The 16th Annual UKRCB Symposium sponsored by James Wellbeloved     will be held on Sept 28 2008 at the Hilton Coventry Hotel Paradise Way Walsgrave Coventry CV2 2ST   Constructive Aggression Treatment with Kellie Snider MSc.  This year’s topic is Constructional Aggression Treatment with speaker Kellie Snider, BSc, MSc, BCABA.  Kellie completed her MSc at the University of North Texas in Behaviour Analysis and now holds the position of Manager of Animal Behaviour Programs for the SPCA of Texas. Her thesis research project was based on working with aggressive dogs using a gentle form of Negative Reinforcement that involved shaping appropriate behaviour.  Aggressive behaviour is replaced by providing the aggressive dog with distance from strangers or unfamiliar dogs when desirable behaviours are given.  The success of the method is outstanding and it has found its way into dog behaviour work as a valuable tool in working with aggressive dogs.  Suitable candidates who are dog to dog or dog to human aggressive are often friendly within a few days.  Variations on the technique can also be used in working with separation anxiety and resource guarding problems.  If you work with aggressive dogs, this work will change your world.  We will be talking about canine aggression in a completely different way from what you've learned.  We explore the genetic, dominance and instinct-based theories of the nature of aggression and replace them with our research which reveals aggression as a learned behaviour.  Using the Constructional Approach we can change the aggressive dog into a friendly dog.  We will present a training procedure that will provide trainers and pet owners the ability to make significant differences in dogs' behaviour.  The research was conducted in the dogs' real lives, not in a laboratory.  Pet owners and dog trainers are now taking it and using it with their real dogs in their real worlds with real success  In addition this work can be used with fearful animals, including feral cats, lamas and cattle.  This is one seminar you don’t want to miss!!! GREAT NEWS! For those who attend the first day Kellie has agreed to provide a second day of CAT demonstration working with aggressive dog(s). The venue will be the Sports Connection, Leamington Road, Ryton On Dunsmore, Coventry, CV8 3FL. Cost will be £35.  Only those attending the first day Symposium will be eligible to attend.  Refreshments are not included in the price. Ticket details from Bob Haynes, 6 Gardenia Drive, Allesley Village, Coventry, CV5 9BN, phone 07966 535854 or email deltaonecanines@aol.com OR - you can print off the ticket application for the Symposium Day (two pages) and the Info Sheet for the Demo Day from the links below.  If you wish to attend both make the payment to include both days and include a note to that effect. Symposium Ticket Application page 1 Symposium Ticket Application page 2 Demo Day Info Sheet ============================================================================

The 14th Annual UKRCB Symposium, sponsored by James Wellbeloved, was held on Sunday, October 1, 2006, at the Thistle East Midlands Hotel, located near East Midlands Airport, off the M1.

Our subject this year was Rescued Dogs and how we as re-homers, carers and potential owners can help rehabilitate them both in the re-homing centre and settling them into their permanent homes.

For a review of the symposium, please click here.

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Report on The 12th Annual Symposium took place on Sunday, October 3, 2004 at the Connexion, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Coventry. The subject this year was

PEOPLE, PETS AND PROBLEMS

How often do we as trainers and behaviourists remark that the owner/dog relationship is making successful training more difficult than it needs to be? Are there really no bad dogs, only bad owners? How has a family let a situation with its dog go as far as it has before seeking help? These are all the questions we have asked ourselves whilst working with people and pets. If we are to offer effective help, then we need first of all to look at the problem holistically and recognize that a difficult owner/dog relationship may well reflect personal issues. We need to get a measure of the whole picture, rather than relying on quick, and often ultimately unsatisfactory fixes.

To help us realistically reappraise difficult situations and advise us how to design an acceptable behaviour modification programme, the UKRCB was delighted to welcome from the USA Joel Gavriele-Gold, PhD., Author of the best-selling When Pets Come Between Partners and Dr. Anne McBride, B.Sc., PhD., Director of the Companion Animal Behaviour Counselling Diploma Course at the University of Southampton. They jointly presented an exploration of case studies based on actual situations, with full discussion on how problems can successfully be resolved for both ends of the lead. Both speakers are widely experienced in both dog and human psychology.

Course notes for the presentations are available below, and may be cut and pasted into any word processing document and printed out.

Notes for the presentation by Joel Gavriele-Gold:

UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSES
The unconscious can be regarded as the storehouse of all that has pass through our senses. If you compare the unconscious to where you live, it's like not realizing how much stuff you have stored in your attic until you have to move it.

Almost always, our need to displace old relationships and feelings onto the present operates in the unconscious part of the mind until it is made conscious, usually through therapy. Part of the way to resolve the problem is to put all the displacements into perspective that is, to make them conscious enough so that you can see the true role they play. This is the only way to avoid rekindling the same problem over and over again. People relate to each other in the world on many levels of awareness of consciousness.

DISPLACEMENT:
Displacement is the unconscious act of putting past thoughts, moods, feelings, images, impulses, and even actions onto present-day individuals and situations. For example, someone might fear a very large dog because of an association with an overbearing parent.

DISPLACEMENT = FROM (the past) TO (the present)
Positive displacements are rarely a problem for people. Displacement is reacting to a person or an animal or an object in the present in the same way we reacted to someone in our past - usually from our early childhood and usually in connection to a parent or a sibling. If the pet stirs up feelings of an abusive father, a non-nurturing mother, an older brother who got all the good stuff or a younger sister you had to drag everywhere, then the present relationship will suffer because of the displaced reactions.

Displacement can become a problem in a relationship when it involves an unconscious (stress unconscious) meaning not conscious and negative association with a person's past.

Some of the questions you might want to think about in relation to your own clients are the following:

• Are you using a dog to tell the world how you were treated or how you would have liked to be treated?
• Is your dog getting caught in unfinished business from you past?
• Are you trying to tack a happy ending onto unfinished business
• Are you perhaps using a dog (yours or someone else's) in trying to master a personal issue?

PROJECTION
In projection, we unconsciously ascribe to others thoughts, feelings, and deeds we do not like or do not wish to acknowledge in ourselves.

Projection occurs when we UNCONSCIOUSLY put a piece of ourselves into another person or a pet - that piece could be a feeling, a thought, or an idea.

PROJECTION IS ALWAYS UNCONSCIOUS which makes it particularly difficult to catch in ourselves. We project onto others those aspects of ourselves that we have either not acknowledge or prefer not to own. To turn around and face those unpleasant parts of ourselves that we project onto others takes courage and persistence. A projection is a long-standing part of a person's personality that he or she would prefer not to deal with. The question is not - are we projecting? But rather - what we are projecting?

There is no way of avoiding projecting entirely. Consciously or unconsciously, there is a reason for the way we act. The way we respond to people and events reflects an attempt to resolve or relieve some personal issue. The trick in dealing with it is to be aware of what projections are and how they may be distorting a current relationship with people or with dogs.

REPETITION COMPULSION
As if the rational, logical world of intellect and comprehension is not interrupted enough by the displacement and projection, we add still another component: the repetition compulsion. This is an unconscious and repeated acting out of an issue again and again, instead of moving it from unconscious memory into the conscious world, where it can be dealt with and put to rest. Through repetition compulsion, we attempt to change the past by unconsciously reliving, so to speak, unfinished business from an earlier period in the hope of finally tacking on a happy ending. With this going on most, if not all of the time, it's a wonder that we get any work done!

When couples realize they are engaged in repetition compulsion, they are often surprised at just how powerful the compulsion really is. Many couples, upon learning of their particular repetition compulsions, thank me and soon leave after therapy. To them, just knowing what the repetition compulsion is seems to be more important than resolving the problems connected to it. Unconsciously, they have a need to continue the repetition compulsion because breaking the cycle might be more frightening than just letting it continue to play out.

Repetition compulsions also involve a recreational aspect. Couples can experience ongoing excitement in trying to get what hey believe they want from each other, and this constant cycle actually binds them together. Each is perusing his or her own repetition compulsion, hoping to magically create through the other a happy ending to unresolved childhood problems.

Joel Gavriele-Gold, PhD.

Notes for the presentation by Dr. Anne McBride are available by clicking the link AMcBride06Notes