@bee_brian Excellent advice ! I’ve been practicing with other temptations outside (chicken bones, dead mice…) he does still seem very sensitive with whatever has been dead for a while. BUT he does seem to understand when :
He sees a chicken bone,
He pulls,
I pull him back and say “no” very firmly
He walks besides it while staring at it
I reward as soon as he’s past it.
Dead iguanas such to be so much more of a reward but I shall keep trying.
Thank you for the very much detailed advice. I love it and it makes me feel not too hopeless !
@grace302015 Just don't please. It doesn't help at all unless you want to contribute to his fear and anxiety more. There are many peer-reviewed journal articles on the fact that they are useless. I am a reactive dog guardian as well and the only progress we have seen so far happens with the help of positive reinforcement, nothing more nothing less
@grace302015 e-collers do not work well as punishment. I've seen them used effectively for negative reinforcement. But that almost always at a low level(a tingle). It acts like a tap on the shoulder.
@grace302015 It’s so bizarre to me that people in this thread are totally fine recommending a muzzle that restricts your dog but will call you a horrible person for using an E-collar on vibrate mode.
@bryttaaniarynn A muzzle doesn’t administer pain (or a “stim”). It’s a management tool that will physically prevent the dog from eating things. They’re completely different.
@bryttaaniarynn I just want to use the sound mode or the vibration to kind of get him out of the state in all fairness … IF I ever buy one. I would never subject my dog to any pain in order to train him.
I’ve been using a muzzle but the thing is he can’t play when he has it on and ultimately I don’t feel like it’s actually training him not to eat dead iguanas. It’s restricting him but I’d like to actually teach him. He’s been doing great with the “no eating the food found on the floor”. I put a kibble on the floor and tell him to stay. Then I pick it up and hand it to him. So now he knows he has to wait for me to give it to him. I also hope that getting older will curb his obsession a bit
So for the past two days I’ve been using the muzzle but so long, ball throwing sessions in the open…
@grace302015 Just a heads up, this reddit thread doesn’t support balanced training, I’m happy to see so many replies above who do, but most will completely shut down any idea of it calling it abusive
Getting a balanced trainer who knows what they’re doing with it will change your dog and your life, my personal example is my reactive rescue dog who I adopted at 5 years old and was set in his ways can now calmly process his emotions without going over threshold and greet and play with them with no issue, and we use audio for recall successfully
Best of luck, I would recommend YouTubing trainers who go through the motions so you can an idea of what is possible then research your local balanced trainers
@grace302015 I agree with all of this, I think from the dog's perspective the restrictions created by the muzzle are worse than a simple sound or vibration, a vibration is not inherently aversive anymore than a whistle is and it's weird to say that it is. Meanwhile dogs use their mouths like we use our hands, it's how they interact with the world, if someone tied my hands up and I was never allowed to use them that would be incredibly punishing and cruel and I would absolutely not handle it well at all.
I said this in a different thread so I'll just summarize here instead of the full comment but we used the vibration setting when our dog was literally jumping out of windows to go run all over the neighborhood, it was a last resort and it ended up being the only thing that worked at all. The vibration grabbed her attention and as soon as she felt it she'd look back at us for instruction and that was all we needed to be able to train recall and get her back in the house with proper positive reinforcement stuff but we couldn't get to that point without grabbing her attention first and the vibration was the only thing that could pull her out of her freedom run around the neighborhood long enough to pay attention to training.
If you're using just the vibration and you're using it as a tool to get the dog's attention and then you're using other kinds of training as well (not just solely relying on the collar to do all you're training for you which I don't think is what you're doing) then I think you're likely not doing any actual harm, attention grabbing =/= aversive, something has to actually be punishing to the animal in order to be an aversive. If you use the vibration setting and the dog is genuinely upset about it that's another matter but again it doesnt sound like that's what's happening here.
@grace302015 This sub is strongly against any remotes collars or other training collars so all comments in favor will be deleted. If you want another set of opinions check out the OpenDogTraining sub where balanced training is allowed to be spoken about.
My dogs are fully trained on remote collars (1 Mal and 3 GSPs) but the training and conditioning was done by a professional. I do not use for reactivity and aggression though - it is a safety net for off leash freedom since they all range 100-800 yards when hunting and are way out of sight / ear shot.
@grace302015 An ecollar helped me stop my dog from eating animal poop (also risk of bacteria). My dog is also a working dog and loves when I bring it out because I put it on him whenever he works or walks off leash - using them is standard for bird dogs. His obedience training is very strong and I use it for safety primarily.
@houston84 Well, the safest way is hydrogen peroxyde BUT we did it a couple of times and he hates it so much that last time he hide in a corner and looked genuinely traumatized and terrified so I don’t want to have to do it again if I can avoid it.
@grace302015 I bought a vibrate only collar but I rarely use it mainly because I wasn’t able to train consistently with it. I would never use a shock collar though.
@grace302015 Yep, muzzle. I know it's a bit disheartening but my last dog was insanely food motivated and if I wasn't watching him like a hawk he would hoover up anything, so if he was off lead or on long lead he wore a muzzle. He got used to it pretty quickly and soon realised it was just something he wore when we went for walks.
