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Engineer Lenk posted:Strictly speaking, the treat in front of her face is luring to keep her still. Did your method of keeping her still and moving around into position translate easily into a pivot? Oh yeah, I totally lured the pivot part. I just shaped the feet-on-book part. Sorry that wasn't clear. I still use luring, but I find that some things Psyche gets much better through shaping because she refuses to think sometimes and I can never fade the lure because she's in robot mode or something. As part of the shaping feet-on-book exercise, I built up some duration and then added the lure to get her to pivot. I tried it a couple of ways at first, based on a kikopup video. I did it standing in front of her, holding the treat in front of her face, and taking a step in a circle so she copied me. I tried treat in her face and walking into her side and lastly, I got into heel position and pivoted with her. She seemed to like me in heel position and I found it kind of natural to step into her to get her back legs to move without making her feel like she has to move the front ones. Also, from heel position, she kind of has her head turned to look at me, so it's easy to follow me in a small circle. So yeah, that translated pretty well into a pivot and then we just had to work on her keeping her feet on the book. She'll do it with me in heel or in front now without a lure, but I've been lazy and haven't worked her up to doing it without me.
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Jan 5, 2013 04:41
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Fraction posted:Quoting myself. Any ideas/help, dognerds? What are your ultimate goals for Lola? What do you NEED her to do and what do you WANT her to do? Dogs with a history of reactivity have burned neural pathways for reactive behaviors. These pathways can be buried, but not erased, so in a sense you can never cure a reactive dog, you can just keep plugging away at their good behavior so that it becomes much stronger than the bad behavior. Because of that, it's not unreasonable to draw a line and say, my dog is never going to do this. For example, I will never ask Psyche to let a stranger pet her or go to a dog park. It's just not in her to do it, she doesn't want it, and I don't need it. But I do have the practical goal of getting her to let someone she knows handle her, for boarding and emergency purposes. So make a list of goals and stop yourself before you cross the line into things that you would do just because other people do it and not because it's good for Lola. At the top of the list should be things you NEED, followed by things you WANT that you think will benefit her. There's nothing wrong with running out of new goals and just perfecting the old ones. Does that help or were you after some other kind of advice?
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Jan 11, 2013 14:57
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Instant Jellyfish posted:This is where I am at now too. Major will never ride free in the car without meds, he won't be a dog park dog, I won't let small children near him. Those are things I know he can not handle and that's ok. He is totally fine in a crate in the car and he can work in a classroom with other dogs around and he doesn't seek out and destroy children so I'm content. I keep working on proofing things and doing things I want to do with him within reasonable parameters, like he could handle a rally or advanced obedience class but not a beginner obedience with a bunch of wild barky dogs just getting started. Both Major and Lola have made so much good progress.  I think it's hard for people who work so hard with difficulty dogs when the day comes that your dog is basically in a good spot and just needs you to continue managing and proofing things in the way that (you've established through blood, sweat, and tears) works. You get stuck in 'OKAY WHAT EPIC, CRAZY DOG THING DO I NEED TO DEAL WITH NEXT?!' mode.
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Jan 11, 2013 16:19
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I'm not an expert at tug as Psyche barely gets into it herself and then only with soft, fuzzy toys, but I did find that she is more excited about grabbing toys and holding on after I did a bunch of shaping exercises to get her to pick things up and put them in a box and to play fetch (I had to shape fetch with food). I would probably start rewarding him for grabbing the tug toy with food, but I've read that using food to increase play can be really sensitive to timing, so it's not necessarily the best way. Here's a blog post that talks about it more and gives some tips at the end.
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Jan 20, 2013 01:56
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Well, we just had a really interesting training session and I learned some new things about Psyche's neurological state, I think, and thought I would share while it's all turning around in my brain. As our behavioral modification has progressed, Psyche has learned to deal with things in new ways other than her usual reactive responses. Some of these have been intentional on my part, like teaching her to sit rather than jump, but others have developed naturally. For example, months after we got her and started training, she started wagging her tail when she was nervous/overstimulated. Later, she started whining rather than barking in lower level situations. The whining is also a sign of frustration and her expression of it signals that she is not over threshold, but that she doesn't know what to do to get herself out of the situation. So in that vein, we've had a lot of success with showing her what to do. We recently taught her a head turn calming signal and it has done wonders for her behavior. She now slides into working mode really well and we can do an efficient recovery with the head turn if she's about to get into trouble. This has been so great that last week the trainer was able to feed her directly (with her muzzle on) and she went a whole hour with another dog in sight without freaking out. Our emphasis on working mode, however, has made it a bit of a crutch and she seems to have totally lost any ability to relax while not engaged during our people sessions. This is a fairly recent development too. Things she had long gotten over are stressful again, but in a "mustworkmustwork" way rather than a reactive way. The Be Still and body work I used to do with her to help her relax has now become something she resists. Any time I stop asking her to work and try to get her to relax, she immediately tries to lure me back into playing the head turn game. So this week has been particularly hard on her. She's completely off her prozac, I went back to work last week so she's been alone more, and it's too cold for walks. She is restless in a way that reminds me of why I put her on the prozac to begin with (though still not that bad, so I'm going to see if we can work through it, exercise is definitely a factor). So we went easy on her with her session tonight and just worked on obedience. The trainer barely moved the whole session. But Psyche would not relax and the session culminated in a spectacular display where I asked for a down and, when I didn't treat or ask for something else right away, she started whining and pseudo-hyperventilating for a few minutes (I didn't treat her until she calmed down). She wasn't reactive at all by her usual standards, but she was still so stressed. So it was probably mostly just a bad day, but lately she's following me around more and doing nuisance behaviors to get attention and when I do training sessions with her that are supposed to be fun, she gets frustrated a lot more easily. I've just been working her through the frustration, but I think I need to do more than that. I think I need to require that she work in a relaxed state. Of course, some training will need drive and excitement, but I'm seeing now that there's a difference between being drivey and what she does, which is more panicky. I started the Protocols of Relaxation tonight and I've chosen a bunch of tricks to work on with her, some which require calmness (like balancing a treat on her nose) and others which require activity and energy. I'll alternate between the two as kind of a long-term switching game. If nothing else, it will give her mental exercise, which can only help. Oddly, this all hasn't been a problem I've noticed much in our outdoor dog sessions, and it's worse if she's say, not wearing her muzzle etc. It's like the more distractions, the more she can handle because she's not in her own head (until it's too much and she explodes like a tiny dog volcano). Is there a dog psychologist in the house. 
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Jan 25, 2013 04:01
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Instant Jellyfish posted:I know I've seen her on a mat in your videos before, have you done a lot of mat work? Major gets kind of "lost" when we go to new places and aren't actively working and having a super solid mat behavior has really cut down on his anxiety about exactly what he should be doing. He knows if he sees a mat anywhere that it is his job to go to it, lay down in a settled position (hip kicked out, sometimes head down, looks like this), and watch me for further instructions. If he gets into a loop of pacing around the house after something stressful has happened or he's being a dick and attention seeking by breaking things I can tell him to go to his mat and he will settle and once his body is settled his mind seems to follow. I have done a good amount of mat work and my original goal was to have it as a portable relaxation spot. I tried a few different ways and ran into much the same problem I'm having now: Psyche sees the mat as work and doesn't find it relaxing. I did shape the settle position and she now often lays around with her leg kicked out. It was a huge improvement at the time, but she can still be worky in that position and I didn't get any farther. She will stay on the mat (and now we're teaching her to go to it when someone is at the door), but my attempts to make it relaxing have so far failed. I plan to do the protocols both on and off the mat and am specifically selecting for calm posture/behavior. When we started it today, we had to repeat the first 'sit for 5 seconds' several times. She was able to hold the sit for five seconds, no problem, but she kept offering me frantic head turns. I had to show her what I wanted with a Wait command and then we moved on and she mostly stopped, but was still tense and worky. I'll repeat the days and individual exercises until I get the relaxation I'm looking for with each one and then I'll repeat them again with down and with settle on the mat. Perhaps by starting over this way, I can work up to the mat relaxation I was originally looking for.
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Jan 25, 2013 04:55
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Riiseli posted:Too cold? Proper clothing and e.g. a buff over your nose and mouth and fleece booties and a jacket (if necessary) for Psyche should enable you to go for walks. If it goes below -20*C/-4*F I shorten the walks a bit and encourage the dogs not to run like crazy. Yeah, it's certainly doable, but it kind of caught me unprepared. We usually get less than a week of such cold weather during the winter and the last two winters were unusually mild. Psyche is such a snow dog that I didn't know her limits until last week when she was high stepping during her morning pee. I didn't really have time this week to get her booties or make them and it would have taken me a week+ to desensitize her to them anyway. She's pretty averse to wearing things and is still touchy about her feet. It was <0*F with the wind chill, but in a few days, it's supposed to be like 40*F anyway. Honestly, she's not a super active dog (unless the prozac was damping some of her energy, which is certainly possible), so the walks are probably the least of the factors. There's another one that I only admitted to myself this morning: I've had a really tough year and have been dealing with depression and anxiety myself due to stress from grad school. I've been short-tempered and, to be fair, a dog that barks as often as she does would drive a normal person insane. I've kind of known all along that I was probably affecting her, but it was never super obvious and I was always calm during actual reactivity sessions and kind of told myself that was enough. Anyway, I've got a whole plan for relaxation sessions daily and I think it'll help both of us. And tomorrow will be slightly warmer, so I'll put on like a billion layers and we'll go for a nice walk. 
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Jan 25, 2013 15:54
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XIII posted:He quits as soon as you pay him any attention. As long as you're at least petting him a little, he's fine. It sounds to me like, in conjunction with the other things you said, he just doesn't know how to deal with you paying attention to things besides him. Licking is calming for dogs and him trying to be in your lap is probably attention seeking behavior and a sign of stress. My dog leans or stands on me when I am sitting or puts her paws on me when I'm standing if I am doing something she doesn't want and she's stressed about it. She also licks us to calm down (which we somewhat encourage because she used to chew instead of lick). This problem should improve as you use a crate and teach your dog confidence and how to be alone.
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Jan 25, 2013 20:32
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Wulfolme posted:I'm having some trouble with 'fading the lure.' First of all I'm not exactly sure how far to go with it even I can get it to work; I've read that you're supposed to stop giving the dog a treat for every click eventually, so they'll follow commands when you don't have a handful of food. Never seen anything on how you're supposed to do it, though. It sounds like you are mixing up a few different concepts. There are many kinds of reinforcement schedules (i.e. when to give your dog a treat). First, a clicker is a marker that tells your dog exactly when they did what you were asking them to do and that a reward is coming. To keep the association between the clicker and a reward strong, you should always reward after a click. You don't have to click each time, however, and can ask for multiple actions before clicking and rewarding. That is getting a little ahead of ourselves, however. When you are first teaching a dog a behavior, you want to be on a 1:1 fixed reinforcement schedule (i.e. 1 action = 1 reward or jackpot). Every time your dog gets it right, he gets a treat. As your dog learns, you want to raise the criteria like kikopup does in the video (the dog gets a treat for standing still, then for folding his back legs a bit, then for doing the full down) until you get the full behavior. You treat for every time your dog meets your current criteria (and jackpot when he does it extra well). Eventually your dog will have a full understanding of what you are asking and be able to do it consistently (this depends a bit on how fast your dog learns, but say something like he does it right every 9 out of 10 times). When you get to this stage, then you can move away from the 1:1 fixed reinforcement schedule. So maybe now he gets a treat every two times he does it. Eventually you should graduate to a variable reinforcement schedule where you give the dog a treat at random intervals. This helps teach the dog that he needs to do everything you ask and pay attention because he never knows which trick will get him the treat! You should still only click when you intend to reward. Some people use a verbal marker or praise for in between treats. Remember that this is only for learned tricks and a trick needs to taught in many different circumstances. So even if your dog knows sit in your living room for one second, teaching him to sit in the park or when you're across the room or for a long time means going back to the 1:1 reinforcement schedule until he's got it down. As far as luring, it can be tricky to fade the lure. I would check to make sure you aren't going too fast (kikopup moves very fast in the video because her dog obviously knows the trick already) and I would start not giving the dog the lure. Use the lure like usual, click for the behavior and then give a different treat from your treat bag or whatever. You can even just pretend to pull out a new treat. Also remember that where you give the treat matters. If you have a problem with your dog staring at the treat bag, then don't just hand him the treat from the bag. Put it in front of your face and then hand it to him straight from your face, so he gets in the habit of looking at you. If you're teaching something where you want the dog to be facing a certain direction, make sure he gets the treat in that direction and he's not twisting around somewhere else. For a stay, always reward in the place they are staying (even if you have to walk back over there). Where they get the treat from indicates a place of importance, so you should use that to your advantage. Also, just practice patience with your dog by taking some time to show him that shoving his nose in your hand gets him nothing and backing off and waiting patiently gets him everything. You can do this informally or formally teach Leave It. Kiri koli fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Feb 8, 2013 |
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Feb 8, 2013 02:53
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More exercise yay! So a cool thing has happened during our training session with Psyche last night. I usually keep a toy nearby so we can do some shaping if she needs a break from more stressful stuff. Normally she only voluntarily plays with toys if she's in the right mood (and NEVER during training or in front of someone else), but last night she decided she would rather play with the toy than do what we were doing. So, for the first time really, I got to work a toy into our training as a reward! Yaay! She was super happy about it and I would reward her with the toy every ten minutes or so and she stayed interested in the toy the whole hour. She kept looking at it and back at me while we were doing other stuff, like 'now? now? toy??'. I've been pairing a toy and food for games of fetch for a while now and I think it finally built up the value of the toy for her. So if you have a dog that doesn't play much or doesn't value toys as a reward, it can (slowly) be changed!
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Feb 15, 2013 19:42
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Rixatrix posted:Make sure to get your mom to give Lola treats when she is doing something nice. People often tend to only notice "bad" behavior and ignore the "good", when generally it should in fact be the opposite. Specifically, I would start rewarding the dog for sitting or laying down, both with attention and with food. You can go ahead and ask for the sit or down at first to show that's what you want and then just make sure you reward it anytime it happens spontaneously until the dog has learned that sit=treat in that context. My dog used to do the clawing thing and it was painful and she valued any attention she got from it, even if I was just pushing her off cuz she was hurting me or getting up to remove her. Putting her in another room was only marginally effective because she didn't know what else to do with herself when she came back (which isn't to say it won't work on a different dog, with some it is very effective). So the best solution for her was to give her an alternative behavior and really reinforce it. Just make sure you don't accidentally chain the behavior (dog claws -> you ask or wait for sit -> dog sits -> treat -> repeat). You can avoid this by getting the sit in there before the clawing starts or, after the dog has learned that sitting is rewarded, only rewarding for sitting without clawing.
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Feb 22, 2013 16:43
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boboto posted:So, my plan is to reboot the training, work on the mat work someone posted above and move on to the protocol for relaxation and deference from Dr. Overall they posted, and once those are in place and he's starting to learn how to relax more in general start the desensitization again. Does that make sense? Our dog walker wants us to start correcting him (jabbing him at the hip joint, pressing him into a wall) for the barking but that seems like bad juju to me, and I haven't done it. Any suggestions on where we can consistently see dogs for desensitization but have good control over distance? We got frustrated with trying to do it on walks because it was so rare that you'd see a dog at a good distance for it (as opposed to dogs popping out of doors or around corners, which happens all the time and pretty much ruins the rest of the walk for any kind of training). Would working on obedience in general when he's outdoors/distracted help or be a waste of time? You are definitely right not to start correcting him. It sounds like your dog is acting out of fear, putting on a display when another dog gets too close that is meant to scare the other dog away. My dog does the same thing. Punishing a dog for such behavior will just cause them to hide the signs that they are uncomfortable and eventually they will snap and could really do some damage when you think everything is okay. I would highly recommend finding a trainer who uses positive reinforcement methods and has experience with difficult behavior or, better yet, a veterinary behaviorist. They will be able to help you tailor a plan to fit your dog's behavior. The best way I know to have desensitization sessions where you can have control is to find a friend who is willing to lend you their dog or work with a private trainer. You can try going to an area where other people walk their dogs and standing waaaay back from the action, but like you said, this is unpredictable. Unfortunately, real life doesn't allow us to control what our dogs see all the time and still get them adequate exercise most of the time, so try to have your walks in a less trafficked area and employ any methods you need to avoid your dog going over threshold (cross the street, turn around, have your dog sit facing the other direction...anything that works). Working on obedience in general while outside will help things enormously. Work on your dog's recall to you (even from the end of the leash) and eye contact. You need to work on this for all levels of distraction (starting with the least distracting) in order to get to a point where your dog even has a chance of deferring to you over the biggest distraction of all: a dog he's terrified of. Make yourself so much more interesting/rewarding over the environment that your dog happily turns to you without even thinking about it. Then later, after you've done a lot of desensitization and counter-conditioning and your dog is ready for operant reactivity training, you can play games like Look at That and call your dog's attention back before he goes over threshold. There are a lot of techniques for dealing with reactive dogs and the absolute best way to learn them is to find a good trainer/behaviorist. While you are learning/looking for a trainer, remember that your dog gets better at what he practices, so you should manage things as best you can. Play music, keep him away from windows, go on walks at 6am, whatever. The more he practices his reactivity, the more bad habits will be burned into his brain and the harder it will be for you to replace those habits with good ones. Kiri koli fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Mar 12, 2013 |
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Mar 12, 2013 19:05
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G.I. Jaw posted:Thanks for the advice so far, but we've actually become a bit more worried about him. He was sitting on the couch with my fiance just now while she was playing with her phone. They had been fine for about 20 minutes just sitting there like that and he began to growl and bare his teeth at her completely unprovoked. When I got up from the other end of the couch he ran towards me growling and snarling, but didn't actually do anything when he reached me. He basically flipped it off as quickly as it came on. No one is going to be able to tell you what's going on with your dog over the internet. You need a pro to come watch the behavior. I can tell you though that my fearful dog acts like that all the time if we do something that startles her, even things that seem like nothing to us. She will bark, growl, or run at us in an attempt to get us to stop and doesn't actually do anything when she gets to us. Some dogs react to fear by moving into the pressure and posturing. We combat this by showing her it doesn't work (we don't stop what we were doing) and by having her practice good behavior while we do the thing. I have worked with a professional extensively, however, and know my dog well enough to be able to tell if she is just posturing out of fear or actually over threshold, in which case I don't do anything which might cause her to escalate her behavior. You did a good thing by counter-conditioning with some treats and removing him from that particular context. Now you need professional help learning to read and diagnose your dog's behavior so you can most efficiently manage and change it.
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Mar 20, 2013 03:27
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Triangulum posted:I'm looking for suggestions for more ways to help my dog learn how to relax. Vecna and I had a training consulation last weekend and the trainer basically said in my attempt to make sure he doesn't get bored, I've way overstimulated him and now he thinks he needs to be doing some sort of activity 24/7. I'm supposed to limit going to the beach or park to every other day and do mentally taxing but physically easy stuff the other days like searching for things around the house, recreational bones, and trick training. We have the same problem, except Psyche's inability to relax is anxiety-based (she learned that working is a great distraction from her anxiety and now won't stop working, basically). We have tried a number of things. In the beginning, we did mat work, rewarding for calming signals and Be Still cue from Brenda Aloff's books. All of these things were good, but they only got us halfways there because she still saw the mat as work and learned to act/be calm but not really relaxed when giving calming signals and during Be Still. We also tried body massage, which got us a little bit farther. What I am having success with right now is getting her ramped up with play or training and then asking her for a downstay (you could also do this on a mat) and rewarding for entering a more relaxed state than what she was in, which for her basically is her head down, her ears relaxed, and her breathing slows down. Be careful with this cuz some dogs can be tricksy and 'fake" relaxation. Like she pretends to be relaxed by being really still, but gives herself away cuz her ears are still listening for the neighbors so she can get all upset cuz they exist. She also switches to more "relaxed" positions, like kicking her leg out because once upon a time I thought that was good enough (and it was at the time, given the context) and rewarded it a lot. You really need to put it in the context of their entire body language if you are going for REALLY relaxed. Of course, you can decide how relaxed you really need him to be. This last method is basically a form of the switching games also in the Aloff books.
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Mar 20, 2013 17:10
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Triangulum posted:Otherwise he treats laying down like he's the sole person on earth who can keep the floor from flying off into space. Hahaha, yeah this. Psyche makes laying on the floor look like an EXTREME SPORT. I also started the relaxation protocols, but they were still too work-y for Psyche right now. She can do all the exercises, but wasn't getting the relax part (it's super obvious cuz she whines). I plan to go back to them later, but for now, she needs the contrast from the switching game and I need to be able wait her out without asking for anything else. Good luck!
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Mar 20, 2013 17:36
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a life less posted:At home if she's annoying me (and she's already had her walk(s) that day) I'll tell her a) lay down, and if that doesn't work, b) go to her bed, then if still unsuccessful, c) I'll lock her in another room. I find that dogs will adapt to their daily schedule fairly well assuming you've given appropriate outlets already. If you give more, they expect more. I do exactly this for most stuff during the day. Go lay down (which she somehow learned from me just yelling it at her while I was trying to work at home, oops), chew your bone, or she gets timeout in the bathroom. We use knuckle bones or a stuffed kong, that's the only thing she doesn't eat in two seconds or that I'm afraid will hurt her. The give more, expect more thing is so true. Psyche settles down and behaves so nicely for my husband and not me because I work her waaay more than he does, so she thinks she is entitled to my attention whenever she wants. It's really unfair. When something is going on (we're out or there are others in our house) though she has two modes, working or freaking out, so we've been trying to reinforce the idea that relaxing is good too. I hope that teaching her what relaxing IS (that was the hard part and most things didn't quite work) and pairing it with a lot of food will eventually create a preference in her for it. I think part of her preference for work is that it makes her feel better, anxiety-wise. I hope that she will eventually recognize relaxing as something that makes her feel better too and an option in addition to work for low-key situations.
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Mar 20, 2013 18:40
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Whatever site I was reading when I started doing it said that they should basically stay in the same position the entire time (sit or down, whatever is comfy for the dog) without resetting. It's supposed to be a chill-out-while-poo poo-happens exercise, so it makes sense to me that the dog shouldn't be moving around a ton. Edit: Also, I wouldn't do things like jerk the treat back if the dog breaks the sit. If the dog breaks the sit then I would work on stay and leave it separately before starting the protocols again. The goal of the protocols is not just to have the dog hold the stay, but to be relaxed about it and the other things going on. If holding a basic stay is too hard then it's more like work than relaxation right? I mean some things may be hard for the dog, but if waiting patiently for a treat is one of them, I think the exercise isn't going to be very effective. Maybe I am way overthinking this though. Kiri koli fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Mar 21, 2013 |
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Mar 21, 2013 22:53
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Instant Jellyfish posted:Starting meds was the best thing I did for my dog. This. Psyche is and will always be a hypervigilant dog, but before the medication, it was obviously impacting her quality of life to the point where I would have said she was spending more time suffering (even if only at a low level) than not. She was on all the time, even when resting. She would not leave my side and the slightest shift or noise by me would make her jump to her feet, even when she was "sleeping". She would go over threshold just at a noise outside the window and attack it such that I had to drag her away. I know that that part is linked to her reactivity, but I would have been concerned even without the reactivity just by her general behavior and twitchiness. And given that this was all when we first got her and I was bad at reading her in the beginning, if I noticed it then, it was potentially even worse than I think. Our trainer certainly recognized it and was comfortable suggesting meds after several training sessions. Without the medication, I have doubts that she would have been able to make even half of the progress that we've made since putting her on them in terms of her reactivity. We saw a difference right away (after the meds had a chance to take effect) and she gained independence, the ability to sleep better, and a better ability to work past her reactivity, including the ability to live in her own home without feeling like she was constantly besieged (she still barks at the windows like a good little watchdog, but it doesn't drive her over threshold 90% of the time and she can truly relax and focus on toys, sleeping, training etc.). We actually did an experiment a few months ago. After two years of being on prozac, I questioned if it was still helping and so we weaned her off of it. We did it very slowly and she was doing great right up until it was almost completely out of her system and then she had a total regression. That nervous, always on dog came back and she wasn't able to do a lot of things that we thought she had gotten over. We waited long enough to convince ourselves that it wasn't withdrawal or something (we stepped down the dosage so it shouldn't have been) and then I decided to take this opportunity to switch to zoloft and we feel like she is even better than she was on prozac. Our trainer agrees. We are now testing a higher dose and watching her carefully to see if it helps more or the lower dose was better. I think that you should trust your ability to read Rho and if you can tell that Rho is stressed in situations that lack an obvious stressor, then I would err on the side of caution and assume that he is experiencing general anxiety and, in fact, assume that he is experiencing more anxiety than he is letting on, rather than less. Even if it's only with obvious stressors, he may benefit from medication. The not being able to compete thing sucks, but other than that, I see no reason not to test if it can make a difference in his life.
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Apr 5, 2013 19:34
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protobyss posted:Mugging is just trying to get food from my hand, I'm not currently using a pouch. In addition to what Mr. Furious said, try playing this version of Leave It. Put a treat in your palm and brace your wrist on your leg or something just so you aren't flailing around. Open your hand up. When dog goes for the treat, close your hand. Hand stays closed as long as dog is actively trying to get treat. Hand opens when dog backs off. You reward* when the dog backs off at a first and then build up duration after he gets the game. Another variation which is nice for teaching eye contact with distractions is to hold a treat in your hand straight out to the side and dog gets the treat when he looks at you instead of the treat. This is a good game for after your dog learns that mugging your hand doesn't work. Once your dog learns that going after or focusing on a treat will never get him the treat, holding food in your hand is not generally a problem as long as you also teach that doing stuff when treats aren't obvious can still be rewarding. *if this is super hard for your dog, you can reward with a different treat from your other hand. Some versions of leave it in fact require that the dog never get the thing they are supposed to leave (it is a leave it FOREVER cue). This can be useful if you want to teach your dog to leave things in the environment alone such as other dogs or people.
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Apr 11, 2013 23:48
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drat Bananas posted:I need help. I know this is NOT good, and I'm in tears typing it. I'm sorry that happened.  A good behaviorist will help you isolate the problem and form a plan of action, both for behavior modification and for management so that the dog is not put in situations that will escalate. It sounds like your dog has barrier frustration when people come to the door in general (the barking) and has learned to associate the delivery guy as particularly bad for whatever reason. Things like are particularly challenging because, as you say, you can't predict or control when the delivery guy comes, so you have to start from a damage control position. But it can be done. A lot of the work I have done with my dog has involved starting after she is already freaking out since she will freak out at things I can't hear or catch before she goes off. So I would first find a good positive reinforcement behaviorist. It sounds like this is a bit new, so it is worth talking to the vet about it specifically or, better yet, finding a veterinary behaviorist. I would work in general on his barking problem with people at the door, even if he's totally happy when they come inside. You can control this and it will lay a foundation for him for working on his barrier frustration. If you need to open the door, he goes in the bathroom or other place out of the way. This is just management, but it is key because you don't want to put him in a situation where he feels the need to bite or learns that biting is effective. I have dealt with going over threshold at windows/doors in several ways with my dog, all of which depend on how over threshold she is. At first, she would go straight over threshold and I would just put her in the bathroom. We left a leash on her so that we could guarantee she would go, now she knows a bathroom command from anywhere in the house (and is generally under threshold enough to actually go). She sees the bathroom as a safe place now, which was a nice outcome. This is more management, but it was necessary while we built a foundation for coping in other ways (you would work on his door skills in general). Next up is just straight counter-conditioning. I would actually start with this even if he is already freaking out and gauge how fast your dog starts responding by taking treats (throw them on the floor if you think he will redirect) and hopefully progressing to looking to you for treats. If he responds right away, you can probably skip the bathroom timeouts. Once you start getting somewhere with counter-conditioning, you start asking for behaviors. Something easy at first so he can succeed and figures out that, hey, we're working now. Then you can do something more complicated, like teach him to come find you or go to a mat. If he hears the truck first and freaks out, recover him with something easy (if he can't do something easy, go back to cc), then practice your more complicated thing. You can keep practicing even after the truck has gone and I think you especially should if he still looks stressed. I do 're-dos' with my dog, if she freaks out from looking out the window, we practice looking out the window until she is happy playing the game of Look Out the Window, even if the thing that freaked her out is long gone. The trigger (the delivery guy) is important to connect to the action the dog is supposed to take, but so is muscle-memory. Then hopefully, the day comes where your dog hears the delivery guy before you but going to the mat is a stronger action to take because you have raised his threshold with the counter-conditioning and installed alternative behaviors. Hope that helps, sorry if it was rambly, I had to attend a meeting in the middle of writing it.
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May 17, 2013 20:45
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Dogdoo 8 posted:How do I extinguish behavior that I'm trying to teach, but only at certain times? I'm trying to get Beartato to wave and roll over, but I don't have a command assigned to either yet. Now a lot of the time when I tell him to sit, he does it but will sometimes paw at the air and every time he goes into a down he rolls over. I had this problem earlier and stopped trying to get him to wave/beg/sit pretty/whatever so I could get a good sit, but now I'd like to teach him to do more. Does he understand down as separate from roll over, aka did you teach him down before and he knew it, but now has added the roll over? If he knows down, then I would just never reward him for doing the roll over because that's not what you asked. Reset and ask again. If he still doesn't get it, put him next to a piece of furniture so he can't roll over. Since he's offering the roll over, I would go ahead and add a cue now too. Lots of dogs like to stubbornly offer the behaviors they like best or that have recently gotten them lots of treats, so don't let them get away with it if you ask for something different. If a dog is offering you a fully formed behavior (like a complete roll over), then it's time to put it on cue and only reward when you ask for it.
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May 20, 2013 18:58
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Fraction posted:Lola has a new quirk. I would probably try having separate fetch times for the two of them for a while. So Kalli Fetch time is Lola Downstay time. Does Lola have a problem with Kalli running around like crazy otherwise? Are you only using one ball?
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Jun 15, 2013 21:08
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Fraction posted:I might try separate times in that when Kalli is fetching, Lola takes a fetch break. There's no way she'd hold a down-stay when the puppy is playing fetch! and getting treats!! for it. She'll probably get jealous and then want to play ball again. You'd definitely have to work up to it. Even if you don't want to work her up to a downstay, I would try working up to long throws, assuming you typically throw it a long way. This might help Kalli too. Throw the ball like two feet in front of you and let Kalli get it and meanwhile, throw treats at Lola before she has a chance to register that Kalli is even fetching anything. Psyche is so dumb about fetch, I had to teach her to do it by throwing the ball like right in front of me, then a foot away, then two...lol. She's still bad at it. I'll post a video in RN.
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Jun 15, 2013 21:33
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Maniaman posted:I think our dog Andrew (9 year old yellow lab--we adopted him this past April) has anxiety issues. We can't leave him alone in the house un-crated or he will destroy things and poop everywhere. Doesn't matter if he took his normal dump of the day 5 minutes prior, we'll leave him un-crated in the house and only be gone 5 minutes and will come home to (usually multiple) piles of poop on the floor. He also occasionally pees in his crate, regardless of if he has just gone out to pee. Excessive peeing, drinking, and panting can be signs of a medical issue. I know those symptoms, along with excessive hunger and hair loss, are common signs for Cushings disease, particularly in older dogs (not saying your dog has Cushing, I'm not a vet, just an owner of a possible Cushings dog). So I would go back and talk to your vet about possible medical reasons for this behavior. Do you know the dog's history? Has the dog shown signs of anxiety before and when did the excessive drinking start? A veterinary behavior, of course, would be able to help your dog from both the behavior and the medical side.
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Jun 25, 2013 15:38
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Skizzles posted:My dog is very much the same way, even when he was younger before he got Sore Old Man Joints. I have NEVER witnessed him roll over or lay on his back in any way. Some dogs just don't dig it, so I never forced him into it. But yes, he will do "bang!" and lie on his side for a second. Psyche sleeps on her back with her legs in the air (it's not very ladylike  ) and I taught her to roll over by trying the luring thing, getting impatient, and then just pushing her over. It worked and she rolls over all the time now. But I've never been able to teach her play dead, apparently being on your back is fine, being on your side is submissive and scary. 
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Jul 25, 2013 19:19
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I'm teaching Psyche to cross her paws using a target. Any tips on removing the target once she starts crossing her paws? I started moving it a little bit farther, but she just re-adjusts her position to be closer. She'll do it if I hold the target next to her paw and we've worked on duration a bit.
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Jul 29, 2013 00:17
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Kela posted:My large, fixed-since-puppy, 6 year old male poodle still enjoys humping. At the dog park, I pull him off or end play time when it happens. I'm less concerned about his dog park actions since we really don't go all that often. Once he gets humpy, we go home. Humping can be a sign of stress and I'd guess that's what's going on when you have strangers over to the house. Depending on what your dog likes, I would either 1) give him something else to do like a kong or bone, 2) give him a job not involving the person like going to his mat, or 3) give him a job involving the new person, like sitting for treats. For 2 and 3, I would put him away except when you were working on his jobs so he doesn't have a chance to practice bad behavior and work up to him being out longer until he is comfortable/breaks the habit. You could also use a baby gate so he is still present, but has his own space. Dogs are strange about space. Sometimes when nervous they will move toward the thing making them uncomfortable when what they actually want is to be farther away.
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Oct 28, 2013 02:43
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Kela posted:#1 seems kinda similar to just locking him in another room that I've been doing. Distracting/blocking instead of solving the problem? It can actually be a solution to the problem. Your dog is likely humping to release tension and try and calm himself. Only, humping is not an effective way to to do that because it is close proximity, the action itself is likely overstimulating, and you have to keep pulling him off. Licking/chewing is also a self-soothing behavior in many dogs, only with several distinct advantages: 1) it can be done at a distance, 2) it's less likely to be overstimulating, 3) it's acceptable behavior so you won't need to punish it and 4) you've added something more rewarding to the mix, so now strangers in the house is a predictor of good things happening. Over time, this could change your dog's attitude about strange people. Whatever technique will be most effective depends on your dog. Some dogs feel much better when they are working, some get overstimulated by work. You could also pair a kong/chew with mat work. When you teach your dog to stay on a mat when people are visiting, you will need to reward heavily. Once you can trust your dog to stay on the mat, you could introduce a long-lasting reward, especially since your guest will probably need some of your attention.
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Oct 28, 2013 13:34
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 16:33 |
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Engineer Lenk posted:Yeah, when Stella howls with a tennis ball in her mouth it kind of acts like a trumpet mute. Psyche barks while eating. Then she chokes. Then she barks some more.
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Dec 2, 2013 19:13
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