Hi! From Cole and Moya & Argo.

[Cole26]

So much to say. I guess I'll start with a huge thank you to Neil, this site and the videos have been an excellent resource. Especially the videos...I learned just how incorrectly I was pushing.

I starting looking for training material online almost immediately after we got our two dogs (more on them later), which was 3.5 years ago (a few months before my wife and I got married). I had done the typical puppy class several times before with family dogs, my wife had dogs her whole life too, and so we did not see any benefit worth the cost. Hindsight being what it is, we made a horrible decision to skip that "training" (which was really little more socialization). I knew socialization was important and should have seen that as worth it's weight in gold. In the end we got by.

They picked up the sit, shack, stay, down, bedtime, super-time, etc. with ease. They walked OK, at this point, but they were so bound full of energy on walks they always seemed to be more energized after we walked then before, and I wanted the walk to tire them out. They would pull and drive (especially the malamute) towards the horizon and anything that looked alive. They would follow though, so I used a lot of change of direction to survive the walks. We wouldn't stop often because of their size, but for people that did not seem afraid of two 100 pound puppies with energy to spare, we would stop. It always went well. They even respected small children enough to not knock them over - which to this day, amazes me.

By about a year - year and a half, we started seeing the problem behaviors. The first was when they caught a rabbit in the back yard and fought over it - really right, like it was life or death. We were nearby and had to turn the hose on them and grab their collars and tear them apart. Thankfully neither was hurt badly. My wife cleaned up the rabbit and I cleaned up the dogs. Who within 15 seconds of having the rabbit removed seemed to completely forget it ever existed and went back to playing with one another. After that, there was a few food based aggressions in the house but nothing to that scale (I guess rabbit is just that much better then kibble; that and we learned quickly which body language meant they were upset and going to aggress).

We adopted a dominance based training method, which both worked beautifully and failed horrifically. We have not had a food based aggressive incident since (2+ years at this point). Their walking didn't change much, but their indoor behavior did. They responded to us better (more consistently) but also became much more agitated when people stopped buy or walked past our home. We realized it wasn't working, and I didn't like having to submit them or yank on a chock chain.

This lead us to try a local trainer. She had published books and toured the country and her rates reflected this. I can't even describe what she had us do. It was a lot of seemingly counter intuitive and contradictory methodologies. The good things out of it was "cookies from the sky" which helped solve the agitation about people outside. It involved anonymously launching small treats in a high arc to land near them when they were calm and just sitting there (sort of like money falling from the sky for doing whatever an unseen overseer wanted). The other good thing was she suggested we use thinking toys and activities and to get one of those hand free waist leashes ... I built some agility course things and we got them Intelli toys which are both wonderful and they (and myself) enjoy a lot. The worst part is that I should have followed my gut instinct when I wanted to kick her out of my home in the first 5 minutes of speaking with her - she was extremely judgmental and otherwise very short and somewhat rude. Ultimately, their behavior got worse (well other then agitation over people outside). The walks went to hell and when people came up on a walk or came to our home visiting they would go ballistic and hound them, and jump up a bit (a great behavior for 100lbs dogs to have).

We were going nuts at this point, and had stopped walking them. This is when I found Neil's site (about a year ago now) and starting reading certain posts and implementing the small things. The funny thing is, I remember the failures so much more then the successes. I barely remember which posts I read or activities we tried and in what order, but I can detail you every second of time spent with the trainer or when I submitted one of them. I guess that's the point though, that it just worked. Tug has become a part of life in our household. Playing chase like children usually attracts looks, LOL. Anyways, at the beginning of this year I found the money to order the videos and things only got better. We realized how wrong our implementation of push was - we were too low and on a large dog that means you are supporting over 75 points of dead weight with one upturned hand). Our dogs had always liked to follow us but now they stick to us like glue. They want to be by us every second. Its awesome! Oh, and walking has gotten better...that waist leash even turned out to help a lot (Though it isn't all there yet, we have made headway on distractions but not rock solid. I don't expect to ever trust them off leash or for the recall to be 100% given their history but who knows, I never really expected to be where we are now either) it enabled us to push and get food without having to worry about the leash. We got the super long leash too (partly because I can't resist anything orange) and we play with them in the park down the street so they can play somewhere bigger then our yard and without a fence. You can tell the feel more free that way, just in the way they run.

Moya (Celtic for Great, and is also the name of a character from x-men as well as the ship in Farscape)
3.5yo Alaskan Malamute female

We had put our deposit down with the breeder early in our engagement. We got to stop by several times and visit the litters and then pick her out - well not really, but it worked out perfectly in the end. Moya had show only submissive signs early on, so the breeder gave her a lot of one-on-one time, taking her to friends' houses and the like, to build her confidence. She is still some what laid back for a Mal, but she is a mutant and 100lbs she is huge for a female.

Argo (as in the name for the boat in Homers story, Jason and the Argonauts)
3.5yo Mix male (50% Rottweiler / 25% German Shepherd Dog / 25% something with webbed toes???).

We were moving out of our apartment and into our current house when my wife was thumbing through the community reader. One "OOOoooo! Puppies!" and a two hour (round trip) car ride we had Argo. We had always wanted to do two things; rescue dogs and support those breeders who work for the betterment of their breed and dogs in general. We had done the latter with Moya (though we still had 4 weeks before we could pick her up) we got to take Argo away from this very decrepit and disturbing farm home in the middle of nowhere (so I take that as a rescue as they just wanted to find homes for their Rot's accidental impregnation). They had more animals of more types then some zoos. Emus! who raises Emus in Wisconsin? Anyways, Argo picked us. They had the massive litter (14 puppies I think) penned out front for us. We showed up just before feeding time and Argo stayed to watch us while the other puppies ran over each other for their food. It helped that he was one of two with the plush like coat of a long haired GSD.

That's our story!
Cole.

P.S.: I decided to post this because it might be useful background for some problems we are having. I will be posting (in the appropriate sub-forum) a thread of questions about how to combat those problems soon.
Edit - Our major issue: New Emergent Behavior - Seemingly Unprovoked Aggression.

[neilsattin]

Thanks for the long and thorough introduction - it's great to get to know you better!

I'm glad to hear how I've been able to help...and that you like orange.

I'll head on over to your "issues" now...