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greenstormLet's try writing some more:
Very few training videos involve treating the dog like a partner. I get that many dogs are supposed to have less volition/be making fewer decisions/their job is to be instantly responsive to humans and they're bred for that etc. Livestock guardian dogs are bred to protect their important things. A lot of raising them is preparing them so that when the strong guarding instincts kick in, they know what's an important thing to guard, what's safe and they don't need to guard against, and who to trust to be involved in decision-making.
So for instance inconvenient resource guarding, which can look like guarding food, a person, a location, is just a slightly misplaced sense of what to guard. That said, my dogs do need to be able to guard their food from, for instance, crows and chickens or it'll all get stolen. So learning what kind of radius is appropriate to guard in, learning that I will not take their food and I will in fact add value (maybe throw hot dogs into the food bowl) instead of taking it away, and that if I take something it's often to move it to a safer/less anxious place like a corner of the yard instead of the middle of the driveway, rather than confiscate it-- all that's important, and it requires the dog learns to trust me.
This is also why I practice "the world is fair" treat-giving pretty often; I give them all treats in order, one after another, so they know that if someone else has something and they don't it's al oversight and I'll fix it. The alternative would be to try and take the thing from the other dog, who then guards their resource, and the tension spirals.
So if a baby dog grabs poop or a dead mouse my job is not to grab the dog and force the thing out of its mouth. It's to close my eyes, think "I'm not sleeping with this baby dog till later tonight and the gross will be worn off by then", give a treat and maybe ask to just look without taking it (very useful!) and deal with it. I remember when Solly was kill-stealing from Hazard (the cat) whenever he'd catch a vole she'd take it and eat it. I handled that well. The first couple days of Robs being here for some reason I could not handle him eating, particularly, dog poop or dead animals and I grabbed them from him. Now he's suspicious of me, and rightly so, so I have a lot of repair to do.
I think part if it might just be that, although he's not really a baby anymore, in the sense of being used to a farm he kind of still is. So he's putting everything in his mouth. He's particularly good at knowing that something "was" food, which I find fascinating. Like, how does a mostly decayed dried out black seed potato from last spring register as food? What about a pumpkin that dried out and sat in the field since October a year and a half ago? Also he eats the fresh mushrooms all over the yard, which are there because I put blocks of spent mushroom blocks in everything. I won't eat them because I can't ID them (bit of an oversight there when I put them in, there are so many kinds) but the ducks will even dig for the mycelium, and apparently Robs recognises them. At least he hasn't poisoned himself yet.
He's doing pretty well with the "it's your choice" game, I think it's called, where I put food in one hand and reward him with the other for not taking it. The next step would be to put the food on the ground but he's a lot faster than I can think. That's a problem with a lot of this, actually: my thoughts are so slow, and my body accordingly slow, that by the time I realize I want to tell him he's doing well he's gone onto doing something else. Likewise by the time I think "it's not worth it for this one dead mouse" I've already gone after it.
We're learning when we like to snuggle with each other, which is important for me. Excited and anxiety look the same to me in him, and he has a tendency to snap at my hand when he wants a hug but also when he wants space. This is difficult because I want to transfer him to a different signal for both of those things but it really helps to be able to first be able to give hi what he's asking for, and I can't tell them apart, and they're very different. When he comes out of the run he always wants a snuggle though.
There have been some good encounters with cats. The way they progress, though, is that if he sniffs quietly we're good, but sometimes he then does a play bow and when he doesn't get a response he likes he starts jumping up and down, which can cause running and wanting to chase, and definitely doesn't reinforce that calm is good. Instead it reinforces that jumping gets a toy to chase. I've been keeping him on a 25' lead that runs loose on the ground when we're up top, so I can step on it if he tries to chase something but he also has more freedom of movement than if I were holding onto things.
I've been rewarding him for looking at me when we do stuff, and rewarding him for sitting. He's doing both of those things more. He's starting to learn that sitting is for asking for something, mostly, though when he's excited he will forget.
He's picked up sit, lie down (though not duration for either of those), and we've been doing rounds of "come, sit" and "go get it" where I alternately treat him for coming to me and then throw a treat for him to get. He's bored of his ball at this point. He does not retain interest in any particular toy, but he is very very very food motivated. The former probably bodes well for flappy reinforcing things like chickens and running interesting things like cats in the long term., as long as he never learns they're food. That's my job: absolute prevention of a Really Bad Incident.
Because he's so food motivated he likes doing tricks. I remember Avallu was a bit like that, he liked tricks and training. The other LGDs are NOT. Honestly I've been with them so long though that we can kind of subtextually communicate about stuff that's important, and if it's not important they wouldn't do it anyhow. On various occasions when I'm out with Robs I'll offer either Thea or Solly some of his treats and they look at me like, "what are you doing?" but I can kind of nod into the corner when I'm coming into the house with a rambunctious Robs and Solly will go to the corner to get out of the way until I get him into the bedroom.
Learning that he wanted hugs when he came out of the run was helpful for me. I need to feel like the dog likes me, not just the treats, and because he's so food motivated and doesn't know me yet I can't really reward him effectively with praise. But being able to settle him with a hug, I at least know there's some component of me that helps. Also undoing my resource stealing issues-- who could trust someone who steals delicious dog poop --will likely help him. Anyhow, we're making progress on feeling like there's a bond but we're not there yet. There's some nice snuggling in bed, especially in the morning.
He's almost longer than I am tall already. He's gonna be a big boy, it's definitely my responsibility to make sure he keeps those teeth to himself. Well, himself and bears.
Meanwhile the cats took pity on me and Siri and Demon started getting along and sleeping on the bed together instead of fighting each other off it. One conflict at a time is enough for me. I'm very grateful.
The geese have raised 5 goslings to almost chicken-sized and another 2 appeared yesterday (they always hatch after a thunderstorm, I think it's the humidity). I hope the new 2 make it as well. I have to do a lot of bailing them out of drinking vessels since they're too tiny to hop out on their own, and if I leave a stick in there to climb out on the adult geese try to stand on it to mate and knock it out. Luckily I'm doing all these dog walks everyday...
There were deer in the back last night and this morning. Poor Solly screams like she's being pulled limb from limb when I won't let her chase them; meanwhile Thea might trot off after them but mostly doesn't care. That's probably why Solly is so upset. Meanwhile our daily walks take us in back past holes in the fence which Thea goes out and Solly wants to go out (but is on leash) so I go around and let Thea back in the front when Solly is away. Hazard and Little Bear come on these walks too.
Hazard and, to a lesser extent, Little Bear seem to want to be friends with Robs but he wants to chase and they want to ....?... Hazard headbutted his leg the other day and he was good with it, which is excellent. He definitely reacts differnetly to them situationally: on the other side of a fence or far away he's inappropriate, but up close he's more likely to make the right decision.
Three weeks till Solly can go out on her own, hopefully, and also meet Robs officially instead of just lurking while he is shepherded through quickly.
I'm sure there was more I wanted down but I'll leave it here for now, my midn is gone. If I trusted AI more I might give it acc3ss to email to try and let through only the ones, er. Nevermind. Less writing more resting.
Very few training videos involve treating the dog like a partner. I get that many dogs are supposed to have less volition/be making fewer decisions/their job is to be instantly responsive to humans and they're bred for that etc. Livestock guardian dogs are bred to protect their important things. A lot of raising them is preparing them so that when the strong guarding instincts kick in, they know what's an important thing to guard, what's safe and they don't need to guard against, and who to trust to be involved in decision-making.
So for instance inconvenient resource guarding, which can look like guarding food, a person, a location, is just a slightly misplaced sense of what to guard. That said, my dogs do need to be able to guard their food from, for instance, crows and chickens or it'll all get stolen. So learning what kind of radius is appropriate to guard in, learning that I will not take their food and I will in fact add value (maybe throw hot dogs into the food bowl) instead of taking it away, and that if I take something it's often to move it to a safer/less anxious place like a corner of the yard instead of the middle of the driveway, rather than confiscate it-- all that's important, and it requires the dog learns to trust me.
This is also why I practice "the world is fair" treat-giving pretty often; I give them all treats in order, one after another, so they know that if someone else has something and they don't it's al oversight and I'll fix it. The alternative would be to try and take the thing from the other dog, who then guards their resource, and the tension spirals.
So if a baby dog grabs poop or a dead mouse my job is not to grab the dog and force the thing out of its mouth. It's to close my eyes, think "I'm not sleeping with this baby dog till later tonight and the gross will be worn off by then", give a treat and maybe ask to just look without taking it (very useful!) and deal with it. I remember when Solly was kill-stealing from Hazard (the cat) whenever he'd catch a vole she'd take it and eat it. I handled that well. The first couple days of Robs being here for some reason I could not handle him eating, particularly, dog poop or dead animals and I grabbed them from him. Now he's suspicious of me, and rightly so, so I have a lot of repair to do.
I think part if it might just be that, although he's not really a baby anymore, in the sense of being used to a farm he kind of still is. So he's putting everything in his mouth. He's particularly good at knowing that something "was" food, which I find fascinating. Like, how does a mostly decayed dried out black seed potato from last spring register as food? What about a pumpkin that dried out and sat in the field since October a year and a half ago? Also he eats the fresh mushrooms all over the yard, which are there because I put blocks of spent mushroom blocks in everything. I won't eat them because I can't ID them (bit of an oversight there when I put them in, there are so many kinds) but the ducks will even dig for the mycelium, and apparently Robs recognises them. At least he hasn't poisoned himself yet.
He's doing pretty well with the "it's your choice" game, I think it's called, where I put food in one hand and reward him with the other for not taking it. The next step would be to put the food on the ground but he's a lot faster than I can think. That's a problem with a lot of this, actually: my thoughts are so slow, and my body accordingly slow, that by the time I realize I want to tell him he's doing well he's gone onto doing something else. Likewise by the time I think "it's not worth it for this one dead mouse" I've already gone after it.
We're learning when we like to snuggle with each other, which is important for me. Excited and anxiety look the same to me in him, and he has a tendency to snap at my hand when he wants a hug but also when he wants space. This is difficult because I want to transfer him to a different signal for both of those things but it really helps to be able to first be able to give hi what he's asking for, and I can't tell them apart, and they're very different. When he comes out of the run he always wants a snuggle though.
There have been some good encounters with cats. The way they progress, though, is that if he sniffs quietly we're good, but sometimes he then does a play bow and when he doesn't get a response he likes he starts jumping up and down, which can cause running and wanting to chase, and definitely doesn't reinforce that calm is good. Instead it reinforces that jumping gets a toy to chase. I've been keeping him on a 25' lead that runs loose on the ground when we're up top, so I can step on it if he tries to chase something but he also has more freedom of movement than if I were holding onto things.
I've been rewarding him for looking at me when we do stuff, and rewarding him for sitting. He's doing both of those things more. He's starting to learn that sitting is for asking for something, mostly, though when he's excited he will forget.
He's picked up sit, lie down (though not duration for either of those), and we've been doing rounds of "come, sit" and "go get it" where I alternately treat him for coming to me and then throw a treat for him to get. He's bored of his ball at this point. He does not retain interest in any particular toy, but he is very very very food motivated. The former probably bodes well for flappy reinforcing things like chickens and running interesting things like cats in the long term., as long as he never learns they're food. That's my job: absolute prevention of a Really Bad Incident.
Because he's so food motivated he likes doing tricks. I remember Avallu was a bit like that, he liked tricks and training. The other LGDs are NOT. Honestly I've been with them so long though that we can kind of subtextually communicate about stuff that's important, and if it's not important they wouldn't do it anyhow. On various occasions when I'm out with Robs I'll offer either Thea or Solly some of his treats and they look at me like, "what are you doing?" but I can kind of nod into the corner when I'm coming into the house with a rambunctious Robs and Solly will go to the corner to get out of the way until I get him into the bedroom.
Learning that he wanted hugs when he came out of the run was helpful for me. I need to feel like the dog likes me, not just the treats, and because he's so food motivated and doesn't know me yet I can't really reward him effectively with praise. But being able to settle him with a hug, I at least know there's some component of me that helps. Also undoing my resource stealing issues-- who could trust someone who steals delicious dog poop --will likely help him. Anyhow, we're making progress on feeling like there's a bond but we're not there yet. There's some nice snuggling in bed, especially in the morning.
He's almost longer than I am tall already. He's gonna be a big boy, it's definitely my responsibility to make sure he keeps those teeth to himself. Well, himself and bears.
Meanwhile the cats took pity on me and Siri and Demon started getting along and sleeping on the bed together instead of fighting each other off it. One conflict at a time is enough for me. I'm very grateful.
The geese have raised 5 goslings to almost chicken-sized and another 2 appeared yesterday (they always hatch after a thunderstorm, I think it's the humidity). I hope the new 2 make it as well. I have to do a lot of bailing them out of drinking vessels since they're too tiny to hop out on their own, and if I leave a stick in there to climb out on the adult geese try to stand on it to mate and knock it out. Luckily I'm doing all these dog walks everyday...
There were deer in the back last night and this morning. Poor Solly screams like she's being pulled limb from limb when I won't let her chase them; meanwhile Thea might trot off after them but mostly doesn't care. That's probably why Solly is so upset. Meanwhile our daily walks take us in back past holes in the fence which Thea goes out and Solly wants to go out (but is on leash) so I go around and let Thea back in the front when Solly is away. Hazard and Little Bear come on these walks too.
Hazard and, to a lesser extent, Little Bear seem to want to be friends with Robs but he wants to chase and they want to ....?... Hazard headbutted his leg the other day and he was good with it, which is excellent. He definitely reacts differnetly to them situationally: on the other side of a fence or far away he's inappropriate, but up close he's more likely to make the right decision.
Three weeks till Solly can go out on her own, hopefully, and also meet Robs officially instead of just lurking while he is shepherded through quickly.
I'm sure there was more I wanted down but I'll leave it here for now, my midn is gone. If I trusted AI more I might give it acc3ss to email to try and let through only the ones, er. Nevermind. Less writing more resting.
