Ego Vs. Safety - Kikopup Video

Well, it can be, sure. Dogs get sports injuries all the time doing... sports. My dogs have sustained minor paw injuries skijoring, and could easily sustain more serious injuries. We all make our choices but I think it's equally extreme and silly to insinuate that sports don't carry a risk of injury as it is to be so afraid of those risks that you don't participate with a dog who loves it.

I ain't watching that whole thing again, but I thought she said that one of HER dogs wasn't supposed to do the jumps. And then the weird speculative thing about maybe possibly theoretically getting injured at a trial because you trained in your backyard, which is... weird, but didn't really seem anti-agility to me.


I think she's risk averse to a silly degree, but I guess I'm just not seeing THAT level of insanity in anything she's saying.

Well, she is better than you. She puts her dog first and you clearly do not.

Did Merlin ASK for the bowtie or did you pressure him into wearing it? She would never be so cruel.

Then why do you watch them? The awesome part about the internet is that you can turn it off! :lol-sign:

I mean, honestly, I'd rather people be taking it to the extreme this way, then taking it to the extreme in the opposite direction. So her dogs will probably never do ALL the things that yours may do....and we care....why?

I guess I just don't find this sort of thing important enough in the grand scheme to get riled up over it.

She inferred fast agility, being "pushed" to run fast, is egotistical and dangerous. Basically if you run a slower dog and don't ask for extreme speeds you're looking out for your dog more than your ego.

She clearly said tricks that chance danger to the dog are not worth it if you put your dog first. Conversely one could gather that if you chance potentially risking your dog in a "millisecond" you're not putting the dog first, in turn you are putting yourself first.

For what it's worth I don't see anyone storming the castle, I see people annoyed and laughing.

If anything people are responding in equal levels of "riled up" in defense.

<shrug>

No, YOU inferred that.
/grammar nazi

Seriously, I think that whole thing was bizarrely speculative with too much AS FAST AS HE CAN but I didn't really get that out of it... I took it to mean, be careful how you train because at balls to the wall speed there could be an accident on unfamiliar equipment. Which isn't... exactly untrue, I guess, although it took a lot of setup to essentially say BE CAREFUL.

Well I'm not going to go back and watch it all again, but as I said before her false dichotomy of "it's either for you OR for the dog" annoys me... it can be for both of you. Certainly we all have a line in the sand where there ARE tricks or activities where the level of danger is not worth it to each of us, and obviously her line in the sand is way, way behind mine. And there ARE times when we all probably put ourselves first. But I guess I didn't take it as a personal accusation against anyone's particular decisions so much as her just saying where her line is and that people should think about why theirs is where it is. Even if it was done in kind of a weird, cray cray way.

I don't see anyone storming the castle, either, nor am I riled up, I'm just... discussing the video? Which is the point of the thread? Unless it was meant to just be a circle jerk, in which case I'll bow out.
*shrug*

Don't worry yourself grammar nazi, I meant insinuated, again, the world won't end tonight.

Nothing she said was not impossible to relate to, it was merely "out there". Her opinion, my opinion, her* seriousness, my comedy.

I am referencing PWs post mentioning "riled up". Suggesting that neither opposing side is riled up.

Yes, that was... a joke on my part.

I have a feeling my seriousness is not nearly as serious as you think it is. Ah, the pitfalls of ascribing tone and motive on the internet.

I would rather people just avoided extremes period personally.

I'm not gonna lie, she has always gotten under my skin from when I was first learning and so far in the "Positive reinforcement trainers are stupid" camp to now. Back then she was a perfect example to me of why I wouldn't be that kind of trainer. She put me on the defensive, she was insulting, demeaning and just bugged me.

Then I slowly changed and learned more and I did find the usefulness of her training video's. When they were muted.

And now, well most days she's not a blimp on my radar, I wouldn't have seen this video had Mandy not posted this thread. But, when I do stumble across one all my annoyances and frustrations bubble to the surface again.

I think she's judgmental, I think she's got a superiority complex, I think she really really loves her soap box, I think she's got a very narrow view of right and wrong and whether or not she comes right out and says it she sure seems to imply often that people that do not do or think or train in the way she deems appropriate are less than.

I also wish she would show some passion sometimes because I've yet to see it at all in training video or her diatribes.

I think she's a very talented trainer but it gets lost in the crazy, I think it's off putting to people just learning, I think being so over the top in everything she does takes away from every valid point she has.

Of course this is her opinion and she has ever right to have it. I still think her base message is a good one. But, I'm going to shake my head, scoff and roll my eyes at this video (and a lot of her others) because I find them silly, extreme and detrimental to what she's trying to get across.

I had to fix my post, I actually had no intention of typing your on my phone. I don't make any assumptions to know how serious people take thins until they offer it, via a video for example.

Yes, she only said her dogs won't do some things (the stair, agility jumps, and crawl) but because each of her dog has something it should not ever do, it somewhat implies that all our dogs have some trick or task that they should never be allowed to do (unless she has all seniors maybe?).

Secondly, I don't know what kind of conformation would prevent a dog from being able to safely crawl. I guess it exists, but to then say you'd never do it again makes me think that she thinks dogs are so fragile that even done in small amounts is cruel.

To me, it had two main points. One don't do something dumb because it looks cool. But secondarily, she seems to disdain intensity (agility courses or downs) because a dog can not know its limit.

I agree with the first, but not the second.

I'll be posting my diatribe on YouTube shortly.

Very good post, much better than I can offer after 19 hours of work and a never attempt of winding down on chazhound. Lets pretend this was my post, as well.

Someone mentioned slipping hocks being the reason her chihuahua should not be encouraged to crawl nor use stairs.

I'm not sure how correct that is, though.

Heh I thought Chaz loved Kikopup on here.

Glad I'm not the only one who thought some of the things she said were loony. The only other video of hers I watched part of, she was going on about how any aversive is just sooo terrible. Which just does not compute for me at all. So yeah. My verdict: she waaayyy wayyyy too precious of dogs.

That said, I do agree that there is some exaggerating going on in this thread. She wasn't saying we can't let our dogs do anything or we must bubble wrap them. She was saying we should very carefully, very thoroughly weigh the risks involved in every mundane thing we do with our dogs, so we can determine the least risky way to keep a dog happy.

Personally, I own and put time and resources into my animals because they benefit me in some way. So when I'm out with my dog it's totally true that I'll ask him to do something because I think it would be neat to see, not necessarily for his benefit. E.g. when I'm walking him, I'll ask him to jump a fence. If he had some burning desire to jump fences I wouldn't have to ask him and sure it's more risky than trotting along, but he's certainly happy and willing to do it, it's exercise and variety and stimuli... and mostly I think it's cool!!

I wonder what she thinks of people who ride horses, I mean are you only allowed if the horse trots over and presents himself for tacking up? Are you allowed to gallop or jump him?

So long as my dog is happy and healthy, I'm not about to hire a professional dog analyzer to look him over and determine exactly how much pressure each of his joints can bear at various angles. I consider it absolutely nutso for someone to think this should be routine procedure for a healthy pet dog. I don't even know of anyone who does this for their child.

Perception is a funny thing isn't it?
I don't find her to be preachy at all, in fact I remember at one point her talking about making a concerted effort to NOT be LOL!
Besides most of what she was saying specifics-wise, sounded to me like she was talking about for HER personally, not that everyone should follow the same advice.

I didn't watch the whole video, I was trying to cook dinner and check FB at the same time and the oven timer went off before the video was done. But my overall reaction was that it was a good message to share. Do I agree with everything? Nope. But that doesn't diminish the validity of her main point for me.

I also saw the video with ACD jumping off a building in to his owner's arms and found it a bit scary, but meh, not my dog, not my choice. Mine climb waterfalls and impale themselves with branches and barbed wire, so who am I to judge...
I get more annoyed with the video of the guy with the dog in the middle of times square IN THE STREET doing a down stay. THAT is the kind of thing that makes me think ego has taken over the brain.

To me it sounded like the only reason she feels people run fast dogs or do vaults in disc is ego. I don't know much about disc but would like to start up with the club here with Nextdog. I doubt I'll ever get really into it but it would be fun.

Agility can be dangerous, I suppose. It's a sport and freak accidents and injuries can happen in anything that involves running and jumping and climbing in people and dogs. Does that mean the reason people do agility is not for the dogs and for ego? Do the dogs not get anything out of agility? I will say that my dogs are much much better for agility classes and training. Especially Mia, who has a more cautious kind of personality. It's taught her to work through fears and that new places and people are FUN. She does so much worse to herself on a daily basis.

I do agree you need to ask yourself why am I training this and is it okay for my dog? But analyzing every behavior like crawl or give me five or whatever isn't something I see as realistic. Or even beneficial.

When you get down to it, why do we train any kind of trick behavior? Do the dogs really care if they know 'jump through my arms'? I would argue that we train most anything for US (the humans) to at least some extent. Does that make it wrong? No.

I don't even want to see her opinion on hunting or more dangerous work.

When she points out that a dog refusing to do something might be doing so because of an injury, I thought that was interesting, but it sounded to me like she was saying because it's possible that the dog is refusing because it hurts, you should never insist; I feel that would be to the detriment of my dog.

Elsie is a naturally reactive dog, who finds the outside world very stimulating. I know that by learning to stay calm even when faced with confusing or frightening stimuli, she has an easier emotional time of it. It would not be fun for her to be on edge all of the time. When she 'refuses' to sit on a walk because there's a hawk on a light pole a half block away screaching (real thing that's actually happened), my gently saying, "Whoops!" and walking in a tight circle with her and asking for a new sit... I don't think that's a bad thing. I think the risk of her learning that 'sit means sit unless there's something weird happening in which case you should probably ignore the human and be really really concerned' outweighs the risk that between the front door and the sidewalk she's hurt herself.

And yeah, ideally I never would have let her go 'over threshold' in the first place and she'd never miss a cue, but I'm not that good of a trainer. ;]

On the other hand, the above mess is probably not what she was talking about; it was just my thoughts while watching the video.

I do let my dogs do quite a lot that they could get seriously hurt doing. We bike with them, and Zobby HAS run under the bike before. Luckily, he wasn't injured but he could have been. I hike with Elsie, and we often hike in places that she has to climb rock faces. In that situation I use social pressure to get her to do something she's mentally uncomfortable with, and I'm glad I did; the first time she was like, 'aw hell naw people die that way yo' and I kept walking, she got all upset about being left, and scrambled up. The next time we hit the same kind of scramble, she was like 'i got this let's go' and did it. At the same time, I don't let her jump down off high rocks; I make her wait, and then help her down. Still, she could break the down and leap. She could slip. But she loves hiking, I love hiking with her... I think it's worth it.

At the same time, I do think it's important to keep the dog's limitations in mind when doing things; it's important to think about the possibility of injury. And I think for me, in that, the video was successful. I did think. :]