Resilient dogs?

[GipsyQueen]

Is your dog resilient? And if so, how do you deal with it?

Zora just doesn't get it someone times. You can reprimand all you want, tie her up and ignor her all you want, she just does not get it sometimes.
For example:
Right now, leash manners are a problem again. A few weeks ago, she started tugging at her leash and jumping up on you and nipping at your calves. It's extremly annoying - but she is extremly resilient. We haven't gotten behind the reason she does it. Sometimes it's at the start of our walk, sometimes at the end. Doesn't matter. She laughs at voice reprimands. If you hold her back or down, she thinks its a game. If you tie her up on a tree and ignore her for a while, she just pull on her leash. She just tries and tries again.

Another example:
In the evening we usually spend time on the couch. She is welcome to lay there with us, but it's not play time anymore. She will bark and chew on you and try to get your attention over and over again. We usually throw her out into the hallway, but she appears to not get the concept that if she barks or chews on you, she will not get to be in the room. This has been an on-going issue though

 

[Oko]

I'm pretty sure I could throw Feist across the room and she'd come running back for more. You cannot correct this puppy. So much for border collies being soft. :rofl1:

As for how I deal with it, right now since she's 11 weeks old her big thing is mouthing. I keep a toy on me at all times and encourage others to do the same, and stuff it in her mouth when she starts going for my hands/face/whatever. It is working, she's getting much much better about it. Just...reinforcing what you want is my only option with her, because you can yell in surprise, 'puppy cry', and push her away all you want and she does. not. care. And if she wants something, she will stop at nothing to try to figure out how to get it. Seriously. Clearly we have similar stubborn issues, so I can't really fault her.

 

[Elrohwen]

I'd call that handler hard more than resilient, but I get what you mean.

Watson is quite hard, though spaniels are typically soft dogs. You could hit him in the face with a 2x4 and he would keep coming. He's the type of dog who, if you kneed him in the chest while he jumped and mouthed at you, he would just come back harder and faster thinking it was the best game ever. Ask me how I know. He was mouthing inappropriately until well over 1 year, and he will still play inappropriately now ("Oh what, you didn't want me to pounce on your head while you were watching tv?")

For biting while walking on the leash, standing on the leash so he had very little slack worked the best. He couldn't jump, he couldn't bite the leash, and I wasn't physically holding him back and making it into a game.

He will shut down eventually with corrections in training, but only because he gets frustrated at not knowing what you want and not getting reinforced. So you can't really man handle him into doing obedience with you, because he'll just flip you the finger and find something more interesting to do. He doesn't shut down because he's afraid he's offended you like some dogs.

The only correction that has ever worked is the spray bottle. We keep one around for one of the rabbits (she likes to bully the other one), and tried it on him one night when he was charging them in their pen. It stops him in his tracks and there's no need to nag or carry it around with you. I specifically use it with inappropriate behavior around the bunnies and he's improved so much.

I don't have much advice except to be more patient and more persistent than he is. For every time he jumps on the counter, I have to follow through with making him get down. If I'm doing time outs, I have to be really consistent with it. And occasionally I pull out the one aversive I have if absolutely nothing else is working and the behavior really needs to stop.

And honestly, some of it is just maturity. No matter what I did, I'm pretty sure some of the annoying behaviors more or less went away on their own as he got older. Not right away, since he's 15 months and still does some of this stuff, but gradually.

 

[Romy]

Charlie was the most resilient dog. Evar. With a super high pain tolerance, and while I didn't actively use aversives he had a prong to walk on. I never used it to correct, more like a self correcting thingy for when he hit the end of the leash from lunging spazzily everywhere. He'd just do it repeatedly though, so it didn't work very well.

He was the dog that would jump in the ocean, then run up our hill and slink under the electric cattle fence. Soaking wet. If our bull touched it, the bull would "MMmmmmmOOOOOOOOO!!!!!" and run several hundred yards.

If Charlie touched it all soaking wet with salt water, his skin would flinch a little and he'd smile and shake it off like, "tee hee! that tickles"

And while I didn't use aversives, my ex was pretty mean to him in the name of training and it totally didn't work or deter him at all.

Anyway, I wasted a year and a half of trying to train him with verbal markers and positive reinforcement, saying good boy, etc. He was so. Freaking. Impulsive. It failed.

Then I gave in and got a clicker. I was tired of the ex being mean to him and figured the best way to stop him was to really shape Charlie up into behaving really well. I read a lot about proper clicker training from folks here on Chaz. It turned out to be the PERFECT tool to communicate to him what exactly I wanted him to do. When I tried to do verbal markers he'd be all spazzing out and instead of marking a "sit" he'd already be leaping in the air by the time I was able to say anything.

With the clicker, I was able to mark the exact moment. We were able to do some super basic focus work, getting him to watch me and stuff. Within a month the difference was amazing. I'll admit, that before that experience I thought clickers were kind of dumb and gimmicky and vowed I'd never give in. After my experience with Charlie, I realize that they're just a training tool, and that they work extremely well for communicating with some spazzy dogs.

 

[Toller_08]

For me, being resilient means that a dog can take negative experiences or any changes and bounce back quickly and not be affected negatively.

I wouldn't call what you're describing to be resilience. I find Journey to be a very resilient dog, because no matter what situation she is in, she keeps trucking through and keeps are upbeat personality. Even if she becomes unsure for a minute, she bounces back to her old self quickly and nothing gets her down. I find Dance to not be a resilient dog at all. If something scary happens to or around her, she takes a while to recover and will continue to associate a particular place or person with a negative experience. She does not bounce back easily.

What you're describing to me would be what I'd call head strong or determined.

Dance is a very determined little dog. I can remind her not to do something a thousand times, but she'll seize any opportunity to do it and continuously go back and do it again and again. If I tell her to get out of the kitchen, she will, but she sneaks back all the time. Or she'll sneak off to go lick out of the other dogs' bowls. Or a million other things. She knows that if I catch her doing it that I am going to tell her to knock it off, but she simply does not care. She wants to do things her own way in her own time and what I have to say really doesn't matter to her most of the time unless she gets something out of it. Keira is much the same way.

Journey is less determined and more of a manners minder. Once given a rule, she might slip up here and there, but she doesn't mean to and wants desperately to please me. She will not continue to push my buttons. She just wants to do right and keep everyone happy. She wouldn't dream of sneaking around like Dance does, getting into trouble haha. Ripley is much the same way.

 

[Oko]

For me, being resilient means that a dog can take negative experiences or any changes and bounce back quickly and not be affected negatively.

I wouldn't call what you're describing to be resilience. I find Journey to be a very resilient dog, because no matter what situation she is in, she keeps trucking through and keeps are upbeat personality. Even if she becomes unsure for a minute, she bounces back to her old self quickly and nothing gets her down. I find Dance to not be a resilient dog at all. If something scary happens to or around her, she takes a while to recover and will continue to associate a particular place or person with a negative experience. She does not bounce back easily.

What you're describing to me would be what I'd call head strong or determined.

Joy and rapture, Feist fits that definition too. Crazy girl.

 

[GipsyQueen]

For me, being resilient means that a dog can take negative experiences or any changes and bounce back quickly and not be affected negatively.

I wouldn't call what you're describing to be resilience. I find Journey to be a very resilient dog, because no matter what situation she is in, she keeps trucking through and keeps are upbeat personality. Even if she becomes unsure for a minute, she bounces back to her old self quickly and nothing gets her down. I find Dance to not be a resilient dog at all. If something scary happens to or around her, she takes a while to recover and will continue to associate a particular place or person with a negative experience. She does not bounce back easily.

What you're describing to me would be what I'd call head strong or determined.

Dance is a very determined little dog. I can remind her not to do something a thousand times, but she'll seize any opportunity to do it and continuously go back and do it again and again. If I tell her to get out of the kitchen, she will, but she sneaks back all the time. Or she'll sneak off to go lick out of the other dogs' bowls. Or a million other things. She knows that if I catch her doing it that I am going to tell her to knock it off, but she simply does not care. She wants to do things her own way in her own time and what I have to say really doesn't matter to her most of the time unless she gets something out of it. Keira is much the same way.

Journey is less determined and more of a manners minder. Once given a rule, she might slip up here and there, but she doesn't mean to and wants desperately to please me. She will not continue to push my buttons. She just wants to do right and keep everyone happy. She wouldn't dream of sneaking around like Dance does, getting into trouble haha. Ripley is much the same way.

I ment it more as a she does not give a rats tail if she is reprimanded, timed out or whatever. In my book being timed out is not a positiv experince, but she does not care, she actally thinks its a game
She does however also fit your definition of a resilient dog.

Oko - we give her a toy as well if she starts chewing on us, she however has more interest in hands, or feet.

She's actually pretty well trainable. She has her commands down and does them well, esp for a 7 month old. I can call her off a group of dogs the first time I try, which can be a problem with some adult dogs.

 

[ThoseWordsAtBest]

Sham is incorrigible and I find it amusing now that he is a mature adult that doesn't ALWAYS make terrible choices.

 

[sassafras]

Squash forgets about anything bad that happens pretty much almost immediately after it is over.

Pip and Maisy have elephant memories and hold grudges, though.