Aidan3

Does the dog want to go out the door?

It's worth thinking about what the difference between "emitted" and "elicited" is at this stage. Early on it's hard to tell them apart, later you will think it becomes clear, and then if you go on to learn more it becomes difficult again! The definitions that I regurgitated were succinct and accurate, and worth learning because no example will cover the breadth and depth of operant and classical conditioning. The clicker is exactly like the bell in the example I gave in that it is paired with food (and elicits the same response as food). However, we use it for operant conditioning, where it "bridges" the gap between response and consequence and is known as a "bridging stimulus". Stop following up with food and pretty soon it will do nothing much at all, as classical conditioning predicts. It will also cease to have effects on operants that are "emitted"

How long have you not been letting her pull?

What is your understanding so far? From Burton, Westen, & Kowalski (2009) "In classical conditioning, an environmental stimulus leads to a learned response, through the pairing of an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) with a previously neutral conditioned stimulus (CS), or learned reflex. The result is a conditioned response, or learned reflex". So in the famous example, the UCS would be food and the CS would be the bell. Bell is paired with food and later dog learns to salivate in response to the bell alone. Burton, Westen, & Kowalski (2009) again "Operant conditioning means learning to operate on the environment and produce a consequence. Operants are behaviours that are emitted rather than elicited by the environment" (emphasis mine). So a dog might learn to bark (an operant) because it produces attention from the owner (a consequence).

Do we even know for a fact that Craig Murray doesn't ever use food? Grace1979, your dog is definitely food motivated or your dog would be dead. That is not to say that your dog is necessarily going to work for food in normal class training situations without some conditioning. I've never had a single dog not work for food at all although sometimes it's expedient to find something else, and sometimes you're necessarily working with reinforcers that make food less attractive. In any case it is not necessary and I would expect one of Craig's trainers to get results that you will be pleased with with your dog, so best of luck.

Just for a bit of added perspective, it doesn't sound like there was any real damage. With some good help right now (early), a lot of consistency, careful management and time, your odds of having them co-exist are actually not too bad. Just don't become complacent down the track.

Some call it "cheating", some say it's "being smart the smart one". I'm saying nothing.

Thanks for the reminder, I bought a scooter with a reasonably long wheelbase from the tip shop for $4 (always haggle) and started teaching my GSD to pull it. Rugby has started to feel too safe and predictable for me so I might pull the harness back out and give it another go.

No, long story, demonstrates my incompetence so I'm keeping it a secret I've fixed my location, wasn't so hard after all. That's exactly the sort of thing we need to measure. If it appears to be happening greater than chance you know you're on the right track and supplementation hasn't been in vein. If this keeps up for a couple of weeks you're probably on a winner in the long term.

Aversion certainly can be used strategically to minimise stress. In order to avoid an aversive stimulus the dog learns to do something specific. Knowing how to avoid the punisher leads to a reduction in stress, so long as everything goes to plan and the dog learns to avoid the punisher very quickly. Whether or not this addresses the anxiety felt from being left alone remains in question. Simply seeing compliance is no indication that this anxiety has been alleviated. That's not to say that it won't, but how do you know? Another approach is to use "owner being out of sight" as the aversive stimulus in an escape procedure. In this case the owner returns only when the dog is staying in position. The dog learns that the way to bring the owner back is to stay sitting, then the duration can be built up. In order to do this you use a tether so that if the dog breaks from position he can't go anywhere and the owner can just stay out of sight until the dog is sitting again, at which point you reduce the duration and explain how it works again. This article explains the procedure in detail: http://www.clickertraining.com/node/1556

About the same amount, start off with just a little potato just in case, build it up over a few days. I'd like to see his stomach settle first. He might even respond to just the addition of the tryptophan, the addition of carbs is a "belt and braces" approach, covering all bases. Exercise and natural sunlight are important too, there are a number of factors.

If you don't think he will get used to the change in diet and if he tolerates pumpkin quite well then you could use boiled, mushed pumpkin and potato instead of oats. The glycemic load of pumpkin on it's own probably won't be enough, but with a bit of extra carbohydrate from potato it might do the trick. I'm very interested to hear reports from GSD owners. So far it seems to work well for GSDs, but that just could be my observational bias. It's feasible that some of the behasvioural traits selected in GSDs could unintentionally involve serotonin.

There is probably already quite a lot of tryptophan in her diet (especially the egg), she might just need the carbs to make use of what is already there.

In the Tolman and Konzik experiment it was postulated that the rats who were allowed to freely wander the maze for the first 10 days formed cognitive maps of the maze, so when an incentive was introduced to go to the end of the maze they had that store of information to draw on. When the reward was introduced their learning was made observable. The delay was that there were 10 trials prior to a reinforced trial, at which point they quickly caught up to the control rats who had been reinforced since the first trial. Latent learning refers to learning which is not yet observable. I suppose the idea of letting the dogs rest and think about what they have just done relies on the theory that dogs might think about what they have just been doing and learn more about it, and that this learning is not observed until later trials. So it might be a good idea to give them time to reflect immediately after training, to take advantage of recency effects on cognition.

My recollection is that the food was found at the end of the maze, so that they would seek the food at the end of the maze when placed at the beginning.

Tolman and Honzik, 1930. A group of rats were left to freely wander a maze for 10 days with no food rewards. A control group were given food rewards on each trial. A third group did not receive food rewards at any time. The control group learned to navigate the maze without too many errors very quickly. On the 11th day the experimental group were given a food reward upon completion of the maze. The next two trials they completed the maze with about the same number of errors as the control group. The third group (no rewards at any point) maintained a high level of errors.

If you go to clickertraining.com and search for an article on "separation anxiety" written by me, there is an exercise called the "Calming Yo Yo" which you would likely get excellent results from if you follow it to the letter.

Did he eat anything unusual prior to this episode?

The oats are there as a carbohydrate source to strategically raise insulin, shuttling off the larger aminos to muscles and organs. You could use fruit or mashed potato as alternatives, you'd need to do the math though. No other veggies would have enough glycaemic load to make a difference. I'd stick with porridge or boiled rice unless you know this dog has a particular allergy. Lessened anxiety is much better than whatever benefit not feeding grains offers and oats seem to be well tolerated even by dogs who are intolerant of some other grains.

With the exception of champions (e.g obedience, field, retrieving etc) who are so good they get to put their working title at the front. Then it will say O.Ch, T. Ch, FT.Ch etc Shows I don't know much about all the titles and intricacies of it It's a relatively rare thing and has undergone several changes in recent years, it wasn't always done that way here.

So what, specifically, would you like them to do instead of that and how might you train that?

I own two pure-breds and I have been dog-snobbed too, there are snobs everywhere for everything.

I'm actually writing a piece on matching law as it applies to recalls as we speak, and in the course of my research I uncovered this gem which is a good introduction: http://users.ipfw.edu/abbott/314/MatchingLaw.html

Like I said, impossible to tell from a couple of photos, the bit that concerned me was the location of the bites on Zeddy. Whether one dog has the upper hand or not, I do not like to see bites to the legs, belly or throat (even from the underdog). The fact that they are superficial is a good sign. The fact that the two dogs do not normally appear to be stressed around each other is also a good sign. Worth getting an opinion from someone who can see them together and get a good history from you. I do feel for you, and have some personal understanding of your situation.

It sounds like you've come up with a solution, but I thought I would offer this anyway. The good thing about using a clicker is that you can mark whatever backwards movement you get and shape from there. So a dog who tends to go into a sit is actually a good thing, you just have to click before they get that far.