What can you contribute?

Cool.
 
Great idea for a thread.
 
And, since you brought it up...why don't you give us an example and set the tone which you are trying to achieve? []

ORIGINAL: Angelique

Cool.

Great idea for a thread.

And, since you brought it up...why don't you give us an example and set the tone which you are trying to achieve? []

I would love to. 
I have always been around large dogs.  I grew up with GSDs, a GSD mix, a medium sized mutt, a collie.

One of my personal experiences as a dog owner was the family akita.  He was 135lbs of very assertive dog.  He also had sebaceous adenitis and was on steroid treatment for such.  So he was assertive and testy.  Alot of you who have been around Akitas know that they vocalize.  They howl, or moan or bark or groan.

When I would walk by as he was lying in the hallway, most of the time he'd groan or moan, but occasionally he'd growl.  If he growled I did what I was told I was supposed to do...I would growl back and stare at him.  Sometimes these contests would last for 20 minutes.  They always ended up with him crawling beneath me, never rolling over, but always underneath me as if he was trying to make himself small.

I thought I was doing the right thing because I was the "one" he listened to ALL the time.  Others in the family would say "Shiloh get away from the table" or "Shiloh go lay down" and he'd walk to the other side of the table or to another person.  If I looked his way and growled at him he'd go into the other room and lie down. 

This was in the late 80's, early 90's.  We had always used similar methods to this to train our dogs.  So I thought I knew what I was doing.  What I really learned with Shiloh was how to read dog language, how to read into his behavior to try and find the "why" of his actions.

Fast forward to the very day I got Xerxes (May 30, 2005.)  I thought I could approach training a PH in the same way.  Little did I know that even a PH puppy was as stubborn as they come, and would just shut down if he thought that things were going too rough. If you've never been around a PH, you have no idea howdominant they are.  Without aggression they will establish themselves as the leader of whatever sized dog pack you may have.  They have uncanny intelligence, speed, agility, drive and independence.  The down side is that, as with most sighthounds, they are considered "soft" dogs.  A harsh word, a leash pop, a swat on the rump all of these and more can cause them to shut down. 

So I knew I couldn't use the methods that I grew up with.  I did some research and I found "Playtraining Your Dog" by Patricia Burnham.  It was a method of training that emphasized short, intense and fun training sessions-specifically suited to sighthounds. 

I took the "tools" that I had from growing up and helping to train my dogs, my various experiences and such and added "Playtraining" and also added the experiences that I had training parrots andcockatoos to the mix.

I'm not a professional trainer, and I don't have a lengthy resume, but I have used my tools to help dozens of my friends understand why their dogs behave in certain manners and have helped them to redirect those behaviors.

So that's the tone I have in mind for this thread.  The sharing of experiences.

What were some of your challenges with your own dogs?

  All the common ones and resource guarding (food and resting areas) which started as a puppy and became dangerous at around 6 months with my 3 year old son.
 

How did you overcome those challenges?

I hired two behaviorists within 3 months and read and learned and worked consistently for over a year to feel confident the problem is well under control.
 

If you had to change anything in what you've done, what would it be?

 I think I would have learned more about dog behavior before I pursued a pure breed dog.  Always having very subordinate mixed breeds all my life - I didn't know the importance of leadership or how to be a leader.  I did all the wrong things with resource guarding for example: I would continue to try and take his food from him and put my hands in it etc.  Now I know how silly that was and how that escallated his issues.


 

ORIGINAL: Xerxes

I'm not a professional trainer, and I don't have a lengthy resume, but I have used my tools to help dozens of my friends understand why their dogs behave in certain manners and have helped them to redirect those behaviors.

So that's the tone I have in mind for this thread.  The sharing of experiences.

Oh poo! All professional means is that you make money working with dogs. You share what you've learned with others and continue to learn yourself, that's enough to make a valuable contribution.

This is a great thead, Ed. []

Right now I am completely hosed and need a nap, but I look forward to reading about everyone's personal experiences and sharing more after I get some rest...I know Corvus will be on-line when I wake up in the wee hours.

I also grew up with large dogs. []

I love when my friends tell me "are you sure you want to walk my dog" and after they see that their dogs dont act the same way they do with their owners their jaw drops

My friend could not take her dog out because it was a puller, imagine her face when i toke her 2 dogs at the same time around the block and they were walking next to me, there was another friend with a dog that is dog agressive, i also walked her dog, at one point a neighbor of hers came out with 5 other dogs, my friend could not believe that her dog was next to other 5 without fighting

I also feel really good when i can draw an invisible line in the floor and avoid my dog or my friends dogs crossing that line, i have a friend which has a dog that is a runner, i showed him that he could have the garage open 100% and the dog would not run away, same with the first friend with 2 dogs, i can make one of them wait inside the garage and play with the other without the first one feeling that has to join the fun, all of these dogs have no dog training, or discipline whatsoever, my friends have never touch a book about dogs so you can imagine how they treat their dogs, of course that i give them advice but it goes in from one ear and comes out by the other

There is going to be a dog parade next month here and they are asking me to come with them to "control" their dogs and be able to go []

I don't think I can contribute much at this stage. I'm still entertaining some fairly wild ideas about where I want to go from here with dogs.

One thing that I do regret is choosing when and where to listen to my dog. We're currently tackling a problem with the invisible monster next door. Before there was a 12 ft, steel fence around that yard, there was a dog that lived there that repeatedly tried to attack Penny. We had to walk past every time we wanted to leave or return to our house, and every time, the dog would try to get Penny. Sometimes, we couldn't protect her from him adequately. She never got hurt, but she did get very scared. The fence went up after this dog bit my mother's arm in an attempt to get to Penny, who she was carrying at the time.

That dog is gone, but the dog that lives there currently likes to roar and throw herself against the steel fence. Penny is truly very distressed about this dog, but I've been ignoring her, thinking that it was best not to give her any feedback except for the odd impatient snap when she started being really silly. She just got worse and worse. When she started pooping out of stress before we had run the gauntlet of barky monsters, I realised I should have done something about this already, and that ignoring the behaviour wasn't helping in the least.

I have started dealing with it by whipping out some real good treats. I don't know if I will ever get her over her fear of every dog that ever resides in that yard after her years of angst with that first one, but I can keep her attention focused on me if I have something good to give her. If she starts to stray, I run backwards, then forwards with her, making sure she moves with me. We're getting there, but I'm not all that happy about resorting to treats. I think there's real potential to accidentally reward her actions towards the scary dog instead of keeping her attention on me. I think, if I'd addressed this problem before it developed into an obsession, I would have been doing us both a big favour.

My take home message: I was a bad dogparent in letting it get to my dog so much that she became obsessed. I should have redirected her before I needed the silly treats. Now she's obsessed with treats. [8D]

Scout is my first largish dog, and all in all her training has gone quite smoothly. She is super adaptable and calm, and her energy level is very manageable.
 
My biggest challenge with her is working with her leash reactivity. It is not extreme, but it has caused some rather embarassing barking/lunging behavior.
 
I bought Scaredy Dog and got a lot of insight from that book. We've been doing a slow desensitization program which more than anything takes place at agility class while we are waiting our turn. It is not spectacular or dramatic, but it's working. I reward Scout everytime she looks at another dog and then looks back to me without getting worked up. Just last Monday, the class more full than usual and we were beside a poodle. Scout was laying down, only about 2 ft from the poodle. The only time she made an attempt to face the poodle was when it started sniffing her bum. So I was really pleased, she's made great progress. Dogs were running right by us on their mini-courses, and she didn't even budge. []

that is awesome!

What I wouldn't give to have Ella look at another dog and then look at me.
We'll get there though and we're working on it.

I plan to go on to do intermediate obedience training and then onto agility (hopefully) and then eventually make Ella a therapy dog.
I've seen some of the tests that they give therapy dogs, and all we got to do is get Ella to not react to other dogs and to focus on us more (that's all easier said than done) and the rest should be gravy for her.
She doesn't freak out around equipment and her people manners are wonderful. She can be messed with and looked over and it doesn't bother her. She's awesome with children and just awesome with humans in general. She doesn't jump on people and ANYONE can come up and pet her.

ORIGINAL: espencer

I love when my friends tell me "are you sure you want to walk my dog" and after they see that their dogs dont act the same way they do with their owners their jaw drops

 
So explain the technique you use.  Where did you learn this technique.  How do YOU walk their dogs?

there was another friend with a dog that is dog agressive, i also walked her dog, at one point a neighbor of hers came out with 5 other dogs, my friend could not believe that her dog was next to other 5 without fighting

 
What did you do that was different? 

I also feel really good when i can draw an invisible line in the floor and avoid my dog or my friends dogs crossing that line, i have a friend which has a dog that is a runner, i showed him that he could have the garage open 100% and the dog would not run away, same with the first friend with 2 dogs, i can make one of them wait inside the garage and play with the other without the first one feeling that has to join the fun,

 
Again, how do you you do this?  What technique do you use?

There is going to be a dog parade next month here and they are asking me to come with them to "control" their dogs and be able to go []

 
That sounds like alot of fun.  I'm sure you'll have a great time.

I was such a world-class moron when we got our first dog. My incredible good luck never ceases to amaze me because that could have been a disaster. Neither my husband nor I had ever had dogs growing up, but we'd always wanted one once we got into a good housing situation. So like the week after we moved to such a location, we went to the pound and got a dog. No research, no thought at all about it. Dumb. Dumb dumb dumb and it is, as I say, simply sheer luck that it wasn't a disaster from day 1. Especially because the dog we got was an akita x gsd, two breeds we knew next to nothing about aside from what they looked like and also two breeds that are not good for novices. Two great tastes that taste great together!

So in the past five or so years I've gone from litearally zero to a fairly competent pet dog caretaker. And I've done it mainly on my own. Until this year I never really talked to very many other people about dogs and we've never had cable (my parents do, which is how I've been able to watch the first season of the Dog Whisperer plus a little of the second). My decisions were based soley on "does this make a lick of sense, and does this work for my dogs?" Though on occaision I stuck with some things that looking back, didn't make much sense and definately didn't work, but I stuck with them longer than I should have because someone at some point had been very persuasive about what I "should" be doing.

My biggest challenge was our second dog, Conrad, and his raging seperation anxiety. Having been through that, I'd never wish it on my worst enemy. It's heartbreaking and nervewracking. My biggest regret was not getting some freaking help beyond just our vet (who was not trained in behavior and didn't have anything else to offer after the meds didn't work). At that time I literally had no idea that there were people out there who specialized in helping dogs with this kind of stuff. I lived in a small town with a tiny library and one small book store. I had no idea what the hell was going on with my dog beyond some really basic stuff I found on the internet. Finally it was a stupid, simple thing that solved the problem: a crate. Not just any crate (crating had been tried before and failed), but the right crate. It was literally the last thing on my list of stuff to try and if it didn't work I was going to look into rehoming.

Marlowe has been a challenge but in a differet way. He's a lot like a cat, affectionate but extremely independent, and not without his behavioral quirks. But he's such a tremendous joy to be around that I don't really think of him as a "challenging dog". I think in the hands of someone expecting him to act like a Lab, he'd be considered a serious problem. But for someone expecting him to act like a coonhound, he's pretty much exactly what I wanted.

If I could change anything it would first and foremost be to train a better recall on our first dog. Had I done that, he'd still be with us today. Linked to that is that I would change how I obedience trained both of our first dogs, Ananda and Conrad. Ananda aside from the problem that resulted in his death, was a very good, very gentle dog but not at all 'soft'. He was self-confident like woah, and even people who didn't know anything at all about dogs would remark on that to us. But Conrad, poor long-suffering Conrad. A softer dog you'll never meet. And we did pretty much the eqivalent of taking Jello and putting it in a blender. We made him complete mush, by using the exact same training on him as we did on Ananda. Ananda could take it in stride and retain his regal bearing. Conrad just turned into goo. And ya think that maybe didn't at all help his SA? Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too.

So I've had three dogs. All on the large side (50-100 lbs. range), but all with incredibly different personalities. Ananda was noble, regal, a little untamed, but gentle and affectionate and humored us with great good will. Conrad was anxious, nervous, and shy, and remains soft and with a very gooey center. Marlowe is cat-like, bold, totally independent, yet ridiculously affectionate, he has his own agenda that occaisionally coincides with ours, he needs to know what's in it for him, and he cares not for your petty social games--dominant and submissive mean nothing to him, he's outside of it all. My learning curve has been extremely steep and I've changed methods and philosophies a few times based on new things that I've learned and observed.

My take home message: I was a bad dogparent in letting it get to my dog so much that she became obsessed. I should have redirected her before I needed the silly treats. Now she's obsessed with treats.

 
I don't think you were a bad dog parent, I think we all are in learning stages.  From what you've said before I think you're doing great.  I always enjoy reading about you and your menagerie.  You've got many different animals living together in a somewhat harmonious surrounding.  That is a momentous success.

My biggest challenge with her is working with her leash reactivity. It is not extreme, but it has caused some rather embarassing barking/lunging behavior.

 
That's one of the hardest things, IMO, to deal with.  But from the rest of your post it seems like you're doing a great job.

I'm just trying to make sure I have happy, respectful family dogs. We're 90% there. (Yay!) I have to admit, after 12 years with the Spotted Tyrant (our Dalmation) Lucy has been a breath of fresh air. Blackhawk had a lot of problems with resource guarding and the only thing that has stopped his counter surfing is arthritis. He's ALWAYS been a "what's in it for me" kind of dog and at nearly 13 years old, I'm happy with how far he's come.

Lucy is a FABULOUS dog that we got less than a year ago from a local rescue. She adores kids and everyone else - except for the bratty neighbor boy, but I don't like him either so we're BOTH working on that! We're just working on general manners like not jumping up, stop barking when I ask and trying to improve her recall. Her previous owners, who surrendered her because they were evicted and had to get an apartment actually stopped to visit a couple times. We live right by the school his kids attend and they recognized her right away. I got to see where she got her bad manners! The dad was encouraging the jumping that I had spent a couple weeks trying to stop. He talked about how she used to run out the door all the time and looked extremely surprised when I told him how she didn't do that at our house. I didn't tell him how easy it was to teach her door manners - it seemed kind of rude.

All in all, I just want happy, healthy and polite dogs that we can take camping with is in the summer and enjoy inside year-round.

The dad was encouraging the jumping that I had spent a couple weeks trying to stop.

 
That's frustrating. I have family members who used to come over and wiggle their hands and feet in Scout's face, which all looked like a fun bitey-game to her. It drove me nuts.