Salukifan

I think the short answer to the question is when the dogs' welfare suffers because of lack of attention. For some people one dog is too many.

I've seen plenty of very friendly dogs whose back yards I would NOT enter if the owners weren't home. I have one myself. Glad you are seeking professional help. You can move beyond speculation to deal with the issue. Aidan Bindoff would be my recommendation in TAS.

Dog was in its own yard so I'd expect the consequences from council to be negligible. That said, I think your friends are deluding themselves if they think this was "playful" behaviour. Jumping and excited dogs can be motivated by aggression too. The dog was not trying to bite? It DID bite and the sooner they acknowledge it, the better. I"d be suggesting they get some professional help before the dog goes anywhere NEAR the neighbour.

I wish the Taramuke website didn't make me shudder. Slick, very well set up but still a volume breeder IMO. 6 litters of pups due for rehoming in the next 2 months. Early desexer and overseas shipper. Has a USA dog breeding business too. Did business with Rutland Manor. Only breeder in the world of "paddy melon labradoodles"? No thanks. I don't care how many stories of dogs saving people and helping autistic kids they post although I note that to date Taloodles have placed only one dog with an autistic child.

Get it 100 % reliable before training with any kind of distraction and when you do take the step up, add a long line to ensure you get the desired performance. Some would suggest that you should increase the degree of performance required and only reward it when you get it but this is one behaviour I would ALWAYS jackpot. And if you don't get it... bugger off in the other direction.. all dogs will test boundaries and you need to make sure that blowing you off is not rewarding. There's that pesky negative reinforcement again.

You will not get an effective tooth clean above the gum line without a GA. God only knows I wish my peridontist would knock ME out for that but I have to get by on a local. I really struggle with one of my dog's teeth. She gets the same diet as the others, plenty of raw bones and she needs annual cleans to prevent the onset of gum disease. She's 16 next month and going strong. I weigh the risk of GA against the risk of gum disease and its impact on her health generally and opt for the cleaning. I do think it is harder with the smaller dogs and even worse for dogs that don't have scissor bites.

I gather then that you don't take group classes? Your situation is clearly quite different to the classes I trained. Up to 12 handlers and dogs, usually novices and with varying degrees of control (and dogs of varying temperament). Multiple pieces of equipment and sets requiring a lot of movement between them for me and at the lower levels, very hands on for me helping dogs and handlers learn equipment (holding chute ends up, controlling rate of see saw fall etc). My dogs were usually at home. I needed eyes in the back of my head to ensure handlers were doing the right thing :laugh: And yes, I broke up scuffles between dogs and dogs did run away and get in other dogs faces. All this despite control and temperament tests prior to training although those tests sure did weed out most of the issues.

I can only talk to poodles but gluten does also seem to trigger a lot of yeast based infections.

Training tip: put the treat you want to use in the same hand as the clicker. I like the I-clicks best. Then you click and take the treat out of that hand. :) You can replenish the treat in your hand from your bait bag after treating. If you are on the front porch, given that he is a little dog, you can attach his lead to a chair and sit with him. OK toys are out. You need the mother of all food treats.. roast chicken? Steak? Somethign super yummy he gets at no other time. What is the behaviour you propose to train to replace the barking? You need to start training this with the dogs at some distance and work up to them being closer.. at the moment before he is triggered to react, that is when you ask for the behaviour but you need to train it first without distraction than build up to cueing it on the front porch with distractions.

Unless of course, you include the allergen in the raw diet. Or are you suggesting that dogs are only allergic to cooked food?

What response are you looking for. You are teaching her that the click means "desired behaviour, reward coming". She doesn't have to externalise that response so a 'massive reaction' would be unlikely IMO. I'd say if you've not been overdoing it and are offering treats of sufficient value to her, she should have "got it". But here's a threshold question - what do you think this pup finds truely rewarding? What's her strongest drive? I'll offer you the best piece of advice I can give to anyone starting out with training a dog. When things aren't going according to plan, eliminate every possiblity at your end of the leash before blaming the dog. The other one is to put down the books, play with your pup and let her be a baby before really homing in on training. The lessons she needs right now are toilet training, trust and that you are her family. The first behaviour you really want to ingrain is the recall. Clicker training is of limited value in training a recall IMO. Don't burn her out overdoing the formal training just yet. Have fun wtith her.

Dog Walkers find US$10 million in gold coins! A Northern California couple out walking their dog on their property stumbled across a modern-day bonanza: $US10 million ($11.09 million) in rare, mint-condition gold coins buried in the shadow of an old tree. Nearly all of the 1427 coins, dating from 1847 to 1894, are in uncirculated, mint condition, said David Hall, co-founder of Professional Coin Grading Service of Santa Ana, which recently authenticated them. Although the face value of the gold pieces only adds up to about $27,000, some of them are so rare that coin experts say they could fetch nearly $1 million apiece. "I don't like to say once-in-a-lifetime for anything, but you don't get an opportunity to handle this kind of material, a treasure like this, ever," said veteran numismatist Don Kagin, who is representing the finders. "It's like they found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow." $US10 million worth of coins were found by a couple walking their dog. Photo: AP Kagin, whose family has been in the rare-coin business for 81 years, would say little about the couple other than that they are husband and wife, are middle-aged and have lived for several years on the rural property in California's Gold Country, where the coins were found. They have no idea who put them there, he said. Advertisement The pair are choosing to remain anonymous, Kagin said, in part to avoid a renewed gold rush to their property by modern-day prospectors armed with metal detectors. They also don't want to be treated any differently, said David McCarthy, chief numismatist for Kagin Inc of Tiburon. "Their concern was this would change the way everyone else would look at them, and they're pretty happy with the lifestyle they have today," he said. They plan to put most of the coins up for sale through Amazon while holding onto a few keepsakes. They'll use the money to pay off bills and quietly donate to local charities, Kagin said. Before they sell them, they are loaning some to the American Numismatic Association for its National Money Show, which opens on Thursday in Atlanta. What makes their find particularly valuable, McCarthy said, is that almost all of the coins are in near-perfect condition. That means that whoever put them into the ground likely socked them away as soon as they were put into circulation. Because paper money was illegal in California until the 1870s, he added, it's extremely rare to find any coins from before that of such high quality. "It wasn't really until the 1880s that you start seeing coins struck in California that were kept in real high grades of preservation," he said. The coins, in $5, $10 and $20 denominations, were stored more or less in chronological order in six cans, McCarthy said, with the 1840s and 1850s pieces going into one can until it was filed, then new coins going into the next one and the next one after that. The dates and the method indicated that whoever put them there was using the ground as their personal bank and that they weren't swooped up all at once in a robbery. Although most of the coins were minted in San Francisco, one $5 gold piece came from as far away as Georgia. Kagin and McCarthy would say little about the couple's property or its ownership history, other than it's located in Gold Country, a sprawling, picturesque and still lightly populated section of north-central California that extends east of Sacramento to the Nevada line, running through the hills and valleys of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill set off the California Gold Rush of 1848. The coins had been buried by a path the couple had walked for years. On the day they found them last spring, the woman had bent over to examine an old rusty can that erosion had caused to pop slightly out of the ground. "Don't be above bending over to check on a rusty can," Kagin said she told him. They were located on a section of the property the couple nicknamed Saddle Ridge, and Kagin is calling the find the Saddle Ridge Hoard. He believes it could be the largest such discovery in US history. One of the largest previous finds of gold coins was $1 million worth uncovered by construction workers in Jackson, Tenn., in 1985. More than 400,000 silver dollars were found in the home of a man who died in 1974 and were later sold intact for $7.3 million. Gold coins and ingots said to be worth as much as $130 million were recovered in the 1980s from the wreck of the SS Central America. But historians knew roughly where that gold was because the ship went down off the coast of North Carolina during a hurricane in 1857. Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/dog-walkers-find-us10m-worth-of-rare-gold-coins-20140226-hvdv3.html#ixzz2uORs5563

That's because the dog has never learned consequence for the wrong behaviour. If corrections were used in conjunction with positive reinforcement, you wouldn't need to settle her down with the mat etc when a dog is trained using methods incorporating double reinforcement. It's my choice, that I don't use correction/physical force techniques in my dog training. So what would you do in a situation like that...bash the dog with a piece of 4 x 2...then give it a treat. For me, positive reinforcement works well & if I choose to teach my dog to lay quietly on a mat while I am instructing a class in agility, it's a win win situation for both me & my dog. It won't be if another dog gets in her face or has a go at her. Why not put simply her in a crate? That way you can completely devote your attention to your class and there is no risk to your dog from others.

Double post

So far the OP has been distracting her dog from approaching dogs. I don't consider that this is training her dog not to bark at them. I think the effectivenes of whatever marker is being used is a side issue. Could this be done without an aversive? Provided she can get her dog's attention and cue the dog to offer an alternative and better behaviour (eg. look at me) then YES. But this IS a JRT, a reactive, vocal breed. This is natural, territorial canine behaviour. OP wants to train her dog to do something that comes very very naturally and this is not a dog with a naturally biddable temperament. She needs to have the mother of all motivators to obtain the desired behaviour and to reward it when she gets it before she can cue it. Squeaky rat.. given at no other times? Squeak to get dog's attention, reward with rat when dog has passed and no barking??? Then the squeak is the cue and getting the rat is the positive reinforcement. Who knows, the dog may end up offering the behaviour when a dog approaches - wouldn't be the first time provided you can find a motivator more rewarding than a good barking at an approaching dog. It is not always possible to have a clicker with you. They are not permiitted in trialling situations for a start. I think it is perfectly acceptable and effective to train an alternative marker such as "yes" for such situations and frankly seeing a lot of novices fumble with clicker, treat and lead, possibly easier for some folk too.

This is my preferred method for those situations where the pup has got a bit carried away and is grabbing at moving objects whatever they may be. So I would use an interrupt noise - like uh-uh, which will often make the pup pause, then go very still and turn away from the pup - maybe for a couple of seconds, then re-direct the pup onto something legitimate to grab - not necessarily a toy as such - could be cardboard tube, plastic drink bottle. There's a bit of a dilemma here - do we want the pup to learn that dog teeth do not go on human skin - in that case, IMHO we have to be totally consistent in never allowing it - inhibited bite or not. It's a much clearer rule for everyone - pup and human. Or do we want bite inhibition, where the pup learns to use his mouth safely - that seems to me to be what the pup is taught in the litter. Certainly when you see even adult dogs playing bitey-face, there is no rule about "not using your teeth on dog skin" - the rule then becomes "inhibit your bite when you're playing." While I certainly want my dogs to have bite inhibition among themselves, I don't really want even an inhibited bite on humans - hence the "no teeth on human skin" rule. Ian Dunbar recommends complete lack of contact for pet dogs. Mainly because the challenge of teaching appropriate mouthing is more complex for owners. It is possible to teach "soft only" but for a novice owner, avoidance is a an easier lesson to train.

agree. Apparently there are only two options in dog training; use a clicker or bash the dog with a 4x2. While it is wearing a prong collar and/or being zapped with an e-collar too Used to pee myself laughing at the idea oft trotted out here that K9Pro was Mr Prong and Mr "Fry them with the E-Collar" and that was all he did... especially after seeing him work my friend's nervous poodle swinging a flarfy toy.

Because they don't understand the concept of appropriate aversives or the fact that it is scientifically proven that dogs learn faster with a combination of positive and negative reinforcement. And of course this is all fuelled by the "purely positive" concept of training and those who espouse it. Personal fave "telling a dog no three times is abuse". Used to be standing joke among dog folk I knew that you could always spot a purely positive trainer - they couldn't do anything with their dogs. Quite a few "positive trainers" use negative reinforcement - they just don't call it that. Example.. dog breaks at the start or runs off on agility course, trainer declares "game over" and exists the course and the dog gets no more time on the course.. THAT is negative reinforcement. Dog receives (to it) and adverse consequence for its behaviour. Susan Garratt says it and I agree "positive should not be permissive" and most balanced trainers lean towards positive reinforcenent but understand that on occasions and aversive is called for. Why halve your training toolbox to eliminate tools that work and that are not abusive. You don't have to it a dog to correct it. What do people think "uh uh" said to a pup is?? Dogs need boundaries and negative reinforcement is what tells them where those boundaries lie.

Not the same. Worse. If my dogs stray and are impounded in NSW, they will not face a death sentence based on their appearance. Sadly, some dogs do. If you have a dog at risk of BSL being imposed, you need to guard that dog's safety accordingly. You need to socialise, train, manage and contain to avoid impoundment at all costs. Puppy buyers need to understand the consequences of BSL for them and more importantly for their dogs if they are at risk of a declaration. BSL is a crock but while it remains in force and people continue to breed and buy dogs who are at risk, then Team Dog ain't going to lack for work. Owners need to step up where they can to protect their dogs. This is absolutely a case where an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure.

Blooming brilliant speech. Great point how sending rangers hunting after dogs based on appearance, diverts dog management away from actual behaviours which put community safety at risk. It's as stupid as giving police officers a list of physical attributes to concentrate on, in order to haul humans off to jail. May Ruby win through! Great result but I would point out that Ruby only came to the attention of the rangers when she was impounded for escaping her yard. A dog at large is a risk to itself and does potentially cause risk to the community. I hope her owners are appropriately grateful to Team Dog for the work put in to securing her safety AND that they take the necessary steps to ensure she never escapes again. One escape is understandable.. any more would not be.

The difficulty I have with redirecting mouthing is that distraction and redirection is not actually teaching the pup that mouth on people is not acceptable. Offering something else bright and shiny isn't the same as giving a boundary here. Sandgrubber I suspect that you telegraph this message to your pups quietly and consistently, even if subconsciously because I have had the unfortunate experience of meeting an adolescent Lab with no bite inhibition and it was PAINFUL. This is what we are teaching –bite inhibition or even more plainly that any mouthing of people is simply unacceptable. You only have a limited timeframe to do it and if you don't do it, it is a lesson a dog may NEVER learn. So as pup owners we have to consistent whenever a pup does it in teaching that it is simply not on. So my advice, firmly and plainly teach the lesson. I don't have mouthy breeds but my preferred method is to encircle the muzzle with my hand and apply sufficient pressure for the pup to break contact. Generally this is not extreme and no different to what Mumma dog would do on her pup's muzzles if pressed. Pups get the message very quickly. You should also avoid play that winds a pup up to the point where you get a mouthing frenzy – this is where other more appropriate games would be useful. This is one of the reasons I would caution against allowing the pup to tug on clothes or hands. If you wouldn't want it in an adult dog, don't allow it with the pup EVER. Lots of folk have learned that one the hard way.

She needs to expose her son to non-shedding dogs to see if he reacts to them or not. Some folk do No Labradoodle I"ve seen comes close to being 15kg - most are larger. Most are also pretty high strung. Lagotti are also larger dogs. A mini poodle may be an option but frankly she needs to talk to people experienced with placing such dogs. Does she really want an "assistance dog" or an even tempered pet? Low reactivity and high tolerance for a full on kid would rule out many small dogs I can think of, including quite a few poodles and schnauzers. CKCS are often recommended for this role but they do shed. So do Whippets, most of whom are great with kids but may not train well if a genuine job is required of the dog. Beagles are another possibility if hair is OK - most are very even tempered. Whippets do best with even tempered owners. If this child is prone to any kind of outbursts, I'd choose another breed. They can get literally sick to the stomach with stress in some homes. I would recommend a mature dog over a pup.

Check local council regs before jumping to conclusions. What you've heard and what the real story is may be quite different. It would certainly be an Australian first as far as I know. Aren't the regs online?

The worst kind of attention seeking behaviour IMO - one that placed goat and dogs at risk. I'd have called the rangers.

Have his thryroid levels checked. The starting on Propalin may not be the cause of the issue.