Re: Does your dog do this?

Dear Lia,

PMFJI

What sort of dog is Cubbe? What are you feeding? Is it male/female/ neutered?

You sound panicky. First stop. Calm down. Decide what behaviour you want. Then train for it. Remember a dog does not speak fluent monkey and you do not speak fluent canine. Your main problems are with who's boss. You are not. This needs dealing with pronto, or you are going to have major problems.

Start with that. Then we can deal with basic obedience matters. Ditch the clicker (imho, they are OK but unless everyone who ever deals with your dog has one, pretty unreliable.)

Teach your dog a Down on command. Then a stay. When you open a door, have dog in a down behind you. Open the door wide. Dog can see out, visitor can see in. Both are under control. If it is a "l'il old lady" she is not scared because dog is under control. If it is the local axe-murderer, he thinks: if this dog is doing this, what else can he do? You know dog is safe, but in position to protect, if needed. You can then control the situation with confidence.

Dog understands your confidence and will therefore allow you, as pack leader, to control the situation. Dog is back-up, he is not needed to muscle in, unless asked, therefore he is relaxed. When everybody is relaxed, the situation is safe. When you drag the dog from the door, he thinks he is needed to protect you. If you remove him from potential "situations" he a) does not learn how to react appropriately and b) can sense your unease, and will try to take over on occasions when he is present.

Do you see what I mean? I hope that meakes sense.

That's a start. I can help you with the rest if you want. But mebbe we should talk off group. I can recommend you some good books, too.

BTW I have trained dogs, of many different breeds, for about 25 years, so have _some_ experience, and qualifications. I do not like methods that harm or hurt. I teach motivational methods based on psycholgy and behaviour management. I am not remotely interested in prong collars or other harsh methods. I was taught my people (brilliant, imo) who proved they were not necessary. If I can help you, I would be delighted to try. (and talk woofit. I miss that at the moment)

Try it, talk to me.

Nel (Gadget Queen) Sartor Resartus

All excellent advice, but please be careful. If Cubbe continues to snap & snarl, you could be in for some nightmares. Been there, done that, unfortunately. Contact me privately if interested.

-- Royce A day hemmed in prayer is less likely to unravel.

The dog groups have been plagued with a particular virulent troll for many years. It is irrational, makes no sense, cannot be reasoned with, posts constantly (literally 100s of messages a day most of which are repeats). It is annoying, hateful, spewing. Folks have tried arguing with it, being kind to it, reporting it to ISPs, contacting local law enforcement agencies. Nothing works except ignoring it which the folks on the dog groups have learned to do successfully. So it began changing its name and crossposting. I wouldn't presume to assign motives to something that doesn't respond to normally accepted rational human responses, but it seems to crave attention. In the past, whenever it crossposted to unrelated groups (it has this thing about dogs), people have recognized almost immediately that it wasn't making sense. Most recently, it has taken to crossposting to groups where the regulars would recognized a familiar name, in this case, mine. Apparently that gets a response.

Please, folks, use some common sense. The post that was reposted here was from several years ago. Since then, I've solved the problem. Even if I hadn't, I wouldn't come to my quilting, gardening and cooking buddies for a specific and ongoing problem with my dog. My dog group hears from me regularly about training techniques and progress and setbacks. They're interested. My quilting buddies are interested in what quilts I'm working on. My cooking buddies like to hear about new recipes. Sure I get off-topic from time to time (who doesn't), but in general, I try to stay with the subject.

Please don't fall for the troll's tactics. If you have any doubts about what I'm saying, do a google search on my name-- Julia Altshuler and Julia FN Altshuler. You'll find that for every one of my posts, there are about 20 reposts and nonsensible answers from the same troll. This goes back to 1998. (I'm not the only target by far. Every regular on the dog groups put up with the same.)

Here's the canned post on the subject written by me with input from the regulars on the dog group. I post it whenever I see answers to the troll. (I have the troll itself killfiled so I never see its posts unless someone who is not in my killfile repeats them.)

--Lia

This message is posted to rec.pets.dogs.behavior (r.p.d.b.) regularly and occasionally to other newsgroups including alt.animals.dog, rec.pets.dogs.rescue, alt.pets.dog, and rec.pets.dogs.misc. These are unmoderated groups meaning that no one checks the messages to make sure they're on-topic, civil or sensible before they go through.

The purpose of this occasional posting is to give information about the newsgroup so that discussion about the newsgroup itself is cut down and discussion about dogs increases.

Like so many usenet groups, this group has people who post annoyingly and constantly, people who post angry and abusive messages, people who post to irritate others. It's up to individuals to decide which posters bother them.

Here are some guidelines that many people follow to make this newsgroup pleasant and informative:

1. Use your killfile. A killfile (or filter) makes invisible posts by any particular person or with any particular words in the subject line. The posts are still there, but they don't show up on the screen of the person using the killfile. Look at
   formatting link
   for instructions. Ortry:
   formatting link

1. Don't make more noise. The only thing more annoying than a troll is an otherwise rational person arguing with or about a troll. That's known as feeding the trolls. Please don't feed the trolls. It really is insane to attempt rational discussion with the insane.

2. Want to exercise your right to free speech and argue about or with trolls anyway? Put "ninnyboy" in the subject line. That way the people who want to join the fracas can, and those who don't can opt out by killfiling "ninnyboy." If you don't do this, expect to be killfiled yourself. [Jerry], with the brackets is also a recognized signal.

1. Figured out that arguing with trolls is useless but still want to talk about trolls by referring to them in the third person? Put "ninnyboy" in the subject line then too. That subject is boring too.

2. Trim quoted posts to include only the part you're responding to. Quoting an entire long post in order to respond to only a small piece of it is annoying. Again, if you don't do this, expect to be killfiled.

1. Understand Candace. Candace is an automatic program that answers troll posts automatically, repetititively and relentlessly. Most of us find these posts boring after a short while and killfile it too. That's O.K. You can't hurt its feelings.

2. Show no fear. Have a question or need to admit that you've made errors in dog training in the past? This is still a good place to come for (often contradictory) advice. Use your own judgment to decide what advice to follow and what not to. No harm can come to you even if people vehemently disagree, call you names or repost your old messages.

1. Label off-topic threads as "OT." A label helps people decide what to read and what not to.

2. Check the F.A.Q. for answers to frequent non-complicated questions.

1. Don't post pictures. This is not a binary newsgroup. That's plain text only, no HTML, no attachments. If you'd like, post a pointer to a website with pictures on it.

2. Don't crosspost. It's bad enough when someone posts something dog related to all the groups having to do with dogs. It's worse when totally unrelated groups get tossed in the mix. Feel like you absolutely have to jump in on something that's been crossposted to unrelated groups? Erase the extraneous ones when you answer.

Julia,

I for one, read the entire thing, then double checked to see when you had posted your message/question. It seems that we are getting mroe than our fair share of trolls lately...any chance they could be related in any way?? Ah well, from your other messages, I feel that I "know" you, so I'm not going to bother responding to the dog post. Just wanted to write to let you know that those of us at rctq (since that is the only group that I can speak for) know the real you and wouldn't take this nonsensical gibberish to heart.

Larisa

Julia Altshuler wrote:

The same troll invaded rec.woodworking a few months ago. Many of the regulars there began using NewsProxy

to filter posts. This program allows you to drop crossposts based on the number of groups in the crosspost, or specific groups (e.g. you can tell it to drop anything that's posted both to rec.food.cooking and rec.pets.dogs.behavior).

Do a Google search on rec.woodworking for posts in late May and early June, looking for the keywords nfilter and newsproxy for more information.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)

Good idea, doug. You can't hurt wood.

troll for many

This program

the crosspost,

early June,

information.