Today we had our second vaccination so in two weeks we can go for walks!!! Yeah!!!!

Whilst at the vet we tried to get a closer look at her eyes! That was fun!! After putting a muzzle on her nippiness it was a bit easier but she was still a wiggleworm. Blue eyes reflect red at night unlike brown which reflect orange was one thing confirmed to me today. After dilation drops were put in she was still wriggling too much to allow a really good look but vet did confirm that her right eye (small one) pupil did not dilate as much as normal. She also confirmed that she has vision from this eye. She is going to look up the vet websites for any info on eye problems in koolies. She at least had some familiarity with the breed!!

Paxy is very protective of the right side of her face, probably because her vision is restricted on this side so she struggles much more on this side during examination.

She suggested that we try a stocking muzzle on Paxy when she gets really nippy as she is still trying to nip the back of our legs even with our back turned to her and ignoring her. Not all the time but sometimes she just seems to keep going and going like the bunny!! And it's not pleasant especially for visitors.

The stocking muzzle is something I used to use when I was a vet nurse many years ago - before muzzles were commercially available. It is soft around the muzzle (and tied at back of head) and they can open their mouth but it is restricted by the stocking so they don't get a good grip on you!! Mind you if they are really determined they can still get you. I will think on using this and see how she progresses with further training first, I can see progress but it's hard work!!!!!LOL

The vet thought part of the problem with Paxy was she was extremely smart and was really testing the boundaries all the time. I mean even though this pup was in a stressful environment she was watching alertly but not with alarm any movement by other vets and nurses in the next surgery.

The vet will give her eyes a good check when she is under sedation which will likely be when she is desexed in a couple of months. She thought that some of the muscle control is also not so good on that side. We tried movement observation but she's a pup and just not good at concentrating!!

her nipping sounds like it's still a real problem i have never seen a koolie pup like her when i first got quin at 4-5 mths old he was a bit of a nipper but i had him out of it in a week and little dance has tried it on a couple of times but a quick grab of the muzzle and a loud growl in her face fixed her just as quick. amber had a miopitic eye to i think but she could see out of it when it was not turned in to much but unlike your girl she was very layed back and you could do anything with her and she din't care. i don't know that your pups breeding is but does she have any heeler in her way back or something that could explain the nipping

My ACD pups tend to be very nippy (I would call it bity)and with them it is a habit that must be stopped early or becomes a very bad painful habit as they get older.

The first ACD I ever owned I got as an eight month old monster that thought it was great fun when playing to jump up and bite on the arm or back of the leg.

I have never had a drama with any of the Koolies but they have a totally different personality to the ACD's.

That's fortunate - the eye specialist we see is lovely and wonderful but she'd never even heard of the breed! She couldn't find anything in the vet literature about Koolie eyes or about dogs with the pattern of cataract development that Wal has - his cataracts are strange - probably genetic because he got them when he was too young to get geriatric cataracts, yet strangely late apparently for inherited ones to show up (9 yrs).

But when I asked her if she saw many merle dogs she said 'lots', so at least she's familiar with that bundle of issues lol.

As far as I know both Paxy's parents are Register A koolies - although that says nothing about ancestry long way back!!! It stands to reason that because I have always had a "thing" about dogs that nip I get one!! I am determined to stop it! It really does seem more typical of an ACD!

I have been practising the "Zen" method of treat in hand (both open and closed) and "off" so when she moves away from the hand I say "good girl" and drop treat on floor. This works reasonably well when she is relatively calm, although sometimes I worry that this is actually teaching her a reward for mouthing.

When she is nippy, we have been turning our backs to her and "standing like trees" with hands tucked underarm as advised by the Puppy Preschool trainer. This has had some success however she then may attack our toes if accessible or just go round the back and jump and nip clothes or the back of our legs. Again it depends on how much her excitement level is.

I have tried the holding her muzzle and growl method and that seems to excite her. She still tries to nip when you take your hand away. I stopped this as it only seemed to exacerbate things.

The real worry is occasionally she will just come up and jump at your face especially if you are leaning over. The boys worry more because she jumps at their crotch!!! She will be playing with her toys and then just run up to you and jump and nip.

After some more reading the method I am now trying is to be much more assertive since she seems to be dominant and instead of turning my back on her I walk towards her talking in a low growly voice about how she is a bully and I won't put up with it, as soon as she nips!!! She kept nipping at first but she had a very surprised look on her face when I just kept going forward!! I mean business now!!

Most of her food is now being hand fed as a reinforcement/reward for "sit", "drop", "stand", "come". Which she does extremely well. I even hold her chicken wings when she eats them as she is not a good sharer and runs away with them!! I try to keep things pretty low key and calm but being a puppy that ain't always a reality.

The vet said that her behaviour reminded her very much of a kelpie belonging to a friend of hers and that once the kelpie had figured out she was not boss she was a fantastic dog. So maybe there is hope!!!

If Zen is being practiced correctly (ie if she's being rewarded for not mouthing in such a way that she can understand that it is the not mouthing, rather than the mouthing that is getting her the reward), then mouthing during the game will stop really quickly. If that hasn't happened, then something has gone wrong in the communication - my suspicion is that you need to increase the duration of the 'not mouthing' before marking and rewarding, and then quickly (ie in one session) move to no reward if the mouthing starts at all when you present your hand - no reprimand or anything, a non-reward marker can be used if all the ppl who will be using it understand that it is merely information - 'sorry, that's not going to work' - rather than a reprimand (it's very easy to fall back into a pattern of using it as a reprimand, unfortunately) - just take your hand away, wait a few seconds, and then do it again, as many times as needed (within reason, after 5 failed goes or so she's telling you there's some big miscommunication going on).

I'd go back and reread the stuff about it and check that you're actually following it correctly. If a behaviour continues then it is being reinforced somehow or other, that's one of the basic tennants of training. Obviously the rewards that may be maintaining a behaviour may be different from what we imagine, and may have nothing to do with us. In that case you usually either need to introduce rewards that are more valuable than those that are intrinsic to the situation or if it is possible to humanely and without causing other problems withhold access to them, use the intrinsic rewards to your benefit (premacking/life rewards - have you come across anything about those concepts yet?).

Which is why I'm surprised at the recommendation to be a tree - mouthing is not reinforced by social contact except insofar as your mere physical presense is a reinforcer so it's unlikely to respond to the withdrawal of attention. Actually, as it's often associated with frustration, then this seems a good way to increase it, IMO.

Like I said before, mouthy puppies are common, mouthy adult dogs are much rarer. So it does resolve in the huge majority of cases. I'd seriously consider looking into Ian Dunbar's stuff on teaching bite inhibition - it's a smart attempt to replicate how other dogs teach pups to moderate their biting - and again, puppies are often bitey with other dogs when they're young, but as adults they all play with their mouths, yet they don't usually hurt each other and this is actually negatively correlated with aggressive behaviour to other dogs.

Have you read the Rugaas book yet? When I said that I worried about well-trained dogs in another thread the other day I was only part joking. Almost whenever someone tells me that they know a really well trained dog and there was any attempt to use 'dominance' to train it - which is impossible - when I actually see the dog I see a stressed dog showing lots of calming (displacement) behaviours.

another method i was shown to use with bad hand nippers was not to pull the hand away as this is a game catch the hand, instead when the pup grabs your hand push forward into it's mouth they don't like this and will try to back off but try to hold your hand in it's mouth for a couple of seconds as deep in as humanly possible the pup will then think well that was not fun and should get the hint after a couple of days

Izzy is a Kelpie X and when she is over excited, especially when I come home from work she jumps and snaps at the air. I ignore her and once she has settled a bit and actually is ready to listen I then tell her to sit and then give her a pat. She has gone backwards a bit because when I was away for the week, my OH lets her jump up and he pats her. Now that I am back I am nipping it in the bud. She grabs my hand but does not bite down just mouths. If she gets real bad at the jumping and won't stop I stomp my foot she drops immediately.

Her nippiness I got rid of around 6-8 months, she now nuzzles me and it tickles cos of her whiskers. It is similar to being kissed by a seal all whiskers with a bit of tongue on the cheek.

Keep persisting and try different methods until you find one that works. I tried several different methods with the nipping. The grabbing of the muzzle which excited her. Ignoring her she got more persistant and jumped on my behind. The one that worked for me was doing a yelp then grabbing the sides of her lip and pressing it down on her teeth so it hurt back holding her muzzle and growling. I watched Ceejay do this and she stopped so I did this to Izzy and it slowly worked.

Just have to keep working on her jumping now, it doesn't help that my OH encourages it a bit but he is also getting better. Training the dog is easy the OH boy is that difficult. lol. Don't give up.

My vet is also great and loves Ceejay, she is her first Koolie that she has treated and absolutely adores her. Ceejay is an attention hound and loves my vet to bits. The vet also did a bit of research on the Koolie to understand what they are all about. The vet has stated quite a number of times how smart she is and she wishes more farmers would have them around here as they are so easy to deal with.

Thanks everyone for the posts! Been busy finishing off my 1st assessment for NDTF amongst other things!


I haven't figured out how to get people's names into quotes yet, I'll figure it out one day!

I think you're probably correct - I haven't had time to go back to it yet but intend to over the next few days.

There has been a slight improvement over the past couple of days with the nipping. Maybe she realises that I mean business, perhaps my signals were not strong enough before. The triggers are overexcitedness (chasing the cat one example) and overtiredness. I usually put her in her crate when she is like this with her stuffed kong and she settles down almost immediately with very little fuss. It's funny once she sees the kong in my hand it's like "oooohhh, thank goodness, I can turn off now".

She is a lovely little thing except for the nipping!



I am having a bit of trouble with consistency with the rest of the household, OH has some dog issues from wayback and teenage son just gets frustrated (as they do) and is reverts to "no" instead of commands!! Paxy still sees him as a plaything I think - she sees too little of everyone else so gets very excited when she sees him!

Books arrived yesterday and today: On Talking Terms with Dogs: Calming Signals, Turid Rugaas; The Dog's Mind, Bruce Fogle; Canine Body Language (Photographic Guide), Brenda Aloff; The Evolution of Canine Social Behaviour, Roger Abrantes.

So a bit of weekend reading to keep me occupied!!! There are still a couple more to come, hopefully in the next week.

I have read a bit of the Rugaas book and one thing I have noticed that at puppy preschool Paxy arrives panting and yawning and unable to sit still. We are usually opposite a very excitable lab pup who has to have a barrier put in btwn us because he just wants to be social! Anyway by about the middle of the class Paxy is the one who is lying down with head on floor at her own instigation and "looking" relaxed while the other 3 pups are still wriggling. Last Tues night she let all the other dogs out first and we were last to leave. Still trying to work out whether she's reacting to the other dogs or reacting to calm herself. When the dogs are allowed offleash, one at a time, she actually avoided all the other dogs and spent most of the time sniffing the floor as she went round the room!

Bl***y labs!!! Before we opened our dog daycare, we were on a US yahoolist where some of the ppl called Labs 'devil dogs'. At first we were, 'labs are ok, why do they call them that?' - the bosses' partner owned a lovely middle-aged one - but it only took a couple of labs in daycare to show us what they were talking about. I really suspect that there's some blip in the brains of lots of labs that stops them learning to read other dogs' signals until they're quite old - like yrs old. But then they're often really really good with other dogs, but young labs are like another breed from mature ones. And the fact that they are so resilient to me seems likely to be part of the 'problem' - that cos other dogs attempts to 'discipline' them and set boundaries don't worry them, they don't learn from them.

How many wks are you into the puppy class?

With her yawning etc, it's excellent that you're noticing it (now start paying attention when you're around ppl and their dogs to how many times you hear 'you're not tired, why are you yawning?' lol) - I'd be offering her treats when you notice it - that way you're calming her down while still respecting her communication. If she won't take then perhaps she's over 'threshold' (have you come across that concept yet? just means she over-stimulated either by excitement or stress/fear) and I'd talk to the instructors about how the experience can be modified so it doesn't challenge her so much. It says that things are going great that she settles - probably means that the class is a more valuable experience for her than for the lab for eg. I'm a strong believer in exposing pups to mild stressors and helping them get calm so that they can learn to do it for themselves eventually - that's really what socialisation as we practice it is - lots of counterconditioning and desensitisation.

I've been using a particular method of doing this that's in Control Unleashed (Leslie McDevitt) that is a really easy to understand approach - she calls it 'Look at that!' - the dog has to be under threshold - not stressed by the experience - and you mark/click when they look at 'the thing' that concerns or interests them and reward. This will quickly develop into you mark when they look at 'the thing' and reward when they look back at you expecting the treat. You can see the stress and distraction flow out of their bodies as you do it. She makes the wise point that in the past we've tended to try to get dogs to ignore the things that interest and stress them and only focus on us and that is both difficult and unfair - if something scarey comes along they aren't going to feel better cos they're being cued to stare at us - that will prob increase their fear.

Great choice of books - As I've said, I really love the Rugaas, but I'm also pretty much in love ;-) with Aloff, not least because she's into Foxies and some of her late greats were *soooo* much naughtier than mine (and she was pretty wild). I think you'll find them really interesting. The Abrantes book I find frustrating - it's so badly translated (unless it's been retranslated, it's good enough to warrant that). But really interesting. Like all more ethology based books, not a recipe for training though, more to understand the species, development etc.

Were you on the forum when I mentioned a while back that Aloff's coming to Australia? I'd like to see her, but probably won't get there.

To me, Paxy sounds drivey and intense and those pups often do get frustrated and restless/OTT more than the average. They make you work much harder, but their learning capacity is often higher - because they're more passionate about the things they're into - so you get a stronger response for the reinforcement you offer. And you learn much more from them.

Oh dear, now I'm on my hobby-horse...

About the handling stuff - when you do your vet-proofing stuff are you offering rewards? Counter-conditoning is a faster process than desensitisation.

There have been 2 main ways of approaching this by reward-trainers over the last little while, and I'm still a bit unsure which I prefer. They really overlap anyway.

You can make sure that you keep them under-threshold, so the way you touch them isn't going to get a strong response (but she needs to be aware of it - which doesn't mean she needs to show any reaction, though) and mark her for accepting the handling and then treat. In this, the person understands what they are doing as 'I am teaching her that when I touch her, accepting it and staying still is a rewardable behaviour'. They need to work within what the animal can give them - ie if they are working on it and the animal keeps moving away, then they are asking it to accept too much and need to ask for less.

The alternative, more along the lines of what the behavioural vets have been doing is - touch the dog (if it really had a prob with handling - like a zoo animal - you'd start whichever approach you were taking by 'mock touching' - touching the air away from the animal or just starting the movement) and feed whatever the response, no mark. Ideally, feed while the handling continues if the animal can tolerate this. You want the animal to associate being touched with being fed and as long as you don't put them over-threshold, which will confirm their suspicions that this isn't a safe or worthwhile thing to be involved in, with repitition you'll see their response change - even though more mainstream dog-training theory would suggest that you risk rewarding them for moving away etc. If they continue to move away they are telling you that they are over-threshold. This is my preferred approach with nail-clipping - however difficult they've been they should be 'rewarded', and if this is done correctly they will begin to associate nail-trimming with food and it will become easier and you can then start reinforcing the choices they make about what they allow. Of course, if there's a lengthy history of bad experiences with nail-trimming then it will take more repetitions to change the associations they have with this.

The ignore thing works best for jumping up behaviors, in combo with rewards which are given only when the dog is below the waistline. Jumping up is an attention behavior whereas nipping is an infantile behavior which as you say resolves over time by itself mostly, if it isn't encouraged or inadvertantly rewarded.

Paxy seems to be a real action girl. She seems pretty fearless and forthcoming from how you describe her, and motivated and desiring plenty of action. Remember that she is a working dog.I assume her parents were working dogs.The working traits would have been bred into her deliberately. There is a high liklihood that there will be alot of grunt in her personality. In the normal course of events this is a desirable trait. My dogs don't work stock, but check out their half brother who does. One gnarly dog, eh? Here he is, yep, BITING,just like he has been bred and encouraged to do lol.

Jacksy was not a nipper (but he was a bloody jumper upper until he was 12 months), Alby was a nipper but didn't jump up....go figure. I don't have a pic of Alby attacking me (as he regularly did, little bugger), but he was the bane of Jacksy's life and most of his play involved stalking a sleeping Jacksy and going straight for the jugular, like this.
Yep, the 9 week old pup has an adult entire male on his back(Jacksy is patient, but wouldn't put up with the same nonsense from the adult Alby).Even then, there were limits and I would hear the occasional puppy yelp yelp yelp from the other room. Alby tore everything apart as well.

I suppose the point is that mostly they grow out of the random nipping. Remember, you and your family are her family now. If she'd stayed with her mum and litter, all this stuff would have gone on there and knocked out of her as she grew. Alot of this sort of naughty behavior is boundary testing, as your vet says. She is intelligent no doubt.Normally the dominance relationships get worked out among each other in the litter. With humans you have to sort out dominance in a dog like way, to put the dog flat on her back straight away to show she is subordinate to you when she nips. But everyone has to be consistent as you have observed.

Paxy will also be intelligent if bred to work, and will be looking for stimulation and getting action going.

I had the advantage of having another dog, but I would run Alby ragged (within the limits of his wee puppy joints) and that burned a lot of the nipping out of him, simply because he was physically and mentally tired and not looking for stimulation. Looking back it probably was the best practical solution. Also I gave him decent bones from the get go, and interesting and tough chew toys (but they had to be tough).

Well, in short, I suppose I'm just saying that she probably will grow out of it, and that maybe there are a few different strategies you could try all at the one time in the meantime, bearing in mind that with rewards be really careful you are not inadvertantly rewarding her for the nipping instead of not nipping as KoolieMum said.

Good luck Puppy owner!

Thanks guys for the advice! It's soo good to have a place like this forum to get so much help!!

I do hope that the nipping will resolve itself as she gets older. I think part of the problem is she hasn't quite learned to switch herself off yet. But she's only a baby yet. I do think she is a high energy girl - she loves to "kill" her toys too!

The other day I had some friends over and she behaved beautifully with them, did nip at one friend's skirt but she just hiked it up out of reach!! She does have a tendency when calm to roll on her back and expose her tummy - submission (!) - but still trying to get your hand in her mouth sometimes!!

I have been thinking of taking her to a friend's place to have a play with their dog. They have asked me to help train him, he's a rescue with a nice nature just never encouraged to obey commands even though he knows them!!

I think once we can start walking Paxy will get better!! She is a real sticky beak - as observed by the PP instructor!! Last night the b****y lab barked the whole time!! The other two pups are mini foxies - really cute, one, a girl is pretty good and has good manners, the little boy is a bit all over the place. He was quite funny with his pig's ear throwing it all over the place and growling at it! Paxy just hogs into hers! We did the "grooming table" at preschool last night, ears pretend washed, brushed lightly and squirted with "cologne"!!! The star was the lab of all pups - absolutely loved the attention (and the chicken). Next week is our last session - only 4 in total with the pups and one without at the start.

Maybe one day I'll get the chance to try Paxy on some stock!! That might be fun!

Vetproofing is only done when they are calm (dog and cat) always continuous quiet verbal praise and gentle talking and treats. I still do it with the cat even though she is now 7.

I have also always allowed my dogs and the cat to check out whatever they are interested in. The cat loves to check out anything you are holding and sniff it. One thing I also do is shake plastic bags (they are a bit scary sounding) and then let them come over and sniff and touch (on the floor) and even play with them. Cat loves to lie on them, Paxy likes to shake them. It's amazing how often you encounter plastic bags when out walking - even one just blowing along the ground can spook dogs.

Last night when we came home from puppy preschool next door had washed their car and there were suds in the gutter. Paxy investigated - look and jump away, look again, stick nose in and get suds on it. Look again!! Always with verbal praise and mutterings from me (no treats on me).

Glad I'm not the only one with training problems, after 13 years of easy to train no problem dogs we got Izzi , she's a whole different dog. My methods don't work on her & I needed help, after contacting one of the Delta Society listed trainers we're on our way to a beautiful partenership. Can't remember who, on the Koolie Club site, recomended them but HUGE thankyou from me & another girl I told. Enough of that, now for the bit I realy want to share. Saturday we picked up Pebbles, Australian Shepherd, what a sweety. She's never seen live stock before & I work with pigs. Pebbles handled her first meeting pretty well but today there was a pen out, about 17, I sent JC & Izzi but let Pebbles decide if she wanted to go, after a couple of minutes watching she went & got her paws dirty, so funny to watch , so now she's officially a pig dog, sorta. We start dog school in 2 weeks with Izzi & Pebbles so you'll probably all get bored witless with my ramblings but I'm so excited .

A pig dog!! She's got guts then!!! Got any pics yet!!! Please bore us - it's so good to hear everyone else's fun and games and successes!

The instructor at our Puppy preschool is Delta trained. She is one of the instructors in NSW now - married to the vet too! She is very nice and was quite frank about some of the local training schools when I asked her (including the Delta one). Anyway we'll see how we go with Paxy. I have to be away for a week in mid April (learning to train dogs) so she will be left to OH and son to look after! That'll be interesting!!

Think I can say with some confidence that No we won't!!

Have just seen that APDT have Roger Abrantes coming as 2nd speaker this yr. Think that will be really interesting.

Sounds like a great conference with some interesting speakers. Are you going to go to it?

Checked out your website too!! Very good site! Wish I'd seen your forms last week when I had to do one for an assessment - I feel inadequate now!

I've let my membership slip, but now that I'm restarting my training business (hence the website - thanks for the compliment) I will be rejoining, and I hope I'll be able to get to the conference. I didn't go last year (Wal was really sick then), but did the 3 yrs before. I love it love it love it, have always found it inspiring and challenging.

About the forms, feel free to use any of the ideas in them that you like. I've changed my forms so many times over the time I've been training. I've found it really difficult to get a balance between getting the info you want and asking questions that inexperienced owners can actually answer and be bothered answering. This form is very new - so will have to wait and see if it works or not. Several of the questions are designed to get an impression of the relationship between the person and dog and consequently how I should approach the training, and that's risky, can make a person feel that you don't approve of how they keep their dog and start on the defensive. And my old forms used to came back quite often with lots of questions unanswered, which is frustrating. These ones are long, maybe too long. I really think that there are a range of factors that determine whether a particular form works for a trainer - including the SES and education level of the client base, the status of the trainer (I don't think many ppl who fill out Kersti Seksel's long form, for eg, think it's too long, because they recognise they are getting a superior service. For my suburban, (as yet) unknown business it might be different, though.

I like and am influenced by Suzanne Hett's questionnaire about behavioural health, especially in terms of defining the goals that I can offer to ppl for the training (one thing that makes one-one training more difficult, imo, is that in a group class ppl can usually accept that everything that is offered to the class is not particularly relevant to them, and they will do it out of politeness and often their dog will really benefit because it was actually just that they didn't know they needed it - god what an awful sentence but I hope you know what I mean :-) But with one-one they have to think it's relevant before you can even teach it.) http://www.animalbehaviorassociates.com/quiz_dog.htm

And you can download the SABS form from www.sabs.com.au - I've copied some things more or less straight from there.

Never thought about checking if there were any on the net - must have had a blonde moment! Do'h! Thanks for the permission re your forms, I appreciate that. It definitely came down to me with just how long you want to make a form. I condensed mine to one page for the simple fact that people sometimes would rather talk than write when face to face but if they're filling in a form on the net you can definitely make it longer as they will usually take the time to complete it. Will have to wait and see if I pass now!