Is it just me or is that greyhound fat?
oh I didn’t see but the show line grey’s always look.. weird. wtf are they doing to them? can they still run? how is this happening?
YOUR DASH HAS BEEN VISITED BY THE SAD BATH MAN. LIKE TO TELL HIM IT’S GONNA BE OKAY. REBLOG TO SMOOCH HIS LITTLE SNOOT.
I procrastinate so much that I have a gaping hole of dread inside my chest where I think my other emotions are supposed to go. unless a potential employer is reading this, in which case I don’t do that & I have all the normal emotions that human beings have & I love capitalism
fudge
You guys...😮
She’s 6 years old.
How is this possible? How is this allowed?!
Training Tools
It wasn’t until I had been working as a professional trainer for several years that I began slowly ditching training tools. Not just “aversives” but basically anything other than a plain old collar and leash. Let me first say, I have nothing against training tool use. It’s just the more I grew my skill set, the more I realized that I’m yet to meet a dog who truly NEEDS a training tool for any reason…. and I quite literally have the “worst of the worst” flown to me from all over the country.
Today I was working with an incredibly high drive dog who has been driving his owners absolutely up a wall with his adolescent antics. You give this dog any hint that we’ll be working and he starts shaking and chattering his teeth in excitement. He gets himself so worked up that his brain just flips into complete hooligan mode and he’s incapable of following any cues no matter the environment. His owners had completely reached their breaking point with him and considered sending him to another working home with more experience. I did an evaluation and said “There’s a really good dog under here. Don’t give up yet.”
The old me would have put a prong on this asshole of a dog to make my life easier. Well, we’re three weeks in on nothing but a flat collar and he’s doing fantastic. Tight high step heel, fantastic finish, great stay/wait/recall, and today we had probably the most successful impulse control session I’ve had in a long time– all off-leash in nothing but a flat collar. His owners also reported that he’s really coming into himself, settling down at home, and he is turning into quite a calm and focused worker (he’s in training for detection if anyone was curious lol). I was so proud.
I used to hate the quote “the amount of force a trainer needs to use is directly proportional to their skill level” but now it’s starting to make sense.
Open for friendly debate :)
What a fantastic story. What steps did you go through with this dog, roughly speaking?
Because most of us spend the majority of our time indoors, NASA conducted a Clean Air Study to determine which common houseplants are the best for filtering harmful toxins like ammonia and formaldehyde from the air.
**Please note: Several of these plants are known to be toxic to cats, dogs and other pets. If you are a pet owner, please do check the toxicity of plants before introducing them to your home.**
There’s a good site to reference when trying to make sure you don’t accidentally poison your fur children!
canineandcaffeine-deactivated20
In the Fenzi course I’m taking the instructor said the dog breeds that excel in agility do well because they are easier to exploit. I know nothing about agility, and I wish she would’ve elaborated on that. I wonder if there’s a way to teach it that would let all dogs enjoy it.
malinwoman
oh i am confident i know what she means. the kind of dog who no matter how unfair, stressful, or unclear the situation is, will continue to try. like, happy will do pretty much anything for her ball when i have it - she might get increasingly frustrated, she might lose enthusiasm OR get overaroused (depending on activity), she might have no idea what i want and be stressed as a result, but she will continue to try bc her ball is so important to her.
ive watched many dogs go through situations they find terrifying for their reward; ive had happy do an absurd and unfair amount of labor for her ball in the past, and she would grit her teeth and endure even though she was frustrated bc she wanted her ball; ive seen dogs persevere through unclear training, through incorrect and unrewarded attempt after incorrect and unrewarded attempt (with little to no accomodation from their trainer), to finally stumble on the right answer bc of their desperation for their reward.
these dogs will continue to perform and even perform intensely and fast (and faster and faster) even when they are feeling unsure and frustrated and stressed, and being trained poorly enough that another dog might tap out entirely, because of their desperation for their reward
^this, basically. This is gonna sound blunt and callous, but IMO (after 16+ years in competitive agility) many people “upgrade” from their family pet/mixed breed/off-breed to border collies (or insert other relevant common agility breed here) not because they really like border collies, but because border collies in general are “high drive” and willing to put up with a lot of shitty training and handling and try-try-try again and still be super fast and willing, instead of slowing down or quitting. This is also very often paired with a dog that will do anything for food/toy/whatever, as @malinwoman said, and so again will keep working through oodles of frustration as long as they get the precious.
Instead of learning to be a better trainer/handler, the human gets a dog that is more willing to put up with their shit, basically. Of course the human won’t say it this way and may not even realize that this is what’s happening.
Obviously those are some big generalizations and of course there are exceptions so don’t @ me about that. But I see that story play out over and over again in agility. It is so common because agility is so much harder than people realize, tons of frustration for both dogs and people, and there is still so much focus on handling/sequences/courses over dog training. People want to spend their time running courses because that is more rewarding for them. And it’s so much easier to do that if you have a dog that again will basically put up with your shit as long as you have their ball/toy/food/whatever. Which, when you boil it down, is exploitation.
YEPPERS ^