Rileyroo

Oh, Sam, I'm so sorry

Good luck with the operation, Murf. Your mum will be there to collect you soon, and you'll be feeling a lot better

I hope your next appointment gives you some answers.

Oh, I want to blow raspberries on the belly that belongs to that face. He looks so happy and content, and . I'm in love.

Oh, no Sending lots of positive thoughts to Wiggle and all the others

No, but I'm sure he's a very clever, and operant, dog. I think dogs are masters at learning - they're Phd level and we're just about scraping O levels if we're lucky. They're much better at training us than we are at them and they find many, many things rewarding which we can use to our advantage. You think that suggesting they're not calculating is doing them a disservice, I think it's even more of a disservice to suggest that their behaviour is purely about being above others in a heirarchy, or to suggest that behaviours dogs show are about revenge, or other human emotions. Yes, resources are important to them - who wouldn't want the best bed, or the best food, or all the toys - but it's flawed to suggest that the dog that gets all those things is 'dominant'. I love dogs who work things out for themselves - I set up my training sessions to encourage and reward exactly that. I also love the fact that we're still learning about dogs, that we can move on from theories that were first popularised decades ago and that in 20 years time I'll hopefully know more than I do now thanks to the work of people who are, finally, studying dogs rather than wolves.

Dogs are opportunists - some will take more opportunities than others to get what they want but I think to suggest that it's calculated or somehow about getting one over on other dogs or owners is mistaken, and there's clear ethological studies to back up my position. There's no evidence to suggest that dogs do, when left to their own devices, want to be above or below anyone - they don't have that kind of social hierarchy and neither to wolves if it comes down to it. Dogs learn, just as we do, what behaviours work and get them what they want through trial and error. Perhaps this should go into the topic started by purple_mog in Contro as it appears more people have opinions than have expressed them there already.

They make the same point as you - that it's used in so many contexts and has been misapplied and give a variety of definitions, which they then explore and try to use to explain various social interactions. Their 'correct' definition is that used by ethologists in which it describes a relationship between two individuals, not a character trait in an individual.

I'm just reading the full paper now - I'm happy to email a copy if anyone wants it. One of the last lines of the conclusion is: 'It is therefore doubtful whether the concept of 'dominance' can make any useful contribution to explaining dog-dog aggression, and it is therefore even less likely to be applicable to aggression directed at humans, given the added complexities of interspecies communicaction.' Now I just have to go back and read the bits in between - I'm the same with novels, always read the back page first!

Interesting - that's almost the exact opposite of what the first few lines of the paper say: The term ‘‘dominance’’ is widely used in the academic and popular literature on the behavior of domestic dogs, especially in the context of aggression. Although dominance is correctly a property of relationships, it has been erroneously used to describe a supposed trait of individual dogs, even though there is little evidence that such a trait exists. When used correctly to describe a relationship between 2 individuals, it tends to be misapplied as a motivation for social interactions, rather than simply a quality of that relationship. Hence, it is commonly suggested that a desire ‘to be dominant’ actually drives behavior, especially aggression, in the domestic dog. By contrast, many recent studies of wolf packs have questioned whether there is any direct correspondence between dominance within a relationship and agonistic behavior, and in contrast to wolves, hierarchical social structures have little relationship with reproductive behavior in feral dog packs. Nor do the exchanges of aggressive and submissive behavior in feral dogs, originally published by S. K. Pal and coworkers, fit the pattern predicted from wolf behavior, especially the submissive behavior observed between members of different packs.

It's on my list - I'm waiting for it to come into the library as a loan because it sooo expensive to buy. I've read exerpts on-line etc and the small amount I have read is fascinating. Like you, I don't expect it will change my views as I'm already a positive reinforcement trainer but I'm sure it will help me feel more 'sure' of my views and facts etc.

Khanu - I spent the whole of your post nodding, smiling, saying 'yes' and generally thinking that you were saying all the things I wasn't eloquent enough, or sure enough of myself, to say. I think you pretty much summed things up for me.

I saw that too - good to have more evidence to highlight the flaws in the old theories and an opportunity to learn more. I've asked friend to get me the whole paper, rather than just the abstract - should be interesting reading. Just after I've finished my assignment on social interactions between dogs and its relevence to training, though.

What do you mean 'use it like a clicker'? Conventional clicker training uses the clicker as a marker of the correct behaviour, not as a cue If you want to use the whistle for recall then you can condition it as I suggested in the collar thread, and then pair it with recall, but you can't use it (at first) unless you know he's going to come back (because he's on a long line). If he gets the chance to ignore the whistle then you'll knacker your recall - as I've done with Riley. Good luck

I've been wondering what your view of it was - it's been all over the news here - what a time to be in the country. I too am hoping that peace lasts, that help can now be given to those who need it, and that the future is better for all concerned.

If you're going to use a vibrating collar you have to condition it so it means whatever you want it to mean (look at me, come back to me etc). I used to train with someone who conditioned it for recall in exactly the same way I condition a whistle recall, so spend two weeks or so doing 50 reps a day of vibrate / treat in the house - so the dog is strongly conditioned to equal vibrate on the collar with a treat. Then progress to vibrating when the dog is in another room, and they have to find you for the treat. When this is rock solid progress to in the garden, and then in the park / field. Keep them on a longline so if you vibrate the collar and they don't come back then you can bring them back to you anyway. Don't vibrate the collar unless you sure they will come back ie don't give them a chance to ignore the cue. I made that mistake with Riley and while her whistle recall is pretty good its not 100% because of too many opportunites to ignore. Practice this multiple times a day - I aim for 50 easy recalls on each walk for at least the first month or so - so that the recall is instinctive and the dog finds themselves reacting without even thinking about it. If you vibrate the collar and they ingore then go back a step and continue to condition. As you're classically conditioning the recall then you need to always reward with a treat when you use it, or the conditioning will fade and the recall will fade with it.

I thought about starting a similar thread the other day, as I was sad to see that a request for a spray collar on swap shop had more replies and offers that almost anything else. I subscribe to Ian Dunbar's philosophy that there a thousand things a dog can do wrong so it's better to teach them what's the right thing to do instead. Suppressing a natural behaviour because it doesn't suit us humans doesn't sit comfortably with me - I'd rather make it more rewarding for the dog to do something else, provide an outlet for the natural instinct if necessary and take away the reason for needing to bark (or whatever). The 'problem' with using positive punishment / aversives (ie things designed to decrease the likelihood of the behaviour happening again, morals / ethics aside) is that you're focusing always on what the dog is doing wrong so you're always seeing the bad side of things. That's no way to build a relationship, or have fun with your dog - not for me, anyway. I train with Kay Lawrence, have their 'Teaching People Teaching Dogs' certification and am just finishing the Canine Behaviour course that she and Helen Phillips design and run at Warwickshire College. I also teach agility and basic obedience for a local training club in London. I've explored lots of theories, methods, ideas and had lots of my ideas and theories challenged over the past few years of learning more about dogs - and I'm always willing to learn more. There are good ideas everywhere - take the bits that fit and discard the bits that don't. There are lots of myths in the dog world - some of them so prevelent that even non-dog people believe them to be true (dominance for example) - but one thing's for absolute certainty: there are no quick fixes, no one method that works with every dog and any trainer or device that promises such a thing should be avoided.

That's good news

A leaflet with a photo of Nettie, Bertie and Fluke on it has just dropped through my door Being very responsible citizens and demonstrating how to use a poo bin on the Common - Fluke is paying very close attention.

Staffies can be very talkative - Riley has a wide selection of noises, one to suit every occasion, and she appears to be sharing them with Kevin.

Hope you feel up to eating soon, Mal

Lots of 'don't be anything nasty' vibes from us here - as we have two lots of them on the go ourselves Riley's on antibiotics to try and reduce a lump on her chest / breastbone that 'hopefully' is an infection from a thorn or something making its way under the skin, and Kevin is on 'watchful waiting' with a skin tag / lump that's gone black, dropped off, is re-growing.

What P_M said

We used to use A&C but after a few weeks of rubbish quality (I'm perfectly fine with odd shaped carrots and veg covered in soil etc but not tomatoes that are already squashed and overripe or mouldy oranges etc) and bad customer service when we complained we swapped to www.organicdelivery.com. Not much use if you're not in London, though Friends also swapped from A&C and now use Riverford who they much prefer.

I don't think Kevin has ever known it