Staranais

Staff'n'Toller pretty much covered it earlier, Kelpie-i: Not something I'd want a stranger doing to my dog, and in fact, Andoria herself started the last (deleted) thread because she was unsure about these methods and was apparently concerned at the negative changes in her dog's behaviour since this 'therapy'.

I didn't notice any difference when I changed my dog from a commercial "dog food" diet to a mostly BARF diet. I suspect that is because I mostly fed a very good quality commercial "dog food". I imagine if you fed a low quality commerical dog food that contained artificial colours and carbs, you might see a big difference when you switch to BARF. But you'd probably also see a big difference if you switched to a great quality commerical dog food that had no sugar, no grains and no artificial colourants. Just my 2 cents. :D

You could ask your guests to completely ignore him when he's rowdy, and only pay him attention when he's polite. However, this might be hard for them to do if he's persistant or rough with his attention getting behaviour. You could consider crating him when guests arrive, and only letting him out when he's calm. If he gets over excited, pop him back in the crate. It's not a solution, but it would manage the problem. Just out of interest, how old is he? What other training have you done with him? You could try teaching a non compatible behaviour (e.g sit). When he comes to jump up, try telling him to "sit" and only reward him with attention and chase games when he complies. If you don't know how to teach him things like this, consider going to a good obedience school or engaging the services of a good professional trainer. I'd personally also look at the amount of exercise and mental stimulation you're giving your dog - giving him more exercise and more mental stimulation might help him stop being so rowdy and over excited. Remember that huskies are energetic, smart dogs that were bred to run for miles every day - if you don't encourage your dog to channel his energy appropriately, he'll use that energy in destructive ways! I'd also consider starting the NILIF programme to reassert your leadership (do a search on the forum), and using the triangle of temptation programme (sticky at the top of the forum). *oops - crossposted with you, Erny!*

It's very very hard for one person to break up a serious dog fight by themselves. It's also extremely dangerous, especially if one dog redirects his frustration on to the human. I wouldn't expect your flatmate to be able to do it, and to be frank, it's unfair to expect her to try. To break up a dog fight, it's best to have at least two people. If you have three people, get two people holding the back legs of the dogs (wheelbarrow style) and have the person in the middle try to separate them (use a breakstick, splash of cold water to startle them, choking one off with a flat collar) so that the others can wheel the dogs apart and away. If you only have two people, your best option is to have one person grab the aggressor by the back legs and the other person attempt to get him off (the other dog will hopefully flee when he's free to do so). Please don't get your face anywhere near those fangs. Be aware that breaking up a dog fight is dangerous. Be aware that either dog could bite you by mistake. Be aware that either dog could redirect and attack you when you prevent him from getting to the other dog (even friendly dogs can do this to their owners when they're frustrated or stressed). IMO it's way better to prevent dog fights from happening, by keeping the dogs separated when they're not being strictly supervised. When they're out together, keep an eye on them and break up any likely altercations before they become fights. If you don't have enough control of your dogs to do that then it's probably best to only have one out at a time until the problem is sorted. I personally wouldn't let your flatmate let both dogs out together while she is home alone. Have her crate one dog while the other dog is out, alternating dogs. You really don't want to come home to seriously injured dogs, or worse, a seriously injured flatmate. I really do recommend you get a good professional behaviourist in to help remedy this behaviour. This site may be of some use to you: http://www.leerburg.com/dogfight.htm

What a great thread! I can't believe I missed it the first time around. A compiled list of all these soclialisation suggestions would make a great sticky.

I don't know much about training in drive yet, so my answer might not help you very much. But to me, it sounds like you have two problems - firstly Tia genuinely just does not really understand the exercise yet (does not understand that stay means "stay exactly in that position until you are released"), and secondly she has no faith of being rewarded unless the reward is apparent before she performs. IMO, to help her understand the exercise you should make the release very clear to her - follow the release command with you throwing up your arms, jumping around, acting excited, producing the reward. On the other hand if she starts to break before you release her, calmly give a NRM, put her back in position, and ask her again for a stay. Make those two different consequences as clear cut to her as you can. Remember to set her up for success - she should be achieving the release/reward at least 80% of the time. If she is breaking more often than that, consider asking for a shorter stay so she can be successful. For the second issue, when you say "using food", I'm wondering if you mean that you're bribing her with the food (showing it to her beforehand?) If so, you need to switch to rewarding instead of bribing. In other words, you need to make her understand that the "stay" command will always be rewarded, even if she doesn't see the reward beforehand. To do that I'd personally drop back to really short stays but only produce the food (or the tug) after she's done the stay successfully and you've released her with your release command. Again, aim for her achieving 80% success - if she's not getting that, then lower your criteria. Doesn't matter if you have to do 2 second stays for a fortnight before you can raise the criteria, just think of it as laying a really good foundation for long, solid stays later down the track. Hope that helped some, and sorry if some of it was kind of obvious - I'm not sure how experienced you are.

Don't know if anyone has suggested this yet. But when he goes to mount, why not give a loud NRM then immediately collect him for a brief time out? Once he learns that mounting means he loses the chance to play with other dogs, he might be less likely to do it. You'll probably need to start in fairly low key environments (e.g only one other dog) so that you can get his attention while he's playing. It's just a thought - I haven't done this myself. Have done something similar with my SBT and the cats though (putting your mouth on the kitty earns a time out) and it worked fine.

Would you consider crating her when you're not home to supervise (as long as you're not gone for long), or locking her in a 'safe' room? I'm just a little concerned for her safety if she decides to chew on an electrical wire or something when you're gone. Also, her chewing on things when you're not there to tell her 'no' is only reinforcing the behaviour, IMO. Also, as well as saying 'no' when she's doing the wrong thing, have you tried redirecting her to chew on something acceptable like a dog toy? Wiggle the toy in front of her like you're having a great time, and praise her when she starts to chew on that. If you teach her what things are acceptable to chew, you may find she chews less often on unacceptable things. Hopefully some of the other people here will have other ideas too.

Can you write a review of the product for us here, Lynnie?

Believe me, I do know! I have an 8 year old staffy bull boy who I adopted as an adult - he jumps at the chance to fight with strange dogs if he thinks he'll get away with it, and will cheerfully do them serious injury if allowed to do so. I honestly sometimes think that he views every other canine as a giant squeaky chew toy put on earth for his amusement! Do you do competitive obedience etc with your staffies Emmark, or just show them in conformation? (Sorry for the OT!)

Where do I start? The "Alpha Roll" is based on flawed ideas about how wolf society works (wolves don't normally push each other over to prove their dominance, they don't alpha roll each other). The "Alpha Roll" can get you seriously bitten in the face or arms if your dog decides he doesn't want to be rolled, or if he reacts fearfully to being rolled. The "Alpha Roll" is unnecessary. There are other ways of getting respect from your dog that don't involve placing yourself in physical danger. NILIF, ToT, tethering, Shirly Chong's Mindgames, Leerburg's "Groundwork", Jan Fennel's "Amichien bonding", etc. Most importantly, though - even if you use this technique on your own dog it's still not a good idea to recommend it on a forum to other people, because you don't know if their dog is more aggressive or more fearful than your dog, and they could get hurt trying to apply your advice. Hope that helps.

How many dogs do you have? Just one of my own at the moment. How often do you train etc. Several times a day. Do you find it hard to train all of them? Since I have only the one right now, not at all. However, I'm planning on getting another dog in the next year or two, and chances are it will be considerably harder to have two dogs (since my current dog can be extremely dog aggressive when he thinks he can get away with it, there's a reasonable chance that the two dogs will have to be completely seperated when I'm not actively supervising them). What are their rough ages - ie: are some retired, do you have multiple dogs at trialling level? Nearly 8 years old. I got him at 4 years old with behavioural issues, so he only has his CGC so far. I'm just starting to get him into tracking and obedience trialling, so hopefully we'll be able to compete a little before he's too old. Do you have multiple breeds to train or do you only have the one breed? Any preferences in working style? My next dog will likely be a different breed (at the moment I'm leaning towards a german or belgian shepherd), but I'll probably get another shelter staffy as a pet when I lose my SBT. He's just so much fun - very confident, loves absolutely everyone, and is always on the go.

NILIF (search the forum) Tot (sticky at the top) Seperating the dogs when you're not there to supervise Behaviourist (consider K9force, he's near Sydney & I hear he's great).

Great, thanks! I'm after a 3/4 - 1 inch wide, 6 foot long, really good quality leather leash. Is that the police type one? I can deposit money through paypal if that suits you - just PM me.

Yes, I can sympathise! When I got my stafford as an adult adoptee, he had no idea what to do when I chucked treats at him. He just let them bounce off his face, then picked them up off the floor. We taught him by getting his attention first, then saying "catch", then lobbing the treat at him really slowly (like teaching a small child to catch a ball, that kind of speed). It took him a few days before he realised that "catch" meant a treat was being thrown at his head, and a few weeks before he really got the co-ordination to catch the treat every time. Now he's a pro!

*bump*

Sas, I agree will all your reasons! The main reason I stopped going to the two obedience/agility clubs I tried out was that the classes just weren't organised enough. I got sick of having to always be on the look out for uncontrolled offleash dogs who would pop out of nowhere and attempt to play with my (then highly) dog aggressive dog, for instructors who encouraged people to take their dogs over to 'socialise' with my dog without asking me, and with having dogs roaming around ignored on the end of a flexileash. The chaotic atmosphere prevented us even using the classes as effective socialisation, since they were just too unpredictable and could easily have gotten very dangerous. Classes were also generally too long to keep my dog's interest - I'd rather have them half hour long maximum, not a whole hour. The instructors were generally pretty inflexible in the methods they allowed in their classes. Some of the more positive ones would act upset and shocked at the idea of my dog wearing a check chain or pinch collar, despite the fact it improved his behaviour and I clearly knew how to use it, and would try to guilt trip me into putting him onto a 'humane' halti, or into ditching the collar entirely and 'trusting' my dog aggressive dog offleash. Some even got upset if I verbally corrected him. I imagine it would be similarly annoying to go to a traditional club and have the instructors not let you use toys or food to motivate your dog and insisting you used old fashioned methods, like Sas described. There was also no system for referring 'problem' dogs to further training at either club. As they were mostly volunteer-run clubs, I definately didn't expect any of the instructors to be experts at treating serious fear or serious aggression problems, but it would have been good if they were able to recognise the problems that were out of their league and had some system of refering those particular students to good private trainers. That's my whinge over, anyway. We now train on our own, or sometimes take private lessons.

Would you be willing to forward a leather leash or two on to NZ, Julie - and any idea how much that would cost? Splitting the cost of shipping from America sounds like a great idea.

In case I caused some confusion, I just want to clarify that by "positive punishment" I just meant that I saw a lot of applying physical or emotional "pressure" to a horse - for example applying pressure on a rope halter, or pressure from a hander's body language. The "pressure" was then removed when the horse was compliant (that's the negative reinforcement I think you're talking about). I never saw a natural horsemanship trainer cause a horse pain or fear, that's certainly not what I was referring to by the term punishment. Hope that makes sense? Thanks for your explanation, Haven!

Just wanted to add that I only know a very little about natural horsemanship, but the techniques I've seen seemed to be based on a combination of mild positive punishment and negative reinforcement. e.g, the trainer would apply physical or emotional pressure to the horse when it was doing an undesired thing, and remove the pressure plus give praise (conditioned negative reinforcer) when the horse started to give the desired behaviour. I could be dead wrong since I've only seen a little, but that's how it looked to me. I'd be really be interested in hearing how natural horsemanship techniques compare to dog training methods, if a natural horsemanship pro feels like commenting.

In that case, then IMO we should be training the judges to cue their stewards to immediately remove dogs that move. If the moving dogs are promptly removed from the lineup, I don't care exactly how it's done! :D But perhaps it's different in Aus, and that already happens? It's just that I've seen dogs removed here when they had broken and they looked like they might be going to interfere with the other dogs, but it wasn't exactly a prompt response by the stewards, and made me wonder exactly what would happen if the offending dog had decided to act aggressively (or if the stationary dog had been fearful). Just sort of worried me.

Will PM you. :D

I agree with doing something to make the out of sight downstays safer. I've never seen a real fight in the obedience ring, but I have heard a lot of horror stories about dogs getting injured or being intimidated or scared by other dogs that break their stays, and I figure there's got to be some way of making it safer for everyone concerned. Due to owning a very dog aggressive dog already, I'm really sensitive about the risk of putting my future dogs in situations where I can't protect them from aggressive or frightening advances from other dogs, and really wary about the permanent temperament damage I know that can cause. I don't want to risk my dog getting scared or hurt by another dog when I'm out of the ring and can't intervene. All I can think of is either putting all downing dogs on a short tie so they can't physically reach the other dogs if they break their stays, or else just making sure that there are plenty of well trained stewards with strict instructions to immediately retrieve dogs if they move away from the spot they were last left (even if they don't seem to be acting aggressively towards the other dogs). JMO, anyway.

Big achievement this year - putting a CGC on my formerly untrained and extremely dog aggressive stafford (now he's still dog aggressive, just better trained :D). Aims for next year are to complete the distance course we're doing with K9force (hopefully therefore improving his offleash reliability round other dogs), and pass the first level of the SAR course we started doing this year!

I understand the use of corrections to make the dog reliable under distraction. What I don't understand is what the advantage is of using corrections in the learning phase, before the dog knows how to avoid them? Why not teach the retrieve with positive methods (like clicker), then once the exercise is learned you can correct for disobedience? Just thinking that this is what most people do when training most of the other obedience exercises - teach with positive, then proof with corrections once the exercise is known - and these other exericses all seem to turn out reliable enough. Why would the retrieve be different? (That's a genuine question, BTW, I know very little about the forced retrieve so don't have a closed mind either way).