[nagdu] Defiant poodles running away from corrections

[Tami Jarvis]

Kerri,

Poodles are truly bark monsters. And they love to play games. With two 
of them, you have your work cut out for you.

Rox's advice is the best approach. Just interrupt the barking calmly and 
firmly, have the poodle do something else and reward that. Poodles are 
super high-alert, so calm is important. Adding to the excitement will 
amp up the barking like you would not believe. Patience can be 
difficult, especially while trying to convince a determined barker that 
"quiet" is what you realistically expect it to do, but patience will pay 
off.

What I like about poodles is that they ultimately want to do what you 
want them to, and they want you to be happy. They also like to play and 
invent clever games, as you have noticed. If you can figure out what the 
poodles find rewarding and turn the game your way, you can actually go 
far with that. They tend to get more obstinate with a punishment-based 
approach, so if I need to use negative reinforcement, I simply remove 
the reward from the behavior or make the behavior unrewarding. It can 
take some creativity, although once you figure out the individual 
poodle, it can be really easy. I like to give them express commands for 
what I want them to do, so I use "quiet" instead of "no." I use "in 
bounds" to set boundaries, "off" for off the counter or furniture, and 
so forth. They learn words easily, and it gets to be really fun to teach 
them things. I learned from Mitzi never to go head to head with her if I 
didn't have to and to be creative with redirecting her. Things got 
pretty easy once I figured out what she wanted. So, say, for 
distractions, I would just stop and not let her look at the distraction. 
She didn't like that, so would rather move forward than stand there 
doing nothing. Once or twice, we stood there a long time while I waited 
for her to give in to the inevitable, but after that she decided it 
wasn't worth it. Praising in a happy tone goes a long way, too. I use my 
firm, bossy tone sparingly, but it does work when I do. I'm always 
surprised for some reason. /lol/

Convincing the bark monsters that being quiet is in their best interest 
and what they really want to do does take time and patience, but it can 
be done. I allow mine some barking, but I want them to keep it in limits 
and to obey the quiet command. If Loki gets into nonstop bark mode and 
the girls are being quiet, I will put him in his crate for a bit. So now 
he will bark until I get to the door and just go to his crate on his own 
before I tell him. Mitzi would do that to -- get in trouble, then put 
herself on restriction. It drove me crazy until I realized that she 
would do less of the behavior in future and stop doing whatever it was 
altogether.

For recall, a really good approach is to turn around and walk away, 
possibly out of sight. Then I get all happy and reward the recall. I 
also try to remember to have or invent a reason to have the dog come to 
me, though I do practice random recall just for the reward periodically.

Speakin of obnoxious poodles... We just got back from a trip, and I have 
a young one that needs me to dredge up some energy and reinforce the 
home rituals and rules. The rest of us are in a state of collapse, but 
he's ready to play ball!

Tami



On 06/23/2015 10:25 AM, The Pawpower Pack via nagdu wrote:
> Hi Kerri,
> Usually, it's a good idea when your dog is doing a behavior that is self-rewarding— like barking, to go to the dog yourself and physically move her away from what she is barking at.  Asking a dog to recall to you as you see just teaches them to ignore the cue.
> Here's what I suggest, if the dog barks, stop what you are doing, go over to the dog, put her back on the lead, and have her lay next to you.
> You can also click and reward for quiet.
> Now, you are going to have train the recall cue again since the dog has stopped acknowledging it.
> Start with the dog on a short leash and use her favorite thing as a reward for coming back.  For many dogs, that's food, but I know some poodles are not that wild about food.  You can also use a toy.  The most impootant thing is never give a cue like recall that the dog will not or cannot obey.
> Some handlers have had success associating a recall cue with feeding time and a whistle.
> Blowing the whistle as the cue to eat, and using the same whistle za recall cue.
> Good luck!
>
>   Rox and the kitchen Bitches:
> Mill'E, Laveau, Soleil
> Pawpower4me at gmail.com
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On Jun 23, 2015, at 11:11 AM, Kerri Stovall via nagdu <nagdu at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>> As most of you may know, my husband and I both received poodles from Pilot Dogs back in April. We have just begun to let them off leash in the house as of a couple weeks ago, and I do know that this is just the beginning of their learning process for house manners. So, my question is this. How can we keep them from running from us when they know we are unhappy with their behavior. Here's a little of an idea of what's happening. As I now understand more fully, poodles are barkers, and they will bark at anything they hear or see that they are interested in, so pulling shades down doesn't work because the shades are already down, but they bark mostly at audible noises, like the air conditioning unit rattling or something like that. It's not every minute or anything like that, but it's often enough and they keep it up long enough to get to interfering with things. So when we tell them quiet several times and it doesn't work, then we will try calling them to us, but of course they know 
they are not behaving so they run the opposite way, even if the word no is used for other things than barking, any kind of misbehaving they will run away from us when we want to call them to us to distract them. They also will try to play with us by jumping around just out of reach, when they know we are unhappy with them. So I'm wondering, is it time to go back on leash for a while? I want to be able to do instant corrections or whatever else I can do with my dog, and I'm not sure if Lee will be up for it, but I hope so, so that he can get a handle on it. They are stellar dogs when they're apart, but when together their come command needs a lot of work because alb they want to do is play. lol.  Now my dog, she will still run away from me even when Lee isn't home or when his dog is elsewhere in the house, if she knows that I'm about to get onto her for something. I never correct her for coming to me though, I make sure the come command is always rewarded instead of corrected. But I ju
st want her to come to me so that I can distract her from whatever she's doing wrong. Any help would be great. Thank you to all.
>> Kerri and Sadie
>>
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
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