Odd behaviour help.

lindsayH

lindsayH

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I have a nearly 10yo collie bitch (Islay). We've always done lots of treat-based training but for the last 3 days she's started doing something very strange. She really doesn't want to take a treat from my hand, turning her head away, or even walking away. She'll perform her task or trick or whatever, bounce over to me for her reward but as soon as I hold my hand out she looks worried. If I crouch down she is more likely to take it and if she's over excited or it's something especially tasty she'll take it - then run off with it.

I'm baffled, she's never done this before and seems normal in every other way. The only thing I can think of is that I've been teaching her a new trick - to tell me which hand the treat is hidden in and I've only been treating her when she gets it right. Could this have somehow caused her odd behaviour? We haven't done that for over a week and 4 days ago she was taking treats fine. She was also taking treats from me fine while we were working on that trick.

I have recorded a quick video if that helps, but Youtube says it will take another 55 mins to upload!
Any ideas what could be causing this?
 
Is she bored of the treats? Maybe change to something different?

Have you started using a new hand cream or soap or perfume? My older gsd pulls faces at smells he doesn't like, and wouldn't go near to take a treat if he didn't like the smell of my hands!
 
Is she eating her meals ok? Could she possibly have a sore tooth / teeth?

My whippet had a sore on his gums and I only noticed as he was picking feed up but then dropping back into bowl
 
Her teeth are fine, I checked carefully thinking the same thing, she's eating her (dry) food fine. She grabs the treat enthusiastically as soon as I drop it. The hand cream theory is a very good idea but I haven't got anything new.
Here is a quick video I did to demonstrate. Please forgive the state of me, I had just got in from the yard. She knows the command 'take it' so I thought I'd see if that worked, but no. You can see how worried she looks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sqTMfu4kU4
The only other person who has been alone with her in the last week is my mum, I'll speak to her too.
 
She looks hand shy. Has anything happened which could have scared her/hurt her face associated with a hand movement? I am not implying anyone has hit her or hurt on purpose, but I mean has anything happened accidentally I wonder.
 
All i can see is you rewarding her for NOT taking the treat. You are holding it out and she automatially turns then you throw the treat and say good girl. This is now a trick to her. The times she does take it she looks up at you as if "im not sure i did the right thing"

I don't actually see it as a bad thing. It has taught her never to snap at a hand.
 
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lindsayH said:
I have a nearly 10yo collie bitch (Islay). …….. . The only thing I can think of is that I've been teaching her a new trick - to tell me which hand the treat is hidden in and I've only been treating her when she gets it right. Could this have somehow caused her odd behaviour? ……..?
Click to expand...

I suspect that your bitch is feeling rather let down. Where she has previously had a reward, from an open hand, now when she fails, there's nothing and it may well be that the treat when used as a reward, is no longer there. I suspect that you may have introduced a degree of mistrust. It may also be that you've moved the goal posts, for her. Some Collies, especially the bitches, can be particularly precious, and they'll take offence at just about anything. Sensitive doesn't even touch the sides!

I never use treats and would never, because I want the dog to work for 'me' rather than a 'treat'. It's all do do with the emphasis which is applied. The child who will only perform household chores for payment will end up selfish. Dogs are the same in my view.

As Islay's now 10 years old, in your shoes, I'd return to your 'treats' and use them as that, and not as a perceived additional hoop for her to go through.

If you have a previously well balanced and happy relationship with her, then that's all that I can imagine it is.

Alec.
 
Alec Swan said:
I suspect that your bitch is feeling rather let down. Where she has previously had a reward, from an open hand, now when she fails, there's nothing and it may well be that the treat when used as a reward, is no longer there. I suspect that you may have introduced a degree of mistrust. It may also be that you've moved the goal posts, for her. Some Collies, especially the bitches, can be particularly precious, and they'll take offence at just about anything. Sensitive doesn't even touch the sides!

I never use treats and would never, because I want the dog to work for 'me' rather than a 'treat'. It's all do do with the emphasis which is applied. The child who will only perform household chores for payment will end up selfish. Dogs are the same in my view.

As Islay's now 10 years old, in your shoes, I'd return to your 'treats' and use them as that, and not as a perceived additional hoop for her to go through.

If you have a previously well balanced and happy relationship with her, then that's all that I can imagine it is.

Alec.
Click to expand...

Fab post and makes a lot of sense. Very interesting Alec.
 
My first though was tooth/mouth pain but having seen the video that does not seem likely.

She seems to purposefully move away from your hand which could be the result of one of two things. Either she got a fright when taking a treat directly from your hand which has now put her off the behaviour, or she thinks avoiding the hand is part of the be sired behaviour. The first need not be something you did purposefully or are aware of, maybe a car backfired as she accepted a treat from the hand and the association was created. However, I would bet this is not fear related as she seems at ease. She looks to me like a dog doing a 'leave it' exercise, I.e. purposefully showing you that she is moving away from the treat in order to be rewarded with it.

If it were me I would be very specific with markers, say 'good girl' as you do for what you want to mark, then immediately throw a treat to the floor without saying anything else. I'd bypass the problem by not feeding directly from the hand for a few weeks, then go back to it and see what happens.
 
Thank you everyone for your thoughts!
Let me just clarify, the video is not a reflection on how I train but speedily done in order to demonstrate the behaviour. I'm no master dog trainer, but I have trained this one successfully for 10 years including to a decent level at agility and other things.
Alec, it may have been teaching that trick, somehow I'm just not convinced it's that. I am aware of the sensitivity of collies!
Booboos, Thriller, I agree with you, it's almost like she has been taught not to take it. It really did happen overnight though...
 
I introduced a dog to the clicker and the first time I clicked before I had a chance to treat a car back fired. She was off like a shot upstairs cowering under the bed and it took me months to get her over it and get her to accept the click. I've also seen a collie grasp the idea behind the leave it command after the first repetition. They can learn very, very quickly and sometimes it's the wrong thing.
 
Thanks Booboos. I think I may have an answer to the mystery. Mum was over last Wednesday and apparently while I was on the phone for 5 minutes she tried to teach Islay to take a treat more gently. She says she didn't do anything she hadn't done before but I'm deeply suspicious. It seems incredible that 10 years of conditioning can be undone in 5 minutes but your example shows how quickly damage can be done! She is now taking a treat from me if I'm sitting on a chair so I'll just continue to work on it slowly and I'm sure we'll eventually get back to where we were. Mother has had a stern talking to, hopefully she'll learn as quickly as the dog!
 
There's an old term in dog train; 'Months to make and minutes to ruin'. That's not that you've 'ruined' your dog, anything but, it's that dogs learn the negatives just as quickly, or even more so than the positives. My dogs all learn to take food from my hand in a mannerly fashion, and in over 50 years and hundreds of dogs, I've never yet had one that's behaved as you've described. Islay clearly has a bee-in-her-bonnet about something.

Alec.
 
I agree with Alec. Sort of, anyway!

The old dog men used to talk about "being fair" and "justice" in dog training. I think I understand what they meant. A dog learns to perform a certain behaviour and expects predictable results. If the results are so far from what they expected, they can't cope and will "shut down". I'm afraid I don't think you have been very fair to your dog!

Many animals will shut down when confronted with that is (to them) an unsolvable problem. This has been discussed on here before. The rabbit pursued by a stoat, ground living game birds that "freeze" and won't move, etc. In gundogs, we have "blinking". The dog goes through all the usual hunting behaviour but turns away when it encounters game scent.

I had a setter that started "blinking". It would hunt beautiful and by it's slight change in body language I could recognise when it scented game, but then it hunt on as if the birds did not exist. I cured it by shooting a pheasant and cutting it up into bite sized pieces. The dog was kennelled alone and offered a piece of meat every time I passed until it was hungry enough to eat! It gradually regained it's confidence after it had eaten the whole pheasant and became a very good shooting dog.
 
Dry Rot, it would be useful if you could explain why you don't think I've been fair to my dog? I mean, I know I'm not perfect but in this case, if I don't know, I can't do much about it!
 
Sorry, I've only just seen your post and I have now carefully re-read your first one.

You say, "The only thing I can think of is that I've been teaching her a new trick - to tell me which hand the treat is hidden in and I've only been treating her when she gets it right. Could this have somehow caused her odd behaviour?"

I got the idea that you were asking your dog to perform a behaviour, then asking it to choose which hand held the reward when it got it right. But I now see that might not be the case? The guessing game is a completely different and separate scenario? Yes? Either way, I think this guessing game may indeed have provoked the "blinking" of treats. To put it in anthropomorphic terms, the dog feels cheated when it picks the wrong hand and doesn't get the reward so it won't play. Has anyone experienced small children doing something similar when they are not allowed to win? (Oh, and some adults too! :)).

Going back to the example of the setter that was blinking game scent, I know exactly how that problem arose because I have seen it many times since. The first time the dog came on point, I shot a grouse. This is standard practice and it can produce dramatic results as in the dog's mind there is a logical sequence of events -- dog hunts, dog finds bird, bird is flushed, there is a shot and the bird falls, bird is collected and shown to the dog. That, in the dog's mind, is a logical hunting pattern that it can understand.

The problem that created the "blinking" was that I did not kill the bird cleanly but winged it. In my eagerness to recover the wounded bird, I encouraged the dog to follow the trail of ground scent. The dog was confused by being shot over for the first time and was upset at being encouraged to follow the scent for no apparent reason. Thereafter, it avoided completing that part of the sequence. It would hunt for and find game but as soon as it had done so, it would come away avoiding the flush. In retrospect, I should have left the dog work it out for himself. Hindsight is a wonderful thing!

So, I think your dog is confused and rather than risking doing "the wrong thing", it does nothing at all. Does that make sense?
 
I think you are right your mum taught her not to take the treat rather than take it gently. She sounds like a very bright dog that reads more cues than the handler intended!

I am sure you can sort this out by not making a big deal out of it. If sitting down works use that, or maybe even train her lying down, it's enough of a change for her to perceive it as a different behaviour and to get back in the habit of taking the treat.
 
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