Cynology: The Study of Dogs

"5 things I did differently with my second dog 🥰" i'll tell u what i did differently with my 2nd dog i paid far less attention to the internet

Does anyone have any good resources on dog-dog resource guarding in multi-dog households?

I'm looking for force free resources of any kind, so videos, podcasts, books, blogs, whatever, as long as it's sensible and useful. Please, and thank you!!!

'sup have some resources

General Resource Guarding management techniques for "Leave" and "Let it go"

Susan Garret's episode on Resource Guarding and interruption games

Fight! Dog-Dog Aggression by Jean Donaldson (link to ebook) - goes into dog-dog resource guarding

Mine! A Guide to Resource Guarding in Dogs by Jean Donaldson (link to ebook) - doesn't go into dog-dog aggression but good for broader understanding

Feeling Outnumbered the book for multi-dog households (link to ebook)

The Kikopup Dogmantics Resource Guarding Protocol - guide to create a troubleshooting plan

Whole Dog Journal on Resource Guarding (technical troubleshooting for owners)

Graduated Exposure Techniques - Resource Guarding is on page 143. This is a manual for professional dog trainers setting up training sessions, not really for owners.

This blog post series is more about relationship breakdown between two dogs in a home but I'm quite fond of it even though the trigger was not resource guarding. A lot of it still applies even if no fight has happened, just threats:

Dog-Dog Aggression Between Housemates Part One: the Fight

Dog-Dog Aggression Between Housemates Part Two: Bites

Dog-Dog Aggression Between Housemates Part Three: Management

Dog-Dog Aggression Between Housemates Part Four: Training

Man but the notes on that post really are just tumblr showing they have no idea how anything works.

"report to your local animal abuse people not to cops" local animal abuse people would be animal control. Animal control officers are cops.

"rabies is treatable if you go to the doctor right after the bite" rabies is PREVENTABLE, not treatable. There is no cure for rabies. If you suspect you came into contact with a rabid animal, you need to get a series of rabies vaccinations to prevent the virus from taking over your body. This is not a treatment and it only works if you go right away. If you show any symptoms of rabies it is too late.

"rabies is fatal in animals but treatable in humans" rabies has a 100% fatality rate and is not considered a survivable disease at this point in time. If you contract rabies YOU WILL DIE. The "treatment" in humans is called the Milwaukee Protocol, only 14% of people survive it, and it leaves you with massive brain damage and effectively turns you into a vegetable. You do not return to a normal life afterwards. Very few people who have undergone this process are capable of doing more than laying in a hospital bed and eating and breathing through tubes. To my knowledge only one person was able to live a semi-normal life after years and years of ongoing therapy and was not expected to have made it even through her first year after treatment.

I cannot stress enough how rabies is unlike any other disease you may be thinking of. It's required on a federal level in this country to vaccinate pretty much any domestic animal that comes into contact with wildlife for one reason and one reason only: it is not considered possible to cure rabies and the spread of disease would threaten all mammalian life including our own if allowed to continue to propagate.

Didn't expect this post to blow up so much but to clarify:

Yes, some small town animal control folks aren't cops. However, they all work very closely with police when it comes to seizing animals from owners, issuing fines, etc. They might not technically have a gun and a badge in every city, but rest assured, they are still also technically a branch of law enforcement. The difference is splitting hairs imo.

What inspired this post were the notes on a different post about anti-vaxxers not wanting to vaccinate their dogs for rabies. Most of these notes were in agreement that anti-vaxxers are in the wrong. HOWEVER most of these notes also sorely sorely sorely misunderstood exactly how dangerous rabies is.

Unfortunately now this post has some of those same notes:

Rabies is not rare in the US. The only reason for anyone living here to think that is because they do not have a lot of contact with wild animals and do not work in vet medicine.

Yes, you are more likely to get rabies from a wild animal (bats, skunks, raccoons, and foxes are the most common) however when it comes to unvaccinated domesticated animals, dogs, cattle, and cats make up 90% of rabies cases. So yes, be very cautious about any bite or scratch from a stray dog or outdoor cat. The only reason it is less common for domesticated animals to spread it than wild animals is because rabies comes from contact with other rabid animals, so it is more likely that wild animals will have contact with rabies than domesticated which are typically hanging out with humans (which are, thankfully, largely not rabid). Dogs are the #1 rabies vector worldwide, it is only in countries with robust vaccination protocols and dog-owning culture that keeps them inside most of the time that the risk transfers mostly to bats. The majority of human rabies-related deaths are caused by bites from stray or outdoor dogs.

Animals who are suspected to have rabies are killed, decapitated, and their brains destroyed in the process of testing for rabies. There is no other way to test for rabies. "Nooooo the poor doggo :(" and "it's not the dog's fault the owner sucks" sure but consider: rabies testing requires biopsies of the brain and brain stem, aka punching holes in the tissue in order to examine the changes on a microscopic level. That's uh. Not survivable. There is no other way to detect rabies in an animal. It doesn't live in the bloodstream, it just uses it as a highway to zip up to the brain and then starts doing its thing. Even though it is spread via saliva, blood, and brain matter, we have yet to be able to reliably detect it in rabid animals in anything but the last. (it is detectable in the first two but only at the late stages, well after the animal has become infectious and when it is obvious to anyone who has seen a rabid animal before that the animal is rabid)

It is not required on a federal level for all domesticated animals to have a current rabies vaccine- unless said domesticated animal came into contact with a wild animal known to be a rabies vector, at which point the CDC gets to decide and not the individual state. To me this is a really stupid rule because imo all of the continental US and Alaska should be vaccinating for rabies (Hawai'i and other island nations we've colonized don't need to if they've wiped out rabies or never had it spread, though import laws are super strict in those areas on purpose as a result) and if the dog or cat has a fight with a wild animal or a Mysterious Bite Wound the owner's just gunna be told to vaccinate anyway except now they have a lengthy quarantine ahead of them so we might as well just do it in advance everywhere.

So I've gotten a couple of these based on this post and respectfully? I don't think you're understanding the severity of the damage rabies leaves behind, which is why the Milwaukee Protocol is not considered effective treatment.

29 people to date have survived the Milwaukee Protocol. Of those 29, 28 of them are still in their medically induced comas or in a similar vegetative state or have passed away due to other causes. There is brain activity, so they aren't braindead. The majority of them are not awake either and have not been for years and are not expected to ever wake up. They *might* dream, but they show no signs other than some mild activity on brain scans of being sentient anymore. It is debateable whether they are actually alive or if they are a step above braindead and teetering on the edge.

Of those 29 survivors, 1 of them was able to return to full conciousness. The fact that she survived by itself is nothing short of a miracle. The fact that she was capable of being more than a still body hooked to machines is a medical marvel. She is permenantly disabled. It took years- decades- of ongoing therapy after she woke up to get where she is now and she has spoken about how difficult the journey was and how lucky she is to not be like the remaining 28 survivors. Because that's what it came down to. Luck. She was never expected to survive let alone wake up.

This is also why rabies is not considered a survivable disease. The other 28 survivors are barely registering enough brain activity to be considered "alive". No motor functions, no higher thought, no communication, no voluntary muscle movement, no control over your background functions, no awareness of their surroundings, nothing. We keep them alive because of the very, very slight chance that they'll wake up and be able to be like Jeanna Giese. A few have woken, but none have shown the recovery she did. They have yet to be able to reproduce this success.

And- don't get me wrong, Jeanna is still disabled and shows many symptoms of extensive brain damage. She leans and lists to one side when she moves. Her speech is slow and slurred. She has trouble with overstimulation and with processing new stimuli. I have brain damage too- those are my symptoms as well. She is still considered to be capable of living a normal life, just like I can, as long as accessibility is an option.

Rabies is considered 100% fatal because Jeanna Giese is a fluke. And until we figure out why it worked for her and has yet to work for anyone else, she will continue to be considered a fluke. The closest anyone's gotten was a little girl who could move her fingers and blink voluntarily. They weren't able to communicate with her and she didn't recover further because she died from pneumonia she caught in the hospital that was treating her for rabies. There was also a little boy who woke but shortly after began to seize and eventually the seizures cooked the rest of his working brain. I do believe he is still alive but in that aforementioned vegetative state. Those who study the disease still consider Giese to be the only actual survivor.

This was Jeanna before she recovered. Of the other 28 survivors that are still alive, this is still the state they're in.

When I say you don't return to a normal life, this is what I mean. This is the rest of your life IF you survive the Milwaukee Protocol, which again, only has worked 14% of the time. Forever. You're not awake. You're not moving. You're not aware of anything. Your body is kept alive while doctors try to figure out why she woke up and you didn't. This is what "surviving rabies" looks like.

Why don't we get preventive vaccinations for rabies? Why are they only given to humans after being bit?

We do! People who are considered "high risk" for contact with rabid animals (vet staff, zoo staff, park rangers, wildlife biologists, etc) often are given preventative vaccination and this is seen as effective 99% of the time (with the 1% being when incomplete vaccination schedule occurs).

We are not vaccinated as a general population because it is expensive and painful- most of these people who are vaccinated as a preventative have their jobs pay for it, and it is relatively unpleasant in regards to side effects. In most cases, it is considered enough to teach humans not to touch or play with animals that they cannot confirm vaccine status.

In Jeanna's case, she was playing with a wild bat she'd caught. The little girl who died of pneumonia was bitten by a stray cat she grabbed. And I think the little boy was bitten by a stray dog that approached him. More than half of rabies cases in humans are children who were playing with unknown animals they managed to catch. It's important to note that there is "dumb rabies" and "rage rabies"- a rabid animal in the "dumb rabies" state is easily caught by children, and sometimes will even approach humans on its own. Children often love animals and are delighted to be approached by an animal or to be able to catch a previously-uncatchable animal (Jeanna still loves bats, after all) so the danger is only able to be mitigated by seriously teaching children how dangerous even "nice" wild animals can be.

Incredibly topical that this came back up in my notes because at work we just had a vaccinated indoor/outdoor cat come home with a gigantic abscess in its side and since it's a Mysterious Bite Wound they have to either quarantine at home for 6 months or they have to euthanize the cat and send the head for testing. That's for a VACCINATED animal. If it wasn't vaccinated it would need to be quarantined in the hands of animal control (at owner's expense of course) and euthanized at the first sign of aggression or neurological deterioration, or just euthanized and sent for testing. Obviously they chose to quarantine at home but that is how serious rabies is taken even when animals have their vaccines.

At my previous clinic we had an unvaccinated and highly aggressive cat come in and I (and anyone else not rabies vaccinated) was banished from the entire chunk of the hospital where the cat would be receiving treatment Just In Case.

I'm just front desk staff so while I have some vet assistant training I only do the low risk stuff like pulling quills and sucking goop out of c-section puppies if I'm not actually at the desk, and as a result I'm not rabies vaccinated. At my new clinic, this may change, because of the way Fear Free works the entire staff is pretty hands on with all patients so my job pays for vaccination for all employees. Once I hit 90 days of employment and they decide whether they're keeping me, they'll chat about all that stuff with me.

(Check the notes for some corrections to my previous reblogs- like Jeanna actually rescuing a confused bat from church vs playing with it, and more!)

so many people do not understand that 1) animals are not people, and 2) they aren't teaching their animals what they THINK they are teaching them.

dog group on the book of faces, someone is asking for advice on how to get their dog to come to them after the dog is done relieving itself outside. The dog doesn't like coming to them an they spend ten or twenty minutes or more catching the dog each time to bring it in. Which reminded me of one of many attempts to talk a person through trying to fix exactly this same behavior in *many* other dogs over the years...

Me: So, a quick question for you... does the dog not coming to you and you having to chase them down frustrate you?

Them: Of course!

Me: So what do you do when you finally either catch the dog or get them to come to you?

Them: I give the dog a correction!

Me: So. You get hands on your dog and then you immediately punish them for allowing you to get hands on them. And you wonder why your dog has developed the habit of not coming to you?

Them: No, that's not... I'm punishing them for not coming when I call!

Me: Which was.... fifteen minutes ago, or so, you said?

Them: Yes, when I first called them!

Me: Dogs brains literally cannot link an abstract thought like that. A thought and a consequence MUST happen within 2.4 seconds of one another, or the consequence becomes linked to the most recent behavior, thought, or activity. So, tell me... how is your dog supposed to understand that you punishing them is for the event fifteen minutes ago when you have made such a concerted, if unintentional, effort to teach them that them getting close enough for you to lay hands on them in the yard means an immediate punishment?

Them: But that's not what I *meant*!

Me: Doesn't matter what YOU meant... what THEY learned is that they come to you, and they get punished. Stop punishing your dog for the behavior that you want to see more of.

Stop anthropomorphizing your animals, folks. They don't think like us. Stop setting them - and yourself - up for failure.

And for the love of God, don't punish warning behaviors like growling or showing teeth. You haven't fixed the problem; you've just removed the warning system, like a pilot getting an "engine fire" warning and pulling the breaker to stop the alarm. Instead, figure out which engine the fire is in and put it out by changing the dog's emotions or avoiding that situation. My dog, after about eight dog attacks by offleash dogs, understandably has some negative feelings about other dogs and will bark and growl at them. He's improving because when I see a dog, I keep a good distance and give him cheese. And if the dog doesn't keep *their* distance, I have dog repellant spray.

I love it when dogs try to help but the task at hand requires zero dogs so they just kinda stand in front of you and look serious.

middle aged men do this too

Probably not a popular take, but I feel like most big negative opinions in dog spaces come from misuse rather than inherent badness of the things. I know dogs who have been hugely helped in their socialization and reactivity by the mindful use of dog parks. I know dogs who get walks and freedom they would never have gotten in their homes without the appropriate use of a prong, training harness, or ecollar. I use a retractable leash for tracking and am currently using it to clean up play skills for mondio at my club's recommendation.

It's not an either or. You can use decompression hikes and controlled walks. You can teach your dog to calmly watch the world and also take them to appropriate dog parks or play groups. You can use an aversive tool gently or a gentle tool as an aversive.

There's nothing wrong with choosing not to use a certain tool, but there are so many broad strokes used that make people afraid to utilize something that might really increase their dog's quality of life or their own efficacy of communication.

—

Fanny Gott, “How to Get Your Dog to Love Training”. Reward Based Dog Training (22 March 2016).

This is a terrific article that contains many practical tips.

Anyone do clicker training with their dog? Looking for some resources to get started with that, I think Belle would benefit greatly from it.

@molosseraptor

Can you please recommend a good clicker resource for my mutual? You know Martin felt oppressed by a leash so he didn't use a clicker (just a ridiculously complex marker system).

Using a clicker in training isn't more complicated than using any other kind of marker. The coordination can take some getting used to at first, but most people get it pretty easily with some practice. Some people start by priming/charging the clicker (teaching the dog that click=treat by marking and feeding multiple times in a row until the dog noticeably responds to the click) and there's nothing wrong with that, but I just start using it and dogs seem to pick up on it fine. The general rules are that you click or mark the exact moment the dog does the correct action (like making eye contact after you call their name), each click equals a treat and you must pay every time to keep the association strong, and that treat should appear within a few seconds after the click. I typically only use a clicker to teach brand new behaviors, especially ones that require precise timing, or with young dogs out in high distraction environments because the distinct sound sticks out. Often when people express interest in clicker training, what they're really interested in is teaching shaping or marking and rewarding dog directed choices. Those can be powerful methods of learning for any dog, but especially helpful for independent dogs and dogs that are building their confidence. Object based shaping is a lot easier when you and your dog are first learning than "free shaping" or capturing random offered behaviors.

Kikopup has hundreds of great free training resources using clickers to teach a variety of tricks and skills: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-qnqaajTk6bfs3UZuue6IQ

Here are some simple shaping games to try:

Pattern Games, introduced by Leslie McDevitt in her Control Unleashed series, can also be a great place to begin your training by building engagement, working on marker timing, and creating dog directed behaviors:

If books are more your style, this is one of the first to really talk about what clicker training is and how it works with dogs. It's an older book but still full of insight:

This book is a good read if you and your dog are going to be crossing over to clicker training and dog directed learning from more aversive or control oriented training techniques:

Otherwise, unless there are specific skills you're looking to learn how to teach, these are some of the better general resources out there to get you started.

Danton Quarantino posting in AlpineK9 (27 July 2022).

OP isn’t wrong. And these traits are exactly why I love the breed.

Dog sculptures turned golden from tourists petting them throughout the years

As seen on my dobe forum

Persom: I want a doberman, I live in the UK, I want a cropped and docked dog, and I don't want protective instincts

Me internally: don't do it don't do it don't do it

Very tempting just to direct them to get one of these

Sunset

I like this post by fxagility on facebook about the training seasons:

Catie speaks the truth.

Eddie's 2023 Part 6

i don't really consider myself to be a great dog trainer, I'm maybe slightly above average on a good day, but most dog owners simply have no idea what the fuck they're doing and it does make me look very good by comparison lol

I'll be like "man im really bad at this" and then I'll talk to a guy who is like "yeah when my dog disrespects me i pin him on his back and growl in his face" and like you know what maybe I'm doing okay.

@the notes: yes this is a real thing. it's called alpha rolling and it accomplishes nothing except freaking your dog out and maybe getting your face chewed off in the process. no legitimate dog trainer uses this method (cesar millan doesn't count, that guy's a fucking hack)