How did you know it was loaded? How did you know he had a strong mental connex between the marker and the reward? Did you mark and see if he looked for the reward?
Oh yea, he totally knows what clicking means. I took a couple little videos, I'll post those as soon as I get them up on photobucket.
How did you reward for growling? Briefly, how did the growling happen, for you to mark and reward?
When we played tug, he growled, and so I said "growl", and then he knew what it meant. Then when we weren't playing tug, I told him to growl, and when he did it, I click-treated, and then he knew it. For barking, I just said "BARK!", and when he did it, I click-treated.
Not necessary. Just: what happened? Did he try to bite or what? Did the vet staff muzzle him? Was the procedure (exam, whatever) eventually successful? (No timeline needed.
In the waiting room he was sitting next to me, and he began to snarl silently at a man who was looking/talking to us, so I moved away from him. (I was going to say that was the first incident, but now I remember what I was talking to the man about--how Mondo had guarded the house right out of the shelter, and the man was admiring Mondo, and saying he lived out in the woods, and could use a dog like him, etc, and Mondo didn't like the attention.)
He walked with me to the scale with the girl, and I persuaded him to stand and get weighed. We went into the room and waited. When the vet came in (a very big tall man), Mondo pushed his back up against me, like me sitting on a bench and him trying to get between my legs, and started barking and snarling and growling at the vet. The vet was calm, talked to him nicely, got a nylon slip collar and one of us put it on him, I can't remember if I did it or what, then he walked around the room with Mondo at his side on the slip-leash, seeing if he would do a few commands, like sit (and he did, it was like going into training mode, and it calmed him), and then said he would take him out of the room for the shot. It was just a moment; they didn't muzzle him, I think somebody just held the leash while somebody else injected it. (That was the Lyme's vaccine; endemic here.) I had papers from the shelter with other vaccine and vet stuff, so he didn't need to do a complete examination.
The vet came back to me, and Mondo wasn't actively being aggressive then, just sitting by me, watching the vet. The vet told me to never, ever let anybody corner him, and said Mondo needed the right kind of training, nothing mean at all, and gave me the clicker trainer's name. The clicker trainer later told me that he said his partners would have told me to leave him there to be PTS, and he was very worried, but thought he was trainable.
When I picked him up at the shelter, the girl brought him out on a leash, so I didn't see how he acted say if I had approached his cage. Very energetic, ran out of that shelter, snatched the toy from my hand, very wild on the way home in the car.
At home, he was subdued, stayed in the garage, barely went outside, stayed right with me, on my lap practically if I was sitting, followed me around. My BF came home from work (I took two weeks off, so I was home with him all that time), and Mondo was a little timid, but BF isn't interested in dogs, looked at him and said, "Is that the new dog?", then basically ignored him, and they've been fine ever since. (Mondo likes him a lot now.) He seemed to be very attached to me, sticking right with me, not afraid to go anywhere as long as I took him, but not going out very far by himself. He would follow my other dogs around a little further from the garage, so they helped him too.
The first incident happened like this: I heard Mondo barking weirdly outside. It was after he had been been here a few days, and he would go to the grass right by the porch and garage. I went out, and there was a delivery man with one of Mondo's big rope-toys in his hand. I misunderstood, and thought he was doing something to Mondo, or else Mondo was mad because the man had his toy. Mondo stayed a few feet away, but with very vicious growling and snarling and barking. So I walked over, took the toy away from the man, and said, "He doesn't want you to have that." The man wouldn't move, and suddenly I realized he was paralyzed with fear, and I had just taken his only defense. So I grabbed Mondo, apologized, and figured the guy was just an idiot, provoking my dog like that. (Stupid, stupid! I know.) It increased rapidly from there, me keeping Mondo out of the yard when I thought it was likely for somebody to come, but the last incident occurred after 8:00 PM, long after dark, and way after I thought all deliveries would have come. I was pissed about that; turns out they are cutting staff but working longer. I don't want a delivery that late! Could freeze, animals could get it, etc. so I started picking my stuff up at the UPS place.
I took a week off work, had the fence built, and Mondo can't get out where people are anymore.
On a normal weekday, how many minutes or hours of structured exercise does he get (structured meaning fast-paced walks or continuous fetch, for example)?
Oh OK; well, walking the two miles on the snow and ice takes me about 45 minutes with a few stops for potty breaks and stuff for my old dog; he is pretty much running continuously during that time, with me calling him back every so often. He is very good about that; only once he chased a deer and didn't come back for a while. The reason I got him was I thought he looked like my 12 year old lab mix, and she has always been such a good dog, never running away even once her whole life. I thought he might be like her, and learn from her. (My dumb little beagle/hound dogs--different story, they are always on a leash, since they ran away overnight a long time ago, before we moved here. My other old one like that died a year ago.)
On walks, what do you do when you approach someone who he looks at and becomes focused on?
It's really variable. He doesn't pay much attention to most people, if there is nothing threatening about them, and he has gotten better over time. I haven't seen anybody lately, since it's gotten cold out.
First time walking that he got scared: We were at a trail head, about to go on the trail. A man with a bicycle and helmet exited the trail. Mondo began to bark viciously at him. The man came over, squatted down, being very gentle, and tried to make up with Mondo. This caused Mondo to go wild (he doesn't like people to try and make up with him like that; another guy did that once too, and it just makes him worse.) I thought this guy was nuts, although he was being very gentle, it was almost like he was proving something, like he wasn't scared of Mondo, and now I know that was the wrong thing to do.
Other times, he has just got his hackles up, and I tell the people he is from a shelter, and scared, and they then don't do anything that exacerbates the situation, and I can stop and talk to them. (This is a very friendly area; people stop and talk like that.) Once, he was off leash in a place that I didn't expect anybody to be, but a man was walking in front of us who we caught up to. Mondo ignored him, and the man and I (who saw my college shirt, he's from the same place, blah blah blah, we are walking and talking), and Mondo never even glanced at him. Other times, he has gotten a lot more barky with "weird" people (walking sticks, etc), and I just move to the side and let them pass.
A lot of times, when we are out somewhere, he's mostly just aloof to people. Like my friend who I walk with's husband; he'll glance at him if he says his name, and he's not scared of him, but he just doesn't really let himself be petted. He likes my walking friend, but I don't think she's ever petted him, as it makes her dog too jealous.
He hated the clicker-trainer, who was a small woman. Like I said, at first he wanted to kill her, I had to hold him back. Then, when he "accepted" her, he was so bad, pulling her clothes, and throwing fits. He would bite and pull his leash, slinging it around, hitting her with it, growling, etc. It didn't look dangerous, just very, very bad behavior. She started laughing, which I don't think was good, but it was pretty funny, when she's telling me, "Just ignore him", and he's going wild, beating us with his leash, hanging from her jacket, tearing anything he can get his mouth on up, etc.
Not necessary. He growled/barked? For now, this dog needs to be put up when anyone comes into the house. Period. He does not need to be put into a stress-filled situation, and him being with visitors is in the future. Not now.
We won't have visitors until August.
No timeline needed. Does he lock his gaze on any person who looks unusual? Bark? What do YOU do?
Well, more like threatening than unusuual, I think. People who have sticks, stare at him, are making a lot of noise, etc.
He stares, gets his hackles up, and will bark and lunge against his leash if they get too close, in severe cases. If that happens, I back off the trail, squat down with him, try to soothe him, and yell an explanation to the person. Other times, if it's not that bad, like I see he is getting a little scared but he hasn't barked or pulled yet, I warn the people that he is a scared dog, please ignore him, they usually go, "oooh, OK...and cut off their first reaction to go up and tell him they are good people and he is OK, you know what I mean, like the bicycle-helmet guy. That has several times started a conversation for a few minutes, and Mondo will be OK during that time, not pulling, not really staring, hackles going down, etc. My dog and my friends dog help A LOT, and if they have calm dogs, it helps A LOT too. It can really make all the difference in what happens.
He is definitely not scared of everybody, but even if he wasn't scared, he is aloof to strangers. For the first period of time here, my BF said, "Mondo doesn't want me to pet him", because he would slip out from under his hand or pull away from him. Never aggressive, but just not wanting the contact. With me, he acted like a puppy who loves me from the beginning, lots of physical contact, and now he acts that way with my BF too, but it took a long time.
Besides stay, what basic ob commands does he have? Not necessarily with duration or distraction .... what command do you have, if you have one, that is 100% reliable indoors?
Sit and down (or sometimes both, he mixes them up)are always 100% reliable. He also does those for me all the time when I don't tell him, trying to be a "good dog", like if I'm working in the kitchen or whatever. He still jumps up sometimes, and if I just make a little "eh!" noise, he'll sit or down.
Can you link us to a short video clip of a marker session? No big setup or anything - just a minute or two of what a marker session looks like.
Yes I got a couple; they aren't great, of course, because it's hard to film yourself and click and everything just right, but I wanted you to see that he is not hopeless at all, and actually what a good dog he is, except for that one little (potentially huge, but I won't let it happen) problem.
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Re: I adopted a smart but dangerous shelter dog.
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