totally.

but it aint them on the this time all over this forum these days being rude and high and mighty to others on a regular basis.

most rescue workers i know are wise though, dog forums arent on their radar (even dog rescue forums), they just arent interested.

I see your one upmanship threads on this forum a great deal KW but then again I will repeat what I have said before, you are a FANTASTIC example of Kelly's theory of personal constructs, ie the way you like to denigrate and sneer at others reveals more about you than the person you like to sneer at.

Mirrors are wonderful things, you should use yours more.

Fortunately for me your views on me are a matter of complete indifference.

Oh but you are TRYING to be high and mighty to others on a VERY regular basis KW but only succeeding in revealing your contempt for the human race in general, and some in particular.

ok

i figured this was going to be your next reply anyway.
(as i understand it ....just wikid... that means i have followed kelly's theory by applying it yourself in advance of your reply above???).

But anyways, its a fair point worth considering.
I do have a superiority issue of my own on this forum, i know this, i accept it, its a different animal though, as mine is centred around targetting it toward people that incense me when they are rude or unfair or bullying or judgemental of others, which creates the obvious contradiction that i am probably doing all these things to those people that im targetting .

Their is probably a ".....law" for that, who knows?

i always ease myself with this contradiction (hypocrisy even?) by saying thats kind of how it works in the nature of things; if someone hits you, you copy the characteristic that is bad about them when you hit them back, so on so forth.

I think its the motivation and intention that counts.

I truly and passionately believe in the human-canine symbiotic relationship, i do not make any distinction between the emotion of either, i regard it as the same thing living breathing thinking thing.
So to me positive reinforcement is totally applicable at all times when dog training.

thats why i am so fed up with so many +R dog trainers that are just so superior judgmental intolerant etc to the owners.

I seen old videos of Barbara woodhouse, and its scary the parallels between her demeanour, style, manners, looks, etc, with anti woodhouse reward based trainers today.

Somy question to you is: why do you keep wanting to keep putting yourself above people when you talk to them?

You put a lot of investment in your qualifications as a dog trainer to dogs, but to me, people skills is one of the prime qualfications of dog training, as you are meant to be training people to train dogs, so if you had poor people skills, i wouldnt regard you as a qualified dog trainer.

That can certainly be true but there are also dogs whose food guarding only appears after their weight and health improves, for several reasons.

E.g they don't have the energy to do it at first or they consider the safest place for food is in their stomach (much harder to steal from a stomach than a bowl) so they are keener on eating it asap, than not eating due to being too busy guarding and threatening.

Some "food" guarding dogs will spend (waste?) a lot of energy ferociously charging anyone who comes within 6 foot of an empty bowl, until they decide they have finished with it. Starving dogs can't afford this energy-expensive "luxury".

Aside from guarding empty bowls, some dogs will spend a considerable time standing over food, guarding it without making any actual attempt to eat, even if no one is nearby. Starving dogs do not generally do so.

Some dogs only start to show food guarding as they get over their "honeymoon" period.

I'm sure there are other reasons but these are the ones that immediately come to mind, so it can go either way in terms of the timing and circumstances of the testing.

I was just thinking about the honeymoon period here and how it relates to dogs in shelters - and how that will totaly skew any assessments

But of course I think everyone here understands the heartbreaking decisions people have to make every day, I guess there needs to be some critira, even if we dont agree that its the best
In reality there are more dogs than homes, that is the fact we have to deal with I guess
Would it be any better or worse if the staff just flipped a coin when the dogs came in?
Some good tempramented dogs will be pts, some dogs with the potential to bite will be rehomed
I guess our energies should more be spent trying to make there be less dogs having to end up in shelter


and interesting points about how positive trainers conduct ourselves when dealing with other people
deff food for thought

The honeymoon skews the tests in the dogs favour not against it!

If you get a dog that is prepared to guard in a situation it is not confident in think how it might act once it is confident.

I have known dogs to guard water.

Other dogs don't feel the need to guard anything when they are in kennels but once they settle in a home and are less stressed and more confident they decide that they might give it a go and see what happens. Others are taken home by idiots who have read a book or seen on an internet forum that all dogs ought to allow their owners to remove their food----so they give the dog its first meal and take it away half way through. To test the dog.

It happens.

rune

Aah-I didn't realise this. Cherry guards the water dish sometimes but usually she is happy to share it with Parker and they both drink at the same time from it. I think we often expect too much from our dogs as sharing is not a concept that dogs live by!
Someone I worked with a while ago was telling me how he gave his dog a cooked lamb-bone and then the dog growled at him when he took it away after the dog had eaten all the meat from the bone. He said he "showed it who was boss" for growling at him though (!)
I said that his dog thought he was a bully because he had taken something from the dog by force like this and by reprimanding the dog for growling it may skip this stage altogether next time and go straight to biting but he didn't listen to me as he is one of those people who thinks he knows it all about everything! Wonder if he's still got all his fingers?

It happens a lot - I think old school dog books used to suggest it. One of my main bugbears and one of the silliest things ever ...

I had a book called "Pets for children" (which had monkeys in!) and this was the sort of thing suggested. Published in the 60s.

Wys
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Interestingly, there was an article about this very subject in Your Dog recently, by Carolyn Menteith. I can't quite recall what was said now, but I am pretty sure it spoke about trainer attitude to owners

Interestingly too, one of the worst dog clubs near me, (for dogs) was one of the most popular (due to trainers being so lovely to the owners!).
.....

Wys
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