Dustin
Forum Replies Created
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A couple of important details to add here is that this was instinctual for Colton. We have never done any protection training with him. I will also point out that he is not at all a loose cannon and it is common for him to sit safely in Maddy’s car with no problem, like every day. I can’t even remember him barking at me when I was standing outside of the car. I think the context of the situation and Maddy’s true fear is what triggered Colton to bite that man. I tend to think based on his behavior he deserved to get bit.
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Hello Leo,
Allies responses are spot on and in order to deal with a behavior problem you have to understand why and where the behavior comes from. Based on my experience and your initial description your dog’s behavior sounds close to a Flehmen response. I wanted to touch on this part of your second message.
“When Nellie is licking and I tell her enough, she could have anxiety cause I stopped her.. I tend to think is more inline with Excitement and lastly it could be feeling threatened cause I am telling her enough..”
Allie mentioned this same idea in her last post when she suggested you use a different command beside “enough” when engaging with this behavior. The philosophical rule that Allie was getting at with her statement is called the “Dead-Dog Rule” (Lindsay, volume 2 pg 31-33). It’s better to replace an undesirable behavior with an incompatible behavior that a dog can affirmatively perform instead of trying to get them to do nothing. It’s very hard for a dog to understand that you want them to stop doing an activity. Overall I think your dealing with a Flehmen response due to its proximity to licking another dog but there could be anxiety aspects involved as well. Your dog very well may not understand what the criteria for “enough” is and that could raise anxiety and stress due to confusion or anticipation of punishment. It’s better to give the dog an affirmative command that is clear and easily understandable. Allies recall suggestion was good, I suggest a “place” or “bed” command somewhere away from the licked dog may also help.
db
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Is this a toy that she normally plays with or is the an object used only for retrieving? For a dog that is not a natural retriever it may be better to use an object that is only for retrieving to avoid confusion at this stage. She seems to have the basic concept down very well. Maybe I missed it but what is your end goal object you want her to retrieve? Were you going to do birds?
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I’m a little late to the party on this thread but I just wanted to add that ANSI/ASB Standard 092 (https://www.aafs.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/092_Std_e1.pdf) says that for room searches explosive detection dogs should take no longer than 1.5 min per 100 square feet searched (e.g. if the room is 500 sq. ft. it should take no mare than 7.5 minutes to complete the search). Teams are allowed 2 minutes per vehicle in a parking lot search. Open area searches are 1 minute per 1000 square ft (for a 30,000 sq. ft. search the total search time allowed is 30 min.) I did not try to look up standards for other types of detection, I have this standard saved for easy access, but would imagine they are similar. Generally speaking dogs are allowed more time if they are detail searching an area based on a change of behavior called by the handler. That should give someone rough guidelines of how long it should take to complete searches.
Detection is a team sport, its the handlers job to asses and plan the search to get the most out of the dog they have, the conditions at the time of the search and the amount of area they have to clear need to be considered. The target odor in question may even need to be taken into consideration when planning a search. Something like explosives with very little vapor pressure means the dog may need to get closer to source compared with narcotics which are easier for dogs to find. It’s likely the explosives dog will require a little more prompting to make sure it fully searches all areas. Part of the handlers job is to know what their dog needs to complete the task at hand.
I do agree with Mike, when I have a larger area I tend to default to a more structured search in order conserve the energy of the dog and make the search more organized.
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Hello Davida, It sounds like there might be some underlaying leadership issues so I would recommend checking out the relevant lessons in the behavior course to make sure you have a good understanding of how leadership plays into aggression. In order to diagnose the aggression when you are on walks you should ask questions like, What is the dog’s body language when this aggression occurs? Are her ears forward or back? Where is she holding its tail? What sort of vocalizations is she making? If she is barking is it a deep tone or higher pitch whine bark? If you are able to post a video we can all analyze it together to help you diagnose whats happening. As far as the aggression in the yard and the friendly neighbor dog is concerned I think you might find the barrier frustration pages very interesting. Barrier frustration is also one of the possible explanations for the behavior when the dog is on leash, we need more info before we could say one way or another.
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If you follow Mike’s advice of using a habitation chart to predict these events it should be pretty easy to keep the drive balanced and take the edge off the dog’s desire to chase. My suggestion for when your’e out in public with the dog is to micro manage so it doesn’t have the option to tail chase while in line at the store. I’ve found that when your in a store with high drive dogs its usually best to keep that time very structured. If you’re not moving then it’s helpful to place the dog into a command. I like sit and down. I agree with Mike on the instances for after the dog poops as well. Make sure the drives are balanced ahead of time and then reward with something high value immediately after the dog is done pooping. This all assumes you’ve decided this rises to the level of a problem you want to work with as Mike also discussed.
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In my experience working with high drive dogs tail chasing behavior is usually due to drive balance. Unless it’s become a compulsion it goes away on its own when a drive balance and management plan is implemented. The malinois that lived with me for a couple months had a habit of tail chasing when I started working with him. It faded without specific attention as the dog adjusted to having its drives balanced on a regular basis. I’ve observed this in several other dogs I’ve worked or consulted with.
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There is an apocryphal quote often attributed to John Maynard Keynes that goes…“When the facts change, I change my mind – what do you do[, sir]?”. That sums up FSDT pretty good and it denotes a mind open to change when presented with new evidence or situations. You have already made the first step of changing your mind when you realized the facts had changed. Don’t be afraid to burn a few bridges after you’ve crossed them. They may have been important parts of the journey but if you don’t plan to return you don’t need them anymore. As you gain in FSDT you’ll be too focused on whats in front of you to look back…
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So Storm beat Senna in this challenge no doubt. I think we still get partial credit. Senna did prove he understood the verbal commands with the blindfold on. I would have to do some blindfold conditioning before we could try anything further. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6gag7V0FJ4
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Great video, We will take the blindfold challenge but I don’t think Senna remembers his leash pumps. Is that a bad thing? Should I keep working phase 2 even though we’ve moved on to phase 3?
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Good Answers everyone! I agree with Phillip on almost everything except the skipping steps part. I will add that Mike said he thinks that resource guarding could be the initial trigger for Senna. I agree with that. The posture of Ziva reaching in with her nose while im delivering a treat is very similar to if she were to reach into a food dish while Senna was eating. I think in this situation it is a fine line between the two and the presentation of the behaviors very well may look the same. Senna’s body language before the fight shows that he was quite relaxed adding value to the resource guarding argument in my opinion. In situations like this I tend to weight Mike’s experience pretty heavily.
Dustin’s Answer:
In order to understand this interaction better we need to start by understanding the normal dominance relationship between these two dogs. Remember the purpose of dominance in canines is to reduce aggression within the pack. Normally this works very well with Senna and Z, when dominance conflicts arise they are quickly settled by one dog giving up the claim. Occasionally conflicts rise to the level of air snaps but as mentioned before the dog with the lesser claim gives up quickly resulting in a fairly equitable relationship overall.
Contributing Factors:
MAJOR: Lack of leadership- Ziva was allowed to freely roam without command. This meant she was free to roam about and put herself into inconvenient places. I should not have allowed her to wedge herself into such a small space while creating possible dominance conflicts by handing out limited resources in the form of food and attention.
MINOR: Frustration in Senna was a secondary contributing factor to this incident. The frustration was caused by me not having a good plan on how I was going to prompt this behavior beforehand, leading me to wing it and have Senna struggle through the process. Adding to his already high frustration. This was not the reason the fight started but it likely shortened Senna’s trigger.
The conflict started when both dog’s were inside the tight closed end of the bedroom hallway. When Dustin was handing out a treat to Senna, Ziva reached her nose close to the hand area, triggering a dominance reaction in Senna. Senna then gave her a good air snap (watch the video closely on .25 speed). Normally in this situation Ziva would have backed down and that would have been the end of that but in this situation she was unable to give up the claim, she had no easy escape route from which she could flee so she reverted to a fight instinct. The fight, which was now one of Senna dominance/Ziva self defense, was in full swing. The most interesting aspect of the fight once it was on is the amount of restraint shown by both dogs. The dog’s do not skip steps in the aggression cycle and are very slow to escalate the steps even once they are fighting. If the video is played back on the slowest speed it can be observed that, though very noisy, no contact is made by either dog for the entire “first round” of the fight. We don’t see a tooth hit until after I’ve separated them slightly the first time and Senna goes around behind my back, he does start to tooth hit or lightly bite her at that point. The restraint shown by Senna is further evident when I grab him and pull him off of her, had that escalated into the actual biting phase of the aggression cycle I think I would have gotten at least some misdirected aggression coming my way. Instead it was pretty much over the instant I separated them. In slow motion it can be easily observed that as soon as Ziva gets all four of her feet underneath her she instantly retreats. Supporting my conclusion she was not fighting for dominance but just trying to escape. She is generally happy to give up a claim because she understands she will be taken care of soon enough. After Z makes the initial retreat she stops and turns around to look at Senna for a second before disengaging for good with a head turn. She does a shake off when she’s walking away followed by a couple sneezes (have to listen) and then a bigger shake off as she walks back on camera. Senna starts to lick his lips pretty much as soon as I have my arms wrapped around him followed by the big shake off as soon as I release him.
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That is very interesting. Good technique. I like when we can pull these wisdom nuggets out of Mike. Thats a really good idea. I think i’ve been looking at phase 2 too “transitionally” like its something you do to gently introduce the dog to the concepts of aversive stimulus and then move on past it. I see now its just another layer of the dogs foundation that doesn’t go away and can be built upon forever.