Aidan3

It's true, just a little something I'm working on:

I clicked on the link, but I couldn't see what all the fuss was about.

omg

Yes, it doesn't have to be a reward coming from outside the dog, it can be an intrinsic reward, in this case via negative reinforcement.

Good point, that isn't uncommon.

... and this: I don't think it would be possible for the people to be completely neutral to the barking while they were still alive. However, observation would soon give you leads to follow and test via functional analysis. Not very practical if this is an actual problem for someone, much easier just to teach the dogs what you want instead of excessive barking, of course!

Or maybe the other way around, barks more with the person most capable of protecting him, so he can "mouth off"? I think operant conditioning could explain a greater variety of motivations than the person directly punishing or reinforcing barking. Given that barking is an operant, and it is being maintained, then it is on some schedule of reinforcement. Let's assume that the people are absolutely neutral, they don't respond to barking at all in any way (which is impossible if they are still alive, but let's ignore that). Then we might be seeing a negative reinforcement contingency, the dog "believes" that he avoids an aversive consequence by barking. In which case, we have a few different scenarios - the scenario tlc offered, the scenario I offered (only slightly tongue in cheek), or the different people are simply different stimulus conditions (cues) that purely by chance have become associated with more or less of the behaviour depending on the most salient level of threat the dog has felt while those people have been there (whether that is related or unrelated to those particular people, we don't know). But the most likely scenario is that one of the people has done something one or more times that reinforces or punishes barking.

There is always a logbook and pen or pencil, also a note explaining what it is should a "muggle" find it. Most of the caches around here are inside a sistema container, in fact it doesn't seem worth the effort to train for anything else except a sistema with a notepad inside.

You can't own semi-automatic or pump-action shot-guns but there is plenty of work for gundogs in Australia. Tassie has a duck hunting season, Vic opens it when possible. There is also Quail, Pheasant, Geese, Rabbit (everywhere in Australia), pigeon and Hare. All gundog work; find, flush and retrieve. For the hounds there are deer, fox, goat, feral cattle, roo, wallaby and even camel. Pigging is very popular here, and a variety of dogs are used to track and hold pigs. Rifles are legal and used for this sort of hunting. There are also sporting pistols, not used for hunting. Bowhunting is quite popular in Australia, though rarely with dogs.

I've had consistently good experiences training Boxers. In two cases the owners swore that the dogs were "dumb"! They don't really excel in anything so I think they are under-rated because of that, but I always find them remarkably easy to train. Quick to pick things up with enough drive to keep them going, but not so much that they get distracted. There are individual variances, of course. For problem solving, my GSD has had flashes of brilliance, including manipulating mechanical gadgets such as gate bolts, solving problems with more than one step (e.g moving furniture so that she can access a ball, or poking a ball so that it rolls, then predicting where it will roll to without being able to see it), and some evidence of actually taking note of something hours earlier and taking advantage of it later (e.g running straight to the only unlocked window in the house and opening it when my wife left the house with our other dog, having seen me open and close that window earlier, and it not being a window she had escaped through before, nor the most accessible window or the most direct route to my wife). She was also quite difficult to raise, as you can probably imagine. If you want human-like cognition, you can't go past... a cat. Freaky intelligent, but it's a bit like being a black-belt in a martial art. The more you know, the less you have to use. They get everything they want from the absolute minimum effort.

I've only done three so far but I already know I'm hooked. Corvus might be able to explain the addiction using Panksepp's SEEKing circuit I saw a Peregrine Falcon this weekend while searching for a cache, in an area I frequently walk the dogs, but on the other side of the hill.

They do, don't they! Even after you've made jam or chutney, you can still smell the promite. Thanks for the offer on the jug

From browsing the geocaching forums, I think that is what most of the dogs are scenting. There is no shortage of caches out there, even in unpopulated areas, so you could pick and choose ones that had been more recently found by others if that was your aim, I think that would be much easier to train for too. Some of the dogs seem to be figuring it out on their own, without any training. Check it out, m-j, I think you'd enjoy. Go to www.geocaching.com and put your postcode in the search box on the main page. Then when you get the list of caches, click on "view in Google Maps" for a visual representation. It's a real eye-opener. The thing that really turned me off tracking with dogs was meeting up regularly with others to lay and age tracks. I do lots of stuff with my dogs, but I do it on my time, whenever I get the chance. I can see this being something that I can just fit in to my schedule, involve my family and my dogs, and we all get something out of it.

Will do, good idea. I heard some talk about that in the prison down here, it's a big problem apparently. I know someone who seemed to have no trouble updating his facebook page from inside, apparently corrective services don't routinely check this sort of thing. He was also running a business Good exercise, thanks! I was planting foreign objects, one of my dogs was getting pretty good at discriminating but it's been at least a couple of years.

Great info, thanks I just bought a couple of new containers at lunch time... :p will swap them for some old ones at home. I knew there would have to be a precedent, I'll look that up. I checked the geocache forums, apparently others are doing it but nearly all are either following human scent or believe the dog is sniffing out the cache materials but are probably following human scent (training protocols are non-existent or rely on very good luck/smart dog). I had trained both of my dogs to indicate plastic pegs, but in all cases they had recently been handled and placed by a human so there is a scent trail. The good thing about doing this with a GPSr is that there are tons of aged caches out there in virtually any environment.

Great ideas, thanks everyone. Tea is what I have used in the past, wasn't sure how long it would last or whether it might be attractive to very civilised possums? Delving into the spice rack, pepper or cloves would do the trick. I might put some samples out there and see if the possums get into them. I've just started geocaching. I took my GSD with me yesterday and she started following a track as we neared the cache. It was almost certainly a coincidence (a wallaby had probably been through earlier, or maybe a walker), but it gave me the idea. The caches are usually tricky to find, despite having a GPS co-ordinate. For e.g, one find yesterday was on rocky ground with no remarkable trees. I knew the cache was under rocks at the base of a tree, which wasn't particularly helpful! After sleeping on it, I realised the thing to do would be to train the dogs to target common cache container types on cue. "Sistema" brand plastic containers seem to be the most popular, also tupperware. There are a big variety of container materials used, but most of them are plastic of some sort. Last night I was trying to think of something that would be unique and fulfill all the criteria for a cache, but I realise now this is probably not necessary.

I'm looking for the best, safe, readily available odour source that can be kept in a marked location for 6-12 months at a time. They will be kept dry. They must not be attractive to animals, including ants. They will most likely be hidden under rocks and in vegetation. I have a couple of ideas that may or may not work, but I won't mention them just yet, sometimes being given a suggestion can interfere with coming up with a better idea

There's a builder who lives near me who had a BC named Steven. Never "Steve", always the more formal "Steven".

Sometimes I whistle, it works. I don't know another way.

That is not an example of predatory drift. Picture dogs playing happily, then the body language of one changes leading up to an attack which may or may not be fatal. e.g down at a friend's place with her 4 Borzoi, 2 GSDs, a small BC mix that a neighbour had found and was trying to locate the owner, and my Golden. All lovely, well socialised dogs who are used to playing in large groups. Dogs were all playing happily, then BC mix yips (in fun) and all of a sudden is being pursued by 4 Borzoi, 2 GSDs and a Golden Retriever, collectively looking like a pack of wolves pursuing a deer that had split off from it's herd. Thankfully smaller dog is agile and there is plenty of "stuff" around giving us time to step in, whereby other dogs "switch off" very quickly and resume being the lovable family pets and show dogs that they were.

If I'm guilty of anything, it's caninising my humans. If I really want my daughter to do something, I'll use non-verbal cues, there's nothing to debate with those.

I don't know, we study love and relationships quite thoroughly from a scientific perspective in psychology. No field-work assignments though It's probably better defined than "intelligence", but less well defined than "personality".

I agree. I'm not even sure that Skinner thought that way, he certainly did acknowledge the role of emotions and other "private behaviours" in animals. What Skinner did was to focus on the things we could measure empirically. I don't know why people take that to mean that nothing happens except that which you can observe.

http://www.dolforums.com.au/index.php?showtopic=210455 <- good info in that thread Pointers can do almost anything, they're even being used in sled-dog teams.