Staranais

Is that true even if the "new" temptation is of far more interest to the dog than the food ever was? (Edited to add: I'm particularly thinking of dogs with low food drive but high prey drive. Is it possible that they'll learn TOT with their dinner easily because the dinner isn't very tempting to them, but find it hard to transfer the results to working with very tempting prey distractions?) Incidentally, do you ever think you'll release a DVD?

Thanks for the reply, K9. One more question. You say that: "The basis of this program is to have the dog look to you for guidance & permission to partake in anything you say that the dog can, including food, toys, game etc. " To do this, once you have worked your way through the entire TOT programme with the dog's dinner, do you start again at the beginning of the programm using other temptations? Do the whole thing again with toys, then other dogs, then cats, etc? Or is the self control gained through TOT supposed to transfer over to these other situations with no (or little) further training? Thanks heaps!

May I ask a question, K9? If you have a dog who is already quite accustomed to waiting for permission before he eats his dinner, and is perfectly reliable at this, will this programme help? If so, would you still need to start him on a tieback? Thanks.

Yes, I see what you're saying. It was just that your initial post made it sound like your dog was getting quite possessive and aggressive about the stick, so I wanted to suggest that it might be better to avoid the situation in the meantime if you're worried about your safety. Even if you're not worried about her getting aggressive about the stick though, making her work for access to the sticks and not letting her have them "for free" will make them a lot more useful as rewards when you're training her. I don't quite understand, sorry. When playing the two stick game, I presume you're not throwing the second stick until your dog has already given you the first stick, right? So when you decide that the game is over, why can't you just wait till she gives you the first stick and then just not throw the second stick any more? You'll already have both sticks at this point, so you won't need to pry it out of her jaws or fight for it. Doing this shouldn't affect her enthusiasm to release the first stick to you, since you'll still be throwing the second stick a whole lot more often than you will be not throwing it. Or am I missing something? Your dog sounds a lot like my stafford - is she some kind of bull terrier, per chance? Anyway, just wanted to say be careful that you're not bribing your dog to make her work: i.e, you don't want her only obeying when she has already seen that you have the stick. You want your command to be the trigger to make her think of getting the stick, instead of having to show your dog the stick before you give the command. So instead of letting your dog stare at the stick and rewarding her for that, put the stick in your back pocket and make her do other things - give you eye contact, heel nicely, drop quickly - and only bring the stick out when she's complied! And if she's taking your fingers off, you could always throw the stick a short distance instead of giving it to her. Good luck with your training, and hope all that waffling helped some.

Hey Pampa, perhaps I'm missing something here. But if your dog gets aggressive with sticks, then why not just prevent your dog from getting the stick in the first place? Instead of letting the dog pick up sticks while you're walking, just don't let her go near the stick in the first place, so you don't have to make her release it (I'm assuming that she's on leash, or has a good recall command, so you can stop her from picking the stick up). Otherwise, if your dog has an interest in chasing or retrieving, you could try using the "two squeakies" (or "two sticks") method to teach a release command. http://www.nwk9.com/twosqueakies.htm You could also consider keeping a stick on your person while you are training or walking, to reward your dog for good behaviour. It sounds like it would be a very powerful and effective reinforcer for your dog. Using sticks as rewards would be to your advantage as it would allow you to teach your dog that the best chance of getting a stick comes from obeying you (or following you round, giving you eye contact, whatever you like), not from ignoring you. Good luck.

I'm also fairly certain that you're not meant to leave that type of collar on all day long. The dogs can get pressure necrosis (like bedsores) where the prongs are if the collar is put on too tightly, or if it is left on for more than 12 hours at a time. Have you re-read the instruction booklet that came with the collar? They should have some information about how long to leave the collar on. If you're exceeding the recommended time limit on a regular basis, it's really not suprising that the dog is getting collar sores. ;)

Seems silly to me. Why do they expect a vet to know what dogs are "suitable" for e-collars, and which dogs aren't? Are the vets given any guidelines about it? Or are the vets just supposed to make up their own minds which dogs have good "temperaments" for e-collars, without necessarily ever having used an e-collar themselves?

Don't know if anyone's still interested in this topic, but I've just been talking to my vet about it this week. There are two options for dog contraception - an injection called Tardak or Tardek, and an implant called Suprelorin. Both have a contraceptive effect as well as being likely to alter an entire male dog's behaviour. Both interfere with a dog's testosterone production, but through different biochemical routes. The Tardek injection needs to be redone every 2 - 6 months, two injections each time, at a cost of about NZ$30 an injection. The Suprelorin implant needs to be redone every 6 months, at a cost of approx NZ$90 an implant. I'm considering trying out the Suprelorin in the next month or two, if anyone wants to know how we go just drop me a line. *Edited for spelling errors!*

My dog doesn't have moods - he's always happy and bouncy, unless he's sick or asleep. Perhaps he's just not smart enough to have moods? It is off topic though, I guess. Perhaps you could start another topic on this, Zia, explaining what you meant?

How's Ollie doing?

Like I said, Powderpuff has every right to offer her opinion. But if her opinion isn't based on experience or facts, then I have no obligation to respect it. If her own first post had been more polite, then perhaps she would have been? She might, but I'm inclined to doubt it. I'm perfectly happy to be proven wrong though, if Powderpuff wants to come back and detail her knowledge and experiences of training with the e-collar? Unless she does, I guess there's really no point debating what she says.

Can I ask a question? How does everyone teach the drop on recall? I've never taught this before, and am interested how people teach this without confusing the poor dog and/or slowing his recall. (I can start another thread if you like, Kelpiecuddles?)

Powderpuff does have the right to express her own opinion, but unfortunately her post was rather irrelevant to this particular thread (the original question was "does anyone know of a trainer in WA who use e-collars?" not "who on DOL hates e-collars?") An uninformed, off-topic rant isn't such a great way to introduce yourself to a new forum, IMO, at least not if you want to be taken seriously.

Well said, ChelseasMum.

Please note that the "essential amino acids" are actually different for different species. All human essential amino acids can be derived from plant based foods - but not all cat essential amino acids can. It's not just essential amino acids such as taurine that cats need from meat, they need other vitamins and minerals too, such as Vit A & Niacin. (We humans can synthesise these ourselves, but cats can't and must have a dietery source.) Although egg/dairy contain a certain amount of vit A and Niacin, it is not in sufficient concentrations in egg/dairy to sustain a cat, so just feeding a cat dairy or egg won't compensate for the lack of meat in their diet. There are some highly processed commercial vegetarian cat foods available that are nutritionally balanced and will sustain a cat (they even contain synthetic taurine). But even the manufacturers of these foods sometimes suggest giving the cat regular servings of meat along with the vege cat biscuits, to prevent the cat suffering from urinary tract infections (which are common in cats on a vege diet). These links might be of use: http://www.vegsoc.org/info/catfood.html http://www.vegancats.com/pages/1007/FAQ.htm#1073 http://www.sniksnak.com/cathealth/howto9.html

From what I understand you can feed a dog a vegetarian diet, but it's not ideal. You also have to be very careful about what you feed. Humans are much better suited to a vegetarian diet than dogs are, and cats can't cope with it at all. Cavalier, are you considering raising your dogs on a vege diet for ethical reasons? One healthier alternative would perhaps be to feed the dog home kill or hunted meats, supplimented with free range eggs, dairy and fish?

This is probably a stooopid question, but how do you tell if a dog's working in pack drive?

K9, is it possible to teach a dog just to "put on a show" of being aggressive (lunging, growling, barking etc) on cue, but not actually teach the dog bitework? I'm just thinking that a realistic show of aggression would probably be enough deterent for most situations, and then you wouldn't need to be concerned about the legal ramifications of owning an "attack dog"?

I was also wondering about Amstaffs and Pitbulls, would you say these dogs would be more suitable for protecion work than Staffords, or do they have the same temperament "drawbacks" as Staffords? And about staffords, wouldn't they be too small for bitework anyway? Even if my dog had the right temperament for protection training, he's so small that I'd be petrified he would get seriously hurt in a confrontation.

Just want to add, even though your staff is not going to be a great guard dog, you could still encourage her to be a good (noisy) watchdog. I imagine it would be relatively easy to teach her to get worked up and bark when she notices people arriving at the property, if you reward her every time she does so? Tresspasser won't know that she's all woof and no bite. Just an idea.

Yep I bet it did, mine would have too. It's a neat photo, though. You could always erase the background on photoshop, and give him some wings?

Wow K9, your dog can fly!

Noone else has bitten, so I will. Just remember that I'm not a pro at this either! There's nothing wrong with using a food lure to teach a behaviour, if that is what gets your dog motivated. But when she understands what you require, then you need to stop luring and start rewarding. By that I mean, you want to produce the reward when she's done the work, not show it to her beforehand to bribe her to work. Otherwise you could end up with a dog who only works when you show her food - that's not a trained dog! So when you're certain that she understands what you're after when you say "heel!", then you can start to hide the reward and only produce it after she has heeled for you. Start small - just ask for a couple of heeling steps under no distraction before rewarding her - then gradually ask for more and more work before releasing the reward. One more thing - keep sessions short so she doesn't get bored. If your dog is lagging behind when you heel, that's a good indicator that she's not motivated by what you're doing. Help any?

We practiced in a very obscure corner of our local park - people hardly ever go there. I had him drag a short leash so that if someone did come, I could easily step on it and stop him from going to them. On the few occasions that other people did turn up, I just stopped heeling him and waited for the people to leave before continuing the heeling lesson, since he wasn't ready for the distraction. I kept our training sessions really short, and I rewarded him really well for each little "baby step" he made, so he stayed pretty motivated about the whole idea. We used his favourite chase toy for a motivator - he soon worked out that heeling was a chance to earn his toy. Tess, can you give a summary of the "taut lead" way to teach heeling? I've never heard of it before, and would be interested to hear how it works &/or what advantages it might have.

I have only taught my own dog to attention heel (I've taught a few more looseleash walking, but I feel that's a totally different skill), so I can only say what worked for one dog. I chose to teach it offleash for a couple of reasons. Primarily, it was because I wanted a happy, animated heel, with my dog's full attention. I figured that if I needed to use a leash to keep his attention on me then things were going seriously wrong with our foundation anyway. In other words if I had to physically restrain him from running off during the teaching stage, then I figured that the real problem wasn't lack of a leash it was lack of motivation. I liked teaching him without a leash, because I could tell when he fully understood what I was showing him, since he didn't recieve any physical guidance to stay in heel position. I also figured that if my dog learned to do if offleash, it would be easy to add a leash if I wanted one. I think it would be trickier to remove a leash than to add one. As I say I have limited experience at this - but it's worked well for us. His heel is lovely IMO, and we're now starting to add distractions and more complicated turns. *Edited for clarity and spelling!*