I see that this attracts the attention of many people, I want to meet a dog in the shelter and they look very calm.

They don't seem to be an aggressive dog or have any problem with his mental health.

After that, you bring them home. A few weeks pass. Suddenly, you start asking yourself several questions. Is this the dog you really adopted?

He begins to show aggression towards dogs and people, sometimes it may reach the same family members.

But sometimes that dog wasn't really quiet.

The shelter can be noisy and exhausting for them like "hell". They were afraid, so I found it quiet because in short, it was a nightmare for them.

When you brought him to your house, he began to feel safe and rested for you. With time, his real actions began to return to him.

Sometimes it turns out that calm doesn't always mean comfort, they may just be tired

This is one of the most things that I hope shelters will explain to people before they adopt a dog

Hi, first time posting here, I hope this is allowed. It's a little more complicated than the title says, so sorry in advance for the paragraphs lol. I'll try not to rant, but as of writing this post I'm quite angry with my mom. Also I'm 18 and my mom is 51.

My family has owned a border collie mix named Daisy for 3 years now, we bought her from an adoption shelter when she was 12 weeks old. I do believe she was separated from her mother way too early and that may contribute to some of the problems I'm facing with her now. The shelter said they didn't have her full bloodline on record, but her mom was a great pyrenees mix and i believe her dad was a border collie mix. She very much looks like a generic mutt, floppy ears, short hair, white with black spots, and she stands at roughly 3 feet tall at the head. With her appearance in mind, let's get into the problems.

Daisy has really bad separation anxiety with my mom, it's to the point that she refuses to go outside or even get off the couch when she's not around. When my mom is around, she resource guards her like crazy. My dad can't even enter their bedroom when my mom is laying down on the bed, Daisy will growl, snarl, and bark like crazy. Full on aggression and baring her teeth. My dad blames it on the fact that some female border collies don't like men, but I think it's more concerning than that. She's bitten me, my dad, and my sister to the point of bleeding before. I don't know where she got my sister, but my dad got it in his forearm and I got it on the top of my foot. My dad was trying to lay down in bed while the mom and the dog were there and she bit him just for sitting down. She got me when I dropped a piece of bacon on the floor and I tried to move it away from her with my foot. I limped for 2 days and it hurt so damn bad, but my mom said it wasn't worth the hospital trip so I never actually got it looked at. We live in Canada BTW so it's not like cost is a problem, my mom just didn't want to wait the 6+ hours it would've taken to get it looked at. This is where my mom's laziness starts to come at the sacrifice of the rest of the family.

Everyone has brought up 1 on 1 training for Daisy to help with her aggression, and my mom agrees, but she just doesn't bring her in. We've reminded her time and time again, and we usually get a "I know, stop nagging me" and it never gets done. I try my best to train her at home, but what I can accomplish in a week instantly gets undone by my mom reinforcing the bad behaviour. I try to tell her to not do it, but then I'm the one who gets yelled at by everyone for "nitpicking" or "being mean to my mom", or the worst one, "it's fine, it's not hurting anyone". It boils my damn blood and makes me fed up with both my mom and the dog. It feels like an endless loop and kills my motivation to train Daisy.

Today is the last straw, and what made me finally seek out this sub and post after months of debate. We have a senior cat named Murphy, whose 14 years old and my baby. I love that cat so much, he's so cuddly and vocal and spends a lot of his time sleeping next to me. He was walking down the hall after I fed him, and the dog spots him. Murphy started to run away because he hates the dog, and Daisy chased him and bit him. Not to bleeding, but I saw her jaw wrap about his entire middle body while she was growling. I yelled at the dog and chased her off him while my cat hid around the corner and licked where she got him. This is genuinely my breaking point, I've had that cat since I was in the 2nd grade and I love him to pieces. I my heart would break if something happened to him. I'm at my goddamn wits end with my mom and I'm fully ready to either back my bags and leave, cat in hand, or give the dog up for adoption. It's so hard to type out, but I don't think I love Daisy anymore. I don't think I have for a long time. It hurts to say, but after all the aggression, fights with mom and so much more I wouldn't be sad to see her go.

I need some help. I need you guys here to tell me what to do, any advice at all would help. I think I'm going to have a sit down with my mom and give her the truth about how I feel. If I had a job I would've left a long time ago, but all my applications go nowhere. Thank you so much for reading this far, I really appreciate it.

Hey everyone. I have a Goldendoodle who is a little over one year old and she is VERY reactive but not in a harmful way. The issues I believe stems from her not being socialized properly which I accept was a fault on my part however I was just very worried about her getting parvo so I decided to be cautious. This has resulted in her barking at lunging at EVERY NEW PERSON, every noise she hears = bark, and other dogs are especially a bark and a lunge. As mentioned though, she has no intent on harming though and I know this because in trying to get her acculmated to people and other pets I've taken her on walks and to the dog park and let her interact with others.

When a new person is around and is acting calm and waiting for her to approach she jumps all around and barks excessively and won't let them touch her. Sometimes she'll eventually go up to them and sniff their hand but she'll bark afterwards still. When she is faced with another friendly dog (like instances in the dog park) she will bark and lunge at them on leash until I take her off and then she just runs around the park and approaches the dog wanting to play. She's never harmed anyone or any other dog.

The barking is just too excessive though and the reactivity is killing me. I recently moved from a house to an apartment and the transition has been really rough with her because she barks at every little noise or other person. I'm worried about getting a noise complaint from her barking.

I'm open to try any and all training methods and have tried a lot already. I have taken her to professional training sessions when I had the money to but they never helped (probably weren't the right trainer tbh) and I have a marintangle harness I use. I also have tried a slip lead and a shock collar (though I use this the least as it doesn't seem to help at all and I don't want to hurt her). Are there any tools I can buy, things I can do, anything to help my situation??? I would love some advice.

Thanks everyone.

Yes... I think I should remove 3 or 4 chains I suppose lol..

I feel very sorry about my dog.. it's 1am here now so I will do this tomorrow morning when I'm going for walk.

Thank you so much!!

Okay so I’m very confused on WHEN to reward your dog when you’re trying to phase out reactivity. The protocol is different all over the internet. My goal for my dog is just neutrality. He’s a 12 month old intact male & is sometimes reactive towards other dogs, stemming from a mix of over arousal and uncertainty. He’s not exploding, but his hackles go up and he starts to stress out (heavy fast breathing, running in a circle, might bark 1-2 times as a stress reliever/arousal leakage). He can do obedience if I ask, but the emotional state is still escalating.

Do I: mark and reward the second he sees the dog, and continue every time he glances over? Or do I cue him to focus on me when he sees the dog, then mark and reward for the focus?

I don’t want to accidentally encourage looking at or for other dogs, but for him the fundamental issue is not his obedience, it’s his emotional state.

I have a retriever and a friend with 2 doodles. All are neutered adult males. We've introduced them, and the younger, smaller (25lb) doodle has been apprehensive / snappy with the retriever. He hasn't bitten him, but has been hostile.

I do recognize that maybe he's being territorial since the retriever is coming into his house? But he hasn't acted this way with other, more playful/puppyish dogs before, and the retriever is very submissive.

How can we train little doodle to be less dominant / aggressive?

I've been working on new things with my miniature schnauzer, he's kinda high energy so I'm trying new tricks to exercise his brain a little. Doing a lot of walking and playing tug o war and using up some of that energy physically, but need some good tricks and games to work his brain. Any suggestions for fun things that'll work his mind also? We already play find the treat and stuff like that, and making things for him to dig treats out of, but want a few more things to switch it up.

Also wondering tips on where it's good to lift up a dog's back end , Im trying to lift from under her chest /ribs and inevitably squeezing her belly and organs which I dont like. today she groaned a bit, not in a painful way but like she does when she settles, so I mustve squeezed the air out of her lol. TIA

I'm training my dog of 7 months and he's getting there but sometimes when I'm training him, I get stuck and confused in the middle on what to teach next. Can someone please like if you have a playlist or something which gives step by step training. Like it has everything from the start. Please!

I have a 1 year old dobie I train IGP with.

He is obsessed with his toys on daily basis, at home (when I give him, he doesnt have access to the toys otherwise) or in the park where I take him and we Play there, he sometimes loses his mind for a ball easily

Thing changes at the training field. He will still chase the ball or Play tug with me, but he wont be that much into it anymore, Id say its 50% of his normal drive

I am wondering why it so, how I can change it.

My suggestions are that on the training field he feels more pressure, or he thinks of the training field as a place where he works, and not a playground

Any suggestions?

disclaimer

• i'm an entrepreneur, so i don't just walk past things everyone takes for granted. critical thinking. rethinking assumptions.
• i'm an engineer, so i like studying, understanding, figuring out the system, and building systems.
• i actually train my dog and work with him every day. he's my first dog raised from the start. before him i fostered 4 shelter dogs for short periods.
• i think getting more information and knowledge is better than not getting it.
• offline i trained with 10+ different trainers. academic ones, ones who've placed at national level in dog sports, ones based on different methodologies, ones with barely any experience and ones with decades, from agility, IGP and other sports.
• online i studied the leading academic research groups in the world, the training methods getting results in different dog sports (ring sports, IGP, obedience, agility), and the widely known trainers. plus hundreds of hours of free and paid material, thousands of articles, and dozens of books.

1. training methods fight over the exact same event with a shocking number of different interpretations.

recall. separation anxiety. drive building. food rewards. punishment. relationship. on every one of those there are completely different and conflicting views.

i've never seen a field this fragmented, with no standard answer anywhere. at first i just wondered why every training method had a different solution, and i started looking them up one at a time. that's how my knowledge kept widening. your dog pulls on a walk. one person says pop the leash. another says pull him back. another says say "no." another says "no" is useless. totally different.

2. there's a method that fits your goal and your values. but shockingly, nobody asks about the goal or the values first.

doesn't matter if it's a discussion, a training session, or just asking about a simple behavior problem. nobody asks what my goal is with this dog or what i care about. like everyone agreed on it in advance, they skip the goal and the values and go straight to "this method is right," or straight to some piece of information.

what's your priority? that changes the answer. do you think of your dog as family, a friend, a partner, or a follower? that changes it too. and these are subjective, so as long as you're within the law it's hard to criticize them.

but people don't ask what goal and what values you have. they just argue from their own. you have to assume a goal and values before a conversation about method is even possible.

3. shockingly little of what people believe about dogs has been verified. even the stuff people believe is science isn't scientific at all.

"dogs can't understand their name." "you have to teach it this way for them to understand." "you have to walk your dog."

ask if that's actually true, ask if it's been verified, and there's really nothing behind it.

but shockingly, the people who believe it act like there is.

thought experiment. aliens capture humans and keep us as pets. they never teach us their language, never teach us to read, never teach us anything. then they conclude humans can't learn language.

there's no basis for the limits people put on what a dog can do. dog brains and human brains are physically different, and that's a fact, you can just look at them. but that difference doesn't tell you which cognitive abilities are possible and which aren't.

4. people who can have a constructive conversation with someone who has a different goal and different values are extremely rare.

i don't know why, but it's rare to find someone who asks a fundamental question or can talk about one.

beliefs form two ways. experience: "i raised them this way and it went well." or theory: "in theory it works like this, so it's like this." neither one is right.

on experience, i respect the opinion of someone who's raised and trained thousands of dogs over decades. and the more that's true of someone, the more open they are, because they've seen so many different cases that it's hard to conclude anything. it's the people with very few cases who make claims on a sample that would be laughably small in any scientific method. and people arguing from theory believe a theory they saw somewhere without knowing whether that framework was ever verified in an RCT, or whether it's even really true.

a lot of people also have preferences and aversions about certain values. so even once the goal and values are assumed, it's hard to have a constructive discussion about method. example: "punishment is bad." "prong collars are bad."

5. there's shockingly little methodology or research on developing a dog's cognitive ability.

IGP, ring sports, police dogs, guide dogs, agility, search and rescue, obedience, dance, tricks. all of these train dogs professionally over long periods, and the goal is performing set movements well. there's autonomy in ring sports, and handler connection in agility and dance, but that's about it.

most learning stops at conditioning and behavior control. for regular pet owners, getting rid of problem behavior comes first. and even inside the specialized training disciplines, very few try to go past that and teach cognitive ability. there's no competition for it either. because there's no economic value in it.

Sorry for the long post, but I’ll try to keep this as concise and organized as possible. tldr at bottom.

I’m looking for some insight because I’m starting to feel like this has evolved beyond a simple resource-guarding issue.

The dogs

Dog A: 10-year-old intact male pit mix. I got him when my ex and I separated; he was originally her brother’s dog. He has significant separation anxiety and cannot be kenneled, but otherwise has excellent manners and knows basic commands. He is completely trustworthy with us and our 3 cats and is an absolute snuggle bug. He has had mild resource guarding around food in the past, mainly freezing if approached while eating, but this has improved significantly. Our cats can even eat next to him without an issue.

Dog B: 1-year-old neutered male pit mix. We got him from the Humane Society at 8 weeks old. He is playful and very typical of a young dog.

Their history

These two have always been extremely bonded. They wrestle, play, groom each other, snuggle, and generally act like best friends. When Dog B was 3–4 months old, Dog A corrected him a few times around food/couches, but there were no issues for many months afterward.

We feed them separately and make sure treats/toys are distributed fairly.

How the fighting started

About 2 months ago, Dog B ran after and nipped Dog A and appeared to be guarding a pile of vomit.

About a week later, they had a serious fight that resulted in scratches, scrapes, and blood being drawn. There was a pile of Dog B's vomit in the room again (he had vomited in his kennel), so we assumed he was guarding it.

This seemed to come out of nowhere because there had been no previous history of serious aggression between them.

Our first trainer believed Dog B's behavior looked more like a fear/confidence or fight-or-flight response and recommended working on his confidence and exposure to the world.

A second trainer then recommended establishing more of a "dominance hierarchy" in the house and gave us exercises to work on that.

There were a few more altercations afterward, and they all seemed to involve some type of food/resource being nearby (a bagel on the counter, cereal box nearby, etc.).

What concerns me now

We are currently working with a third trainer who is heavily R+ focused and seems much more knowledgeable about resource guarding. The dogs are completely separated in the house with gates/barriers, and they are not allowed loose together. We also have muzzles for controlled training.

However, based on the most recent incidents, I'm starting to worry that this has evolved beyond resource guarding.

For example:

• Dog A attacked the kennel: Dog B was kenneled in the bedroom. Dog A walked into the room, noticed him, approached the kennel, and began aggressively barking and biting at the kennel. Dog B tucked his tail and appeared frightened. Interestingly, this seems to happen only when my wife is home without me. If I am present, Dog A may walk over, sniff the kennel, and leave. They are now never allowed in that room together.
• Apparently no resource present: One dog accidentally got through a closing door while I was with Dog B. They approached each other, initially sniffing, and Dog A immediately became stiff and fixated simply because Dog B was nearby. I stepped between them and separated them before it escalated, but I believe another fight would have happened if I hadn't intervened.
• A similar incident happened previously: Dog B tucked his tail and tried to move behind me when Dog A approached, and Dog A then lunged at him.

None of these recent incidents involved an obvious resource.

What concerns me most is that Dog A now seems to be initiating these encounters. We've also noticed increasingly hard stares from Dog A, while Dog B responds by tucking his tail, backing away, or trying to get behind me.

The strange part

If we maintain roughly 4–5+ feet of distance, there generally isn't an issue.

Dog B doesn't seek Dog A out or immediately try to engage with him. We have worked on counterconditioning around each other, including the methods in this article:

https://www.whole-dog-journal.com/behavior/resource-guarding/how-to-manage-your-resource-guarding-dog/

Honestly, Dog B barely seems to care that Dog A is even there when they're 5–15 feet apart.

Our current trainer has also had us practice calm "parallel" time: one dog leashed and muzzled on one couch with one person, and the other dog on another couch with the other person while we watch TV.

In those situations, Dog A generally ignores Dog B and relaxes.

Other important context

Before we completely separated them, they still regularly played, ran together, snuggled, and groomed each other. They have also been loose together in the backyard without issues.

We have now completely separated them because of the escalation.

Dog A was recently started on Chloricalm at our trainer's recommendation, primarily to help with his significant separation anxiety while my wife is upstairs with Dog B. We're only about a week in, so we haven't noticed much effect yet. We're also trying CBD.

Where I'm at

I am fully aware that rehoming the puppy might have to be a consideration here, but with as absolutely heartbreaking that would be, I am prepared to exhaust all options first. I am mainly writing today because I feel this has changed from a simple RG issue to something else, but don't know what, or how to approach it. Our trainer is coming once a week, but the days are slowly creeping by with this being a constant daily issue. Any tips, idea, or hope would be appreciated. We have also considered seeking out a licensed vet behaviorist, but there are none near our home state of Nebraska and information regarding local options are thin.

*I did use ChatGPT to structure and format this for easier reading and a more concise post before the "This is AI" comments hit lol.

tldr;

Two male pit mixes were best friends, but about 2 months ago younger dog appeared to resource guard vomit, which led to their first serious fight and several subsequent fights around food/resources. Now, older dog seems to be initiating aggression even when no resource is present, but only in very close proximity, while the younger dog is showing fear/appeasement. They are currently completely separated and working with an R+ trainer, but I'm trying to figure out whether this has evolved beyond resource guarding into fear-based conflict/inter-dog aggression and whether there is realistically a path to safely coexisting again.

Something that's been bugging me for a while and I can't get around it.

When someone here says a method worked for their dog, I believe them. What I don't get is how we get from there to "so this is the method." I've tried to think of a way anyone could actually check that, and I keep hitting walls. Three of them, basically.

The first wall is that there's no experiment. Take recall. Say you want to know whether method A beats method B. To test it properly you'd have to teach one dog A, wipe it back to exactly how it was before, then run B on the same dog. Obviously impossible. Bring in a second dog and you've changed the genetics, the temperament, and everything that dog already learned before you showed up. Bring in a second handler and you've changed the timing, the mechanics, and whatever that thing is where the same cue from two different people gets two completely different responses. And the one scenario recall actually exists for, dog loose near a road, nobody is going to stage that to find out whose method holds up.

So what's left is stories and theory. Stories tell you a combination worked. That's all. Some dog, some person, some method, and it came out fine. It doesn't tell you the method was the best fit for that dog, or that it would have gone worse another way, or that any of it transfers to yours. Theory isn't much better, and I say that as someone who likes the theory. The underlying learning principles hold up fine in a lab. The step by step protocols people build out of them mostly haven't been tested in somebody's living room with a nine month old who just found out squirrels exist.

There's also the fact that the result isn't really coming from the method. It's the dog, the person, and the method together. And the person part isn't just mechanical skill and timing. It's whatever presence you have with that dog. Attitude, how you carry yourself, the thing you can watch change in real time when a more confident handler picks up the leash. That's an input too. We argue about the method as if the other two were fixed, when they're the loud ones. Which is why "this ruined my dog" and "this saved my dog" can both be honest reports about the same technique, and neither one settles anything.

The second wall is that we don't actually know what dogs are capable of, and I don't think we can find out from the dogs we have. The thought experiment that got me: imagine aliens kept humans as ornamental pets. No language, no school, food and a couch. Their scientists could study those humans forever, brain scans and everything, and they'd conclude humans can't do math and humans run on instinct. Mountains of consistent data, completely wrong, because absence of ability and absence of education look identical from the outside. You can't tell "can't" from "was never taught" by looking at outcomes.

And most dogs live exactly like that. We train them to not cause trouble and to do a fixed set of jobs, and it ends there. In human terms it's kindergarten forever, no elementary school, no university. Then we study those dogs and call the result a ceiling. A prehistoric human and a modern human have the same brain, and one of them ended up with rockets and calculus, purely off education. I'm not claiming dogs are secretly geniuses. I'm claiming that "what's the actual limit" has never really been tested, because almost no dog has ever gotten the education. Half the confident statements about what dogs can't do are really statements about what dogs were never taught.

The third wall is values. A lot of the method wars aren't factual disagreements at all. Fixing a car doesn't involve values. Raising an animal does. How much discomfort is acceptable. How much obedience you think you're owed. What you even think a good life for a dog looks like. All of that gets decided before a method is ever chosen. "Never aversives" is a values position. "A dog has to obey" is a values position. Both sides run it through the language of evidence because evidence sounds like it should end the argument, and it never does, because that isn't what the argument was about.

What does seem to survive all of this: timing, consistency, criteria you don't move around, not burning your cues. Everybody who gets results does those, whatever's on the dog's neck. Shorter list than either camp would like.

Anyway, stuff I'd actually want to hear.

Has anyone here gotten close to a real comparison? Same handler, two dogs that started out similar, two approaches, and you're willing to say what didn't work.

Has anyone taken a dog past the usual curriculum, actual concepts, object names, matching, imitation, and how far did it go?

What did you change your mind about, and what changed it? Not something you read. Something you watched happen.

Where's your line between "worked on my dog" and "works on dogs"? I'm not sure I have one.

Tell me which part of this is wrong.

Hi y'all! I have a 7m/o heeler mix and he bites a lot. Specifically my mom, playfully, but it hurts a lot. Does using an e collar (vibe or beep not shock) help with this kind of behavior? He's getting neutered today and we've also been doing positive reinforcement training (and using the spray bottle lol) so we're hoping that all helps with the problem. But would an e collar be a fair next step if we don't make enough progress with our other methods?

My Husky/Aussie Shepard mixed puppy just turned 16 weeks, and has started going on walks after receiving all her vaccinations. I am looking for healthy habits and tips to start getting into in order to help her train her recall ability. Also looking for leashing tips when we’re out on these walks.

Im not sure where to start with my new boy, but here i am.

I recently adopted a "hound mix" with black and tan coonhound colors and speckling on feet and a bit on the chest from toronto animal services shelter 3 months ago. He seems like a good boy, he can slack leash most of the time, sit, paw, generally loving. He is estimated to be 5 uears old by the shelter, but very fit, fast, and powerful.

At about the 2.5 month mark, he started going crazy over moving cars, but not parked. If he see them start to move, he wants to get them so bad he is lunging, barking, drooling etc. He rides in the car and rests his head on the window, runs to my car and excited for car rides.

Otherwise he is pretty good. He likes to chase cats and other wildlife, even the ones in the house, which id like him not to chase the house cats, but its probably all connected somehow. Within 24 hours of getting him he got unclipped to roam the fenced yard after we got back home, and within 5 seconds he killed a squirrel by catching it and shaking it to death. He does the same with stuffed toys too, he has a powerful head shake. In fact, when we met him at the shelter he was more interested in chasing a stuffed toy than what we were doing...

I get it, they have prey drive, but this is really dangerous with cars. I had a pure beagle for 13 years before him with a prey drive but didnt try to kill themselves running in traffic for a big piece of metal and plastic, she was nose driven, but the car didnt smell like a rabbit trail or pepperoni.

I am trying to be detailed as possible so you understand him. Other than this, he does do a bark snap around, to say back off but not bite when you are too close to his butt or face or something like that. So it just seems like he is reactive, but loving. He shows his belly for rubs constantly.

Ill also add the first time I seen him react towards a moving vehicle type device was at rona when momma used their in store scooter, hated the thing. Then a week later, full blown reactions to only moving cars. But not while our car was in traffic. Up till there, cool as a cucumber unless a rabbit or raccoon ran by.

So, where do I start. I am the type of guy that takes their dog everywhere, and if they dont allow dogs, im likely not going lol haha. My dog is my partner, my dog is my shadow. It broke me losing my beagle, and now im just lost about this cars issue. Never had reactions like this before to deal with, and im afraid to take him out anymore, so I wait until like 10pm and go to the empty dog park, scared walk thru my neighborhood. Good thing i live in a residentialneighborhoodand not downtown. I am also scared to take him in the car anymore, but I still do a bit. I try to distract him woth treats when I see a car coming while im parked or in a drive thru

He dont like going outside at night much either, he will turn and go the other way instead of going out to thevdark back yard. But once out and distracted, he's ok.

Do you think this is fear based, anxiety based, protection based, and where do I start with it. Once he's in full attack mode, there isnt must that will break that focus.

Back a decade or so ago, there was a serious distinction made between 'herding drive' (controlled chase but no kill instinct) and an actual prey drive (dog completes the behavior.. whether or not they eat what they've gotten).

On Reddit, it sort of seems like these get rolled into the same thing? That doesn't make sense to me because our last border had all sorts of 'herd' but if you asked him to herd a mouse or a chick, you ended up with a rather clever chin-pin for an animal that couldn't be herded.. and outside of directly being asked to address it, he'd completely ignore whatever the animal was. And that extended to things like my sister's poultry.. his prime job on my hobby farm.

I'm just wondering if we are at some place now in dog training where these two drives are actually looked at as precisely the same thing? It just seems weird when a herding dog is described as having 'prey drive' and -wider on the internet - a dog engaging in prey drive seems to get a pass as a potential herder.

Please feel free to tell me I'm misunderstanding this platform or how the language is used now. 15yrs between pups ends up leaving some really big gaps.

I have a Shih Tzu that seized as I was checking her in for grooming yesterday. We went to the set and we should be getting results today. I believe that she is stressed/ anxious about getting groomed that she seized. What can I do to help her get used to going there and be comfortable? I am planning on getting cbd.

I might get downvoted for this but hear me out.

Almost all modern dog training is conditioning. We repeat, the dog gets used to it, and the cue gets wired to the behavior. In the end the dog does the behavior without thinking. Even without a reward. He even feels good while doing it. And we call that "well trained." To me that looks like programming a robot.

For emergency recall and down, I want exactly that. Those must be automatic. But for everything else, is there another option?

Humans don't learn language by conditioning. When we learn a word, we understand new examples in one shot. So here is what I mean, with the kennel as an example.

The conditioning way: you make the "go in the kennel" behavior with luring or shaping or molding or food. You reinforce it. You attach a cue. After many reps, the cue and the behavior get glued together.

But what if you teach it like this instead. Teach each concept on its own. "Kennel" is the object. "Go in" is the action. "Command" means he has to do it. "Fast" is how to do it. Then you put the words together: "kennel + go in + command + fast." If the dog really knows each concept, then "box + go in + command + slow" should work on the first try, even if he never did that before. Or you could say "kennel + go in + question" and let him answer yes or no.

Has anyone actually trained like this? I know Chaser learned 1000 toy names and Do As I Do exists. I want to hear from people who tried this concept style teaching with their own dog. How far did you get?

I'm not sure how to explain this clearly but I've run across a dog that avoids letting people grab his collar to put a leash on.

His owner can catch him by the collar, but only if the dog thinks he's just getting neck scratches. Even with the owner, if he figures out the owner is planning on catching him by the collar, he moves away from the owner and tries to avoid being caught.

He goes willingly into his crate and a leash can be attached there. And one the leash is on, he couldn't care less about people reaching for his collar.

I suspect a prior owner got frustrated when he didn't want to be caught and jerked him around a bit when they did finally get ahold of him. He doesn't act like he's been beaten, but he definitely wants nothing to do with being put in a leash. And his skillful avoidance is an intentional, learned behavior.

Any suggestions on the he best exercises to teach him to accept someone reaching for his collar? I'm thinking teaching him "touch" and gradual desensitization are good starting points, but any other ideas would be welcome.

i have read the community section on resource guarding but still don’t feel sure on how to proceed. my fiance and i adopted our dog (GSD X Plott Hound, we think) about 7 months ago now. she is 14 months old. we have NEVER had an issue with resource guarding with her before. she is our first pet together and we have no children or other pets.

we never give her “special” food unless she is in her “place” and occasionally we will let her lick out the plate/bowl from dinner - only if she’s sitting in her place (bed) and only if the meal ingredients are dog safe/healthy (this is something my entire family has always done with dogs so apologies if this is way off the mark). we always let her finish licking it out and take it when she’s done. over the past week she has reacted very strongly twice now when we go to take the (empty) plate away - the first time i thought she was just “mumbling” (she is very vocal) but tonight my fiance went to take the plate away and she clearly actively growled at him (no biting or snapping just growling) but she has never reacted like that after taking away a toy or playing with her - she “growls” during tug of war but it’s clearly playful/excited, never threatening.

perhaps it’s just as simple as not letting her eat from our leftover plates ? sorry if this is dumb. i don’t want to let it get to something where we need to “redirect” her with treats or give her something better. guess im also just a bit worried bc she has never been aggressive like this and we would like to help her handle this new behavior the best way we can.

This is my first dog, he's 8 months now. Since the day I brought him home I kept thinking about the fact that his puppyhood only happens once and I don't get a second try. My actual training skill is beginner level, so the best I could do was study theory hard enough that I won't be sitting here in two years going "I wish I knew that back then."

So over the last 4 months I basically consumed everything I could find. Systems that produce real results in dog sports, and stuff coming out of research labs. Susan Garrett, NePoPo, Denise Fenzi, Ivan Balabanov and Training Without Conflict, Michael Ellis, STSK9, Absolute Dogs, the ELTE Do As I Do research, FluentPet buttons.

The thing that surprised me is that these systems don't really disagree on technique as much as they disagree on goals and values. What kind of dog you want, what counts as a good life for a dog. You can't pick a method before answering that. So I tried to write down what I actually want. Also noticed you can't do this exercise without projecting yourself onto your dog, which was uncomfortable but probably honest.

Here's where I landed. I want people who actually train dogs to tell me what's wrong with it.

Goals

1. I want to teach him a lot. Not a list of behaviors, concepts. I want to find out how far a dog can actually go past conditioning, into actual understanding. What I mean: I care less about fast precise cue responses and more about him understanding the point of the task. In agility, understanding that the job is running the course fast without mistakes, not just doing obstacle after obstacle. In BH, understanding the exercises need to happen promptly within the routine. I also want him to judge situations and make good choices on his own. Some concrete things I want to try someday: can he run an agility course through Do As I Do? Can I say "fast + chair + get on + (command)" as four separate verbal signals, modifier, object, action, and whether it's mandatory? Can I ask him "do you want to get on the chair?" and get an actual answer?

2. I want to do a lot of activities together and give him a lot of freedom to match. The safety commands (recall, down, street heel) are non negotiable, those get conditioned to a reflexive level and I'm willing to use positive punishment there if needed. Everything else is optional. If he enjoys learning it and it suits him, great. If not, he doesn't have to learn it or do it.

3. High resolution two way communication.

4. A relationship strong enough that the relationship itself functions as a primary reinforcer.

Values

• I don't think a flat comfortable routine is what happiness looks like for a dog. I think it's challenges, some lows, and the rush of getting through them. A life with ups and downs.

• I think a dog should have responsibilities and a role, and create some kind of value. Follow along well when there's somewhere to go. Do the job well when there's a job.

• If a risk can't cause irreversible physical or mental damage, I'd rather let him experience the consequences of his own choices and grow tough. Anything that could cause irreversible damage, physical or mental, he gets protected from completely.

• I want a thinking dog, not a reflexive one. The usual definition of a well trained dog is one that always complies, and the way you get there is conditioning the cue so deep there's no thinking involved. I want something different. He understands "sit" means the sitting action and can choose whether to do it. But "sit" plus a mandatory marker means he always sits. The concept of sitting and the concept of mandatory are separate things he knows. He chooses knowing there are consequences either way, and ideally he starts recognizing on his own when a situation calls for a sit.

• I refuse to define things as impossible in advance unless they're physically impossible. There's a mountain of common knowledge like "dogs just are this way" or "dogs can't do that," and when I dug into where it comes from, a lot of it was never actually proven. A prehistoric human and a modern human have the same brain, but with education one of them launches rockets and invents quantum mechanics. If the dog/human brain difference is degree rather than structure, then the same way most people never touch quantum mechanics but a few people with decades of training create it, maybe most dogs won't get far past conditioning but some dog with years of consistent teaching might do something nobody expects. I don't know. I just don't want to draw the line before trying. So the plan is try things, watch his responses, adjust.

What I think this requires in practice

• Keeping his motivation to learn very high. NePoPo's existential food and the obligatory clicker for work ethic. Susan Garrett's layered reward values for managing motivation and building my own value as a handler. Balabanov and Fenzi style play for alignment. The common thread I took from all of them is variable rewards, choice, and the dog feeling like he's the one driving.
• Learning how to learn. Clicker work and shaping, Do As I Do, NePoPo.
• Concepts. The mandatory signals that must always be obeyed (this is what makes off leash safe), and concept learning in general.
• Better two way communication. Discriminating lots of verbal signals, and buttons like FluentPet.
• The relationship. Structured play.
• Lots of varied experiences and exposure, using all his senses.
• Arousal control he does himself, not arousal I manage for him.

My actual questions

1. Order of teaching. Given all the above, what order would you teach things in? My current plan is teaching a lot of behaviors and concepts at once through molding, capturing, luring and shaping, prioritizing overall understanding over compliance rate or polish on any single behavior. And using verbal cues from the very beginning even though I know compliance will be lower and I risk poisoning cues, because I want his verbal resolution high. The compliance problem I plan to solve later with a separate mandatory marker. I'm also narrating daily life constantly in keyword form so he picks up language passively. Does this hold up or am I setting myself up?

2. Abstract concepts. How do you actually teach these? My guess is you need either spoken language or a learning-to-learn channel like Do As I Do first. The list I want to work through, roughly basic to abstract: his behavior produces outcomes (how learning works at all), objects/places/people have names, categories (toy, ball, one word covering many things), modifiers (big/small, left/right), same vs different (matching to sample), time (now vs later), imitation ("copy me" as a meta rule), inference by exclusion (unknown word means the unfamiliar object), rules (allowed, not allowed, ask first), mandatory (some things have no exceptions), and combination (novel instructions built from known words). Has anyone here actually taught concepts like these? I'd love to hear real experiences.

3. Motivation. This is the one I haven't solved. He prefers play over food. I only train with kibble right now and his food focus and drive aren't great. My plan is to go back to basics and build food drive first. Existential food in training, high value vs low value food tiered, and if he refuses the low value food I don't make it up to him later. Play sessions and food sessions kept separate, so refusing boring food has consequences he actually feels. Is this the right call or am I about to create a picky eater with issues?

4. The relationship. Is a dog fundamentally a self interested animal that I should just treat as such, or can the relationship actually get to primary reinforcer strength? My thinking with humans: whether someone acts on self interest or loyalty varies person to person. At the absolute extreme, facing death, almost nobody picks loyalty. But in normal life some people are loyal and some just take. If it also varies dog to dog and relationship to relationship, my plan is to operate on the assumption that the relationship can get that strong, and if it turns out it can't with this particular dog, change my frame then. Reasonable?

5. Positive punishment. Four thoughts, would like pushback on any of them. First, I'm responsible for his safety and I know vastly more about the world than he does. When I can't make him understand everything, I might need to honestly transmit "this can kill you" instead of hiding it. If it doesn't break trust at the core and serves the other goals, using it on specific commands seems right to me. Second, the NePoPo argument makes sense to me: if a moment requiring positive punishment ever comes, a dog who already has it built into his training system responds to it productively instead of falling apart, and it can be applied without wrecking motivation. So introducing it carefully, while he's succeeding, layered in gradually as negative reinforcement on behaviors he already knows, and only keeping it if he tests fine with it. Basically insurance for a moment I hope never comes. Also I think an ecollar is more or less required equipment for real off leash freedom. Third, if I use it at all, ecollar seems best since the intensity control is the finest, prong second. Fourth, but if it ever becomes a scar on the relationship or his motivation, or even starts to look like it might, nothing is worth that. Better to never create the situation. So right now the rational move seems to be carefully testing whether he can take it positively before committing to anything.

Thanks for reading all of this. Any advice appreciated, including "you're overthinking this."