corvus
Posted : 12/7/2007 3:22:50 PM
Carla, I tried to get my hare off the bed. I failed! 
He always comes back, even on three legs.
Anyway, I feel like this all comes down to the piggy bank. You put money in the piggy bank every time you do something your dog likes or respects, and you take it out every time you do something it doesn't like. As long as you keep your balance in the piggy bank nice and high, you can probably do pretty much anything to your dog and it will get over it. Your piggy bank might suffer a heavy withdrawal that will require you to make some deposits, but it can be overcome. For some dogs, I think an alpha roll as an adult might just drain the piggy bank in one fell swoop and even if you build it up afterwards, there will always be that black mark when it went to zero or negatives, even. There are things I would never do to the hare because I judge it would be a heavy draw on our account. Small aversives are often big aversives to him. Touching is off the cards in most cases. But happily, my dog is the opposite. It all comes down to them as an individual, as others have said.
I think puppies are more resilient to being handled than adult dogs. I don't think pinning the aggressive puppy we had made any difference whatsoever in how he turned out. It just told him aggressing towards us in particular didn't get him what he wanted. Later on he learnt that it did when strangers backed away from him when he barked and growled and lunged at them. If they didn't back away, he would bite. Not hard, because he was both frightened by them and angry with them, but biting them gave him courage. The only way a stranger could put him at ease was by ignoring him. My cousin won him over in just an hour or so by keeping outside his comfort zone and ignoring him, then slowly getting closer and closer. Later that day he was licking her hair. That is infinitely preferable to me than any kind of force or confrontation, and I think by that age if someone had used force or pinned or rolled him it would have made him ten times worse. When he was a puppy I think that pin was not nearly as aversive.
I also think it's important to teach a puppy not to throw tantrums, which can lead to aggression. I don't remember Penny ever throwing one, but she was a puppy a long time ago. However, I do remember my hare chomping deliberately on my finger once when he was still very young. He was not enjoying me picking him up or something. He had that air about him that told me he was trying something new. I pretended I didn't even notice his little baby teeth in my flesh and he never ever deliberately bit me again. Even when I've had to run him down and catch him. Even when I've royally pissed him off. It wasn't an instinctive thing in the first place, and when it didn't work, he abandoned it for good. I'm glad he tried it when his mouth was more gummy than toothy, though! But although he's not a dog, I think this says a lot for the lasting effect actions during an animal's babyhood can have. If a puppy tries something on and it resoundingly doesn't work, I think there's a strong possibility it would never try it again. From this perspective, I think I understand where Carla is coming from (finally). I don't think what she does in an alpha roll and I strongly doubt it has a lasting impression on her dogs. I would even venture that she might know if she ever gets a puppy it would have a lasting impression on and choose to do something different. I would do what she does with a puppy if I had a puppy throwing a tantrum or something similar. The only difference here is that Carla is slightly less bothered by force in certain circumstances than I am, so I would need a stronger reason (in the form of the puppy's behaviour) for me to decide to do something like that. I don't think it's a bad thing and I suspect the majority of puppies would accept it and forget about it except to take away the lesson that whatever they tried doesn't work.
Finally, Dogma, another great post. I also have a look for my dog that is a threat of violence. It's never come to violence, but that's because she thinks I'd do it because I act like I'd do it. I have the same look for people. The only difference is most people know it won't come to violence because they will respect the look and not push too far. When I was a kid, and the look didn't work on my brothers, violence sure did ensue! I guess that's how people learn, too.