[ddpowell]

Thanks Teresa,

Their methods are fine, but the obedience school isn’t really willing to do much work in addressing the desensitizing issue but it’s been a good experience.

This other trainer comes next wed so i’ll let you know how we go. It’s not so much that we don’t want to use purely positive methods its that they are so bullish in telling us we’re basically teaching Manny that seeing a dog = pain if the collar is on.

She’s gotten the phase one stuff down – here’s a little clip of her doing the very basics without any food reward, just pats and praise 🙂

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVucb8rBt6I%5DManny4 – YouTube

[ddpowell]

Hi Teresa,

We thought we’d take Manny to an obedience school but they’re purely positive trainers which is hard when we’ve started on phase 2 exercises and have a prong collar. They HATE the prong collar and can’t believe there’s any way to use it humanely. very frustrating!

Then our local council has ordered us to have another trainer come and consult with us and she also uses purely positive methods. She specialises in ‘reactive’ dogs so i’m hoping we’ll at least get to start desensitizing Manny with some other dogs around.

Any tips for dealing with purely positive based trainers when we want to use the foundation style?

Cheeers

Dan

[ddpowell]

Hi Teresa,

Thanks for the info – the attack she was involved in was quite nasty, small white fluffy, puppy farm kind of dog, very old and quite aggressive in it’s behaviour, barking at Manny, pulling on the lead towards her. She was off leash and unfortunately she wouldn’t listen to me when the dog started barking at her. Despite stopping for a second as i ran a few metres backwards as soon as i looked back at Manny she took that as a cue to continue her charge at this little dog. She definitely ran at it with the intention of attacking it which was most distressing part. She sees little (or timid, she’s attacked a dog that tried to move away from her while she was sniffing it) dogs as prey and i really want to change that if i can. There has been one of two little dogs that don’t bring this prey drive (if that’s the right term) out in her, the only thing i can identify is that they don’t bark and stand their ground when she runs to them, the others either bark at her or run away and she chases them.

She’s fine with a muzzle, we got a basket muzzle similar to the one in the video straight away and she wears that all the time when we go to the park although i still don’t let her off the leash.

With de-sensitizing her, the difficulty is finding dogs who aren’t walking. I’ll keep working on phase 2 obedience but what is the best strategy to decondition her to small dogs? My in-laws have two Maltese X shitzu, should i work with them and ask that they simply use their dogs as a distraction? How do you de-condition dog aggressive dogs when you rehab them? Otherwise i can’t think of a way that i can find a dog, get a distance away and do obedience without the dog either constantly moving away or closer to us.

The other difficulty is she refuses food when we step outside the house, she loves sticks and balls but that doesn’t work with the muzzle. Or should i keep the muzzle of when she’s training on-leash?

Sorry for the millions of questions, i really want to get this right and i can’t have another stuff up if i’m training her around other dogs.

Dan

[ddpowell]

Just bumping this topic to hopefully get some help… i really need to put in place some strategies to combat this as we’ve recently had a very nasty incident and the other dog has died.

[ddpowell]

we used to have something to distract our pup with. So if she started biting – i’d have a toy nearby and make her sit/drop etc to get the toy. She grew out of the biting within 9 months but it was always good to have something to give her and re-direct the mouthing. That was out strategy anyway, I’ll let some other provide some more learned advice 🙂

[ddpowell]

That would make sense – although it’s not her high pitched bark now that i think about it (i think i know the one you’re talking about though). Compared with her guarding the house warning woof which is extremely low its only marginally higher than that. I guess what confuses me is the action i should take in the interim, do i walk away from the dog and remove her from the situation (is that negative reinforcement?) or do i make her deal with the dog and learn to stand by me and calm down? She isn’t phased by the leash or collar choking her so leash manners goes out the window when there’s a distraction, i can walk backwards saying her name, click, whistle, nudge her but she won’t look at me and just continues eyeballing the other dog. A mate (and avid Caeser M fan) suggested i turn my leash loop into a slip collar and put it high up the neck, behind the ears but that seems very harsh as it chokes her the instant it tightens.

I just finished a session of doing heel inside our apartment as it’s a scorching 39C (102F) today, and she’s great indoors. i presume this or my courtyard is where i’m meant to keep it until phase 2. I’ll continue that, leash manners and climb until i move onto phase 2.

If i invest in a pinch collar – can i walk her with it? or should it only be used in training environments?

I’ll try to post a video soon!

Cheers

Dan

[ddpowell]

Very interesting! i’d never heard of that reaction so thanks for putting me at ease. This reaction however leads me to one more question. Despite her great disposition and submissive/friendly behaviour meeting dogs off leash. ON leash – we have the whole neighborhood convinced she’s a vicious killer! We’ve even had a lady say ‘Please dont let your dog eat mine’ as i approached….

She will surge forward (i may even organise a video to show you the finer detail of her behaviour a little better), bark like a dog possessed, hackles up, pull with all her might in an attempt to get to the other dog. I can stand my ground fairly well and if i hold the leash extremely close and not let her move a bit like caeser Milan style, she will still be pulling and almost choking herself but she doesn’t bark and at least looks a bit less unruly.

I’m not sure where this behaviour fits in the foundation training and it’s only random dogs she doesn’t know, so practicing with friend’s dogs doesn’t really work, she just pulls to get to them but without the aggressive looking behaviour. Is this leash related? i know if i let her off the leash she’d just want to play. The general public don’t know that though 🙁

[ddpowell]

Thanks Mike, the issue is mainly space – our biggest room barely lets me move a couple of feet from the climb object and that’s after i remove the coffee table from the lounge area ha!. she’s one massive pup so just her takes up a fair space and usually she doesn’t want to move off the climb object and is content watching me as i walk within a couple of feet her hoping she’ll step off!! I could do it outside but she gets too distracted in the park at the moment.

Is there another exercise that doesn’t require the space i could also start on? I’ve started saying ‘stop’ when she begins to pull ahead on walks – i say ‘stop’ and then give her a second to pull up, if she doesn’t i say ‘nooo’ just before i stop in my tracks and she obviously gets a correction if she keeps walking because i’ve stopped. Today we were walking along and i said ‘stop’, and then ‘noooo’ as she continued to move ahead and sure enough she wheeled around and came back beside my leg before she hit the end of the lead! Is this teaching her a predictable chain reaction from the command? The difference i could see is that i’m not sure if i’ve really given her the opportunity to learn what ‘stop’ means.

Please tell me if i’m way off the mark in my dog-logic here and if you have any other suggestions to start the predictable chain?

[ddpowell]

Hi Mike,

I don’t have room or an object to do ‘climb’ on in my place – we’re quite restricted by space. Is there another way i can start teaching the predictable chain reaction of commands? I feel like i’ve pretty much got the rest of phase 1 down and that Manny will be able to handle some phase 2 stuff. She definitely doesn’t know climb however so i’m hesitant to move on for obvious reasons.

P.S we’re coming to the US in April next year and will be in New York for about 10 days – would be great to come up, see your setup and say hi! (we’re coming all the way from South Australia)

Dan

[ddpowell]

I have a similar reaction with our 6month old female GSD. It doesn’t seem to be quite so bad but she barks, lunges, sometimes heckles up (on leash only). But if she gets a chance to actually reach the dog on the leash, she just wants to lick and jump on them. She’ll do it to people too but only eyeball them, no bark but then lunge and jump if they come near. I wasn’t sure whether with dogs i should be standing still, going the other way or just pressing on (which usually looks like i’m dragging her!)

[ddpowell]

Not claiming that i know what i’m doing, but i thought i’d share my short experience with our GSD’s diet. We started our 5 month old GSD Manny on a bit of a mixed, but mostly raw diet the day we got her after doing a lot of research.

Of her daily meals (which totals just over 2.2lb – split over 3 meals) 50% raw meaty bones (chicken or turkey necks, about 45% muscle meat (like pig or lamb hearts) and then a little bit of organ meat like liver. Then we toss in an egg every meal, with a fish oil cap & a cup or 2 of Hills Science large breed puppy.

We figure if there’s some crucial ingredients she’s missing from the raw diet she can get from the kibble as our local vet insists she needs this large breed kibble for her development. But vice versa the kibble’s first ingredient is Corn Meal so we don’t want to feed that as the main portion of her meals.

We’ve been really impressed with how it’s going so far, at 5 months old she weighs 27kg (59lb), she appears quite toned – has a fantastic coat and endless energy. She’s going to be a big girl judging by her parents so we want to give the best chance we can at a long healthy life

tried to attach a file of her.. not sure if it’s going to work

Dan

[ddpowell]

Based on the body language of the officer i’d say he was yelling at the reporter!! but it’s hard to say, you wouldn’t think so though would you? I saw this video 2 weeks before we got our GSD and it made me wonder if even with socialisation is there still some very innapropriate ways to approach a dog? or is that really just due to the training of dogs in law enforcement?

[ddpowell]

In a month or so i’m going to start Phase 2 with our gsd (as long as she’s ready), she’s 4 months old now and i’ve got her responding to the basic commands by word only with a (brief) silent stay and free etc. I need work on leash manners and do climb + teaching ‘no’ and i think i’m ready..

On leash she’s certainly getting interested by distractions like Jokowalzcyk is talking about; birds, people and other dogs are the main culprits. She gets fixated and i can’t snap her out of it, even with food. She puts her head forward, ears right up and eyeballs them as they walk past, then she starts to jump in excitement. It’s a little embarrassing when she does it to small children staring like she wants to eat them, the reality being she just wants to play and lick their faces!

Even when i practice the leash manners drill in your video she doesn’t look at me and is happy to be pulled back when i start backing up (i’m using a crappy 5 foot leash and easy walk chest harness at the moment),

I’ve ordered a martingale collar + 6 foot leather leash and i’ve finally found a guy in Australia who seems to promote similar training to you and has a store stocking some good pinch and dogtra remote collars when i’m ready.

You might be interested to see his site actually..he uses different terms, talking about training in ‘drive’ a lot, but the combination of postiive plus fairly applied corrections seems to be his basic philosophy.

http://www.k9pro.com.au/index.php

So my first question is jumping – she’s found her legs and jumps ALL the time mostly when she greets someone. With us she knows we won’t say hello until she calms down and keeps her 4 legs on the ground but strangers it’s quite bad – apart from putting her into a sit (which she won’t do due to excitement), is there a command like ‘easy’ of ‘leave it’ that can apply to jumping and how do you teach her NOT to do something before she’s done it? (i hope this makes sense)

Lastly is there something i can do to help regain focus on me when we’re out and she sees any of the above (people, dogs etc)? Or is she just being a normal puppy learning about the big wide world and i should practice leash manners with no distractions and let her do want she wants when she’s on a walk?

Sorry for the bombardment of questions, i’ve tried to work through any issues that have come up from the stuff on your site, these couple of issues have me stumped..

[ddpowell]

she’s all settled now! she’s extremely attached to us though, when we take her for walks we let her off leash and she’ll just follow us around – doesn’t care for balls, sticks etc

if she’s in the car and i’m outside filling up with gas she’ll cry, howl and scratch to get too me. Like Mike said about some GSDs she flips out if there’s anything stopping her having access to us.

She doesn’t cling to me at home, she just needs to know she can get to me if she needs. She goes off and sleeps under a table or in her crate but when we put a barrier there, ie. door, shut her crate door… not a good result.

This is the big hurdle for us – how to transition her from sleeping on her mat into the crate – i’ve been sleeping in the lounge on a mattress for 5 weeks now slowly getting her used to this crate we’ve got. Problem is it’s a soft crate and i know she’ll destroy it if i just close it up and go upstairs to sleep. I want to make the crate a positive experience so i’m just slowly graduating her into being in there more often like for meal time, whenever she’s sleepy, and we’ve trained her to ‘go in your crate’ for a treat etc. but at night she likes to move from the crate to beside the mattress (we don’t let her on the bed of course) so when i close it, she just claws at the door and starts to whimper which leads to howling which will lead to hysteria not long after!

i cut back on affection too, only pat her now if she does something for it and we’re cutting any ‘cuddling’ out all together. when i get home i don’t give her attention till she calms and then its a brief pat and a scratch.

[ddpowell]

I’ve been teaching our GSD ‘leave it’, but so far only for objects in her mouth. She’s extremely clever and really highlights why only positive training can work to an extent.

If i have the clicker in my hand, or she knows i have treats – she’ll leave it straight away, but when i say it spontaneously she just keeps on tugging or biting etc.

I don’t correct her as she’s only 13 weeks old – but is she smart enough already to comprehend a correction in this instance?

and if so, how would you suggest applying it to leave it?