Saber has been doing something new for the past month or so and I wondered if this would be classified as "leaking drive."

She gets VERY excited about fetching with a ball and Chuckit now. We usually do a bit of fetching in the backyard when I take her out to potty. Our usual routine is that we have to go down a flight of stairs to get outside; I trained her when she was little to wait at the top of the stairs, let me go down first, then I release with "okay" before she can follow. She has always waited nicely. Now, she has added a new behavior. While I am going down and before she is released, she stands at the top of the stairs and spins and "screams." I am not sure how else to describe the vocalization but it is high pitched "yelling" type of sound. She will spin herself silly while making this screamy noise, until I release her to come down. I know she is very excited to go out and play.

So is this an example of "leaking drive"? Or is it just a silly excited pup? Is there anything good or bad about this behavior? I just ignore it.

wellit could be a little of both. ... BUT if you release her when she is doing it (even though you think you are ignoring it)... you are reenforceing the behaviour by rewarding her with what she wants (coming downstairs and going outside to play)...

Do you think I should tell her to sit, and not release until she does? I haven't tried that because she is so wound up I don't know if I can enforce it. Maybe if I put a leash on her. Maybe it is something she needs to mature a bit to control, I dunno!

I would try to stop this asap. I have a friend that ignored her Portuguese Water Dog and now he does it while running through the house when she's getting ready to go somewhere. I have seen him crack his head on the stove and on counter corners and keep on going. He does not scream. BUT, I would not let my dog "leak" in an inappropriate manner that I don't want to show up elsewhere (like in agility). I would ask for a sit. Taking her out might take a loooonnngggg time at first but I think it will be better for you in the long run to reinforce the sit. Also, if you tell her to sit and she is spinning and screaming, she is breaking a command - another thing I think you will regret allowing in the future.

This is something you should put a stop to. This can develop into a bad habit that will be difficult to stop if allowed to continue. She needs to learn to contain herself, control herself, and stay focused on you, even when in a high state of excitement and arousal.

What happens is that she will start to associate this excited, crazy behaviour WITH the release. The subconscious connection in her brain thinks that the spinning and screaming is the key that unlocks the release. What you need to do is to show her that this key does not even fit the lock, and give her a key that will unlock the release. (Apparently, since she used to wait quietly and calmly, she used to have the key but lost it somewhere. )

There are a number of ways you can try to do this, a leash, as suggested so you can give a bit of a correction and control her. Not sure if she is responsive to you, but you can reinforce the sit command as you go down the steps. If she starts to spin, stop, make her sit, continue on.

If she is not responding, you can also change her key by waiting her out. This takes patience and split-second timing, but when done well can work quite fast. When Gryff was younger, I broke him of his crate-spinning habit in less than a week.

He used to spin and whine in his crate out of excitement and anticipation when I came to release him. If I told him to stop or to sit, he ignored me and continued on, as if he never heard me. I didn't like this hectic behaviour, and was concerned that it would bleed over into other situations, so I set out to stop it. As it was, in his puppy brain, the spinning and whining was the key that opened the crate door. So what I started doing was walking up to the crate, unlatching it, but staying there and holding it closed, letting him spin and whine away.

At one point, he's thinking to himself "Hey, I've been spinning enough that she should have the crate door open by now, what is keeping her?" So he stops to check out what I'm doing, and that THAT VERY INSTANT, I let him out.

After that, each time I went to let him out of the crate, he stopped quicker and sooner to look at me, and again, door opened for him instantly. Soon, he was only doing one or two spins before stopping to look. All this time, I never said a word to him. I just stood there quietly, with very low-key energy, waiting for him to offer the behaviour that I wanted.

Now with only one or two half-hearted spins before stopping to look at me, I started asking for a sit before releasing him. His energy was now not in the spinning, but looking at me, so I got the sits.

Next, as I approached the crate to let him out, before he even started spinning, I asked for a sit, and quickly released him.

That was it. He started offering sits on his own, the spinning was gone. Gone in about a weeks time. These dogs are so quick to figure out what works in their own interest, easy to use it to shape behaviour that we want.

He still sometimes spins but only in his car crate, during protection, when I'm getting him out for his turn. I'm more tolerant of the spinning during protection, as the dogs are amped up to a different level of arousal than normal, but still, I would ask for a platz before opening the crate door, and it wasn't long, he was offering me the platz on his own, no doubt believing that the platz was what was hastening his turn on the field.

Pan is a low-threshold high prey drive dog who constantly vocalizes and leaks. Like the others said, it's something I've been on him about since day one. It's not something I just ignore until he settles because THAT never happens; I basically have to start over if I let it get to the point where he's screaming. Right now we are working on his long down for the BH/Schutzhund obedience. If I make him to the long down for the entire time, by the time he's done he's so overloaded in drive he's just crazy. The trick is learning when to cap the drive and release the dog. Instead of putting Pan in a down and attempting to wait him out, I put him in a down and literally start with two seconds, mark, release, reward. Then three seconds, mark, release, reward. I *always* try to mark, release, and reward BEFORE he starts to get leaky. If it escalates to the point where he's vocalizing I've already let it get too far. For me the goal is to work the dog in a high level of drive but below the point where the dog overloads and starts leaking, not work the dog up so high that I have to bring the dog down again to stop the leaking, if that makes sense?

Good advice! Bison is the same way and I didn't do this when he was young. There are just some things that I am not going to be able to correct now without major work because they are habituated.

Havoc is really overloaded with this too. I have found corrections make it worse. Ignoring it teaches him nothing. Giving him an alternative behavior helps a little. I have started telling him quiet! and as soon as he shuts up I mark and premack it. No outside til quiet, no walk til quiet, no car ride til quiet, no release to the first agility obstacle til quiet, no dinner til quiet.

I have fought this for 3 years and it is up and down. He has a certain threshold that I cannot get him over despite the years we have worked on this.

Oddly he has release from crate down pat, the rest is still a struggle.

The hardest part for me is screaming when given the command (this video shows what I mean, it's not as extreme as it can be but you get the idea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH5D1b7iHV4). We just started doing retrieves, and I can get him in the right frame of mind so he's quiet waiting for the command, quiet retrieving, and quiet doing the hold but when I actually give the "bring" command he lets out a shriek as he takes off. Same deal with heeling. I can get the vocalizing to a minimum or nothing while we set up and wait to start, but as soon as I say "fuss" he vocalizes, but then quits and settles as he's heeling. When I come home from work he is lying down quiet in his crate and I can open the door but as soon as I say "ok" he lets out a shriek. I suppose if I can keep it to only these vocalizations it won't be a huge deal (I've seen dogs whine and leak their entire obedience routines) but it's hard to correct something even when you know it's coming when it only happens for a split second (and I don't want the commands to be associated with punishment either).

Exactly Lies, Havoc starts loading up all through the heeling (I can see it) and then starts vocalizing as we get closer to retrieves. He gets to run and jump and play and get stuff! He loves it. He shakes at the wait line in agility he is so excited than screams as he takes off. We have been doing agility since he was 8 months old and you can see there are no titles yet. He is so wound like a spring he often drops the first bar or the bar after a contact obstacle. Can't Q with dropped bars.

It is hard to correct a split second scream, timing has to be EXACT! And I am not that fast. I do remind him quiet as we are setting up. I am almost ready to spray mouth wash in his face. I HATE doing that kind of stuff but the loading and screaming make me crazy.

You have already received great advice from people ... I just have a different take on this.



When I read that part, especially the bolded words, I immediately thought of Pavlov's Dog.

From the Noble Prize website page on Pavlov:



So, if 90% or more of the time Saber sits at the top of the stairs she gets to go out and play fetch (which she LOVES), she's been conditioned to expect that action and her reflexes (reactions) are based on her conditioning.

Here's what I would do. I would start having her sit at the top of the stairs for about 5 seconds, then release and reward and DO NOT GO OUTSIDE.

My pack learned that if we were sitting on the couch and turned off the tv right around 6 pm that they were going to get fed. They would jump up and race to the kitchen. To minimize the craziness we started turning the tv off and on and back off and on and off and on and ... well, you get the idea. Now the dog don't instantly react to the tv being turned off.

Thank you for all the descriptions and also Lies for the video. I made a point of having her calm (didn't ask for a sit, just waited her out until she stopped spinning and "watched" for a few seconds which is her default behavior when she doesn't know what else to do) and then released. she caught on quickly because I also wait for a "watch" without command when feeding her or offering her anything she wants like a tug or treat. So now she *does* either not spin/scream or stops very quickly for ME. However she still is going nutso when my boys take her out. She does not offer watch to them, ever. So I just need to have them be consistent about not releasing her while she is screaming and spinning. I will also go up and downstairs with her throughout the day but not go outside. Great idea.

This screaming/spinning has already bled over into other things. Actually before she started doing it at the top of the stairs, she started spinning when I was trying to do OB work with her. I would call to front and she would get to me and spin. Or I would have her finish and she would spin to heel position... or while heeling, she'd randomly spin. I fixed this by moving to lower value treats. I got a ton of spinning of she knew I had steak or fish stashed somewhere as her reward. So maybe that was her food drive leaking? It is resolved now that I use kibble or cheese.

The other time she screams is just recently she has started screaming if I leave her in her crate and go out the door. OMG you'd think someone was stabbing her, the sounds she makes!! She has been crate trained since I got her, always has loved her crate and still does, goes in on her own etc, and does not make a peep when I crate her to eat, or at bedtime, or even if I crate her while I am in the house. But suddenly, if I crate her and walk out the door she just shreiks to high heaven like she is being tortured. Just this morning I went out in the yard to cleanup poo, and I could hear her inside screaming bloody murder the whole 15 minutes I was out there!! She sounded very distressed. I don't know if she was spinning or not but I have never seen her spin in her crate. Anyway as soon as I walked in the door she stopped and was quiet. I didn't let her out for about 5 more minutes but she was perfectly behaved.

Not sure what gives and why she is suddenly doing this stuff!

i bet that the first time she screamed bloody murder you immeadiatly ran back in to check on her (i dont blame you as i would have to). maybe even siad OMG are you ok opened the crate to examine from where she was bleeding... she probably remembers that time and thinks if she continues screaming you WILL come back....

Shawn, has she ever been left alone in the house at all? Just wondering if she's not getting anxiety attack from being left alone.

Also, is it possible to just let her go downstairs without making her sit and wait for a release? What is the point of this routine?

Oksana, yes, she is left alone for an hour or two most days, sometimes twice a day, but she is crated. She never seemed to have an issue before with it. This crying is new behavior.

The point of making her wait for me to go down stairs first is to avoid being knocked over or tripping on her as I go down. I have bad arthritis and need knee replacements, so I taught her to wait at the top of the stairs and let me go first when she was a puppy. It also came in SUPER handy at dock diving, when other people were getting knocked/yanked down the wet stairs from the dock by their dogs, but Saber did her usual thing waiting for me to go first.

Ok, then it seems like she thought you were playing in the yard without her, and she wanted to come and join. Kinda the same behavior as described in "barking in vehicles' thread.

I see now why wait and release on the stairs, makes sense. What about if you modify it a bit and let her go ahead of you? She will go downstairs and sniff or pee and wait for you to come down slowly.

She definitely wanted to come and join me!

Maybe all the noise is part of her growing up. She is almost 15 months old. The nice thing is she is so smart and wants to please, so generally she is good about stopping something she knows I don't like. It's just perplexing when something new like this crops up!

I used to think she had zero ball drive. she would not chase a ball, or fetch, or show any interest until she was probably 8 months old. Now it is crazy ball drive. She is definitely maturing and changing.

Shawn here's an even better video of Pan screaming when he gets the bring/retrieve command http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCfz8ES3Qbg

Lies, that's just how Saber sounds except she goes onnnnnn and onnnnnn! Pan is looking great, to me

Sounds like Havoc too, to include the yip bark as he takes off. Havoc squeals as I get the dumbbell off the holder too. I touch it and back up, touch it and back up, repeat til he is quiet.