Patricia McConnell Re-Homes One of Her Dogs

 Look at all the choice points involved in my decisions related to Hope:
- Deciding to get a puppy 4 years ago when I had 3 very old dogs because a litter related to my soul mate dog, Luke, became available

Even people with PhD's miss their "heart dogs" and hope that a pup with similar genetics might develop into a great partner.

- Choosing Willie from the litter  No different than choosing any other puppy - at eight weeks, you can't tell that much about how the dog will develop.  There are many variables, some of which will have nothing to do with your training of the dog - such as having a truck backfire, or an earthquake, or some  other extraneous issue that can frighten, create anxiety, or otherwise skew your plans.

- Keeping Willie after it became clear that he had a myriad of serious problems

Who better to try to keep him?  It's not easy to place a dog with issues, especially from working lines.  Can't place those dogs with pet homes sometimes, and working homes might not have a slot or be able to manage the issues either.  This is not a decision to make lightly.

- Deciding to get another dog after Lassie died because Willie loves to play with other dogs and I’d like more than one myself.

Heck, I suppose you should tell me not to get another dog because Sioux and Sequoyah liked having a big boy around, and I liked hugging one during the Red Sox games.

- Deciding to buy a puppy from a breeder rather than getting a dog from rescue

There is nothing inherently wrong with purchasing from a reputable breeder if you need a working dog with very specific talents.

-Choosing the puppy Mick out of the litter
- Deciding to take Mick back to the breeder after some red flags appeared

This is precisely WHY you buy working dogs from a reputable breeder.  The dog has a place to go back to if need be.  You'd have a hard time returning a dog to a pet shop or a puppy mill, or even some rescues that might be full at the time.

- Returning home with the puppy Hope because Willie seemed to adore him

Would you rather she picked a pup that Willie seemed to hate?

- Deciding to work with Hope after it became clear he was not the puppy that both Willie and I thought he was
- Deciding to let Hope go to another home

Responsible decision based on the dog's best interest, and not Trish's own ego.  Bravo!

 

WHAT LIESJE SAID!

By the way, none of my responses should be construed to suggest that I agree with Patricia McConnell on every decision she makes.  One of my best mentors often says that you really become a top professional when you begin to intelligently question the people at the top.  But, I must say that if I were to disagree with her, it would not be to simply castigate her for re-homing a dog that would be happier in another setting.  That is one of the most selfless and loving things you can do for a dog if things would really be better for that dog, or your resident dogs.  Constant stress shortens their lives, and who wants to be the cause of that?  At her recent seminar, just as at her colleague's seminar (Karen London) a few years ago, I found myself agreeing a lot, and disagreeing sometimes, with the content of that particular topic.  I expect to do the same at the Dunbar seminar in October.  But, at least I'm operating from a perspective of my own training and experience in this professional realm, and not simply living vicariously through the acts or words of others.  I have taken away some great hints from trainers who are not among the purely positive, too.  But, the common denominator is that they have the experience and the education, however it was obtained, to speak intelligently about their subject matter and not simply adopt positions that are solely or mainly based on the opinions or status of others.

I dont have any problem with her getting dogs from a litter and all the other non underlined facts. Is the underline ones I have a problem with 

 

spiritdogs

- Keeping Willie after it became clear that he had a myriad of serious problems

Who better to try to keep him?  It's not easy to place a dog with issues, especially from working lines.  Can't place those dogs with pet homes sometimes, and working homes might not have a slot or be able to manage the issues either.  This is not a decision to make lightly.

Sure, who better? Or that's what we thought before knowing that after 4 years she has not been able to help the dog to get rid of all his problems 

 

spiritdogs

- Deciding to take Mick back to the breeder after some red flags appeared

This is precisely WHY you buy working dogs from a reputable breeder.  The dog has a place to go back to if need be.  You'd have a hard time returning a dog to a pet shop or a puppy mill, or even some rescues that might be full at the time.

Sure, thats why dogs can be returned but, can not she actually help him to overcome his issues? Wait, no, she already has one with issues who has not been able to help, why to take another one right? Waaaaait a second.... 

spiritdogs

Deciding to work with Hope after it became clear he was not the puppy that both Willie and I thought he was

Responsible decision based on the dog's best interest

So what if he is not "perfect"????? would not 20 years of dog behavior knowledge would make this easy?

Again, dog behavior 101: Do not get a new dog if your resident dog has behavioral issues, it seems that even she can not be exepmt of this rule (and she did it twice)

spiritdogs

What I think is accurate is that people "give up" on dogs all the time, but if it's in the dog's best interest, then what's the problem? 

Nothing on this planet will make my Sequoyah like a dog she doesn't like. 

 

Hi, SpriritDogs,

For the record, I'm not faulting McConnell for re-homing Hope. Nor do I think dogs should be forced to like other dogs. And I am not a fan of Cesar Millan's methods, as most of you (hopefully) know.

However, what I am saying is that given McConnell's level of experience and expertise, this is a problem that she should've been able to resolve long before Hope even came into the picture. And I would go a step further and say that it's probably precisely because she used +R techniques that Will's early puppy issues developed into full-blown phobias and aggression.

I know that statement will be enormously hard to swallow. And I don't have time to go into all the reasons why I think this is the case, so I'll give you one example of a behavior McConnell "conditioned" in Hope, and how and why it didn't "take."

When Hope was a puppy he was wonderfully interested in the cat, as most puppies would be. "Hey! A friend!"

McConnell used treats to condition Hope to leave the cat alone, and come back to her instead. And it worked (though the way she described his initial hesitation, and kind of grudging obedience, made me wonder how he reallyfelt about giving up what his purely social instincts and emotions were telling him to do in favor of a measly treat).

Months later, she describes a scenario where both dogs are outside, and she wants Hope to come in, but he refuses. So she calls Will, which causes Hope to come running too. Then she gives Will a big reward, but says to Hope, "Sorry! All out! Better luck next time!" or words to that effect, using what she presumes to be some kind of feelings of jealousy (?) or unfairness (?) to motivate Hope to come running back quicker next time, so he doesn't lose out.

How would I have handled both situations differently? (Glad you asked...)

Before I answer that, I want to make it clear that the following is only put forth as a way of contrasting the way I work, with what I perceive to be a common tendency and/or mindset in +R trainers. (That's a general comment, and feel free to take it that way or object strenuously.) So my comments are not meant to be taken as a criticism of McConnell's choices with her dogs, her training expertise, etc. They're just being put forth to illustrate where I think behavioral science can create, rather than solve, behavioral problems, just as dominance training does. (It's more obvious with dominance training, but that doesn't negate the fact that it happens with conditioning techniques (and it may be why some of McConnell's behavior modification on Will's fears and aggression didn't "stick.";))

In the first instance I would have either let Hope alone, knowing that all he really wanted to do was explore the world and make friends with anyone he possibly could (WHICH IS WHAT PUPPIES ARE SUPPOSED TO DO). I might've even praised Hope so that his social feelings for the cat would now be tied to his feelings for me.

If I was worried that Hope might develop a bad habit of chasing the cat, and knew that the cat wouldn't enjoy such a "game," I would've jumped up and run away, encouraging Hope to chase me instead of the cat. (Since chasing often leads to nipping, I would have grabbed a toy before I ran off so that Hope had something to chomp his sharp puppy teeth down on instead of my fingers, hands, and shoes.)

There are any number of other things I might have or would've done, but what I wouldn't have done is treat this as an opportunity to teach Hope to come when called. Because dogs -- even puppies -- have an innate ability to detect the hidden emotional valence in any situation, and there's no way that coming for a treat = making friends (playing) with the cat, especially not in a puppy's mind. In other words, McConnell was exerting pressure on Hope's behavior from the top down, just like a "good pack leader" should. So even though he "came when called," and was rewarded for doing so, this technique still created a feeling of resistance in the puppy's mind, so that later, when he was grown and had more freedom, both physically and emotionally, that resistance would start showing itself (which it did).

Running away would've had the opposite effect. It probably would have stimulated in Hope enormous feelings of attraction to me, far more than he had for the cat. And there would've been no feeling of resistance or resentment. As a result, it would've been far easier for me to teach the adolescent dog to come when called, because there would've been no residual resistance.

Then, if Hope started exhibiting a reluctance to coming when called anyway, I would've made a mental note that I'd screwed up his training, and I'd have set up some training sessions, for Hope and Hope alone, to remove that residual resistance he felt toward me. I wouldn't have turned it into a contest, especially if there was already conflict between the 2 dogs.

Again, McConnell doesn't think the way I do. So she didn't do anything wrong because she could only do what she believed was the best thing to do in those situations.  So this isn't a knock against her as a trainer. it's just a way of contrasting +R with Natural Dog Training.

As for not forcing dogs to like other dogs if they don't feel like it, again, I agree. I never force the issue, I only facilitate what I see to be the natural canine tendency to get along. Dogs don't have to like each other, they just shouldn't be pestering and irritating each other.

Anyway, that's how I see it.

LCK

 

LCK, I'm sure you know that the main problem with retrospection is figuring out whether A caused B or if A was merely a precursor to B, or if they are even related at all. We need more information than "A occurred and then B occurred... I think" to really learn much beyond what is possible. At least when discussing our own dogs we can review what we know of the situation and brainstorm and other things we had overlooked may come to light. Discussing someone else's dogs in order to push one's own agenda when that someone else is not even participating in the discussion is just not very useful to anyone, really.

But to comment on the point I think you're trying to make, I think I can see what you're getting at with rewarding with the reward that is most appropriate for the activity the dog most wants to participate in at that moment, but IME, it's possible to handle this without using that reward and without creating tension. Take, for example, Leslie McDevitt's Look At That game. I was doing this with my very social dog on leash. When he saw another dog he wanted to greet I would use his marker and he would instantly forget all about greeting and come over looking for a way to earn a treat instead. That is the power of conditioning. He was so conditioned to look for ways to earn treats when he heard his marker that hearing his marker when he was wanting to do something else instantly distracted him from that and put him into a different mode so he wasn't even looking for that reward any more. I guess it's called an establishing operation.

Incidentally, here's a case of your methods not "sticking". When Erik was a few months old, every time he saw something like a cat that he very much wanted to chase, he turned to me and waited for me to produce a tug toy for him to chase and bite, 'cause I'd taught him if he wanted to chase and bite something I was a sure bet. When he hit about 6 months old his brain went on a holiday and took about 6 months to come back. In that 6 months, all the focus he had as a puppy went out the window and I had to build up his ability to focus on me at all from scratch. What the heck happened there? Nowadays when he sees something he wants to chase he sometimes looks at me hoping I produce a tug (which I always do, because I always have one on me) and sometimes he doesn't.

Corvus, you do raise a good point, namely the insanity known as adolescence.

And LCK, you spoke directly on what I thought was the main contention in this discussion. Not so much whether McConnell was a "failure" or not but whether +R training was a failure, or not. And Corvus' point uses directly the method you mentioned which, by the way, is still +R. It's just that chase and chew or tug replaces a drippy piece of roasted chicken. But it still involves whatever the dog's reward is. So, while you are saying that +R is a failure, you are actually using the same principle involved. Namely, replacing the reward of chasing the cat with the reward of chasing you. Either way, the dog will exercise his prey drive, even in play, right? I think we went through this a year or so ago. Potayto, potahto. Even if it's tension and release, it's still the same thing. Dog wants something and gets it as a result of us which makes us the source of good things.

ron2

Corvus, you do raise a good point, namely the insanity known as adolescence.

LCK ... while you are saying that +R is a failure, you are actually using the same principle involved. Namely, replacing the reward of chasing the cat with the reward of chasing you. Either way, the dog will exercise his prey drive, even in play, right? I think we went through this a year or so ago. Potayto, potahto. Even if it's tension and release, it's still the same thing.

 

Hi, Ron,

In a sense you're right. It's been proposed (by some very serious, academic-type behavioral scientists) that there's no way to determine whether a particular behavior's response strength is the result of positive or negative reinforcement: tuh-may-to, tuh-mah-to.

However, most +R trainers don't see it that way. Which is why McConnell opted for calling the young pup Hope away from the cat with the idea in mind of rewarding his behavior with a treat. It worked, ergo, +R training works. Yet it didn't really work because Hope eventually stopped coming when called, and McConnell eventually had to set up some rather (to me) arcane explanations for how to justify creating competition b/w the dogs to "increase the value" of the reward. If she had shifted her beliefs a micron or two away from +R to -R, or better, from Skinner to Freud*, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

In other words, why didn't the idea of showing Hope a toy and running away occur to McConnell in that moment?

LCK

*Remember, the very idea of positive reinforcement owes its existence to Freud's pleasure principle. And even though Skinner despised the "voo-doo" (i.e., the internal dynamic) of Freudian psychology, there's no escaping the fact that Skinner and all other psychologists owe their existence, in one way or another, to the man with the cigar.

corvus

Discussing someone else's dogs in order to push one's own agenda when that someone else is not even participating in the discussion is just not very useful to anyone, really.

Hi, Corvus,

I really enjoy reading your comments. And you make some good points.

As to the first one, I think I either alluded to this (or perhaps stated it outright) in my previous post, but proceeded anyway, not to critique McConnell per se, but to delineate the differences b/w her philosophy and mine.

corvus

But to comment on the point I think you're trying to make, I think I can see what you're getting at with rewarding with the reward that is most appropriate for the activity the dog most wants to participate in at that moment, but IME, it's possible to handle this without using that reward and without creating tension.

Well, I agree with your first comment, about finding a means of reducing tension that's directly related to the specific type of tension involved. However, I'm not sure what you mean by "without using that reward and without creating tension." The tension is already there: it's an unresolved desire to bite the cat, which had been sublimated into a desire to play with the cat. The cat was out of reach. So my approach would have been to take the tension already present in the dog, and give it a more satisfying outlet than either chasing the cat or eating a treat.

corvus

Incidentally, here's a case of your methods not "sticking". When Erik was a few months old, every time he saw something like a cat that he very much wanted to chase, he turned to me and waited for me to produce a tug toy for him to chase and bite, 'cause I'd taught him if he wanted to chase and bite something I was a sure bet. When he hit about 6 months old his brain went on a holiday and took about 6 months to come back. In that 6 months, all the focus he had as a puppy went out the window and I had to build up his ability to focus on me at all from scratch. What the heck happened there? Nowadays when he sees something he wants to chase he sometimes looks at me hoping I produce a tug (which I always do, because I always have one on me) and sometimes he doesn't.

First of all, as you probably know, around the onset of adolescence, puppies go through a process called neural pruning, where many of the dendritic connections that were made in the first 6 mos. or so of their lives are eliminated.

Secondly, when seen from outside the framework of my methodology (or Kevin Behan's), it certainly does seem as if NDT didn't stick with Erik. The question is, was what you were doing really NDT?

On a surface level it sure seems like it was. This tells me that perhaps I didn't explain it as fully as I could have.

Let me just go back and say that with Hope and the cat, my first choice would have been to let them work it out. My second choice would have been to praise Hope, not to reward him for showing an interest in chasing the cat, but to help make him feel that his desire to investigate the possibilities of a social connection with the cat -- or better yet, the flow of that desire -- also ran through me. I would be part of the conduit, so to speak. I would only have "intervened" if I thought that the cat was unhappy or incapable of managing the situation on his own.

Then, if I decided I needed to intervene, I wouldn't have done it as a "training exercise," to impose control on the dog from the top down, but as a means of co-opting the dog's level of attraction for the cat and using it as a fulcrum or springboard to increase the intensity of his attraction to me. I would have only used the toy as a precaution to protect my hands and shoelaces, etc., not necessarily as a reward for "good behavior." (The reward, if any, is the reduction of internal tension via the release of pent-up energy.)

The primary training problem to be solved here is this: how do you draw a puppy's attention away from something his developmental impulses and urges are telling him he HAS to investigate and connect to, w/o creating a negative experience in the puppy's mind, no matter how small? Remember, I said that puppies have an ability to calculate the emotional valence of a situation. They know when we're trying to make them do something that goes against what their (very strong) developmental impulses are telling them to do. Yes, they'll often do what we want them to anyway, just as Hope did in the example given. But we always run the risk of creating a negative experience by imposing too much structure onto the pup too early, which is why my first choice would have been to let the puppy and the cat work things out on their own. The second choice would have been to praise the dog, and the third would have been to replace myself for the cat as an object-of-attraction.

So while on the surface what I described in my previous post on this topic sounds very similar to what you did with Erik, I think there's a (seemingly) subtle difference that probably looms much larger in the puppy's mind than it does in ours.

This is why I think it's better not to do any obedience training with young puppies, except maybe teaching them to sit. We should wait until they're at least 6 mos. old, preferably even older.

LCK

Lee Charles Kelley

Well, I agree with your first comment, about finding a means of reducing tension that's directly related to the specific type of tension involved. However, I'm not sure what you mean by "without using that reward and without creating tension." The tension is already there: it's an unresolved desire to bite the cat, which had been sublimated into a desire to play with the cat. The cat was out of reach. So my approach would have been to take the tension already present in the dog, and give it a more satisfying outlet than either chasing the cat or eating a treat.

 

I'm going to relate what Steven Lindsay says about it again, because it makes sense to me. Lindsay says that if a dog is focused on one particular reward or activity (for example, trying to repel an "intruder" at the door), you can give them all the food you like at that point and you won't reward the behaviour, because the only thing that can reward that behaviour is the intruder leaving. But what you can do, is create a choice junction by distracting the dog. At that choice point, the dog can choose to go back to repeling an intruder, or it can choose to persue another course of action, like performing a known behaviour for a treat, for example. If it chooses to try to earn a treat, then if you reward with a treat you are rewarding the behaviour, which is not related to the intruder at all anymore. If you keep creating the same choice points, we get into conditioning, so an intruder at the door will prompt the dog to perform for a treat. Whether the tension from the previous incomplete action is there or not is guesswork as far as I can tell. My aim is not to resolve that tension, but to condition the stimulus in question to be a cue for another kind of behaviour. The tension eventually doesn't even appear. McDevitt is a pro at this.

Lee Charles Kelley

So while on the surface what I described in my previous post on this topic sounds very similar to what you did with Erik, I think there's a (seemingly) subtle difference that probably looms much larger in the puppy's mind than it does in ours.

This is why I think it's better not to do any obedience training with young puppies, except maybe teaching them to sit. We should wait until they're at least 6 mos. old, preferably even older.

I was thinking about this just yesterday. There are some things I started with Erik as a puppy that held very well through the chaos of those 6 months where his brain was on holidays. Recalls, default behaviours used in NILIF, and loose leash walking. I don't know where I would have been with him without those. If I had my time again, I think I would do things differently. I would spend more time just playing tug and chase games with him. I would still do NILIF and start recalls and LLW from an early age, and we have both enjoyed clicker training from the beginning, although I would have left some things I taught him. I started agility with him when he was about 9 months old and I regret that. I ended up taking him out of classes and plan to go back maybe next year or late this year. I should have done more foundation work with him first. Erik is a very inventive and excitable dog, and I felt I needed a lot of structure with him early so he didn't learn a lot of obnoxious behaviours he otherwise would have. I think with my next dog I will do NILIF and recalls and LLW from the beginning and apart from that, just lots of games and shaping fun with the clicker until adolescence.

Well written, Corvus.

It's not that we're eradicating the guard drive or prey drive but we are sublimating it.

LCK, I don't think there's any danger in training a dog to exhibit certain behaviors in lieu of others. And yes, I have been called a control freak because I train with treats. So be it, I am a control freak, and I have blonde hair and blue eyes and I'm really tall.

On the other hand, I get where you are coming from in that sometimes a dog is locked onto something and treats won't change it, at least in that instance of confrontation or onset of stimulus. But that doesn't mean that one should allow the dog to follow all impulses. For example, there are times when Shadow will play chase with the cat, Jade. But he can play so hard he could injure her. So, it was better that I trained a disengage command ("off";). But I have successfully used that command in other situations. For example, getting his vacc's updated. For the longest time, he did not like the vet approaching. We would have to muzzle him with a soft cloth. A slip knot behind the ears and a single half hitch (a logger's hitch) that tightens like a chinese handcuff. Last year, in a flash of inspiration, I used off to disengage against guarding us from the vet. He got his shot with no muzzle. Same this year, with the addition of allowing the vet to get near and stroke his hind leg and tail. When he would throw a glance, I would say "off" and he knew it was okay. I'm not trying to stop him from guarding at any time, just in that instance.

And, again, I think it's interesting to note all the attention given to McConnell's "failure" but we never get to hear of the failures from other styles of training.

 And, to be fair, there are some dogs that were never trained with treats. And they do fine. Because they are working dogs and were not originally intended to be in with families and other pets and lots of strangers, human or otherwise. For example, I would not expect a true bred Siberian Husky from a working sled team that has spent his time with only his teammates and handlers to instantly "work it out" with a house cat. The breed tendency is to see small animals as prey. Unless conditioned otherwise, either by way of training or direction association from the time of being a puppy, such as with Shadow. As a small puppy, he was around cats and a Jack Russell Terrier. And children. In fact, the only thing he couldn't handle was water of any depth that was not in a water bowl. Nor am I going to try and help him work through that. We'll get along just fine without him having to swim.

 Ron, that reminds me of another thing I would train early. That is self control. I did loads of self control work with Erik early because he really didn't have much and it would just get him so worked up he couldn't do much but jump up and down and bark. That self control training did hold through the adolescent chaos as well.

corvus

 Ron, that reminds me of another thing I would train early. That is self control. I did loads of self control work with Erik early because he really didn't have much and it would just get him so worked up he couldn't do much but jump up and down and bark. That self control training did hold through the adolescent chaos as well.

Yes, and it starts the moment you let them into your house. If something is never allowed, however you stop it, with distraction, redirection, rewarding for alternate behavior, even if that reward is tug, or frisbee, or smoked brisket, the rules become the rules of the universe and never otherwise. Hence, Dunbar's point that training should start as early as possible. And Anne's simplified statement, "never allow what you don't want." One of the greatest challenges for was not in reinforcing what I want but in avoiding the reinforcement of what I don't want.

For example, Shadow would jump on people, something of a breed trait (the husky hug). I would scruff and pin and he would lay down, and then get back up and do it again. I thought I was "correcting." Well, his first owners would wrestle with him while playing. So, scruff and pin felt like wrestling, which was play, which was reinforcing. So, I was reinforcing the jumping up on people. After pulling my head out of my nether region, I trained "off," which worked much better. It doesn't mean he doesn't want to hug, for I have that trained on a cue ("up-up";). I haven't eradicated the desire to hug, I have sublimated it and can allow it in certain circumstances and breaking "off" from the hug is just as rewarding as the hug.

It could be me just being a control freak but friends and strangers appreciate my being a control freak in that circumstance.

ETA: I should add that Shadow is not a teacup dog. He is 26 inches to the shoulder, weighs 65 pounds and is at least 3 feet long, not including tail, and can run over 30 mph. He doesn't mean anything bad and is certainly not exerting "alpha" status over anyone but he can put his paws on DW's shoulders and could knock someone down with his momentum.

Hi, Ron & Corvus,

I'm running a little late so I haven't read your entire posts on this, but I just wanted to point out that Jaak Panksepp has done some interesting work showing that young animals learn more impulse control by engaging in rough-and-tumble outdoor play (a bottom-up process) than they do through structured learning (top down). And that structured learning can impede or interfere with the brain's natural developmental processes, while free play has the opposite effect.

LCK

 Dear LCK, I'd like to know how I can get my neighbors' dogs- pit bull/chow/ACD mixes - to be friendly to all other dogs. They killed one of our neighborhood strays a few days ago when he went under the fence into their yard- one of the feral chihuahuas. He wasn't an aggressive dog, or particularly pushy, and he was big enough not to be seen as prey.

Lee Charles Kelley

spiritdogs

What I think is accurate is that people "give up" on dogs all the time, but if it's in the dog's best interest, then what's the problem? 

Nothing on this planet will make my Sequoyah like a dog she doesn't like. 

 

Hi, SpriritDogs,

For the record, I'm not faulting McConnell for re-homing Hope. Nor do I think dogs should be forced to like other dogs. And I am not a fan of Cesar Millan's methods, as most of you (hopefully) know.

All good.

However, what I am saying is that given McConnell's level of experience and expertise, this is a problem that she should've been able to resolve long before Hope even came into the picture. And I would go a step further and say that it's probably precisely because she used +R techniques that Will's early puppy issues developed into full-blown phobias and aggression.

I don't agree with this.  I do think that many positive trainers make errors in execution, which hinders their progress, and I would agree with anyone who says so that some behaviorists are not terrific trainers.  For example, I thought Patricia McConnell's book, "Lassie Come!" was not even close to how I get reliable recall from my dogs.  Anyone can have a training failure, even the best trainers.  And anyone can come across a dog that they either don't mesh with or lose perspective on.  I think if you are looking for something to criticize, you'll find it, and, frankly we have a lot of experience with certain members here who are only too happy to point out the failings of anyone who is not a fan of their personal heroes.  However, I think it's best to keep discussions on a more intellectual plane at this point.

I know that statement will be enormously hard to swallow. And I don't have time to go into all the reasons why I think this is the case, so I'll give you one example of a behavior McConnell "conditioned" in Hope, and how and why it didn't "take."

When Hope was a puppy he was wonderfully interested in the cat, as most puppies would be. "Hey! A friend!"

McConnell used treats to condition Hope to leave the cat alone, and come back to her instead. And it worked (though the way she described his initial hesitation, and kind of grudging obedience, made me wonder how he reallyfelt about giving up what his purely social instincts and emotions were telling him to do in favor of a measly treat).

Months later, she describes a scenario where both dogs are outside, and she wants Hope to come in, but he refuses. So she calls Will, which causes Hope to come running too. Then she gives Will a big reward, but says to Hope, "Sorry! All out! Better luck next time!" or words to that effect, using what she presumes to be some kind of feelings of jealousy (?) or unfairness (?) to motivate Hope to come running back quicker next time, so he doesn't lose out.

I think that this was the wrong thing to do.  I would still have had a party for Hope when she got to me.

How would I have handled both situations differently? (Glad you asked...)  Lol, I didn't, but I'm sure you are going to tell me...

Before I answer that, I want to make it clear that the following is only put forth as a way of contrasting the way I work, with what I perceive to be a common tendency and/or mindset in +R trainers. (That's a general comment, and feel free to take it that way or object strenuously.) So my comments are not meant to be taken as a criticism of McConnell's choices with her dogs, her training expertise, etc. They're just being put forth to illustrate where I think behavioral science can create, rather than solve, behavioral problems, just as dominance training does. (It's more obvious with dominance training, but that doesn't negate the fact that it happens with conditioning techniques (and it may be why some of McConnell's behavior modification on Will's fears and aggression didn't "stick.";))

In the first instance I would have either let Hope alone, knowing that all he really wanted to do was explore the world and make friends with anyone he possibly could (WHICH IS WHAT PUPPIES ARE SUPPOSED TO DO). I might've even praised Hope so that his social feelings for the cat would now be tied to his feelings for me.

Again, I think some positive trainers would react the way she did, but I'm not one of them.  I never call a dog that hasn't been really conditioned to come on cue - I would rather resort to falling on the ground, scrunching a squeak toy, running in the opposite direction, etc. than to poison the "come" word by using it when I'm not dead sure the dog will do it.  That's how you get a dog that thinks they have to come when you ask.   You only ask them to come when they're already on their way;-)

If I was worried that Hope might develop a bad habit of chasing the cat, and knew that the cat wouldn't enjoy such a "game," I would've jumped up and run away, encouraging Hope to chase me instead of the cat. (Since chasing often leads to nipping, I would have grabbed a toy before I ran off so that Hope had something to chomp his sharp puppy teeth down on instead of my fingers, hands, and shoes.)

There are any number of other things I might have or would've done, but what I wouldn't have done is treat this as an opportunity to teach Hope to come when called. Because dogs -- even puppies -- have an innate ability to detect the hidden emotional valence in any situation, and there's no way that coming for a treat = making friends (playing) with the cat, especially not in a puppy's mind. In other words, McConnell was exerting pressure on Hope's behavior from the top down, just like a "good pack leader" should. So even though he "came when called," and was rewarded for doing so, this technique still created a feeling of resistance in the puppy's mind, so that later, when he was grown and had more freedom, both physically and emotionally, that resistance would start showing itself (which it did).

I think we're on the same wave length:-)  

Running away would've had the opposite effect. It probably would have stimulated in Hope enormous feelings of attraction to me, far more than he had for the cat. And there would've been no feeling of resistance or resentment. As a result, it would've been far easier for me to teach the adolescent dog to come when called, because there would've been no residual resistance.

Then, if Hope started exhibiting a reluctance to coming when called anyway, I would've made a mental note that I'd screwed up his training, and I'd have set up some training sessions, for Hope and Hope alone, to remove that residual resistance he felt toward me. I wouldn't have turned it into a contest, especially if there was already conflict between the 2 dogs.

Bingo.

Again, McConnell doesn't think the way I do. So she didn't do anything wrong because she could only do what she believed was the best thing to do in those situations.  So this isn't a knock against her as a trainer. it's just a way of contrasting +R with Natural Dog Training.

Personally, I don't like labels.  There are aspects to "natural dog training" that I think are bunk, and there are techniques that "positive" trainers use that I don't think are very effective.   For example, I don't train "leave it" by covering an object with my foot and then letting the dog have it when he leaves it a couple of times.

As for not forcing dogs to like other dogs if they don't feel like it, again, I agree. I never force the issue, I only facilitate what I see to be the natural canine tendency to get along. Dogs don't have to like each other, they just shouldn't be pestering and irritating each other.

True.  Sequoyah does not have to like the dogs at my play group, but she can't go snarking at them either.  That's when "leave it" and "come" are very handy:-)  And, of course, it always pays to get to me - I am the keeper of the tennis ball with the special spit on it:-)))

Anyway, that's how I see it.  In this case, pretty close to how I see it, too.

LCK

 

 

BTW, I liked the article on Cesar Millan as predator.  Interesting perspective.