack in the line. If he starts to wander off or stop, we keep bringing in the line gently. The trick is to avoid teaching the dog to wait for the pop. It needs to be used very sparingly.

Hi itsadogslife, it's a good question, so thanks for bringing it up Back when Koehler came up with his long-line training it was cutting-edge. He had built on Thorndike (instrumental conditioning), Pavlov (classical conditioning), Lorenz (ethology) and Most (military trainer). Of course, since then we've learned a lot more about learning, and animal training. The theory is better developed, and thoroughly tested using the scientific method so that we know that it is both accurate, replicable, and predictive. We also know the limitations of the theory, as a budding academic in this field I pay keen attention to the limits of behavioural science. Of course, all this theory comes from collective experience. Outside of academia we have forums such as this one, dog clubs, behaviourists, and animal trainers from other fields all adding to the collective wisdom. There really isn't a big gap between theory and experience, theory is forged in the fire of experience. The long-line training that I do is different to the long-line training that the Koehler method uses because I can accommodate a wider variety of dogs and handlers by applying what we know about learning today to the method. For me, the long-line is a very effective way to control the environment whilst giving the dog freedom to make choices, as it was for Koehler. For me, the focus is on letting the dog make good choices so that he can be rewarded, rather than setting him up to make bad choices early on that can be punished. I understand that Koehler trainers don't see his method as "setting the dog up to fail", but from a behaviour analysts perspective, that is what actually happens in practice. It becomes about avoiding the correction, rather than working for the reinforcer. Another thing that you find is that a lot of dogs see the leash as a cue (or antecedent). I suspect Koehler and some of his proteges had a very deft touch and knew how to avoid this, but time and time again I've seen off-leash performance fall apart in dogs trained on a long-line. A lot of people get around that today by using an e-collar. I go to great lengths to explain to clients how to give guiding corrections appropriately without teaching the dog to wait for body language or leash signals. But really, the main difference is close attention to "are we actually reinforcing this behaviour"? Praise will not do it, 99 times out of 100. Begin training without any leash at all, no corrections of any kind, and see how far praise gets you. Some dogs are particularly motivated by praise, others not so much. I'm lucky to have one who is, but it's still not a very good reinforcer compared to food, toys, retrieves, tugs, bites or pretty much anything else. The other benefit of using positive reinforcement is that if the handler makes an error, it's almost never a problem. If the handler makes an error with aversives, it can be a big deal. A lot of people don't even notice how much trouble they have gotten themselves into. People can talk themselves into anything, particularly if someone seen as an authority tells them it's OK. Our reality is surprisingly malleable. What else? I guess things like how I raise criteria such as distance, duration, and distraction. Rate of reinforcement. Schedules of reinforcement, making the behaviour stick in the absence of reinforcement. It's actually not very complicated, and easy to teach.

I really applaud the responsibility you have taken in this matter, chuckandsteve. Unfortunately it really just comes down to careful risk management. It's possible to teach a dog to live with cats, but it's harder when the cats aren't yours, especially if you aren't there to supervise. Cat-proofing is quite difficult. It's much easier to keep a cat in than out. I've seen some people put hard plastic sheeting (acrylic or polycarbonate) around the tops of fences so that the cats have nothing to put their claws into, but they need to be very high. In some ways you may be better with easy exit points around your yard, in case a cat gets in and realises the mistake they have just made and wants to high-tail it out of there.

I must say, I would be very, VERY happy getting my Bull Terrier to 10% of the level on the video, whatever the method. Just to broaden the picture a bit, that is almost exactly what we do in my reactive and aggressive dog classes, except we don't expect the dog to walk at perfect heel and look at the handler. I used to run a class for dogs who chased bikes, same thing. We get them doing something, get them enjoying it, then gradually add distractions at a rate at which they are always succeeding. That means tossing balls in front of them, trying to tempt them with food, then riding bikes past them. Slowly at first, then speeding up. Our graduation class was off-leash on a public bike track. After all, “Reliability off lead should always be the most significant criterion when evaluating and comparing training methods.” (Bill Koehler)