Well up to my Step 3 is for those he says who have "easy" dogs - the rest is for those more programmed into the chase - those like Louie who had the external reinforcement at a young age - learn't from that mistake!

The disgust thing is done only as a last resort because if done correctly, all the other things in place, there should be no need except on the most serious of chasers to use the spray collar which has been specially conditioned.

It's important to remember that this is for dogs who chase things that they should not chase - and is a great programme for pet dog owners who have this problem.

The dog's welfare is taken into account because the dog must be allowed to chase - BUT its allowed to chase a different target, for example a toy, frisbee, etc. and not an animal, bike, jogger etc.

So much better than just stopping chasing, full stop.

Wys
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He does talk about the push and pull and shout methods and also goes over shock collars in a brief paragraph and how they are not the best method necessarily.

I do like the book - it makes my bookshelf look fuller anyway and it is nice to have the answer to my problem a hand grab away. And he does emphasise that it is not a quick fix - I can't take away birds over night - I can't get him hooked on the frisbee over night and I can't get perfect recall, sit and down overnight...

None of my dogs chase swans or geese or ducks - even though Shamus will point at pheasants. Because I frequently walk in a park with a lake and they have become used to the fowl and learned not to approach them simply with me calling them back or distracting them.

Would you like to have Louie for a few weeks I've tried and it's easy as we're living next to a lake, but he won't give up! I do suppose I am expecting too much too soon, he is 10 months old... Looks like a long line for a walk around the lake then.

As I recall (I haven't read the book, just the link to the article that Wys posted) the whole idea of the training is that you don't allow your dog to chase anything, or even have access to the things it wants to chase, or even the sight or presence of the things it wants to chase at all, never ever during the whole retraining process. The regime that DR describes will also have the effect of changing neural pathways in the brain, and of redirecting any chase drive onto acceptable objects. If, during the training process, you allow your dog to see the original prey objects, or even start the internal physiological "chain reaction" that leads to the prey drive, then you would be making it so much harder for the training programme to succeed.

It's part of the old adage "if you don't use it, you lose it" but in this scenario we want the dog to lose it, i.e. lose the original prey drive in relation to the things we don't want it to chase. So therefore you shouldn't allow your dog to "use it" either. This means stopping access to any & all stimuli that starts the body's chain reaction to the prey objects that we want it to stop chasing. With some dogs this can mean you have to stop going to the park where they see swans, ducks etc, as even all things associated with the park can be enough to start that chain reaction. With other dogs who are regular "chasers" of cars, joggers, bicycles etc, we have to stop the build up to where the dog expects to see these things. This can mean getting the dog straight in the car & driving to an empty field for example, or taking the dog to a river to swim for exercise, or taking it to agility classes.

So whilst the dog's internal physiology is being changed by the retraining process described by DR, it is important that the "old" neural pathways are not used. It doesn't mean that the dog never gets to chase anything ever again; it just means that the chase behaviours will, over time, become associated with totally different things, e.g. the sight of your pocket bulging with a squeaky toy, or the wide open sandy beach where you play frisbee, or ragger toy that you chuck into the bushes in the fields etc

Perhaps if you start to think along those lines with Louie & find new places to go where he won't see birds, places he's not been before so has no associations with, or start doing different things with him, then maybe DR's programme will have a better chance of succeeding?

I have thought this, but as we live just over 100 yards (not good with measurements) from a lake it is a bit hard to remove birds altogether, the geese fly over our house everyday and I don't take him directly to the lake - we walk past it and go down to the river where the only birds he sees is a couple of pigeons.

He is loving the frisbee though, I'm at my parents so took him to a little slightly enclosed field which has allotments on the back - fenced off with the fencing covered by trees. And he heard chickens whilst he was playing with the frisbee and was interested but still more bothered about the frisbee than the birds.

Well that's good news about the frisbee vs the chickens

If you have to walk past the lake or birds to go anywhere, & this causes problems for Louie, what I would do is to distract Louie by any means possible for that first bit of the walk until you get past the lake. So for example, I would have a happy, perhaps high-pitched voice, do some basic training using extremely high value treats, perhaps a jackpot now & again, & get Louie's complete attention so he's so busy wondering what I'm doing, that he forgets all about going past the swans etc. Perhaps teach things like giving a paw, or spin around, or play the "hunting game" by tossing tiny treats ahead of him so he can sniff them out ~ as always do the initial training/teaching at home & in the garden, then move the training to more distracting locations.

By doing this, you'd also be stopping the physiological predatory chain reaction ~ so the same effect as DR's programme.

Sounds like you're making good progress with him though

I have chased all the pigeons off the garden before I let him out - not really good at my parents as my dad loves to feed the birds - he's not happy! To say I've only been working on it a week - he's lulling me into a false sense of security atm. He did take off after something in the woods the other day, not sure what it was but he came straight back. But I have written in my blog that I am retraining his recall, leave and walking nicely on a lead. So maybe that's helping too.

I think the value of Play isn`t generally recognised enough in dog training - whereas in teaching children it is seen as crucial. In Play you set new rules and boundaries in a non-threatening way. You allow for exploring of possibilities. Learning is facilitated because possibilities are endless.
Play with your dog and you become the most interesting thing in his life.