Why is it...

sillysally

I would likely first issue a *general* warning based on my *personal experiences* with this piece of equipment--

That is exactly what I do. And then I get flamed for judging the relationship other people have with their dogs.

I am not the kind of person that likes to use corrections and I'm not about to pretend otherwise so I don't upset people who are okay with it. I guess what I'm really aggravated about is that apparently I do have to pretend I'm not only okay with it but appreciate that it's the best way to handle some dogs - which I won't ever really appreciate until I see it for myself - in order to have a calm and coherent discussion about it with no wild accusations. Why is that required of me when people who want to criticise positive methods can apparently do it as disparagingly as they like? I think the answer lies in some of the things they tell me positive trainers have said to them.

So whether you're a trainer that strives to be positive, a trainer that uses whatever works fastest, or a correction-based trainer, just remember that the way you talk to people who disagree with you is the way they will talk to people with similar philosphies to you down the track. 

I'm going to be honest. The biggest thing I've learned on this list (honestly - I've not experienced it on any of my others) is that I no longer care to really share my philosophies or what I do, because in the end you're always going to find somebody who will tell you that it doesn't work, you're too permissive/harsh/whatever. People cannot hold mature conversations, or debates, without it turning into flame-wars and personal attacks.

If it makes you angry or frustrated (as it does to everyone from time to time I'm sure), you can either ignore what you don't like, or find a group/list with people who are more like-minded as you are. I'm on a wide range of lists. To be honest, I was on like-minded lists for so long that I actually joined new ones to get new ideas and thoughts. It's why I found this one.

In the end, if you are confident in what you believe, and you know what you are doing works or doesn't work, you don't need to get your back up about the comments of other people. I've been told what I do is too permissive, won't work, is unbalanced, treat-flinging, you name it. And you know what. I don't care. The biggest thing you have to learn to do is to not let it get to you. And that goes for any person with any philosophy. If you are very comfortable with how you live your life with dogs, it shouldn't matter what others think. I can think somebody else is too harsh, and be happy that I don't live like that. I can also think that somebody different doesn't have enough rules in their home. That's my perogative, but at the same time, those people have every right to think I'm a lunatic and that my ways are "wrong".

In the end, the famous saying goes - the only thing that two trainers can agree upon is that a third trainer is wrong. Don't sweat the small stuff, and as long as you're comfortable with what you are doing, then don't worry about the naysayers.

I like Corvus' initial post and I like your post, too, Liesje. The old "using what works" credo.

With one caveat that will possibly bring disagreements from both sides of the debate. Dogs that respond to "corrections." Some dogs do. The technique could even be labeled as "punishment." But, it is not. It is a cue to the dog. Some dogs do better with a physical cue, even if that physical cue is labeled as a correction or punishment by us. We imagine ourselves as macho, "calm-assertive," whatever, but the dog may be thinking, "Enough with the funny faces and thanks for letting me know the limit." I'm not saying dogs appreciate corrections or punishments. I'm saying they view it as something different than what we think of it.

I remember D'Griego's Dog de Argentino. He would lock on to a target and she could break him off of it with what most would call a "finger bite." IMO, it was a physical cue he needed. He would run through brambles and come back with sticky things hanging off of his family jewels, not a care in the world. If that didn't hurt him, I doubt that simian digits will cause pain. Therefore, it was a cue for him that worked better than leading behaviors. He was a true working dog for whom the job was more important than food.

Finally, let me channel Mudpuppy a bit. The dog cooperates with your "training techniques." If they wanted to and were of an independent mind, they could just as easily bite you and run off, or simply run off. I know that will hurt some feelings. We get to lead dogs because they follow us.

There, I think I've offended just about everyone.

ETA: one more inconvenient truth. Dogs do whatever they do because it pleases them. So, sometimes, a dog will do something against training, whether it was corrections or treats because that thing is more rewarding or more linked to survival than the training method.

There, that should do it.

 Hi

There is  lot covered in the original post! I think that commenting on the way that others train their dogs is like commenting on how they raise their children, absoultely doomed to failure.

There is  a fuzzy grey line though. I personally get more and more alarmed with the misuse of both drive and behavourist models and the renaming of some common human behaviours towards dogs as things they aren't. When i clap my hands, give my dogs a shot of adrenalin and they turn around to face me it is P+ it isn't a disruptor. When I give my dogs a verbal correction it is a correction. Personaaly i am not fond of either device but bad things happen. I also use small amounts of R- to teach my dogs some things. Many R+ trianers would call them other things but i don't feel the need too. One example is touching my dogs toes to get her to do a kick back stand.

What i have learned though is a deep distrust of what people say they do in the dog world in favour of what they actually do. There is usually a vast gulf. Often the mouths who are so certian on the web forums have woeful training habits . In fact i call it the certainy of the truely ignorant. There is often a vast gulf between the rhetoirc and the very tired old fashioned skills on offer and very often the near lack of external assesment and achievement. Balance be dammed..I just think it is good old survival skills and bashing of those with a skill set that worries them. Happens in all fields.

I really not inviting a flaming session, but one of the most exciting bits of writing on behaviour suggests that Emotion is the origin of much behaviour (as it must be evolutionalry wise), and that many animals share what are called golden emotions. It is the most consisitent framework for the evaluation of animal behaviour that i have seen so far. It comes out of the work of Jaek Panksepp. He is a real crank of course.. he is from Oxford University. He wrote a book called Affective Emotions and if you want to be a top trainer you need to get it and work with it.

BTW it is suggested that the emotional part of the brain is very similar in structure across many mammals..

You said something in an earlier post I think is important and worth highlighting. Some people have trained their dogs with strong corrections and the dogs did okay because they were not as affected by it as other dogs might have been. That kind of echos my point that for some dogs, what seems like a correction to us is just a cue to them. The dog, corrections or not, follows you because they want to, not because some bipedal, relatively hairless great ape can "alpha" over them. I expect that will hurt some feelings, too. As for the OP, I agree, go with what works. And more often than not, you are dealing with motivation, one way or another.

ron2

You said something in an earlier post I think is important and worth highlighting. Some people have trained their dogs with strong corrections and the dogs did okay because they were not as affected by it as other dogs might have been. That kind of echos my point that for some dogs, what seems like a correction to us is just a cue to them. The dog, corrections or not, follows you because they want to, not because some bipedal, relatively hairless great ape can "alpha" over them. I expect that will hurt some feelings, too. As for the OP, I agree, go with what works. And more often than not, you are dealing with motivation, one way or another.

Exactly, Ron.  My TD uses an e-collar on one of his dogs and he actually uses it for marker training.  That's right, the e-collar stim is a marker for the dog, just as a clicker click or a "yes".

We had some Schutzhund club "homework" this past week, it was to watch 7 Michael Ellis videos on his website (well it streams from Leerburg but if you go to Michael Ellis dog training school, that's where the videos can be found).  In one video he talks about how he had two dogs that he trained using only the positive half of operant conditioning until they were nearly mature.  Then it got to a point in the sport where the dog feels some pressure (remember SchH is not all butterflies and rainbows, the dogs MUST be able to work through pressure in order to success).  One dog shut down completely and didn't want to trust him, the other dog basically turned on him.  Ever since then he has still used positive training on young dogs but has also added in some exercises that introduce the dog to pressure and learning to work through pressure.

But like you say, it really depends on the dog.  Most people are not training their dogs for a sport that intentionally places physical and psychological pressure on the dog in order to test the soundness of the dog and the appropriateness for breeding.  But for those that are training for this sport, it's not like we take a puppy or green dog out there and start wailing on it.  The dogs are taught from 8 weeks how to build and cap drive, how to work through pressure, everything is done so the dog is setup for success and the dog's confidence is pumped up.  It's not the same training method I would use on my other dogs, who were raised completely differently, have totally different temperaments.

Liesje

At some point, you have to put pressure on the dog.  The dog has to have courage, be sound in the head, and be able to think and work through conflict and pressure.  So I'm not sure we can really reconcile our differences as far as training a Schutzhund dog.  Before you refered to "non-confrontational" methods, but the issue here is that I am training a dog for conflict.  The way that Nikon is trained would absolutely not fly with either of my other dogs or most of the dogs I know.  With a dog like Kenya that is skittish, no drive for toys, spazzy in the head....

Hi

I am obviously not a Shutzhund trainer, I have the wrong breed for it, but must tell you that pretty soon as a trainer of poodles, you realise that the difference between poodles that sit in the ring and have a cup of tea while you work and the poodles that  go for it is "drive" and that you need to build it. I use a lot of techniques that many Shutzhund trainers do.

Our "conflict" comes form other things. I don't think that the "conflict " of a correctly breed Shutzhund dog bred for protection work doing protection is any different than my 15 inch mini poodle wading through a meadow of chest high sopping frozen wet tussock grass doing a track for over 1/2 an hour. It requires that my dog go to the limit of her physcial abilites, keep thinking and going in unbelivably tough condtions. I didn't conditon her to do this with adversives at all, in fact if she stopped i was perfectly willing to stop . I did conditon her for this physically and mentally, and she had the mind and drive for it. I can actually describe and model all of this from an emotional model of behaviour better than i can from a behavourist or drive model. One of my ambitions is to work her in working trials. (Like fancy BH) The funny thing is that she is physcially more suited to cope with the demands than many of the dogs bred for it. I am pretty certain that both my dogs could cope with the obedience part of BH. My boy is nearly bomb proof. To be honest, if you want to do competitive obedience well here, you need to proof with pretty tough noise and weather and distration enviroments. You would certainly expect your dog to put up with strong road noise, heavy duck pooh on the grounds,aeroplanes, flocks of birds,nasty grasses that have spikes, rain, hail sleet, heat, thin grass, other dogs of course, people correcting their dogs in vicinity.... Unknown Heeling patterns that last in excess of 2-3 minutes...that have drops ,sits, stands on the move pace changes left about as well as right about turns.. all good fun.

 I also think that training dogs on resolving conflict is a fundamental  part of much advanced training in any discipline. The go out is in conflict with the need to watch and pay attention to me. There is conflict in doing a seekback with dogs working in the next ring. There is conflict when my 15 inch dog walks into a ring and is crowded by a Judge and Steward wearing huge rain coats. There is conflct tracking through a herd of cows or a flock of sheep. None of these things have requred correction for me to get my dogs over the years to do them, but many would insist that it is required. I haven't worked out what i must be doing wrong. :))

 I think that in drive doing protection work the relative values of a strong correction though  take on different meanings. (I also think that in drive in tracking it takes on different meanings too. Dogs do same weird things tracking)  My observation is that in this strong drive the whole dog/human world goes topsy turvy. I think that the idea of keeping to a particualr axis on a training quadrant or particular mode is just too narrow. I like Chrs Bach's view that above all else we should not invade our dog's sensibilites as a start.

I also think that it is hard to sort out human antromorphological thinking attaching motives like bravery to a dog's action rather than say survival if protection is done in defence mode , or just plain out and out fun and pleasure in "prey drive".

I have a suspicion  that that wasn't at all Corvus was talking about.Many trainers talk about the quadrant but get stuck in one square, the P+ square. No one debates that this is right. No one would ever debate seriously that getting stuck in this square has anything other than serious consequences for the dog (and the human doing it), and that denial of the human to the consequences is all part and parcel of the package.

I remember that once in a class I thought that i would actually show people what to do in the instance of a dog doing soemthing really seriously dangerousy wrong. Now i am a moderately experienced positive trainer and pretty much know most of the tricks to get dogs to do most of the basic behaviors, and lots of the advance ones. One observation that i have observed is that as a relationship develops with our dogs based on trust and reward, that often the required adversive for stopping dangerous behaviour becomes extremely diminished. By big tough rough Lab couldn't be stopped by any gorse bush or physical terrain or often by a severe physcial correction when we were using single quadrant training, but well into our positive  training he would stop on a dime for even a 1/2 harsh vocal. I guess the reason was that my presence had some value to him I often think Pack drive is aquired in almost R- fashion, it is a place of safety.. leave it to another time...

 Well I taught them how to do it, and next week what a shock. The treats were left in the pocket,and everything was NO ,,ARGH AH...

Primitive human group behaviour yet again... I guess those dogs just thought we were meeting to disucss finding our birth trees, the behaviour on refllction seemed to have gone back so many generations. .

And again, your post makes a lot of sense to me. Especially ScH and even K-9 training, where the dog will encounter pressure. Where as most of us are just wanting the dog to behavior our way, which is a different goal, to some extent, at some times.

ron2

And again, your post makes a lot of sense to me. Especially ScH and even K-9 training, where the dog will encounter pressure. Where as most of us are just wanting the dog to behavior our way, which is a different goal, to some extent, at some times.

Very much so.  Also, the "conflict" I'm talking about is different than the other types of conflict poodleOwned is addressing.  They are both conflict, but the pressure in, say, tracking comes from a static, inate object (the track, food on the track, articles on the track).  The conflict in SchH is coming from something that is actively applying pressure, physically and mentally.  SchH trainers always say "power brings power".  This is very true of a dog like Nikon.  He has very high prey drive but does not see the sleeve as a "prey" object.  He will not light up if the helper walks out with a sleeve on and just shuffles around.  The more power and pressure applied to him, the more drive and power he brings back.  He doesn't give freebie bites, he bites well when a serious threat is presented otherwise looks rather bored. 

You can SchH train a dog totally in prey drive and only bring conflict by frustrating the dog - holding him back from the prey object (the sleeve) and then releasing him when you are satisfied with the level of drive.  But not all dogs are "prey monsters", and a good GSD should know when a threat is serious and when it is not.  Nikon has bitten our helper for real (like made him bleed, not on the sleeve), but when no threat/power/pressure is presented, I can walk him up to the same helper, hand over the leash, and they will play and do obedience together like I'm not even there.

Anyway, that is getting slightly off the topic.  I would say that no good SchH trainer is "correction based" or "positive only".  Both ignore another half of the operant conditioning chart.

 I have never claimed to be positive only. I am a rewards-based trainer. Other trainers are correction-based, but still use rewards. Some predominantly positive trainers are free with corrections in particular circumstances.

Choosing to avoid parts of the quadrants is not the same as ignoring them. Do I know what P+ does to my dogs? I sure do, and it's precisely why I don't like to use it if I can help it. It's unpredictable and my timing is not very good and I find that there's not a lot of buffering to account for when the effectiveness of punishments changes with something as seemingly random as a dog's mood. I don't use R-, either, and I doubt that many people do use it very much. I would venture to say I mostly ignore R-, but I can say that and no one will sniff and shake their head about it.

You don't need every quadrant to communicate effectively with an animal. The quadrants just describe how animals learn. You don't need to teach them something using every quadrant in order for them to learn it. Balance is over-rated. I have never understood why it should be sought in training. You have an animal. You need to teach them something. Why wouldn't you use the method you are most familiar with, be it corrections or rewards or negative reinforcement? Yet if you show a preference you are unbalanced or ignoring parts of the quadrant? So what. The animal doesn't care. They just want the good stuff to keep coming and the bad stuff to stay away.

I mean that in the sense that "in real life" (not so much on here) I know and see lots of people calling themselves "operant conditioning trainers" that are "positive only" trainers.  I don't really care one way or the other who trains using what methods, only to point out that operant conditioning /=/ positive only.  The same misconception is made by others though, for example I've seen people who do use corrections refer to the "positive only" trainers as the "operant trainers".  You can be a correction based trainer and still be an "operant conditioning" trainer.

Choosing to avoid parts of the quadrants is not the same as ignoring them. Do I know what P+ does to my dogs? I sure do, and it's precisely why I don't like to use it if I can help it.

You don't need every quadrant to communicate effectively with an animal. The quadrants just describe how animals learn. You don't need to teach them something using every quadrant in order for them to learn it. Balance is over-rated.

I think that these two statements have captured pretty well the philosophy of positive training.  We generally choose to ignore +P, but know how to use it if we deem it necessary.  The thing about positive trainers is that they deem it necessary a whole heck of a lot less than other trainers.  That's really all there is to it.  

Liesje

This is very true of a dog like Nikon.  He has very high prey drive but does not see the sleeve as a "prey" object.  He will not light up if the helper walks out with a sleeve on and just shuffles around.  The more power and pressure applied to him, the more drive and power he brings back.  He doesn't give freebie bites, he bites well when a serious threat is presented otherwise looks rather bored. 

Actually, this is a case in point where a drive model of behaviour unless finessed comes up short. Many many dogs will not react towards a slow prey object or an object that isn't moving right to be considered as a prey object. It is quite normal. It is part of good dog wiring, otherwise they would waste and expend unneccessary energy. A dog that is slow to tangle is probably going to be  a winner genetically.

I have heard it postulated that in order for a "well wired dog" to react as if a threat exists, then it needs a combination of smell, body lainguage and handler language to decode the threat. I have a suspicion that we underrate the smell part.

In some way (of  course owning and training the dogs i do) , my fluffy little poodle is "braver" and more powerful to overcome the pressure that she has.:) Her range is deeper too, one minute she has to go to a grooming saloon, the next minute she has to tell various GSD's to pull their heads in. Don't laugh , she does). 

corvus

I would venture to say I mostly ignore R-, but I can say that and no one will sniff and shake their head about it.

There is a fine line between P- and R-. I think that some crating practices with some dogs are actually R-. They create a yucky tense boring place that goes away when the dog does something , even though that something is quite big. It is probably  r- for example to grab a dog by the collar and assist it to go out the door. Never mind, I don't do the first example, if anything i am a little crate wary with both my dogs. (I do use them though). If I didn't do the second i would be on my hands and knees begging my older poodle to go outside when i go to work, or to put her eye drops in.

corvus

Balance is over-rated.

For example I always look at page 98 , Competition Obedience : A balancing act ,where corrections are introducd after rewards are used to get a fast drivey sttart and go  WHY???? How easy is it to get a fast  drivey start with rewards alone or toys? What is going wrong? it is a common stratergy by the way.

What i do know is that this correction often mystifies and befuddles dogs, and takes ages to get over.  I just hate the look on a young dogs face when it has been reward trained fro most of it's life and then suddenly the handler thinks corrections are required to balance it or to toughen it up. It seems to me to be entirely ridiculous and lacking in thought or vision.

 No more than I hate the befuddled look I got when asked by a herding trainer, "How well does your dog take correction?"  Um, what correction do you mean?   It was pretty hard explaining in five seconds that this dog understands cues that alter behavior, but not physical or pointless verbal "corrections"  "Stop" has meaning to her only because she was trained to stop her forward motion when she heard it as a cue.  But, unless you pair a word with an action (or, in this case a lack of action), it means nothing.  If you teach a dog that a particular cue word means a particular action, it's not a "correction", it remains simply a "cue".  Off - get off the couch.  Sit - don't jump up.  Leave it - turn your head toward your handler and away from the forbidden thing.  Many correction trainers use "no" a lot, but think what the word means to the dog who hears it a lot: No - get off the couch.  No- stop jumping up.  No - quit what you're doing.  What does no REALLY mean in those contexts?  Nothing - just unpleasant background noise - it is not instructive as to the next behavior the trainer wants.  What does a leash correction really mean?  In my opinion, it doesn't mean "don't do that"  it means "don't do anything", and if I have a dog that doesn't offer novel behavior, how can I shape behavior into a complex task or a flawless heeling pattern without further coercion?  I can't - hence the necessity for many people to use tactics like ear pinches to get dogs to retrieve.   Correction is not the same as "pressure".  Correction inhibits behavior.  Reward increases the likelihood that behavior will be repeated (because it works for the dog).  Pressure elicits behavior, some desirable, some undesirable.  Pressure can be a dangerous tool in the wrong hands, but a magnificent refinement in the right hands.  No one is saying there are no negatives in life - but handlers should work away from confusing or inhibiting learning, and toward clarity and encouraging learning.