Natural dog training - pushing

It's reward training for recall. With the added condition that the dog could encounter contact with your hand and your conditioning him to overcome resistance to your push. I don't think my dog views me as prey. Also, I know at least one person here who would have a problem with fasting the dog before reward training.

corvus

I would be particularly interested if anyone thinks there might be any kind of side-effect to this kind of thing. For example, I'm wondering if encouraging a dog's excitement and drive in a fairly systematic and ongoing manner might have an effect on how often they become drivey and energetic.

Let's discuss.  

The article really didn't explain thoroughly how this technique helped build the human to dog relationship.  I see that  it most probably interferd with relationship building since a competition is setup for food between the human and dog.  I am not one to manipulate, fool, or tease a dog with food, being that is a basic survival instinct need and the lowest one at that.  The effects of the procedure is exactly the same as Clicker Training and the use of food in order to get quick results.   Maybe in analyzing this procedure, Clicker Training and the use of food reward should be kept in mind.  It may now make sense to some why food rewarding is not a good thing. 

I see nothing natural at all in this training technique. 

DPU

I am not one to manipulate, fool, or tease a dog with food

I gotta give it to you, DPU.   I know I "manipulate" my dogs in training with food, but I'm dead set against fooling them and teasing them. I really don't like the idea of setting up the tension of the dog trying to get to the food (he's not trying to get at me) while I push him away... The end result may be that he turns his attention toward me when he gets excited, but I'm not sure of the advantage of that. And it seems to me that pushing the dog away from the food would only introduce more anxiety into the relationship. After all, I am creating a barrier of tension between him and his food... Not something I'm eager to do.

If people find this technique something that's useful to them, I have no problem with it. I just don't see an advantage for myself and my dogs. 

Interesting concept, but not for me.

I don't see anything useful in the "pushing" back of the dog.  In fact, most dogs I know will stop pushing once they figure out what you're doing. 

Xerxes

...I don't see anything useful in the "pushing" back of the dog.  In fact, most dogs I know will stop pushing once they figure out what you're doing. 

Thats what I see happening.  

"Pushing is a fundamental dog training technique that will shift your relationship with your dog, increasing their level of attraction to you during high energy moments, and also helping your dog learn to be relaxed during those times. "

 I don't see the connection with triggering the dog's prey instinct, actually I see the procedure taking advantage of dog's hunger, and the above statement.

I use affection to seal a good relationship with my dogs and also increase the dog's level attraction to me.  It works at low energy moments as well as high.  In doing the sealing, I have cuddling session with my dogs by allowing them in my lap for a petting session.  Great Dane have an awareness of their size so they either balance themselves between the two arms of the chair, sit on the arm of the chair, or just place their head in my lap.  Most of my foster are also respectful not to hurt me when they want their petting session.  Enter Paganini, who does a leap into my lap.  We have a pushing session and I win and she is on the floor waiting and wagging her tail.  I say up and she nicely climbs into my lap.  I have had to only do this a few times but with each time, the strength of her resistance lessened.  Anyway, thats how this techniques works in my house, minus not using food. 

In reading the article, these are some of my thoughts:

1. I'm not really into fasting a dog before working it. Especially not fasting a dog for 24 hours before working it. Plenty of research has shown (in humans, so I think the same science can be applied to learning in animals, considering it's often the same things affected) that attention, learning, and memory, are improved in animals/humans that maintain regular nutrition and whose bodies are routinely energized. A dog or human who is fasting for 24 hours has a body that is highly seeking for glucose energy in the form of nutrition, to feed the brain and cells. I could see how working with a fasted/hungry dog would hinder learning more than help it because the focus is in the wrong place (food, rather than learning), it would affect the dog's attention, energy level, and overall level of homeostasis. And because of the dog's (as carnivore) digestive system, they tend to digest their food a lot faster than humans do, based upon the known literature. It's precisely why I feed regular meals regardless of when I might use food in teaching, or if I am working with a dog in the morning I will feed part of a meal first, so that the dog has some energy and sustenance in the body to allow the dog's brain to function optimally. It's like the saying goes: Feed the brain. Your brain (and body) needs regular nutrition in order to function optimally.

2. I keep envisioning this monkey-like dance when picturing the particular hand positions (palm-up, right hand slightly above left, try moving around in this position, elbows out!). Not really relevant, but when I did it in the mirror I couldn't stop laughing.

3. It is just a food-based exercise that teaches the dog to push against you. It's really no different than teaching any other behaviours, except you are shaping a pushing behaviour. Unless you actually pair it with a recall (the behaviour of coming towards you), I can't see it being any more effective than a normal recall that I would teach, and it would take similar amounts of time. I'm actually not that into teaching a dog that it should immediately push against people when the dog is called, I can see that setting up for annoyances in the future. And I don't think I'd want my dog's response to a "come" to come up to me and expect to push against me. I would much just prefer the dog comes to me period, and maybe sits.

I can see a bit of classical conditioning going on as a bond-builder, but really it's no different than any other classical conditioning that pairs human with "good stuff".

The dog is just learning to push against you as a measure of getting food, which is simple R+. It's not what I would do, nor would care to teach. I see it basically as a glorified lure-reward method. The dog sees reward, does the behaviour, and gets the reward. I don't see much teasing going on, nor do I see much competition, as the human has the food, and the dog is working to get it. I don't really like teasing either, but I don't see any teasing going on here, as the dog always gets the food. Teasing implies the dog doesn't get the food or that you are continually showing/removing the food from the dog's grasp, and that's not the case here.

In terms of side effects, it would likely depend on the way it was implemented I think. People use the oppositional reflex for a lot of things - teaching stays, teaching stacking, by applying very slight pressure to the dog in some manner, and then releasing, in a R- procedure. I don't see this as much different. By the sounds of it, it starts so gradual that with most dogs there would likely be little to no anxiety produced. But then again I'm looking at it from a shaping standpoint in which it's done in teensy tinesy steps so that there would be no anxiety induced. I can see the possibility for inducing anxiety if the dog thought that the human was acting as a barrier rather than the dog simply learning to push as a behaviour, or if the dog was teased with the food rather than playing with it and sniffing at it until the food was released. Then there are the dogs that are the exception to the rule, who would not be comfortable doing this type of thing. 

It's certainly not something I would care to do, simply because I think teaching a recall on its own is simpler, without the extra "effects", and I don't want to get into pushing with my dog.

But to be honest I'm not really sure it even activates a dog's "prey drive" at all. When I'm using food I don't activate my dog's "prey drive", nor is it induced when I place a bowl of food down in front of them. It is motion and predatory actions that stimulates prey drive, like moving cars, and tugging and shaking, and small critters - things that move or involve predatory action patterns. I can't recall the last time I saw wild animals chest-bumping their prey and pushing them with their chests as part of the motor action pattern.

I should thank Corvus, I guess, for starting this thread. But I have to shake my head at some of the answers. Well thought out, I suppose, for people who haven't understood the simple principle of increasing a dog's desire and teaching him that by pushing his desire/preydrive/energy into the handler he not only gets what he wants, he gains confidence, he learns how to use his energy in concert with his handler, he develops more emotional balance, etc., etc., etc.

Part of the problem may be with Neil Sattin's way of explaining the exercise. Part of it may be that it's totally foreign to the way most people here think. **content removed by admin, do not remove edits** But I have to remember that the first time Kevin Behan told me about this exercise, and described it to me, I thought, "What? What good does that do?" Then I tried it, and wow! What a difference it makes in all kinds of behavioral areas. So perhaps one has to try it and see how it works in order to understand it.

For example, I was working with a boxer recently, who had issues with aggression at the dog run. And I spent the first week of training working on that, and doing the pushing exercise. Of course I didn't just do the pushing exercise, but through a combination of that and a few other things, she learned how to play without getting overexcited or fearful. Then I got a call from her owners asking me if I'd been working on her fear of sidewalk grates (and there are a lot of them in New York). I said I hadn't. And she said, "Really? That's funny, because she's no longer scared of walking on them." So here's the trickle-up effect of this exercise which apparently resolved an issue I wasn't even working on. Of course, the work I did on her fear aggression at the dog run could've also been part of what got her over her fear of sidewalk grates. But the point is I wasn't even working on that. The pushing exercise was the basic means for solving both issues.

I've also used it to solve a fear of thunderstorms, leash aggression, lack of focus on the dog's owners, separation anxiety, and on and on. 

Perhaps my explanation of how and why it works will make more sense to some here than Neil Sattin's (though I still suspect few people will actually try the exercise to see for themselves how well it works). http://www.tiny.cc/SwimUpstream

Oh, and Kim, it has nothing to do with +R, except maybe marginally. The idea isn't to teach the dog that pushing is rewarded, but to develop an overall feeling of "self-confidence" and emotional balance. And maybe you should research a hormone called ghrelin. A study was done at Harvard recently showing that increased levels of ghrelin also increase the brain's ability to learn and retain information. So being a little hungry actually may increase learning.

LCK 

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Lee Charles Kelley

Perhaps my explanation of how and why it works will make more sense to some here (though I still suspect few people will actually try the exercise to see for themselves how well it works).

I did understand your explanation a lot better and it makes more sense to me now. I have one dog who is displaying aggression toward other dogs and another who licks obsessively. This sounds like a technique that might be beneficial to both of them if it "works". 

I can completely identify with this:

how and why playing tug and doing the pushing exercise helps a dog overcome behavioral problems by building his ability to deal with sudden shifts in energy, particularly in the form of strong feelings of resistance that he feels he can't get past,

Also:

Willie is fighting against internal emotional currents that get stirred up in him when he sees other dogs and feels suddenly as if he's going to be attacked. ... But when he sees another dog, the energy builds, the emotions tighten up in him, and he feels like he's going to "drown." So he lashes out at what he perceives to be the locus point of the sudden energy shift from lazy river to extreme rapids. ... when there's a sudden influx of energy, he feels thrown off balance emotionally. And since he has strong levels of social attraction, his instinctive strategy is to go AT the other dogs rather than to run AWAY from them. The primary reason he does this is that he hasn't been given the skill-set necessary for dealing with strong feelings of internal and external resistance. He doesn't know how to swim against the current.

That describes B'asia. I'm willing to try the pushing (and tugging) exercise with B'asia to see if it impacts her ability to deal with other dogs. I have many times talked about using energy in dealing with dogs, but it was never an actual physical resistance... This should be interesting.

One other thing that kind of proves, or at least strongly indicates, that the pushing exercise increases a dog's prey drive, and does a lot more than what people who haven't tried it think it's about, is very simple: if you've got a dog who won't play, and you do the pushing exercise for a few days or a few weeks, depending on the level of resistance the dog feels toward being uninhibited, you'll find that the dog automatically starts playing again. So how does that happen?

LCK 

Xerxes

Interesting concept, but not for me.

I don't see anything useful in the "pushing" back of the dog.  In fact, most dogs I know will stop pushing once they figure out what you're doing. 

 I think it is like a restrained recall in how/why it works. With a restrained recall, one person holds the dog and the owner teases them a bit with toys, food and/or play and runs away. When they turn to call the dog, the dog is straining against the person's hold - making them even more sure they REALLY want to get to their owner. The pulling (or in the case pushing) into something to get to what they want builds drive and desire.

 I'll have to read through everything before I can say what my thoughts are overall on the method.

Lee Charles Kelley

The idea isn't to teach the dog that pushing is rewarded, but to develop "self-confidence" and emotional balance. And maybe you should research a hormone called ghrelin. A study was done at Harvard showing that increased levels of ghrelin also increase the brain's ability to learn and retain information.

Ghrelin, something I've looked at quite extensively, yep. Especially considering I've been involved a lot in hunger/food-deprivation work with animals through my university career thus far. Also called the "hunger" hormone, it is released generally before meals and decreases with food consumption. I'm pretty sure you mean that Yale did the study, but Harvard may have done a study as well,*G* Yale is the "big name" though whn it comes to ghrelin.

Not to mention, the researchers themselves who have done these studies say that a lot of future work needs to be done before anybody can begin making any sort of claim on learning and memory. Because mice running mazes is not really indicitive of how humans and dogs might learn other tasks. And the work comparing the progress of those animals running on ghrelin and those who have eaten appropriate  meals.

Now, I'm not saying that ghrelin might not improve memory (the only learning discussed was that of spatial learning, and there are a lot of other types of learning that dogs undergo in which no research has been done). I'm not saying that at all. However, one has to weigh the benefits and risks associated with anything, and just because it enhances memory doesn't mean it's the best way to go. The end doesn't always justify the means, not for me. And there's a difference between 1-2 hours before a meal and a 24 hour fast too. A huge difference.

It is known that increasing the levels of glutamate (by a compound called domoic acid, which increases glutamate in the hippocampal regions) in developing rats actually helps to create "smart rats", that far out-do their normal counterparts in learning and memory tasks. Eventually when running some of their studies, they found that a lot of these smart rats were also developing seizure-like behaviours, including twitching, zoning out, rigidity, closed eyes, etc. Without careful observations, these things could easily have been missed, as in everyday experiences these animals appear otherwise completely normal. So there is such a thing as "too much of a good thing", and everything needs to be taken with caution, until much research is done. 

I'm very excited at the propect of ghrelin research, as there is talk about using ghrelin supplements for memory-related diseases, as a way to combat, prevent, and even remove, some of the memory loss that diseases like Alzheimer's results in. But that's a far leap from depriving animals of food for 24 hours just so that they will learn a bit quicker, and there is a lot of conflicting evidence as to how beneficial that would really be anyhow, as to how learning is affected by the body's lack of other crucial nutrients as well. There is evidence that looks specifically at the effects of fasting and food-deprivation in animals, which is call for a lot of careful thought before using fasting as a method to routinely teach animals. I know you likely don't use it routinely in the sense that the only food a dog gets is after fasting that long, but it's still something to always keep in mind.

Anyway, perhaps it's time to get back to discussing pushing as a teaching method. Ghrelin is a bit off-topic I think. ;-)

Lee Charles Kelley

One other thing that kind of proves, or at least strongly indicates, that the pushing exercise increases a dog's prey drive

Then I definitely do NOT need to do this exercise.  

Lee Charles Kelley

if you've got a dog who won't play, and you do the pushing exercise for a few days or a few weeks, depending on the level of resistance the dog feels toward being uninhibited, you'll find that the dog automatically starts playing again.

Is this just from observation or is there documentation for this?

Lee Charles Kelley

One other thing that kind of proves, or at least strongly indicates, that the pushing exercise increases a dog's prey drive, and does a lot more than what people who haven't tried it think it's about, is very simple: if you've got a dog who won't play, and you do the pushing exercise for a few days or a few weeks, depending on the level of resistance the dog feels toward being uninhibited, you'll find that the dog automatically starts playing again. So how does that happen?

LCK 

 Are there any videos that show this method in use? I actually may try it with a fearful, reactive dog I am working with for a friend.