Very interesting blog about Pit Bulls & Aggression

[RealPitBull]

vanyaproject.blogspot.com/2010/06/thinking-about-pit-bulls.html

[maryellen]

ah i know that dog!!! he is on another forum i used to be on.. she just had to put to sleep her 17 yr old pit Tiva so now its jus Vanya left

[pitbullmamaliz]

Nancy is amazing. That's a great blog posting. I remember that discussion she was talking about at the beginning of the blog. It was UGLY.

[RealPitBull]

I haven't come across her/this blog before! I can't wait to go ahead and read more.

[pitbullmamaliz]

Mary, you'd love her.

[maryellen]

i love this blog omg

[RealPitBull]

She lost me with the post promoting shock collar use. Oh well.

[maryellen]

i didnt see the shock collar part where is that?

[RealPitBull]

The latest blog post, the one at the very top. I was just taken aback, because she seemed so all about R+ training, and also is obviously knowledgeable. Her using a shock collar on a livestock chasing dog was just like whaaaat? Doesn't discount the good stuff she's saying, I just hate that she's promoting them.

vanyaproject.blogspot.com/2011/08/teaching-vanya-not-to-chase-livestock.html

[pitbullmamaliz]

Oh yeah, I did forget about that.

[RealPitBull]

Well I think her blog on aggression is amazing, and I'll continue to share that with people.

[maryellen]

well, as someone who has a dog who would love to EAT the livestock next door, and after using bat,cat, clicker, etc on him i would try the e collar . its different with livestock, as most states/towns have a law that if your dog chases/kills livestock they are sentenced to death... and if nothing positive works on the dog no mattter how long you have tried you have to resort to what will SAVE your dogs life... (and the livestock). in nj if a farmer catches your dog chasing its livestock/killing/maiming etc the farmer has the LEGAL RIGHT to shoot your dog.. no questions asked.. so i would rather use a ecollar on a dog when all else fails to keep the dog away from the livestock then have the dog dead. but thats just my opinion...

i can never again leave my dog outside unattended, i have to have a leash with me at all times, and i have to micromicro manage him due to his intense livestock issues...and it sucks

[RealPitBull]

www.clickertraining.com/node/1193

[maryellen]

While I understand where u are coming from and I do agree some dogs it works on. But not every dog will respond unfortunately

[maryellen]

what does one do in a situation like this. I think this would make a good separate topic some folks could use help on this. Me, I will just keep managing Rufus as I don'tind but what about others who won't care like I do. How do you help owners who want a fix but positive training isn't working....

[RealPitBull]

Well, in my personal experience, positive training always works. There is no such thing as a dog that doesn't respond to the laws of learning, sometimes it just takes persistence and trying a variety of techniques. I just don't believe physical punishment is ever an option.

Predatory behavior no matter what method you use is always going to be a difficult thing to manage, and there is definitely no "cure". (Think about it in terms of how we manage/modify dog-aggression in this breed). But for instance, with Luca, I pretty much extinguished his on-leash squirrel obsession by merely requiring him to do something I wanted before he got a chance to go follow a squirrel up the tree. He was insane about wanting to chase squirrels, too. After a short time, he just stopped even caring about squirrels and completely ignored them.

Also remember too the horse is a whole new thing for Rufus, some of it is a novelty thing that has to wear off. And he can never, ever be allowed to gain self-reinforcement for chasing the horse (not that I think you'd allow that, just saying for sake of an argument). Reverse-BAT or reverse-CAT works really well for prey-chase behavior. When he wants to GET to something, movement towards it is the reward for appropriate behavior.

Control Unleashed has some really good exercises for teaching self-control, too, that I'd use in addition to the above.

Just my coupla cents

[maryellen]

Crap double post. can u delete my one double post. see I Am fine with him managing it. But what about others who aren't. and who have a dog that needs extra training.. Maybe do a separate thread on training prey drive and the time it takes etc for newbies. and if I spent a year training a dog to ignore livestock and nothing worked I would use whatever worked. To save that dogs life . Not everyone is purely positive and some dogs are more driven then others. I think this would make good discussion

[maryellen]

Ps I lo e my iPhone I can be on the forum while at work all day !

[maryellen]

Love my iPhone lol not lo

[RealPitBull]

I just don't get the whole "to save a dog's life" thing. I don't live in a world where it's "shock your dog into compliance or he dies". I'm not trying to be snarky or anything, I just hear people say that all the time, and I don't get it? I manage my dog's dog-aggression, why can't people manage their dog's livestock predatory-behavior? I did. (Just FYI, Luca was insanely predatory and I had him around my horses - granted the horses didn't live on our property but I am not unsympathetic to people who have to deal with a predatory dog around horses - Luca would have latched onto my horse's nose and hung there if given the change!)

I know you manage, ME, and you know what you are doing/how to manage. I get what you are saying, there is a need for people to be able to learn about positive training and managing their dogs' prey drive, but I guess my first point would be that when we choose to live with an animal with inborn prey drive, chances are we're going to have to learn to simply manage some of that behavior when it pops up, not shock it out of existence......there is no "cure" to predatory behavior anyway, and even if you shock a dog into temporary compliance, at some point that suppressed behavior will resurface. So regardless of whether someone uses positive or shock, they are STILL going to have to manage their dog, regardless. Prey drive is not something you can "fix", just like aggression isn't something you "fix". You teach new/incompatible behaviors, and you manage.

The last thing I wanted to add was, I can't help it if a person is not down for management and working with their dog using positive methods and jumps to, "Well I need to shock my dog or else I'm going to kill him!" I know people do that, but sadly, I cannot stop them from doing that. For some people, they want/need a behavior stopped at all costs or they will give up their dog. If my dog is predatory and I live around livestock, I'm keeping my dog contained. I'm not going to shock him - period. That's just not what I'm willing to do. Everyone has a different threshold for acceptable behavior, however, and everyone has a different idea of what is/is not acceptable to do to their dogs.

Anyway, thanks for bringing this stuff up, ME! Good discussion.