They’ll always be my babies, but they’re happy in their new homes

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They’ll always be my babies, but they’re happy in their new homes

By Gina Spadafori

June 16, 2009

I just couldn’t stand it any longer.

A couple notes here and there, a couple of pictures in my e-mail, a phone call or two … but I wanted more, oh yes, much more.

I wanted a definitive, detailed, expanded report from each and every home on how myMcKenzie’s puppies are doing. After all, these pups had been my entire life for more than eight weeks, everything wrapped up in making sure they were as well prepared as I could possibly make them for life in their future homes. And they’ve been gone for a week now. A whole week!

So I sent out an e-mail, beggingasking for updates.

The upshot: They’re all doing very well.

They’re happy and outgoing, learning the rules of their new households, getting more socialization, pottying more or less where they’re supposed to, allowing every inch of their squirming, wriggly tail-wagging happy bodies to be handled without resistance, getting their nails cut without complaint, walking on leash, playing with the kids, bringing back whatever’s thrown for them as quickly as their fat little legs can manage, sitting for their food dishes, learning how to be quiet in their crates and pretty much charming the very socks off their utterly smitten new families. They’ll be starting their puppy classes soon, where they’ll surely be the head of their respective classes.

My response:

Yes! Yes! Yes!

My heart sings to get such glowing reports. I have never worked so hard at anything in my life as to get these youngsters off to the best start I could. And now, to hear back that they are doing well, and with people who are working just as hard as I did to keep up the pace of good puppy-raising … well, it doesn’t get much better for a first-time breeder. I will always be there for these dogs and their families, as will their other “grandmas,” Katie and Mary. But for now, the reports couldn’t be much better.

Yay, puppies! Yay to Jack (the former Mr. Yellow), Parker (Mr. Green), Dooley (Mr. Blaze Orange), Keen (Ms. Purple) and Maya (Ms. Pink)!

At my house, the One Who Chose Me, Faith (the former Ms. Red), spent the weekend on the go. To the hardware store, to the patio at Whole Foods, to Peet’s Coffee. She spent a good deal of time on a leash and a good deal more in her safe crate in the car. She’s coming along with her house-training — pee puddles here and there, usually my fault for not paying close enough attention to her signals — but the rest of her business she can hold for the yard, not making a mistake for a few days now. She sleeps in a crate next to the bed, but later she’ll sleep on the bed with everyone else. She needs to learn where the limits are before I spoil her rotten, see?

And then, there’s the clicker training. If you’re not familiar with it, here’s a short primer. Clicker guru Karen Pryor was on “Good Morning America” this morning with a demo as well. I just love clicker-training puppies. I had “pre-loaded” the entire litter before they left by showing each of them the link between the click and the treat so their owners got a head start.

With Faith, I started the next stage of clicker training in earnest after her sister Keen left last Thursday, the last of the puppies to go to her new home.

Faith’s first goal: Learn to touch the plastic lid from a tupperware container. When she first figured out what we were doing, shelooked back at me with eyes suddenly full of understanding and amazement: “Seriously, all I have to do to get the click and treat is touch this thing with my nose? Cool!”

After just a couple of days, she will now touch it and come back no matter where I place it within about a 15-foot radius of where I’m standing or sitting. I’ll be increasing the distance, giving the behavior a “name” — “tap it” — and then moving on to other little tasks, all of which are designed to be built on or chained together, a foundation for learning to last a lifetime.

I have honestly never understood how anyone can consider dog-training an unpleasant chore. It’s an ongoing process with a reward that’s far, far better than having a well-mannered dog or one who does tricks – although both of those things are very nice indeed. When Faith first touched the lid, heard the click and looked back, the world changed for us both:

We were communicating in a common language.

Different species, and we both at that instant were connected, forever. She knew it, I knew it and we both found it more than a little amazing, a special moment for us both.

How could you not get a thrill from something like that? To me, it’s a miracle, every time it happens.

Image: Faith, 10 weeks old yesterday, and very very tired from a weekend of puppy-fun-with-a-purpose.

Filed under: animals: pets,behavior,GoodMorningAmerica,Pet-lover life — Gina Spadafori @ 2:58 pm

Comments (175)

175 Comments »

I also consider puppy training tons of fun. If it’s not, then you’re doing something wrong! =P

Comment by Pai — June 16, 2009 @ 4:04 pm
I love your clicker training story. How I wish those people I’m fighting with over the “you can’t get a reliable retrieve unless you use the earpinch” could understand you.

Comment by EmilyS — June 16, 2009 @ 5:03 pm
I LOVE clicker training! Glad to here the puppies are doing great in their homes and are off to good starts =]

Comment by Alex V. — June 16, 2009 @ 5:14 pm
Emily, I gotta be honest here: I’m not a completely positive-reinforcement trainer by any means. A lot of trainers much, much (much, much) better than I am have looked at high-level hunt tests and to date, not one person to my knowledge has trained to the highest levels of field work without an e-collar.

The challenge is that the reward of getting one bird instead of another is so high that you simply cannot get a reliable directed retrieve on a dog who’s 100, 200 or 300 yards away and determined to blow you off and do what HE wants.

I have an e-collar, and I use it for field training. When used properly, it’s effective and humane in that it is fair, fast and clear to the dog what you’re doing, and how he is responsible for his choices once he understand they are his choices to make.

That said, I recognize that there are a lot of people who have no business owning or using an e-collar, because they think it’s all about putting it on and shocking the bejeebers out of their dog — taking no time for learning theory, no time to understand the most effective and humane way to use this tool, no time to be fair to the dog so he can understand what the collar is and does, and how he can control the use of it.

Heather, Woody and McKenzie have all had field-training with an e-collar. They are all happy, bouncy and outgoing. But they know when they’re told to “heel” it is not an option. Believe me, they haven’t been corrected much, because they were properly collar conditioned. (Well, again, to be absolutely honest: At almost 13, Heather pretty much does what the heck she wants, and considers my requests mere suggestions. As for Drew the Sheltie …. an e-collar would in fact would be a disastrous choice of a training tool for him, highly inappropriate for the dog he is.)

I am NOT, repeat NOT, a field-training expert. I have personally trained one dog (McKenzie) to junior hunter level. But I am an avid reader of all kinds of training theory and practice, and I can tell you that collars have become more precise in their corrections, and field trainers have become much more positive overall. I know this not only from reading and watching, but also from my affiliation with the co-owner of all my retrievers, who is one of the best field trainers in the breed.

But again, if you think you’re getting the attention of a hard-driving, hard-headed field-bred retriever on a mission at 300 yards with anything other than shock from an e-collar … well, you will be giving lots and lots of seminars to all us wimpy chicks who’d love to know how you did it. Because we would if we could.

I’m not all that fond of field training, but I do love how the dogs live to do the work they’ve been bred for, and I believe it’s important that my breed be able to continue to do the work it was bred for, so I field train. And make no mistake: My retrievers LOVE field work more than anything else we do together.

But my dogs are first and foremost my beloved companions, and so they do a lot of other activities, none of which require an e-collar to learn.

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 16, 2009 @ 6:51 pm
I have noticed that, whenever I give advice about some training issue and my advice — for that issue, that owner, that dog, that day — trends towards “positive” or “positive-identified” or “positive-claimed” — I have noticed that this seems to be an opening for some people to start slagging on other training methods, tools, and approaches.

Generally in perfect ignorance of the true nature of these methods, tools, and approaches, and always in perfect ignorance of the reality that there is practically nothing that I haven’t used successfully in the right circumstances, and that some of these maligned training resources are in fact my favored ones — for a different issue, owner, dog, or day.

Just something I’ve noticed.

Believe it or not, Karen Pryor did not invent praise and reward in 1995. People even trained dogs before BF Skinner was born, or so I’m told.

Have fun having fun with Faith. I have faith that whenever something other than a clicker is called for, Faith will get whatever she needs from you.

As for e-collars — a good collar, in the hands of a masterful field trainer, cannot be described as issuing a “correction.” And certainly not “punishment.” It needs an entirely different vocabulary for one to understand what’s going on between dog and handler.

Comment by H. Houlahan — June 16, 2009 @ 8:07 pm
I worked with a positive trainer who also felt that appropriate, humane corrections have their place.

Interestingly, it has also been needed when Niki has chosen to blow me off in situations where I really have to have compliance, like if I let him off-leash on walks.

I was taught to use treats, commands and hand signals and haven’t used a clicker. More or less Sirius Puppy Training.

My proudest training accomplishment is that I have taught him “Sit Now” by myself. I use it when he is off-lead and I need to stop him when a car is coming or I don’t want him to approach someone. He will stop what he is doing and sit if he is within the sound of my voice, which I make sure he always is. He also knows that if he doesn’t, he goes back on the leash. What’s funny is that he always turns 90 degrees and faces the road before he sits.

Training Niki and learning to work with him and communicate across species is one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done.

Comment by Susan Fox — June 16, 2009 @ 8:19 pm
Comment by H. Houlahan — June 16, 2009 @ 8:07 pm

Generally in perfect ignorance of the true nature of these methods, tools, and approaches

Make sure you always remember to keep that “Generally” in there, because there are more than a few clicker trainers who are NOT ignorant of how and why the other methods work - but who still choose to use the clicker rather than those other methods. Just because we take different roads to similar destinations doesn’t mean that I’m ever likely to choose the roads you’ve chosen - regardless of whether your roads would get me to my destination or not.

Comment by The OTHER Pat — June 16, 2009 @ 8:34 pm
“It needs an entirely different vocabulary…”

It strikes me that the intention is to use it as a command signal instead of one’s voice, for whatever reason, but maybe because having to scream at a dog that is fifty feet or fifty yards or more away isn’t practical or particularly dignified.

Comment by Susan Fox — June 16, 2009 @ 8:57 pm
Without getting too deep into this: At hunt tests people are using whistles and hand signals to direct the dogs to the birds, some of which the dog has seen fall (“marked”) and some of which they have not. The idea is that a dog is the hunter’s right hand, getting birds that have been shot but could not otherwise be retrieved (because they’ve fallen in water, for example, in the case of a retriever).

It’s a difficult and intense team effort. The handler is directing the dog ( with whistles and hands ignals) to where the dog can find the bird with his nose. pick it up and bring it back. But there’s a lot of other scent on the ground and even other birds in the field, and the dog needs to listen to what the handler wants to get to the bird that should be retrieved.

In brief, the dog learns to go out in the direction he’s sent, stop and turn on the whistle, look and take a “cast” from the handler — going left, right or further back. The dog also learns that being determined to ignore the handler’s directions will mean collar correction … in training, because you can’t have an e-collar on in competition. Obviously, you’ve got months and years of high-level training before you could ever compete as a successful team,

Three of McKenzie littermates — one male and two females — are working at the Master Hunter level. It takes a special dog and a very good trainer to get there, and lots and lots of work. McKenzie may have been that dog, but I am not that trainer. We’ll dabble in juniors, thanks. Woody works at a much higher level, but I don’t train him: Mary did.

I’m going to be happy with Junior Hunter, and maybe now move into agility with McKenzie and Woody both. I just don’t have the chops for top field-level work, and I know it. But I sure admire those top trainers and dogs who do, and who are changing the nature of the sport as they go.

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 16, 2009 @ 9:07 pm
You can train a working retriever without an e-collar or without a “conditioned retrieve,” if the dog is a natural retriever. It does take a little longer. If you’d rather just have a working retriever rather than a dog with titles, then you can forget the e-collar and the toe hitch entirely. However, if you work your dogs with someone who does do the tests and trials, your dog will be a little bit different in its behavior than the titled dog. (This way is called the “British way” but it’s not necessarily positive reinforcement only.)

It’s just very hard to train for competition or tests without using one. Most of the behaviors required for those things require some pressure to train.

People want to fight over positive reinforcement and traditional training. I think it’s a bit silly. Each person has his or her own training style. Some people get results using one method. I am one person who cannot effectively train using punishment and negative reinforcement. With the breed I have, it’s very easy to overdo it with them, and then they’ll go on strike. Of course, normally they are really focused dogs— maybe more so than their flat-coated cousins.

Comment by retrieverman — June 17, 2009 @ 5:57 am
I was specifically talking about training for high-level competitive field work when I wrote it has not been done without an e-collar.

Oh, and as for “focus” … I guess that depends which goldens you’re talking about. There isn’t really a field-show-pet split in flatcoats, so I’d guess that if you pulled six random goldens from the entire pool of all goldens and six random flatcoats from the the entire pool of all flatcoats, you’d find the flatcoats generally more amenable to work as a companion hunter.

Pull six goldens from field lines? Yeah, that would favor the goldens. But overall? Well, personally I’d put my money on the flatcoats. :)

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 17, 2009 @ 6:08 am
Emily, I gotta be honest here: I’m not a completely positive-reinforcement trainer by any means. A lot of trainers much, much (much, much) better than I am have looked at high-level hunt tests and to date, not one person to my knowledge has trained to the highest levels of field work without an e-collar.

Okay, this is where my mind just boggles.

Not at the idea that e-collars can be used correctly, humanely, by very good trainers who know and care what they’re doing. That I get.

What makes my mind boggle is the idea that there were no highly trained, highly reliable hunting dogs during the several thousand years that preceded the invention of the e-collar in, what, the 1940s? I’m sorry, it makes no sense.

Comment by Lis — June 17, 2009 @ 6:11 am
I’ll give this a, er, shot. And in fact, I do remember reading an old retriever training book that suggested doing exactly that for a dog who wasn’t minding at a distance — peppering his behind with birdshot. I think I’d rather use a modern e-collar.

Anyway, when I’m talking about e-collar use in this context, I’m talking about field trials and hunt tests, which at the highest levels demand extremely competitive and precise handling of the dog. It’s sort of like the difference between a dog who walks on a loose lead and one who performs a perfect competitive obedience trial “heel” — except with a high level of natural ability, the drive and desire to get through anything to get that bird. You can’t train that; you can only channel and control it.

There’s a considerable amount of discussion that top lines of field-bred Labradors have been “bred to the collar” — they have such intense focus and drive and such hard-headedness that they’re not a companion hunter anymore — they’re a field trial dog.

The flat-coated retriever typically doesn’t do as well at these high-level trials (with notable exceptions), because the folks in the breed haven’t encouraged (or in fact tolerated) the show-field split you see in some breeds. Most flat-coats could probably be trained to the junior hunter level — marking a bird’s fall and going out on command on land and in water to retrieve it.

The higher levels with the precise handling is a big step that many dogs and trainers never make. Or, as with people who get really into agility and then switch to a breed that’s more naturally competitive (border collie, Sheltie, etc.), there are folks who start out with one kind of retriever, get seriously addicted to field trials and hunt tests and switch to top field-line Labradors.

For me, I’m not that into the field work, but I am seriously besotted with flat-coated retrievers. I do my duty to “prove” that my dogs can get something done in the field. I’m pretty much satisfied with the junior hunter as proof that my dogs are screamingly happy to bust through cover and jump into ponds of scummy water to retrieve a bird. But honestly, I also get to draft/cheat because of others: McKenzie has three of four junior hunter passes, but she has THREE littermates with Master Hunter passes, so I have a pretty good idea what kind of ability is in these lines. They’re birdy, smart and biddable. They also do pretty well in agility.

Beyond that, well, I own an e-collar, and I use it in field training. But I tell you, over time I hit a clicker a million more times than the button on the e-collar base unit. That’s because I’m using the tools I need to train MY dogs for the life WE lead. Other people are different, have different dogs and different training goals. Not wrong, just different.

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 17, 2009 @ 6:32 am
there are more than a few clicker trainers who are NOT ignorant of how and why the other methods work - but who still choose to use the clicker rather than those other methods.

Comment by The OTHER Pat — June 16, 2009 @ 8:34 pm

***********************

A clicker is not a method.

It is a tool. A twenty-nine-cent party store toy that can be used — or misused — as a tool.

It is also, contrary to popular belief in some circles, not a fully-formed system of religious practice.

Still just plastic and thin steel.

Comment by H. Houlahan — June 17, 2009 @ 6:40 am
Oh c’mon Heather, you’re not being honest or fair in dismissing Karen Pryor’s popularization of operant condition as a landmark event in dog training. Did it exist before? Sure! Was it in wide use? Nope!

Yes, a clicker is a tool, as you note. But what its introduction to the world of dog training represents is a sea change, and you have to admit that.

Then you can fairly discuss its benefits, its limits and its place in the overall work of training dogs, both as family companions and as specialists for various jobs or sports.

But it’s really disingenuous not to give credit where credit it due. And utterly unlike you and your patented blunt honesty, if I might say!

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 17, 2009 @ 7:27 am
well, I find that “generally”, force trainers don’t like to be pushed on this subject, and that they make assumptions that those that who choose not to use force tactics are ignorant or one of the mythical mindless “pure positive” trainers who never correct their dogs (mythical because ALL training requires correction of some sort).

They do call it “force” fetch after all, and the question they don’t like to answer is: “what do you do when your dog doesn’t comply with that “light pinch” or “lowest level of ecollar”? If the rationale is “you have to show the dog it must always obey”, the only answer is of course: escalate the level of pinch/stimulation. And then you get into the discussion of pain. Because what else other than punishment, or the threat of punishment, enforces “must obey” when these tools are used?

The other part of the myth is that force techniques and only force techniques produce 100% performance. Not only do force-taught dogs sometimes fail to perform, there are many sports/work that require just as much reliability and precision as fieldwork and competitive obedience, and in which force is NOT a common technique (agility, detection, service, herding…). I take from this that force is a choice, not a requirement. And in the case of field work and competitive obedience, it’s also merely a tradition.

Comment by EmilyS — June 17, 2009 @ 7:44 am
One look like that from those chocolate brown eyes and she’d have me trained, no clicker or collar necessary.

Comment by Original Lori — June 17, 2009 @ 7:44 am
And in the case of field work and competitive obedience, it’s also merely a tradition.

Comment by EmilyS — June 17, 2009

Honestly, I’m not so sure it’s “merely a tradition.” There are groups of “no force” field trainers, e-mail lists, etc. Lots and lots of people trying to get there.

Still not one high-level field dog from those methods, and NOT for lack of trying. And until there is, you can’t say it’s possible.

Frankly, I would LOVE for a really good no-correction trainer to show it can be done. That would really expand the debate and the possibilities, and you know how much I love that.

***

Now, to really stir the flames. How on earth have we gotten the idea that if something may hurt it’s not worth trying?

I tell you as the daughter of a professional athlete I learned long ago that challenge hurts, sometimes mentally, sometimes physically. But the level of accomplishment you can attain is worth pushing the limits. I have to think our working dogs would say so, too.

Sometimes I have to say I find some dog-owners to be like some of the parents of the high-school football players my brother coaches, people whowould rather their sons be safe couch potatoes playing video game football than really pushing themselves on the field of true physical and mental endeavor.

Man, that is just not the way it should be. Risk nothing, gain nothing.

This attitude is why no one is ever going to call me and my fellow baby-boomers, “The Greatest Generation.” So many of us have had it so easy, compared to so many of our parents.

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 17, 2009 @ 7:53 am
In and out of the shower, with more thoughts before I bolt for work:

Yes, when we choose to excel — risk and pain be damned — we are choosing for ourselves. When we work at high levels of performance with our dogs, we are choosing for them. That is an important distinction, and one I don’t dismiss lightly.

Trainers must make their own decisions, based on what they believe, what’s they’re comfortable with, and what they’re trying to achieve. But we also must look at what’s in it for the dog.

I have known and seen so many top-level working dogs in many different sport and work disciplines that I couldn’t even guess how many in total, certainly hundreds if not thousands.

Let me say that the self-confidence, intelligence and joy these dogs carry with them tells me that they are happy with their lives. Really, really happy. The fact that their training wasn’t wholly positive — or even mostly so — changes that not one bit.

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 17, 2009 @ 8:24 am
Oh c’mon Heather, you’re not being honest or fair in dismissing Karen Pryor’s popularization of operant condition as a landmark event in dog training. Did it exist before? Sure! Was it in wide use? Nope!

Did I say a word about operant conditioning?

I did not.

Quote:

Believe it or not, Karen Pryor did not invent praise and reward in 1995.

The acolytes of operant conditioning in popular dog training would have us all believe that (a) there is only one quadrant that they must employ in their popularization of Skinner’s worldview* — to achieve ANY result in ANY circumstances — and (b) all animal trainers prior to Pryor were exclusively employing whips ‘n’ chains.

Since I am actually old enough to have been training before the behaviorist paradigm popped out of the rat lab (and creepy attempts at social engineering) and into the world of dog training, I will rely on my own memory — and the documentation of millenia of trainers — rather than the revisionist version.

I distinctly remember being extensively coached on rewarding my dog — among other skills — by a group class trainer in 1976. This trainer’s credentials were as a military dog trainer, and all his dogs had advanced obedience titles. Purty sure he never read Skinner.

*And keep in mind that there are hominids amongst us who simply do not accept the “four quadrants of learning theory” worldview as a robust explanatory or practical model. (Raises hand and waves for teacher to see.)

Comment by H. Houlahan — June 17, 2009 @ 8:28 am
“How on earth have we gotten the idea that if something may hurt it’s not worth trying?” Well, it’s about hurting someone/something else, not taking on a difficult challenge yourself. Would you twist a child’s ear to force her to do “x”? As you note in your followup, this about choosing for the dog. Given a choice, dogs wouldn’t be doing most of the things we ask them to do.

No one can deny your description of happy forcetrained dogs. I’m just not convinced that it’s an argument in favor of forcetraining. Dogs became dogs because of their astounding willingness desire to be with us. They accept all kinds of treatment by us and still are happy and loving. So no surprise that they accept force training and are still happy and loving. (or not…. in the case of dogs like retrieverman’s)

We do it to dogs because we can. Anyone forcetraining a cat to do anything lately?

Comment by EmilyS — June 17, 2009 @ 8:33 am
Try not to be “helicopter former owner” Gina. Like the mother in law who has to call every day to check up.

Comment by Evet — June 17, 2009 @ 8:36 am
Dog trainers have been skillfully applying reward-based training for thousands of years. They’ve been using “all four quadrants” — and more — in dog training long before anybody coined the terms. BF Skinner and Karen Pryor did not invent these things.

Traditional dog training utilizes dogs bred to have the DRIVE for breed-appropriate work. Drive fulfillment is a HUGE reward.

The biggest reward one can give a dog that’s been bred for sheep herding isn’t a click/treat — it’s to work sheep.

The biggest reward one can give a dog that’s been bred for trained protection work isn’t a click/treat — it’s the bite and fight with the bad guy.

The biggest reward one can give a dog that’s been bred for scent work isn’t a click/treat — it’s hunting scent.

And so on.

Comment by LauraS — June 17, 2009 @ 8:39 am
No one can deny your description of happy forcetrained dogs. I’m just not convinced that it’s an argument in favor of forcetraining.

Comment by EmilyS — June 17, 2009

Then your choice for everyone is really about not having any dog be allowed to do a job that cannot be (or in fact has not been) achieved by the use of solely positive training methods.

That’s your bottom line. Others will disagree. I don’t think you get to choose for others, any more than others get to choose for you when it comes to, say, breeding bans or breed bans.

I think that’s where I personally will leave it. We’re back to the “only thing two dog trainers will agree on is that the third one is wrong.”

I’ve hashed that out enough for six lifetimes.

As for cats (and children) … they’re not dogs. I love my cats — and all cats — but I have yet to see cats work at anything that didn’t come naturally or that they wanted to do anyway, like catching the occasional mouse. Apples and oranges, or rather, cats and dogs.

***

Thanks Laura … that’s what I’ve been trying to say. For a purpose bred dog, the treat is never going to be as compelling a reward as getting to do what that dog has been hard-wired to do for generations.

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 17, 2009 @ 8:40 am
Try not to be “helicopter former owner” Gina. Like the mother in law who has to call every day to check up.

Comment by Evet — June 17, 2009

Hey, be fair! I waited a whole week!

:)

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 17, 2009 @ 8:46 am
*And keep in mind that there are hominids amongst us who simply do not accept the “four quadrants of learning theory” worldview as a robust explanatory or practical model. (Raises hand and waves for teacher to see.)

Here’s what an ethologist (scientist who studies animal behavior) said when he was told that many dog trainers haven’t advanced past operant conditioning:

**********************

“Thanks for pointing this out. Well, that is sad. Cognitive ethology and animal cognitive psychology have now a good solid 30 years of
history and data… most from species not even as sophisticated as dogs (e.g., pigeons and rats). They should read the great work by
François Doré and more recently his former student, Sylvain Fiset on cognitive processes in cats and dogs (starting with object permanence).”

“So the world of dog trainers needs its own cognitive revolution, 30 years after the original one. I was honestly oblivious to that state of affair.”

***********************

That’s from Professor Simon Gadbois, who studies the behavior of wolves, coyotes and red foxes.

Comment by LauraS — June 17, 2009 @ 8:51 am
Anyone training a cat — by any means — to, say, herd sheep, guide the blind, find lost people, retrieve the keys of the paraplegic master, or take down a bad guy in a hostage situation?

The real-world achievements of happy, fulfilled, fully adult, professional working dogs are something else again. This is not tricks. The duties are duties, not optional. In order for that principle to become fact for the dog, there have to be consequences — fair, communicative, proportional consequences — when the dog fails to perform a task that he understands.

And the dogs are fully actualized beings (“happy and loving” does not even begin to touch what they are) who got there through a process that included stress, force, correction, and difficulty in addition to praise, play, and the satisfaction of their powerful drives to do. The latter provides the engine for the work, and the former provides the necessary steering and brakes.

My cats are fully actualized stalking around the hayfield murdering mice, then snoozing in a warm lap. This is because they are cats. They are not dogs. They are fulfilled doing cat jobs. The dogs do those things too, but they will leave these hobbies in a New York minute if there’s any possibility that we are going to train. And they know full well that the training is going to include pressure, stress, and correction for their mistakes as well as appreciation of their successes.

Because they are dogs. Fully adult working dogs who seek accomplishment rather than comfort.

Comment by H. Houlahan — June 17, 2009 @ 8:57 am
Fascinating thread. I have very little exposure to the world of dog training. Sometimes I see classes going on at the shelter where I volunteer (and can hear the “GOOD GIRL!” through the wall).

I train rabbits. Mostly to correct behavior problems, but sometimes to do “stunts” because 1) it’s fun for me and the rabbit and 2) to prove to the nonbelievers that yes, they really are intelligent.

I can tell people over and over that they are more than cute lumps but when I say “kiss!” and the grey rabbit runs over and gives me a bunny smooch, then the light bulb goes off.

There are so few of us doing it that we don’t get the opportunity to argue about method.

Comment by Mary Mary — June 17, 2009 @ 9:09 am
I need to add that it’s unfair to deny a family pet the same rights to achievement and freedom as are enjoyed by working dogs.

Maybe the dog who was appropriately bred without powerful working drives — in deference to his intended role as a pet — does not have a burning need to crash through icy water after a duck, or create order among the unruly cattle. But he can still have a more fulfilled and happy life if much is asked of him, if he has to stretch to achieve.

That stretching may just be the training required to get a rocket-powered reliable-in-all-circumstances recall on a Scottish terrier — but believe me, that can be some serious training.

The outcome is a dog who has the privilege of freedom, and the dignity of his owners’ trust, which they earned together through hard work.

If someone dictates that this freedom and trust and dignity is not worth achieving if force, stress, and compulsion are part of the process, then he or she is free to choose a more confined life for his or her pet, or risk the dangers of unearned freedom.

Comment by H. Houlahan — June 17, 2009 @ 9:09 am
MM … someone who has never owned a house-rabbit has no idea. I am rabbit-less at the moment, but I look at the rescue sites often enough to know that will not be a permanent situation.

***

Everyone else: I really, honestly just wanted to write a little slice-of-lifer on how much I missed my puppies and what I was doing with the one who stayed.

A friend of mine called last night, laughing, to tell me, after she read the post, that I ought to know by now that the only thing more certain to prompt debate than writing about puppy-raising and dog-training is writing about child-rearing.

For the record: I have few formal opinions on child-rearing, and none I wish to share. Just sayin’.

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 17, 2009 @ 9:47 am
When I saw a “trainer” brutally pinch the ear of the young border collie mix sitting next to him (so hard that she yelped loudly in pain) to “train” her not to react to a dog (mine) walking by and heard him mutter in a nasty voice “Didn’t like that, didja?”, I thought that met the threshold for abuse. I saw him at other times and it was always about “power over”, not finding out how get willing compliance or actually address the dog’s issues.

But that’s the kind of thing us civilians see too often. The name of the company is “Best Friends”. I don’t think so. I think some of the strong defense of purely positive training is because of seeing things like that and knowing that it’s wrong.

The dog had had a rough start in life and had been attacked by other dogs. So now her ability to warn was being blocked. She seems to be ok, but my understanding is that she could have ended up as a bite waiting to happen. With no warning, of course.

But this is so different than what Gina and Heather are describing as far as training working dogs.

I think intention accounts for a great deal in any interaction with a dog, whether it’s a correction during training or feeding them into a state of morbid obesity out of mis-placed love.

Comment by Susan Fox — June 17, 2009 @ 9:54 am
Gina, you write, “someone who has never owned a house-rabbit has no idea.”

Exactly. And when they bring one home and run into a problem — chewing, digging, biting/lunging, marking territory, hiding under furniture, refusing to go back to their “den” for the night — they think there is no solution, so they rehome the animal and the problem continues.

Or, as we see so much of at this time of year, they dump the rabbit outside. I don’t have enough traps or helpers to keep up with all the abandoned Easter bunnies reported to me lately.

Comment by Mary Mary — June 17, 2009 @ 10:07 am
I’ll give this a, er, shot. And in fact, I do remember reading an old retriever training book that suggested doing exactly that for a dog who wasn’t minding at a distance — peppering his behind with birdshot. I think I’d rather use a modern e-collar.

And what did they do before the widespread availability of guns and birdshot?

No one can deny your description of happy forcetrained dogs. I’m just not convinced that it’s an argument in favor of forcetraining.

Comment by EmilyS — June 17, 2009

Then your choice for everyone is really about not having any dog be allowed to do a job that cannot be (or in fact has not been) achieved by the use of solely positive training methods.

That’s your bottom line. Others will disagree. I don’t think you get to choose for others, any more than others get to choose for you when it comes to, say, breeding bans or breed bans.

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 17, 2009 @ 8:40 am

What you’re saying, again, is that dogs can’t be trained to a high level of performance without tools that weren’t invented until minimum a few hundred years in some cases several thousand years after the dogs were first bred and successfully trained to do these jobs. At a time when, in fact, the dogs doing their jobs correctly might decide whether or not there was meat for the pot that night.

And that anyone who points that out might as well be arguing for breed bans. woohoo.

I don’t buy it.

I look at the fact that we had these hunting breeds long before we had these tools, and I look at the fact that dogs are in fact trained to do jobs that require a high level of performance and reliability both for recreational reasons (e.g., agility), and for matters far more critical than a competitive hunting title (e.g., guide dogs, who have to decide whether it’s safe to cross the street), and I conclude that whether or not ecollars can be and are used correctly and humanely (and no, I don’t doubt you for a moment on that), their use is not, as claimed, necessary, but simply traditional.

Comment by Lis — June 17, 2009 @ 10:08 am
What did they do before the widespread availability of guns and birdshot?

Comment by Lis — June 17, 2009

They didn’t have dogs to hunt over with guns. The development/refinement of these hunting breeds roughly coincides with the invention of the modern shotgun — a couple hundred years, more or less.

Bear in mind I’m specifically talking about what in the UK is known not as the “sporting group” (AKC version) but as the “gundog group” (British KC version). These particular breeds were developed/refined specifically to find, flush and retrieve birds killed by hunters using guns.

The work of ancient hunting breeds such as coursing hounds is more about their natural instincts with less human intervention. Rather like falconry, in a way. Terriers, too, do what terriers do without much intervention on a minute-to-minute basis.

Gun dogs have a different function, developed to meet the needs of a different kind of hunting.

And I’ve previously explained the difference between a dog used as a hunting companion and a competitive field-trial retriever. The dog used to “put meat in the pot” couldn’t compete at a field trial today. (Any more than Sonja Henie could today win Olympic gold as a figure skater — the level of precision and athletic demand of the sport — triple axles and such — has made the competition much harder.)

Which takes me back to my point: Who gets to decide what jobs our dogs do? A dog doesn’t know how critical a job is. I guarantee you a successful high-level field trial retriever is working his brain just as hard as a guide dog is — and his body a lot harder. We’re the ones who get to decide if that job is important or not. Our dogs just do the work. (And note: We absolutely have as a society ruled out some “jobs” dogs once had, including dog-fighting, bear- and bull-baiting, rat-pits and the like. I think the vast majority of us agree with those changes in social norms.)

But I admit to getting pretty anxious when a minority of people decides something is unacceptable for everyone else. It is, in fact, the very same sort of social engineering by nanny state laws that drives breeding bans and breed bans. Not to mention a host of other things that make my heart ache for how easy it is for a small group of people to decide how others must live by force of law … as opposed to changes in societal norms over time.

Beyond that, all I can add is that there are many trainers who will never, ever accept any possible training situation for which an e-collar should be used and for which an option shouldn’t be found. Based on my experience, I don’t agree. I think if someone wants to train a retriever to the highest levels of competitive field work, they’re going to use an e-collar because that’s what field trials have become (for right or wrong). The option they’ll choose to not use an e-collar is a different field of canine endeavor.

I would love to see someone prove me wrong, as I said. Train a master hunter without a e-collar and get back to me.

Feild trials and high-level hunt tests are not your grandfather’s day out with a huntin’ dog, in other words. And the fact that they’re not is a whole ‘nother line of discussion, involving whether or not field trials and hunt tests should exist at all. That’s a legitimate question, and that’s really what you’re talking about when you have a sport that seems to demand the use of a training tool you cannot abide.

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 17, 2009 @ 10:21 am
Police dog work is even more recent than gundog work. Tools for administering corrections have always been part of it.

Comment by LauraS — June 17, 2009 @ 10:57 am
As Christie called to tell me the other day:

I LOVE the people who comment on this blog. The way we challenge each other just makes me happy.

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 17, 2009 @ 11:19 am
re: the yelping of earpinched dogs: “But this is so different than what Gina and Heather are describing as far as training working dogs.”

no, actually it’s not. (Though pinching a dog for showing dog aggression is a pretty good way to increase aggression, while pinching a dog to teach or correct it about a retrieve is often effective, in the sense that it works). Causing dogs pain .. which the force trainers euphemize as “stress”.. is in the nature of the tools used to train “working” (actually sporting: field trials are not work) dogs according to the methods of the force trainer.

Note how now HHoulahan is now lumping “force, stress, and compulsion” all together, when the issue is not stress in general. We all know that stress is a fact of life and yes, is necessary for development… much of Gina’s stories about raising her puppies are about small stressors she inflicted on them. She is avoiding the real issue, which is pain inflicted by a human on a dog to achieve the human’s goal. The notion that the only free dogs are those that have had pain inflicted on them by a human to achieve a human’s goal is, well, wacky.

“Then your choice for everyone is really about not having any dog be allowed to do a job that cannot be (or in fact has not been) achieved by the use of solely positive training methods.”

Don’t tell me what my choice is. I have said NO such thing. I don’t even know what “solely positive” means. I have already posted that I believe that all training requires correction, which the forcers (though not me) define as “non-positive”.

Maybe there are no field champions taught without pain. Are there any champion herding dogs taught WITH pain? Any champion agility dogs? Any service dogs? Any drug detection dogs? What’s so darn important about field trials, anyway, that they justify using pain?

The excuse that these are high drive dogs who must have pain inflicted on them is senseless: these are the EASIEST to teach without pain because they desire the reward so much.

Comment by EmilyS — June 17, 2009 @ 12:11 pm
Field trials and hunt tests are preserving retriever breeds for useful work. Without field trials and hunt tests, the retriever breeds would degenerate into the same useless-for-breed-appropriate-work caricatures that many other modern breeds have degenerated into.

Retrievers from field trial and hunt test bloodlines are among the most numerous dogs in wilderness search-and-rescue, disaster search-and-rescue, narcotics detection, explosives detection, and most other forms of scent detection work.

Comment by LauraS — June 17, 2009 @ 12:30 pm
Newsflash: physical pain exists in the real world of working dogs.

My wilderness SAR dog frequently ends up with cuts and scabs, and the occasional torn pad. Not from me, but from the rough terrain and brush we work in.

A violent rapist who kicks and punches the police service dog that is apprehending him inflicts pain.

Livestock inflict pain on herding dogs. Working cattle is in fact quite dangerous work for dogs.

If these dogs cannot handle the stress of their work, which includes pain, then they are useless for work.

Comment by LauraS — June 17, 2009 @ 12:39 pm
Please point out to me where I’m “avoiding the real issue of pain inflicted by a human on a dog to achieve a human’s goal.”

It is my distinct impression that I have been writing about nothing else, although I do realize I took the discussion to a higher level:

If it’s true that one cannot successfully train for a particular canine activity without a particular training tool or technique (e-collar, ear pinch) than is there a problem with the level of demand put on the dogs doing that job?

That’s the issue, along with the one of who gets to decide what tools and technique are allowed in training.

***

“Maybe there are no field champions taught without pain. Are there any champion herding dogs taught WITH pain? Any champion agility dogs? Any service dogs? Any drug detection dogs? What’s so darn important about field trials, anyway, that they justify using pain?”

Comment by EmilyS — June 17, 2009

Would you please do me the favor of actually READING what I write before responding? I have made that point at least twice, that in fact maybe the question we’re really looking at is that if it’s impossible to train a field champion without an e-collar, do field trials need to change? Or is there a greater benefit at risk of being eliminated?

Again, I think that’s a legitimate question, one to which I do not personally have the answer. Since it’s very clear to me at this point that you have no understanding of what these dogs do, how well they like it and if it’s worth it to them or humankind for them to get to that level of performance, I’d say it’s also pretty clear that you do not personally have the answer, either.

And yet, you seem perfectly willing to make decision for others on what is acceptable work for dogs, based on nothing more than your firm belief that pain equals cruelty, no matter the circumstances or the eventual benefit, to the dog, to the handler or to society.

Honest to Pete, have we really become such a nation of wimps?

I will say, however, that the very mention of the existence of an e-collar seems to be one of those hot-button issues that forces people to put in ear plugs and retreat to their ideological trenches, metaphorical guns up.

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 17, 2009 @ 12:47 pm
Are there any champion herding dogs taught WITH pain?

Yes. Are there any that are not?

Any service dogs?

Yes. The forced retrieve is almost universal among service dog trainers.

Any drug detection dogs?

Yes.

What’s so darn important about field trials, anyway, that they justify using pain?

See above.

Comment by LauraS — June 17, 2009 @ 12:56 pm
The purest use of pain — just pain, nothing else — in training that I know of is the electric fence.

Either the conventional “touch it and it shocks you” fence, such as the one that surrounds my goats and poultry, or the “invisible” ones that trigger an electric shock from a collar worn by a dog.

I have heard it reported that Karen Pryor’s dog, or one of them, was confined behind an invisible shock fence.

Are such fences inhumane? Is it wrong for a horse owner to fence her pasture with electrified tape? Is it wrong for a dog owner to add the “invisible” fence to the perimeter when she has a fence-jumper.

That’s just pain. No relationship involved.

Balance in dog training — that includes induction, reward, and correction, compulsion, and force when it is necessary, and only as much as necessary, to communicate with the dog has so little to do with pain as such, that it’s meaningless to tease it out of the entire picture.

But that is what some people become fixated on.

When I was watching a master retriever trainer working a young Labrador bitch (with an e-collar, not that it mattered) on a difficult concept, the thing that most impressed me was not the dog’s stoicism to pain — the touch she was getting from the e-collar was so low that some people literally cannot feel it, and I can barely make it out — but the dog’s resilience to pressure. The pressure he was putting on to her to get it right would have been immensely stressful to almost any other sort of dog, including some very hard police dogs I have known.

For that dog, with those genetics and previous training, the pressure was appropriate, and necessary to her success at the task. For another dog, less well-prepared, it would have been cruelty. In no instance would the tool have been inflicting pain.

“Pain” is a red herring. It allows those who delude themselves that “positive” training is not coercive to change the subject of pressure, compulsion, force, surprise — the “negatives” of training — into a degenerate debate about whether or not you hurt the doggy.

And it tries to scream over the voices of those who defend training dogs to achieve.

If you’ve trained a dog to a totally reliable retrieve (just for example) without any force, compulsion, correction, etc., then by all means, bring that puppy out and demonstrate. I for one would love to see it.

If you instead change the subject to the unreasonable and unnecessary nature of the reliable retrieve, then it’s pretty obvious that that demonstration is not going to be forthcoming.

Comment by H. Houlahan — June 17, 2009 @ 1:42 pm
Maybe there are no field champions taught without pain. Are there any champion herding dogs taught WITH pain? Any champion agility dogs? Any service dogs? Any drug detection dogs? What’s so darn important about field trials, anyway, that they justify using pain?

Comment by EmilyS — June 17, 2009 @ 12:11 pm

First off, do you differentiate between physical pain and “mental” pain?

Comment by K. B. — June 17, 2009 @ 1:44 pm
The excuse that these are high drive dogs who must have pain inflicted on them is senseless: these are the EASIEST to teach without pain because they desire the reward so much.

Comment by EmilyS

********************

Please name the high-drive working dogs that you have trained for real work or high-level competition, and describe the work and the dogs’ genetics.

Then please define “teach” and “train.”

Comment by H. Houlahan — June 17, 2009 @ 1:46 pm
Sorry - hit “enter” too soon!

Are agility dogs trained with pain? Yes, I’m sure there are. Dogs that are forced to do a dogwalk when they don’t want to by being pulled along by their collars. Dogs that are given a “leash” correction for breaking a start-line stay. Etc., etc. etc.

I think we are missing one important thing here - dogs learn by physical cues. Watch a puppy interact with an adult dog. If the puppy doesn’t learn the limits, the adult will snarl/snap/nip, and the response is a *yelp* - no necessarily a “that hurt”, but a “hey, okay, I get it”. That’s the same yelp you get when you do an ear pinch, a scruff, a leash correction, etc.

Any dog can learn through positive-only, but no dog is fully proofed without compulsion, which can include “pain”.

As for metal “pain” - my dog in particular would much prefer a leash correction or other “pain” inducing correction than the end of what we are doing or, worst of all, being sent from the room.

Comment by K. B. — June 17, 2009 @ 1:50 pm
The purest use of pain — just pain, nothing else — in training that I know of is the electric fence

Either the conventional “touch it and it shocks you” fence, such as the one that surrounds my goats and poultry, or the “invisible” ones that trigger an electric shock from a collar worn by a dog.

I have heard it reported that Karen Pryor’s dog, or one of them, was confined behind an invisible shock fence.

“I have heard it reported”—you don’t even claim to actually know, or to have a reliable source. Pure hearsay and ad hominem.

And please note that I’m not making the argument that use of the ecollar is always and necessarily inhumane. It’s just that you and Gina have not made any real argument as to why it is necessary in field training, other than the argument from authority that it is necessary, and those of us who are not convinced of that are just too ignorant to know what we’re talking about.

Comment by Lis — June 17, 2009 @ 2:16 pm
As for metal “pain” - my dog in particular would much prefer a leash correction or other “pain” inducing correction than the end of what we are doing or, worst of all, being sent from the room.

Yep. Ask a good schutzhund dog or police dog which he would prefer if he bites inappropriately: a hard collar correction, or to be led off the field back to his car?

The “positive” and “no pain” trainers argue that the latter — negative punishment in OC speak — is more humane while the former — positive punishment in OC speak — is overly harsh if not down right cruel.

Yet anybody who can actually read dog will see that the dog would would prefer the collar correction. It’s a quick and concise means of clearly communicating DON’T DO THAT AGAIN! And then the dog gets to go back to doing what he enjoys most in the world.

Comment by LauraS — June 17, 2009 @ 2:16 pm
Honestly, Lis, I think this is one of those issues that just cannot be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. Or anyone’s, really.

And now, I tell you with no lack of appreciation for the irony that I need to get a quick 15 minutes in with Faith and the clicker before I bolt back to work. (Late lunch because I’m covering a night meeting.)

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 17, 2009 @ 2:25 pm
It’s just that you and Gina have not made any real argument as to why it is necessary in field training, other than the argument from authority that it is necessary, and those of us who are not convinced of that are just too ignorant to know what we’re talking about.

e-collars are used in field trial training because they are the best tool for the tasks they are used for. They are the best tool because they are the most effective means of clearly communicating to the dog. Effective, clear communication that leads to a high degree of reliable success is the most humane means of dog training. Less effective means cause unnecessary confusion and stress in dogs.

Comment by LauraS — June 17, 2009 @ 2:32 pm
I have heard it reported that Karen Pryor’s dog, or one of them, was confined behind an invisible shock fence.

“I have heard it reported”—you don’t even claim to actually know, or to have a reliable source.

Comment by Lis — June 17, 2009 @ 2:16 pm

**********************

Reliable source Vivian Bregman was told that by Karen Pryor herself. Pryor told Bregman that she doesn’t use corrections, because there was no person controlling the switch to her electric fence and the dog controlled the corrections. Of course, the same claim can be made for any corrections — the dog can avoid them if he doesn’t misbehave.

Comment by LauraS — June 17, 2009 @ 2:52 pm
“It’s just that you and Gina have not made any real argument as to why it is necessary in field training, other than the argument from authority that it is necessary, and those of us who are not convinced of that are just too ignorant to know what we’re talking about.”

Think of it this way:

you have a toddler, and a warm/hot cup of coffee. The toddler keeps reaching for the cup. You are trying to train the idea of “hot, don’t touch”. You have choices:

Physically prevent the toddler from grabbing the cup. This will work for that moment, but not for tomorrows cup of coffee. You will have to physically prevent the toddler from grabbing the cup every time, since no connection is made between grabbing the cup (action) and getting burnt (consequence).

Give a verbal cue - “don’t touch, don’t touch, don’t touch”. Again, this will have to be repeated every time, with limited effectiveness.

Let the toddle touch the mug. Yep, the toddler is going to cry, but you knew the heat of the cup, while enough to cause some pain, wasn’t enough to burn or seriously harm the child. This teaches that actions have consequences, is effective, and doesn’t have to be repeated too many times before the child learns.

Throw the cup of coffee in the toddlers face, ensuring the toddler is seriously harmed, is in a great deal of lasting pain, will never touch any cup ever again, and will now be actively afraid of all cups.

Properly using any training method/device that causes pain is equivalent to the 3rd scenario - it works, and it causes no lasting harm to the dog.

Improper training - of ANY sort - is the 4th scenario. You haven’t trained what you set out to, and in fact, made the situation worse. And this is why the vast majority of dog owners should not use choke collars, prong collar of e-collars without training. In fact, many owners use flat nylon collars inappropriately as well, and cause lasting damage to their dogs.

The first two scenarios might eventually work - but you would never be able to trust that the message has been effectively received by the toddler/dog. Thus, the toddler/dog has been “taught”, but not proofed, and you cannot trust the dog to do what you want, when you want, how you want.

Now, this beggars the question: “why should dogs do what we want, when we want, how we want”. If you can’t answer this for yourself, I can’t help you. All I know is any dog I own will have a certain minimal level of expected behaviour, both for it’s own safety (recall, down, stay at an open door) and for my “convenience” (walking properly on a leash, behaving around people and other dogs, toleration for grooming, etc.).

Comment by K. B. — June 17, 2009 @ 2:57 pm
May I direct you all to a book written by a man named B. Waters, called Fetch and Carry: a treatise on training the retrieve.

My apologies for the overly long URL. Tiny url eludes me.

http://books.google.com/books?.....1#PPA21,M1

Proceed to page 22.

If you can ever find a real copy, it is worth it’s weight in gold.

Comment by Linda Kaim — June 17, 2009 @ 5:19 pm
Incidentally, this conversation could get you well on your way to that magical 100 mark.

Comment by Linda Kaim — June 17, 2009 @ 5:21 pm
Now, this beggars the question: “why should dogs do what we want, when we want, how we want”. If you can’t answer this for yourself, I can’t help you. All I know is any dog I own will have a certain minimal level of expected behaviour, both for it’s own safety (recall, down, stay at an open door) and for my “convenience” (walking properly on a leash, behaving around people and other dogs, toleration for grooming, etc.).

And there it is—the presumption that anyone who questions the necessity of a particularly favored tool, the ecollar, doesn’t train their dogs at all, and allows their dogs to just run completely wild.

Two years ago I got a scared little dog who cowered away from people and was fear-aggressive towards other dogs. Not only does she sit, stay, come when called, and wait at open doors until commanded to go through; she now loves to meet new people, has many doggy friends, and is able to make therapy pet visits to a nursing home—the first time with a crew of other dogs she hadn’t met before.

No ecollar or pinching of ears was involved. There was a spray bottle involved at one point to break her focus on things that particularly set her off, but I quickly found that wasn’t the most effective method. The primary tools for achieving this were a clicker and a treat bag—you know, exactly the things I’ve been told over and over again for the past two years, aren’t of the slightest use in reforming the behavior of a fear-aggressive dog.

And no, it hasn’t been 100% positive, that bugaboo of the imaginations of force trainers. I minimize the use of leash corrections and the word “No!”, but I do use them. But, again, the primary method is to reward good behavior, not punish bad behavior.

I’m please with the transformation of my previously scared little dog, but, hey, maybe what I’ve achieved isn’t good enough for you and your field champions. That’s fine. My little dog makes lonely people smile, and that’s better than any string of titles, before or after the dog’s name.

Comment by Lis — June 17, 2009 @ 5:31 pm
I’m please with the transformation of my previously scared little dog, but, hey, maybe what I’ve achieved isn’t good enough for you and your field champions. That’s fine. My little dog makes lonely people smile, and that’s better than any string of titles, before or after the dog’s name.

Comment by Lis — June 17, 2009 @ 5:31 pm

What you have achieved with your dog is fantastic. But you are missing one BIG part - your dog never should have been trained with an e-collar, as it simply doesn’t have the correct temperament for it. And any good trainer would tell you the same. But that doesn’t mean an e-collar isn’t a valid training tool - just that it’s invalid for your dog.

As for your assumptions - my dog is a miniature schnauzer who has no titles on either end of his name. And he too brings smiles to people faces, has never met a person he didn’t like, and is extremely well-balanced, well-tempered and well-behaved - all without the use of an e-collar (or ear pinching).

But because I don’t use an e-collar (or “insert training I don’t use here”) doesn’t mean I don’t agree with it.

When training for agility, you can repeat a sequence over and over and over and over again with certain dogs (like border collies). That doesn’t work with other certain breeds/dogs - you can repeat a sequence 2-3 times at most, before the dog starts to improvise.

So which method is right?

Neither and both. It depends on the dog.

EVERY SINGLE TRAINING METHOD OR DEVICE USED depends on the dog.

To state that e-collars are cruel/useless/should never be used simply because you choose not to use them, or they are not appropriate for your dog, is like me saying that “Gentle Leaders” are cruel and should never be used because they can cause harm with improper use and would be inappropriate on my dog.

“the primary method is to reward good behavior, not punish bad behavior”

That is the primary goal of any dog training, independent of what is being trained or how.

Comment by K. B. — June 17, 2009 @ 6:34 pm
I do want to make the same point, since I mentioned very early in this discussion that under no circumstances that I can possibly imagine would an e-collar be my tool of choice for Drew, my Sheltie. And that probably the vast majority of people who buy and use e-collars haven’t the knowledge to do so.

But … the e-collar is, at the end of the day, just a tool. Use it. Don’t. Your call. But don’t misuse it, if you’re going to. And don’t misunderstand it if you aren’t.

Frankly, many of the things everyone is reading into everyone else’s comments — that Karen Pryor did NOT change the dog-training landscape forever, that someone who uses an e-collar does it because it’s easy, etc., etc., etc — says more about the writer’s own biases and perceptions than anything else.

And frankly, I’ll include myself in that statement. That’s why I discuss things, even when it’s hard. That’s why I have changed some of my opinions over time, which is even harder.

Case in point:

On Twitter recently, I “retweeted” an interesting link posted by a person who maintains a Web site that’s very, very much against everything the HSUS does and (she presumes, incorrectly I believe) stands for. I did so because I thought the link was to something that was thoughtful and provocative.

I immediately got several private e-mails from people who were trying to “help me” by “explaining” that I had just “advanced an agenda” the e-mailers were “quite sure I did not agree with” by giving credibility (such as I can offer it) to the original poster.

Well, thanks, but … I can look after myself. And I do not limit my communications and reading material to people who agree with me. (Well … white supremacists and pet-haters excepted. Really, I don’t waste time considering the rantings of scary crazy people.)

I have changed my opinions on a great many things over the last 20 years, and that only happened because I entertained the notion that there was a possibility that I was dead wrong about something.

And in some cases, I now believe I was. Or maybe I am now. I keep working on it.

I try very hard to keep this point in mind and that’s why I welcome it when people — not sound-bite parroting trolls, but real, intelligent, thoughtful people — challenge what I write.

But honestly, who’d have guessed that my most controversial posts recently were two I thought were fairly innocuous when I wrote them? About having experts help evaluate the litter I raised and about helping my own puppy become the well-socialized, happy and productive member of society I want her to be.

That’s it for me tonight. I’ve got to eat something, train the puppy and feed every living thing on the place. And then I’m going to sleep like a baby … er … a puppy, now that I think about it!

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 17, 2009 @ 7:00 pm
I’m still waiting for the earpinch/ecollar advocates to tell me what they do when they encounter a dog that won’t open its mouth to pick up the object.

Comment by EmilyS — June 17, 2009 @ 8:05 pm
“As for metal “pain” - my dog in particular would much prefer a leash correction or other “pain” inducing correction than the end of what we are doing or, worst of all, being sent from the room.”

Which is precisely why you don’t need a “pain” leash correction for your dog. Why not choose the stronger “positive” correction than the “pain” correction? Removal of the desired object is the classic operant training technique.. but perhaps you would call that psychological coercion no different from force training?

Comment by EmilyS — June 17, 2009 @ 8:10 pm
Emily, let it go now. You just want to thrash. As I said upstream, there’s just not going to be a resolution on this matter that will satisfy anyone involved in the discussion.

In the meantime, I’m pleased to report my adorable and very clever 10.5 week old puppy, the marvelous Ms. Faith, now touches a target 25 feet and two stair steps away with her nose, sits, downs, waits, goes into her crate and high 10s on command.

I love training puppies!

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 17, 2009 @ 9:16 pm
Tired from a long day at work and there’s too much to respond to here for me to pull it together very coherently as tired as I am. But I want to say this: A trainer needs to understand the tool they choose to use, and needs to understand how and why that tool works. The fact is, some of the tools under discussion here use pain in order to elicit a response from the dog. No matter how much a lot of e-collar trainers want to say “It’s just a tickle!” or prong collar trainers want to say “It’s just power steering for my dog”, the truth is that there’s a REASON these tools work, and that reason is that they hurt.

These selfsame trainers then will often become angry and say “I don’t abuse my dog!” And who said you did? I’m saying that if you are honest with yourself about why your tool of choice is effective, you’ll admit it’s because it hurts. Whether it hurts a little or hurts a lot doesn’t matter (except insofar as you need to remember that so that you don’t over-apply). Just know your tool, and be honest with yourself about the reason for its effectiveness.

Now I’d love it if Gina didn’t ever use an e-collar again. She and I have had this conversation in the past, and we both know it’s an area on which we diverge. But what I respect about Gina is that she uses this tool WITH AWARENESS. She’s not lying to herself. She understands that the dog goes “Ouch! Okay - I guess I’ll pay attention to you after all!”. She’s honest with herself and works within that context to be fair to the dog.

That is SUCH an essential starting point to this discussion, and I just wanted to acknowledge that Gina “gets it”.

Comment by The OTHER Pat — June 17, 2009 @ 9:42 pm
OTHER Pat, please read this, and then explain how Jenna is being subjected to “pain” by the e-collar:
http://cynography.blogspot.com.....brain.html

Comment by LauraS — June 17, 2009 @ 10:38 pm
Which is precisely why you don’t need a “pain” leash correction for your dog. Why not choose the stronger “positive” correction than the “pain” correction? Removal of the desired object is the classic operant training technique.. but perhaps you would call that psychological coercion no different from force training?

Comment by EmilyS — June 17, 2009 @ 8:10 pm

Errrr … so if I follow you, what you are saying is that it is higher and nobler and such to cause the animal much more distress by isolation, banishment, or deprivation because then you can congratulate yourself that that distress was not physically painful?

Got it.

By the way, when I really, really want to make a big, harsh, world-shaking impression on one of my ES, I will send him or her away — upstairs to the bedroom, or out of the house entirely (only works with an actually trained and obedient dog, of course). Or with the German shepherd, who doesn’t appear to care about being ejected/isolated, I will deprive her of her fetishized fetch object du jour. These are among my most extreme corrections, reserved for extremely bad manners or crabbiness with the other dogs. A dog who is sent away or deprived of her stupid kong is a Dog In Big Trouble.

One reason I don’t use such methods all the time — aside from them being too harsh — is that this stops the conversation and interrupts the flow of the training or work (if we are training or working at the time). Another reason is that such measures, overused, become routine and noncommunicative, creating a sulky defeatist attitude in the dog.

Right now I am coping with Rosie being too keen and rough when we are moving the goats. Most of the time I correct her with a verbal “out” and require her to move off the stock for a few seconds. Other times she takes a poke or tap with my walking stick, or an attention-grabbing whack on the ground in front of her. The poke or tap works better, in that I have to be pretty loud and forceful to get her attention with sound, and this can worry the goats. Only when she genuinely flips me off do I send her to the porch and forbid her to work the goats — this has happened maybe a couple times in the past month or so. Trouble is, if she’s banished to the porch, all she’s thinking about is how much she’d like to nip at those goats again, and how tyrannical and unreasonable I am for not letting her do it. She’s not learning the impulse control needed to work the goats without using her teeth, because she’s not working the goats.

I’m sure the tap or poke with the stockwoman’s stick would be dismissed as “hitting the dog” and “inflicting pain” by the same people who think Cesar Millan kicks dogs. Same as a leg aid is, you know, kicking the horse.

In Rosie-world, which is where Rosie happens to live, it’s just a poke that reminds her to mind her pearlies, back off, and allows her very quickly to continue to do what she is highly driven to do.

Dogs are neither visual nor auditory learners. They are primarily olfactory and tactile learners, and the tactile sense is the last to leave the animals’ consciousness when he is excited. “Hands off” training denies this reality, and deprives the dog of his best cues for what is wanted, and what will and will not work for him.

Comment by H. Houlahan — June 17, 2009 @ 11:58 pm
“Which is precisely why you don’t need a “pain” leash correction for your dog. Why not choose the stronger “positive” correction than the “pain” correction? Removal of the desired object is the classic operant training technique.. but perhaps you would call that psychological coercion no different from force training?”

Comment by EmilyS — June 17, 2009 @ 8:10 pm

Why not always choose a positive correction? Because it’s not always an option. I can’t send the dog away when we are on walks. I can’t removal the desired object when we are on walks, and the desired object is another person/dog/squirrel/bird.

I said above I haven’t used an e-collar, but I have used a prong. Yep, a prong on a miniature schnauzer. After over a a YEAR of trying “positive” corrections to make our walks enjoyable. And I wasn’t asking for a competitive obedience type heel - just a dog that could walk past humans/dogs/squirrels/birds, etc. without lunging so hard on it’s leash that it vomited. A year of training, paying trainers, reading books, trying each and every thing with consistency and patience, let me tell you something - a dog with high prey drive just does NOT listen to anything you the mere human has to say, and ignores all tasty treats as well. But I had a dog that had a great heel and recall - as long as there were no distractions. I also had a dog that could do off-leash agility when there were other dogs around, since the reward of doing so, and the pain of being sent away (possible in that situation) outweighed the distractions.

Yep, I could have tried gentle leaders or harnesses, but my research indicated they prevent rather than train (remember the toddler and the hot cup of coffee? These are the physical restraints scenario).

After the most frustrating year of my life, I got a prong collar and learned how to use it properly. Yes, it caused my dog pain. Plucking the hair from his ears causes pain as well. I’ve also caused him pain removing a tick from in between the pads of his paws. Should I not do those things, even though they are for his long-term welfare, because they cause short-term pain?

I started using the prong last August.

Yesterday, we went for a walk, and encountered a woman with 3 young children. We walked up to them nicely, my dog sat, received some pats and some treats from the children, then we went on our way. Can’t ask for any better than that.

And you know what? He was NOT wearing a prong, just his normal collar and leash. The prong did exactly what it was supposed to do - it reinforced my message to him on proper behaviour, and trained him so that we do not need it anymore.

Now maybe someone else could have trained my dog to walk nicely without use of a prong. But I’m not someone else. I’m me, and my dog is my dog, and I humanely used a tool to train him to walk nicely, and be a well-behaved dog.

My choice. And I too get it - I caused him a few moments of pain to get the behaviour I desired. And?? We cannot go through life avoiding pain, either for us or our dogs. It’s a risk/benefit analysis, and I chose, and will choose again, to cause pain over the short term to get the long term reward.

But, I’ve said enough (or more than enough). There are those that see all “negative punishment” as inhumane, and all “positive correction” as humane, when it’s simply not true. But I cannot convince them of that, just as I cannot convince them that all dogs are not created equal (in terms of temperament), that all dogs cannot be trained using the same methods, and that all dogs are not happy living a life on the couch; that some would much rather be out hunting/herding/”terriering” even though those activities might cause pain and injury.

Comment by K. B. — June 18, 2009 @ 4:37 am
Comment by LauraS — June 17, 2009 @ 10:38 pm

OTHER Pat, please read this, and then explain how Jenna is being subjected to “pain” by the e-collar

Twofold response: First, I was trying to avoid using the term “shock collar” because it tends to elicit a negative emotional response in people. I had forgotten (and wasn’t really referring to) the fact that some e-collars also have a “vibrate” or “buzz” function. So if you’d like more accurate verbiage, go back to the post I wrote last night and substitute “shock collar” for “e-collar” and that should fix things for you.

Secondly, just as a reinforcement is whatever the subject perceives it to be (ala your earlier example of the variety of non-food reinforcements that are as or more effective than food with some dogs), so too is an *aversive* whatever the subject perceives it to be.

An example I like to use is the practice some companies have of posting lists of all employees who had perfect attendance the previous quarter. The company I work for used to do that. They were assuming it was reinforcing to their employees to see their names on such a list.

That was a bad assumption. For some employees I’m sure it was reinforcing. For others, it was embarassing - i.e. an “aversive”. I was in the second category, and I used to make sure I missed at least one day per quarter just to avoid having my name posted.

An aversive is what the *subject* perceives it to be, whether that is the embarassment of seeing your name posted publicly on a perfect attendance list or the annoyance of having a collar around your neck go “Buzzz! Buzzz!”. An aversive isn’t ALWAYS pain, but if it’s something the training subject works to avoid, then it IS an aversive.

And yes - when possible, clicker trainers like to set up training situations to use rewards rather than aversives. When possible.

But because aversives are so inclusive and don’t necessarily have to involve the application of pain, they are still a useful tool for the savvy clicker trainer who understands what motivates his/her *particular* training subject (motivation including both rewards and aversives) and makes use of it. Using the example of the leash pop v.s. the walk back to the car - both are aversives. The dog will work to avoid both of them, so they are both potentially effective. A trainer’s personal philosophy will inform which aversive they choose to use (in the event that the situation dictates an aversive cannot be avoided).

And yes, there ARE some clicker trainers out there who strive to train without the use of any aversives at all. But again - as has been observed on this thread - aversives are a part of life. At some level, ANYTHING the training subject doesn’t like qualifies as an aversive. Withholding the treat because the behavior wasn’t performed is an aversive. Low-level, but it IS an aversive. Pragmatically, you really can’t avoid using aversives. And pragmatic clicker trainers don’t try.

What they DO try to do - again along the same lines as what I wrote to Gina - is to be aware of when something functions as an aversive to the dog, and behave accordingly (i.e. don’t over-use it, don’t apply it beyond the point that the desired behavior has occurred, don’t use it if a reward can be used in the same situation with equal effectiveness, etc.)

So now I’ll have touched off that annoying debate about the slippery slope of aversives, and how if it’s all a matter of degree, why should it matter whether I choose to pop the collar v.s. lead the dog to the car, and so on. As is frequently the case, these discussions can be parsed ad nauseum.

For myself, I’ll return to my earlier statement and say that a responsible trainer needs to understand the tools s/he is using and how and why they work (and that INCLUDES aversives of ALL kinds) in order to be honest with themself and fair to the dog.

Comment by The OTHER Pat — June 18, 2009 @ 5:54 am
Even my cat Clara seems to have a point to make in this discussion, smacking Faith a good one right across the kisser when the puppy wouldn’t take, “NO, I don’t WANT to play with you!” for an answer.

Talk about an effecitive aversive! Faith came screaming over to me with a little blood on her nose. Clara jumped gracefully onto the table, sat and wrapped her tail around her legs and slitted her eyes in that wonderful feline way.

Body language: “And I MEAN IT, twirp.”

:)

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 18, 2009 @ 6:02 am
Yep, I could have tried gentle leaders or harnesses, but my research indicated they prevent rather than train (remember the toddler and the hot cup of coffee? These are the physical restraints scenario).

The Gentle Leader had the very useful effect that Addy was no longer choking herself and getting even more panicked by that when something scared her. It became possible to distract and calm her—and over time, she learned that most of these things weren’t very scary anyway, and lots of them are even Good Things.

The Gentle Leader isn’t training; it’s a tool that, for Addy, made training possible.

And, bonus extra, I immediately stopped having to listen to that scary cough, after one of her panic episodes.

Comment by Lis — June 18, 2009 @ 7:09 am
First, I was trying to avoid using the term “shock collar” because it tends to elicit a negative emotional response in people. I had forgotten (and wasn’t really referring to) the fact that some e-collars also have a “vibrate” or “buzz” function. So if you’d like more accurate verbiage, go back to the post I wrote last night and substitute “shock collar” for “e-collar” and that should fix things for you.

Well it’s nice that you acknowledge an exception to your sweeping assumption that e-collars can only deliver “pain”. That’s some progress, at least. But you still don’t get it.

An aversive is what the *subject* perceives it to be, whether that is the embarassment of seeing your name posted publicly on a perfect attendance list or the annoyance of having a collar around your neck go “Buzzz! Buzzz!”. An aversive isn’t ALWAYS pain, but if it’s something the training subject works to avoid, then it IS an aversive.

The e-collar as it is used with Jenna isn’t an aversive. That’s obvious to anyone actually observing her. The well-written article is clear on that point. The e-collar breaks the cycle of Jenna’s bizarre self-perpetuating barking feedback loops and quite obviously makes her feel instantly better.

For a small percentage of dogs (NOT most dogs and NOT Jenna), the vibrating e-collar buzzer is an aversive. For those dogs, a low stim is usually more effective and it too is not an aversive.

Look at it this way. If somebody slaps you, that’s painful and possibly an aversive. If somebody lightly taps you on the shoulder, that’s not painful and it’s not an aversive. Low stim training with an e-collar is like a light tap on your shoulder. If you don’t understand this then I can only conclude that you have very little experience with modern e-collar training.

Comment by LauraS — June 18, 2009 @ 7:27 am
It actually would have been possible to use the Gentle Leader in the same way that K.B. eventually decided to use the prong - that is, as a means to redirect the dog’s attention back to the trainer, thereby providing an opportunity to train. Unfortunately, you don’t find a lot of descriptions of using it that way - most of the literature focuses on its use purely as a management tool rather than as a training tool. Sounds like that’s pretty much the kind of information K.B. found.

As an interesting side note to that and relative to one of my previous posts: Many folks argue that the Gentle Leader is also an aversive as it applies a pressure the dog works to avoid. For that reason, there is a segment of the clicker training community who condemn its use and declare that using a Gentle Leader is essentially no different from using a prong collar.

Another segment of the clicker training community absolutely disagrees, considers the Gentle Leader completely benign, and sees no reason not to use it.

The rancor of this disagreement became elevated to such a level that it caused a major rift in the clicker training community - a divide that survives to this day. Which just goes to show you that even a grouping as seemingly monolithic and homogeneous as “clicker trainers” contains its own subsets of viewpoints and opinions about the right and proper way of doing things.

Comment by The OTHER Pat — June 18, 2009 @ 7:30 am
Comment by LauraS — June 18, 2009 @ 7:27 am

Well it’s nice that you acknowledge an exception to your sweeping assumption that e-collars can only deliver “pain”. That’s some progress, at least. But you still don’t get it.

And it’s nice to see that you continue to read into what I wrote whatever you wish to read into it. I clarified that I wasn’t including the “buzz” setting in what I wrote. I clarified that. Okay?

So what other settings are there? Um - far as I know, the other settings are electrical shock. Which work because they hurt.

Clarification re-clarified. Now do YOU get it?

Low stim training with an e-collar is like a light tap on your shoulder.

Please be clear in YOUR terminology. Are you does “low stim” mean “vibrate”, or does “low stim” mean “shock”.

If you don’t understand this then I can only conclude that you have very little experience with modern e-collar training.
.

You’d be right. And furthermore, I have no DESIRE to have any experience with *shock collar* training (I’m trying to be precise here, thank you!)

Comment by The OTHER Pat — June 18, 2009 @ 7:40 am
Seriously … this has now just become a thrash. Every point that could conceivably be made has been made at least twice, and no one is going to change views.

Let’s move on, everyone.

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 18, 2009 @ 7:46 am
Okay, but will you release the comment I tried to post yesterday?

Comment by H. Houlahan — June 18, 2009 @ 8:11 am
Please be clear in YOUR terminology. Are you does “low stim” mean “vibrate”, or does “low stim” mean “shock”.

It means none of the above. Low stim training is the most common way e-collars are used today. It involves a light electrical stimulation that feels like a slight tingle. It is not a “shock”, it does not “hurt”, and it does not work by causing “pain”.

Comment by LauraS — June 18, 2009 @ 8:29 am
Gina wrote:
“A lot of trainers much, much (much, much) better than I am have looked at high-level hunt tests and to date, not one person to my knowledge has trained to the highest levels of field work without an e-collar.”

They do exist; I know of 2 goldens. One mentioned here, and unfortunately, the other one I can’t remember…

“Nev’s pedigree combines excellent field and obedience lines that were also healthy and long lived. Nev’s father was trained to his Master Hunter and became All-Age Qualified without any force training, a feat that was as rare then as it is now.”

http://www.gaylans.com/nev.html

Comment by KS — June 18, 2009 @ 8:32 am
Okay, but will you release the comment I tried to post yesterday?

Comment by H. Houlahan — June 18, 2009

Found in the spam filter and released. :)

—

And KS: Thanks for that find. I’m going to learn more about that dog and the training. :)

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 18, 2009 @ 8:38 am
“Nev’s pedigree combines excellent field and obedience lines that were also healthy and long lived. Nev’s father was trained to his Master Hunter and became All-Age Qualified without any force training, a feat that was as rare then as it is now.”

I’m don’t know for sure, but that may refer to no use of a “forced retrieve” in that dog’s training. That’s what the field trial folks I know mean by “force training”. There’s some debate amongst retriever folks whether extensive use of the forced retrieve might be reducing the natural retrieve drive in these dogs. That comment may not have anything to do with whether or not an e-collar was used. The only people I’ve heard refer to an e-collar as “force training” are anti-ecollar folks.

Comment by LauraS — June 18, 2009 @ 8:41 am
In the interest of full disclosure, I will start off by saying that I own Parker, Faith’s littermate.

This has been a really interesting discussion. Someone (Gina,maybe?) hit the nail on the head when she stated that about the only thing two dog trainers will agree on is that a third trainer is wrong.

I’m currently experimenting with training a retriever with methods “as positive as possible”; in other words, so far we have not used a forced retrieve or an e-collar. My goals with this dog are to earn a JH level hunt test title (may be either AKC or equivalent in another sanctioning organization) and a Working Certificate Excellent. I’m doing this not because I have an aversion to using force fetch or e-collar, as our previous four dogs were all trained with those methods,but I want to see if I can do it as a trainer. There is a lot of “buzz” about what people “should” be able to accomplish with mostly positive methods, but relatively few actually putting those methods into practice for competitive field work,period, let alone high level stakes such as AKC Field Trials or Master Hunter tests.

A few that are working at just that: Lorie Jolly, who has published a book entitled “Motivational Training for the Field”. Lorie does have a Field Champion Golden, but I am not sure if he was trained using force fetch and e-collar or not. Robert Milner who has a successful gun dog training kennel in Tennessee, and ran AKC Field Trials in the 70’s is currently working out a program incorporating clicker training and operant conditioning into widely accepted training progression for field trial dogs. A man named Lindsay Ridgeway is blogging the progress of his two Golden Retrievers as they are trained with positive methods for AKC Hunting Tests. His blog is http://lumi-laddie-test-series.blogspot.com/

The dog referred to in KS’s comments as being trained to QAA and MH without force fetch and E-collar…I can’t comment on how the dog was trained, but Trifecta kennels, where he was raised is an authorized Dogtra dealer, currently trains client dogs with e-collar and states on their website that they are “strong believers in the use of the modern, new generation of E-collars for the regular pet household”.

Comment by Katie Bruesewitz — June 18, 2009 @ 10:17 am
Here’s Parker (the former Mr. Green) one month ago.

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 18, 2009 @ 10:41 am
The OTHER Pat: thank you for your comments on this subject; you have expressed my thinking much much more clearly than I myself did.

Comment by EmilyS — June 18, 2009 @ 10:44 am
I’m doing this not because I have an aversion to using force fetch or e-collar, as our previous four dogs were all trained with those methods,but I want to see if I can do it as a trainer.

Kudos to you for this project, Katie.

In rescue training (not the training of the search dogs, the training of the human personnel) and testing scenarios, we will often play “subtract a resource.”

The team is navigating a search task, and the instructor takes away their GPS units.

The high-angle rescue scenario with a team of twelve is in full swing, and an evaluator “kills off” the team leader and simultaneously announces that one of the belay lines has been cut off by a sharp edge.

The survival bivvy practice is going so smoothly, the training officer “subtracts” everyone’s tarps.

The idea is to be mentally prepared for any eventuality, to prevent personnel from becoming tool-dependent or technique-bound, and to build team confidence by showing them that they can succeed in a higher-stress, lower-resource situation than the ones in which they’ve become comfortable. It’s about being ready for the for reals.

Now, when my goal du jour is to get the dog trained (for whatever purpose), I’m going to use the tools and techniques that I think are the best — fastest, most effective, most solid — for that dog. Any professional trainer who has a client to whom she is accountable must do the same. Those are going to be the tools and techniques with which I am most comfortable about 90% of the time.

But if we are instead working on our personal development as a trainer (and it’s not a critical issue for the dog’s well-being), we may play “subtract a resource” in order to stretch our own resourcefulness. If the trainer has always used food, always used a leash and collar, always used an e-collar, etc. for a particular skill, then she should be asking herself how she would get the same outcome without those tools. If the trainer is a chatterbox, she might work some signal sessions with duct tape on her mouth. If she relies on physical presence a lot, she might try training from a chair. This should be true of a serious amateur who holds forth on “how to train dogs” as well as any professional who takes money for doing so.

It’s the flip side of a mature willingness to consider and experiment with new tools, techniques, and approaches. La la la, I can’t hear you is no way to develop into a better trainer.

Which is what makes this comment:

You’d be right. And furthermore, I have no DESIRE to have any experience with *shock collar* training

So disappointing.

If a balanced trainer shouted that she refused to learn anything about clicker training, would not watch a demonstration or hold a clicker, because she already knew that it was wrong useless, and a plot by Satan, she’d be lucky to escape the “positive” clickerians with her skin. I’ve seen trainers pilloried with an impressive viciousness by self-proclaimed “positives” for far less.

But it’s a self-awarded mark of moral superiority to know that a different tool can only be painful, and refuse to permit oneself to learn otherwise.

FWIW, in the world of balanced trainers, I’m considered a rather sharp critic of the e-collar and its overuse. Not because it is being used inhumanely, but for more nuanced reasons that have more to do with the button-end of the radio signal.

I suspect, as do you and LauraS, that the golden who was not “force trained” was trained pretty conventionally (which in the retriever world often means e-collar, and certainly balanced training techniques) but not “force-fetched.” That’s worth mentioning because of the very real concerns about a degeneration in the retriever breeds’ natural fetching instincts that may be driven by the universal use of highly effective force-fetch training techniques among the field-trial set. A dog who demonstrates that he can achieve at a high level without such training is a great genetic resource. He is not “proof” that any dog and any trainer can do the same.

Comment by H. Houlahan — June 18, 2009 @ 11:20 am
Okay - let’s be more precise again.

“And furthermore, I have no DESIRE to have any experience with *shock collar* training” means I have no desire to ever put a shock collar on a dog and push the button. That doesn’t mean I won’t benefit from learning how shock collars are used in a training situation to broaden my understanding of the various ways in which animals learn. But learning about them doesn’t require me to “have experience” with them any more than learning about fall of the Roman Empire requires me to find a time machine so I can go back there and live it.

I can understand how and why a method works without having to compromise my own value system by actually *using* it.

By the way - the scenario you describe about the trainer who would not hold a clicker? I ran into something very much like that at a clicker seminar I attended. To her credit, this trainer was willing to give it a shot and see what “this clicker stuff” was all about. But in one of the training sessions - once if finally sunk in just how SMALL an increment of the behavior she was expected to accept and click for - she pretty literally threw up her hands and said “I just can’t do this. I can’t reward a dog for something so *trivial*. I just don’t think I can train this way.”

And I looked at her and said “I would have to agree. If you’re not willing to accept this level of progress from your dog as progress, then this probably isn’t a training approach that’s *ever* going to work for you.”

And that was the end of her experiment with clicker training.

(By the way, don’t ask me to do the same thing with an e-collar. Asking her to try the clicker v.s. asking me to push the button on an e-collar are two entirely different things altogether - LauraS’s “low stim” description notwithstanding.)

Comment by The OTHER Pat — June 18, 2009 @ 11:58 am
If a balanced trainer shouted that she refused to learn anything about clicker training, would not watch a demonstration or hold a clicker, because she already knew that it was wrong useless, and a plot by Satan, she’d be lucky to escape the “positive” clickerians with her skin. I’ve seen trainers pilloried with an impressive viciousness by self-proclaimed “positives” for far less.

Considering the frequency with which I’ve heard clicker training described as “food bribery” and use of reward-based training approaches described, referred to, or just assumed to be a failure to train at all resulting in a dog that has no idea how to behave correctly (in this very comment thread!*), the correction-based (“balanced trainers”, meaning that trainers who train differently are “unbalanced”, which also means “crazy”) trainer who refuses to learn anything about clicker training, won’t watch a demonstration or hold a clicker, because she already knows that it is wrong, useless, and a plot by Satan, is hardly the wild’n’crazy hypothetical you present it as.

I’ve been roundly told that I am personally responsible for dogs being surrendered to shelters as untrainable, or even being taken directly to the vet to be killed as untrainable, because I decline to use on my dog techniques and tools that would be disastrous for her.

*Don’t believe me that it’s happened in this very thread, that people have equated reward-based training with no training at all, resulting in dogs with no idea how to behave? Here it is:
Now, this beggars the question: “why should dogs do what we want, when we want, how we want”. If you can’t answer this for yourself, I can’t help you. All I know is any dog I own will have a certain minimal level of expected behaviour, both for it’s own safety (recall, down, stay at an open door) and for my “convenience” (walking properly on a leash, behaving around people and other dogs, toleration for grooming, etc.).

Comment by K. B. — June 17, 2009 @ 2:57 pm

Comment by Lis — June 18, 2009 @ 12:11 pm
I have a client who does low level field training. She tells me she is the only one not using a ecollar in her group. They call her a Quaker.

Comment by Nancy Freedman-Smith CPDT — June 18, 2009 @ 1:03 pm
ooops, I mean they call her Amish (broke my coffee maker!)

Comment by Nancy Freedman-Smith CPDT — June 18, 2009 @ 1:15 pm
That’s cuz they’re so open, fair-minded, and reasonable about training choices different than their own, right?

Comment by Lis — June 18, 2009 @ 1:18 pm
Other Pat, no one is asking you to push a button.

I’ll push the button. You hold the collar.

If you continue to insist that it is painful after that, then I suppose there is nothing more to be done.

Your clicker skeptic did a whole lot more than that before the two of you agreed she should bail.

Thanks, Lis, for calling everyone who is balanced “correction-based.” That’s a whole rhetorical step up from the usual slur of “punishment-based.” It isn’t any closer to the truth, but hey, details, details.

Comment by H. Houlahan — June 18, 2009 @ 1:21 pm
Re-visit my discussion about aversives. If it’s something the dog would prefer to avoid, it’s an aversive. Whether or not pain is involved.

Clicker trainers prefer not to use an aversive when a reward will do. The strength of that preference varies by trainer. Just as the strength of the aversive needed varies by situation/dog.

It’s not about whether or not the e-collar hurts when I put it on my arm. It’s about the choices *I* choose to make in my training approach.

Comment by The OTHER Pat — June 18, 2009 @ 1:27 pm
Hey Gina - 87 comments. You’re getting there . . . . .

Comment by The OTHER Pat — June 18, 2009 @ 1:29 pm
Other Pat, no one is asking you to push a button.

I’ll push the button. You hold the collar.

How about, instead, you put the collar on your neck, and then push the button.

Thanks, Lis, for calling everyone who is balanced “correction-based.” That’s a whole rhetorical step up from the usual slur of “punishment-based.” It isn’t any closer to the truth, but hey, details, details.

I note that you continue to call your kind of training “balanced”, with all its backhanded implications about anyone who trains differently. And this time it isn’t even “balanced trainers”; it’s “everyone who is balanced.” That’s a pretty sweeping claim!

Comment by Lis — June 18, 2009 @ 1:34 pm
I’m actually proud to be “out of balance” towards the side of reward-based training!

Comment by The OTHER Pat — June 18, 2009 @ 1:38 pm
It’s not about whether or not the e-collar hurts when I put it on my arm. It’s about the choices *I* choose to make in my training approach.

That’s not what you said yesterday, comment #60:

the truth is that there’s a REASON these tools work, and that reason is that they hurt.

I’m saying that if you are honest with yourself about why your tool of choice is effective, you’ll admit it’s because it hurts. Whether it hurts a little or hurts a lot doesn’t matter

Laura and I present examples, based on real experience, based on actually repeatedly testing the collars on ourselves before ever employing them on a dog, and suddenly, it doesn’t matter about whether or not it “hurts,” it’s now that we are somehow forcing you to do something you don’t wanna do. (That part is true. I’m attempting to force you to put up or shut up, and you don’t want to.)

That’s fine. Never touch an electronic collar. There’s no need at all for most people to do so. Why should there be? But you don’t get to authoritatively and globally proclaim out of a ground of perfect ignorance that they always hurt while sticking your fingers in your ears and humming.

You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.

Comment by H. Houlahan — June 18, 2009 @ 1:43 pm
How about, instead, you put the collar on your neck, and then push the button.

That’s really, really funny. Much funnier than you can imagine.

Because I am RIGHT NOW, THIS MOMENT using my large Dogtra e-collar as a handy-dandy TENS unit. On my neck, which has been quite a problem lately. And I’ve got the electrical stimulation set up quite a bit higher than most dogs will ever feel from this collar.

It feels pretty good.

Comment by H. Houlahan — June 18, 2009 @ 1:49 pm
Comment by H. Houlahan — June 18, 2009 @ 1:43 pm

That’s not what you said yesterday, comment #60:

For the THIRD time (RE-clarifying my previously clarified clarification) I was referring to the use of shock as I wrote that. I had forgotten about the “buzz” setting, and this whole “low stim” idea just reeks of the “power steering for dogs” argument. Not gonna go there.

Again - when I was referring to pain, I was referring to the use of shock.

When it was pointed out to me that e-collars have a “buzz” setting, I expanded my discussion to include the concept of aversives.

Gina’s about to yell at me for continuing to beat this dead horse, but what am I to do when you guys aren’t actually *reading* what I wrote?

(I keep flashing to Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men” barking out “You can’t HANDLE the truth!”)

Comment by The OTHER Pat — June 18, 2009 @ 1:58 pm
Because I am RIGHT NOW, THIS MOMENT using my large Dogtra e-collar as a handy-dandy TENS unit. On my neck, which has been quite a problem lately. And I’ve got the electrical stimulation set up quite a bit higher than most dogs will ever feel from this collar.

It feels pretty good.

Comment by H. Houlahan — June 18, 2009 @ 1:49 pm

Ok…as an amateur dog trainer I have no problem with you putting that e-collar on your neck. As a physical therapist, however….hmmmm…not so sure on that one. How about a nice microwave heat pack and some stretching? :)

Comment by Katie Bruesewitz — June 18, 2009 @ 2:02 pm
It occurs to me that you guys would have been in heaven during the “Prong Collar v.s. Gentle Leader - Is It Or Is It Not An Aversive” wars to which I referred previously . . . . . .

Comment by The OTHER Pat — June 18, 2009 @ 2:08 pm
I wasn’t going to add anymore, but…

RE comment #81:

“*Don’t believe me that it’s happened in this very thread, that people have equated reward-based training with no training at all, resulting in dogs with no idea how to behave?”

Please, DO NOT put words in my mouth. That comment was about how preventing certain behaviours, as opposed to training against them, creates a dog you cannot trust to not do those behaviours. Prevention does not train, and that comment was about my desire to have a trained dog that can walk nicely on a leash, not simply one that is prevented from pulling/lunging/chocking/vomiting, etc.

I have no problem with reward-based, positive only, whatever-you-want-to-call-it training. In fact, the majority of what I have trained my dog to do has been achieved with those methods, and anything I teach him in the future will start with those methods.

And if that works for you and your dog, yippee! However after a year of trying, I woke up to the fact that it doesn’t always work for hard, high drive, PITA, dominant dogs like mine.

And I take equal offense to those that think/imply/say that anyone that dares to use a choke/prong/shock collar, or any “aversive” training method is somehow inadequate/abusive/old-fashioned.

I will always choose to train my minimum standards of behaviours in my dogs, and those minimum standards may be more or less than you have for yours. And to train those behaviours, I will use any tool that is available to me.

Comment by K. B. — June 18, 2009 @ 4:08 pm
“However after a year of trying, I woke up to the fact that it doesn’t always work….”

I found that it also doesn’t work for bossy collie boys who think they’re in charge when off the property.

Which is totally my fault as a first-time dog owner, but left me also having to deal with the problem I’d inadvertently created.

I had followed what my impression is of one dicta of “positive” training, which is to ignore undesirable behavior and it will disappear over time. Wrong. All it told him was that the behavior was ok and that he was in charge.

Treats and a happy voice worked unless there was something else he’d rather do, like go visit the kitty, then he just blew me off. It also created excitement, which was the last thing I wanted.

What has worked is finding ways that communicated to him what the deal actually needed to be. These turned out to be physical, not verbal or auditory or food.

There are no trainers around here that I’m willing to work with, so it has taken awhile.
The back and forth here has been very helpful in giving me the bigger picture.

He finally had “aha!” moments when I put him behind me on walks, which caused an immediate dramatic tantrum the first time ( I think I’m onto something here) and when he really, finally, deliberately refused to walk on a loose lead, I turned around and physically backed him up and made him give ground until he sat.

It took about six months (I know that’s a long time, but I had to feel my way and he really didn’t want to believe he wasn’t in charge, so the testing was pretty constant) of walking him behind me or backing him up when he started trying to control the walk, but I finally have achieved willing compliance and walks are a lot more fun for both of us.

I now have a dog who isn’t constantly wanting to forge or pull, happily does what I ask, doesn’t blow me off and knows that if he walks WITH me the way I want him to and sits parallel to me when I say “sit”, that the leash comes off and he’s free to “rock and roll”.

Comment by Susan Fox — June 18, 2009 @ 6:28 pm
The reference to “Balance” has nothing to do with being better than or worse than, it has everything to do with using all four quadrants of learning, positive reinforcement, positive punishment, negative reinforcement, negative punishment.

I use ecollars routinely, have for years. I also use leashes and collars, treats, clickers and an assortment of other training devices all specific to the needs of the dog and the goals of the owner.

I am also one of the only trainers in my area who will handle the really tough dogs that have been failed by training that was not appropriate for them.

There is no one way, there is only the way that suits the demands of providing the results that the end user, the client, student,customer and their animal require.

So many times I have seen the result of training that was ill suited for the dog or the owner, whatever the methodology. I am sure there are arguments for people who use lure/reward and clickers seeing the fallout of poorly timed, poorly applied collar corrections, ecollar use and so on. The same can be said for people who have been ill-served by the local clicker trainer who didn’t bother to fade the reward adequately or whose timing was so doG awful that the dog has now been conditioned to react to the sound of the word “chicken!” with aggression and redirection. Yes, it is true.

It’s not a matter of use, it’s a matter of application.

Crappy timing, a limited knowledge base and the unwillingness to extend that base beyond one’s comfort zone to accept that there is more than one method or application and that the very mention of ecollar should not be one of “pain” or “force”.

Those who simper about “pain” have never seen the appropriate application of an ecollar on a dog.

Usually their justifications for NOT using one are based on heresay or opinions based on faulty ‘science’.

Not that this is going to change anyone’s mind, but there are quite a number of really good trainers out there who follow a variety of disciplines and the only thing different about them is their willingness to explore options and learn new things. They have denuded themselves of what they thought in favor of actually seeing for themselves and learning something new.

If one is going to call themselves a pro trainer, they need to study the evolution of training not just from books (that DogWise has reprinted with the little caveats about applications inside the front covers) but through personal research by seeking out the mentors in that discipline.

These days anyone can call themselves a trainer without any provenance, which is wrong.

What needs to be measured is not just a rote knowledge of theories, but a practical knowledge of actual dog training as it has been applied throughout the ages.

Only three more comments to go.

Comment by Linda Kaim — June 19, 2009 @ 5:55 am
Those who simper about “pain” have never seen the appropriate application of an ecollar on a dog.

Linda, up until this sentence, I was reading and considering what you had to say in this comment. And I bet you can’t identify what about this particular sentence persuaded me that you were wasting my time.

(Free hint: I’ve pointed out several times that I’m not one of those who believes that the ecollar can never be used humanely and effectively.)

Comment by Lis — June 19, 2009 @ 6:26 am
Those who use the phrase “simpering about pain” really have nothing to say to me. The assumption that those who object to pain have never seen it used is repellant, as is the whole notion of pain in training. I have SEEN the use of pain, IRT the earpinch, repeatedly. None of you will answer my question: what do you do if the dog doesn’t want to open its mouth? Because the answer is: escalate the pain. And when the dog squeals in in pain, that’s a good thing, because now his mouth is finally open and you can “pop in” the dumbbell. And in the future, you only have to “tickle” the dog’s ear as a “correction” to remind him he “must comply”. So no, there’s no “pain” involved at that point (as there is no pain with the stim setting of the ecollar). It’s “merely” a reminder.. and threat… to the dog that pain might be the consequence.

And this all so the dog will.. allegedly.. reliably retrieve a dumbbell in competitive obedience.

Comment by EmilyS — June 19, 2009 @ 6:41 am
“Simpering about pain” is an incredibly poor choice of words, and I know I regret it, whether or not Linda does.

I think it’s important for all to acknowledge what adversives are, why and how they work and what are their advantages and limits as part of a trainer’s skill set. I think the pro-con/limitations issue also needs to be looked at for all training methods.

Emily, you keep coming back to the same thing: If there are some jobs for dogs for which they cannot be trained without pain (or perform without pain, as in the cited example of herding or police work, in which dogs are often injured or even killed), should we be training dogs for or putting dogs into those jobs? Who gets to decide? And what do we as a society lose if those jobs go away?

I know I was flamed for it earlier, but I really do see this as the same fundamental issue underlying efforts to ban breeding and ban breeds. Who gets to decide that my decision to breed a litter of heritage retrievers will not be allowed as long as there is one single animal in a shelter? Who gets to decide that no one really “needs” a pit bull? Who gets to decide that competitive obedience (or field trials, police work, SAR, etc.) is not worth having if adversives are used in training?

It’s no coincidence that PETA has equated the use of service dogs for people with disabilities as the equivalent of slavery and is also in full support of breeding bans and breed bans.

PETA understand it all as the same issue: The “exploitation” of dogs to serve the needs and desires of humankind, and where to draw the lines.

Who gets to decide for me and for my dogs? For you and for yours? For the dogs of Guide Dogs for the Blind or the U.S. Army?

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 19, 2009 @ 7:08 am
You just HAD to do your OWN 100 didn’t you!

Woo-Hoo!

Comment by The OTHER Pat — June 19, 2009 @ 7:18 am
Gina, no fairs being your own 100.

You ask:

And what do we as a society lose if those jobs go away?

And I ask:

What do the dogs lose if those jobs go away?

I see not a slippery slope, but a short, sharp drop from “The wicked trainer inflicted pain on the goggie to train him, and this must not be allowed,” to “The wicked handler allowed the goggie to be butted by a ram / cut his pad on the ice / slashed by brambles / cold, wet, hungry for a day / kicked and choked by the rapist — and this must be stopped.”

Nobody can rival my guys for their appreciation of the creature comforts; all worship at the throne of the sacred eiderdown.

And every one of them will leave comfort, warmth, food, security, and all our fawning human expressions of love in order to work hard, sometimes play hard, and take hard knocks doing it. They live for the moment when I allow them to do so.

Some of those knocks come from me. Some of them are even physical, though not the hardest ones. That’s a fact about them, and the work, and it is not one that I spend any time rending my garments over. I don’t stay up nights trying to figure out ways to avoid correcting a dog who has made a mistake or chosen to rebel, or ways to manipulate the environment to avoid that mistake. It does not make me feel guilty to correct a dog, unless some preventable fault of mine directly caused the error.

And in the end, I have dogs who are privileged and fulfilled in ways that most people cannot even imagine, or believe to be the realm of fantasy. That is something I do regret, and I do feel pity for people who cannot conceive of, or see when it is before them, the suffusing and infectious joy of a dog who has learned to do a hard job well. My pity stops when those people imply that I am cruel to animals for enabling that joy. At that point I am not nice.

Comment by H. Houlahan — June 19, 2009 @ 7:39 am
I don’t regret the choice of words, I do regret that they were misunderstood.

I have seen dogs unfairly trained using pain as a conditioner, and again, it’s the inappropriate use of a negative enforcer that is the problem. That’s a TRAINER issue, not a tool issue.

I am opposed to this kind of training as much as the next person.

My question arises from the naysayers who have never seen the PROPER application of an ecollar in the actual training of a dog. Or the proper application of the Koehler Method. Or many other methods that condone the use of positive punishment as a proofing tool, not as a teaching tool.

They forsake the real possibility for a predetermined and narrow view of a device or methodology based on anything but actual hands on experience.

Heather’s comments about using her DogTra as a TENS machine is a good example. Used at settings where the stimulation is nothing more than a pulse on the muscle cannot be in any way construed as pain, but a later comment from a physical therapist indicated a lack of understanding about how the collar actually functions. The mechanics. Her concern as a healer of people blocks her understanding of the mechanical functions of a device that is designed on the exact same principal as a tool used in the physical therapy of human beings for decades.

DogTra collars in particular have settings from 0 to 127. At the lowest settings, the collar is not even discernible to human flesh, at the highest settings, yes, it is painful.

The preferences of trainers for the DogTra collar are simply because of the latitude it offers in levels of stimulation. Less lower end than any other collar, more high end than any other collar.

As dog trainers, we all have seen the dog that is over-stimulated and on the threshold of really reactive behavior, where it seems that nothing can deter them, or break through their thought processes sufficiently to deter the behavior.

It is the DOG that determines the level of stimulation, based on his response to the pressure. Not the handler’s. If the handler is making a determination, the collar is being used as a corrective device and I will be the first to admit that it is being used incorrectly.

It is also the TIMING that determines the effectiveness of the stimulation. I am opposed to the use of correction here, simply because if conditioned correctly, the dog will remember that that tingle means he has to make a choice about his current behavior.

This is the fundamental flaw; the erroneous misconceptions about how collars work and their only application is as a tool of punishment. That is where I erred.

“Simpering” may not apply to all readers, but I am sure there is a fair share of readers here that have only seen an ecollar used ONE way and ONE way only. It is not a device to be used by the uninitiated nor the brutal fool who uses it as a cudgel to break a dog.

Like they say, if all you have is a hammer…. then every thing looks like a nail.

For those of you who took offense, it was not directed at anyone in particular, but I battle this stigma every day and it becomes tiresome to hear the same argument from individuals who have A) never seen an ecollar on a dog at all, or B) have seen the device in the hands of a total moron.

As for the ear inch, if it is being used as a tool for training, it is being used out of context. If it is being used as a tool for correcting behaviors outside of the retrieve, it is being used out of context by a pretender who has no more business on the end of a leash than Jeffrey Dahmer does in a high school.

It is a correction used after the placement of the dumb-bell into the dogs mouth many dozens of times to familiarize it with the process of holding something other than his own free choice. The dumb bell is not forced into the dogs mouth, it is placed. After and only after the dog is willing to open his mouth at the presentation of the article and willfully refuses to grasp it is the appropriate ear pinch even supposed to be employed. And only enough pressure is supposed to be applied in order for the dog to open his mouth and take the dumb bell.

Anything more is not training. It is torture.

Comment by Linda Kaim — June 19, 2009 @ 7:46 am
Yeah, funny how that No. 100 worked out.

I’m actually glad y’all didn’t stop when I asked you to upstream. After everyone stopped screaming at each other with their fingers in their ears, we’ve had a lot of thoughtful, provocative and well-argued posts.

Likely no one is changing what they’re doing, but I hope we all have a better understanding of why others make the decisions they do in dog-training.

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 19, 2009 @ 8:00 am
Gina, there are many jobs that dogs no longer do. Dogfighting, for example. And there are many ways people used to train their dogs to do jobs for us that we don’t accept. Beating them to pull a cart, for example. And there are many forms of training that most people now generally look askance at (hanging and drowning for example). Fighting dogs, and beaten cartpullers loved their people just as much as H. Houlahan’s dogs love her. The fact of dog love is no proof of the absence of dog abuse… dogs are like that.

I DO believe in “working dogs”. I DO believe in maintaining breed functions, within the context of our modern concepts of what’s humane (the pit bull people have agonized for decades about how to maintain the unique characteristics of the APBT in the absence of the traditional ultimate test).

I am very very troubled by dog “work” but most especially “sports” that involve the use of dogs in the killing of other creatures (as in terrier “work” and live rabbitcoursing). Though I am not opposed to people killing other animals for food which might seem a contradiction. And I am very very troubled by training methods that involve people inflicting pain on other creatures, particularly when the end is some trick like retreiving a dumbbell. If it were truly necessary to inflict pain for a dog to perform as a service dog, a detection dog, a SAR dog or any of the real “work” dogs do, I might accept that. But the evidence (working dogs not trained with pain) is that such training methods are NOT necessary.

And I just laugh at people who equate the pain an animal might incur from its natural running/chasing/play activities with the pain we choose to inflict on a dog to “train” it.

Just as it perhaps ONCE was true that there were no OTCH dogs that hadn’t been earpinched, it may be now true that there are no field champions that haven’t been force-trained. But it’s not true for OTCH dogs any longer, because people have been using non-force methods for years. And I believe that if enough people used non-force methods for field work, there would be non-forced retreivers, too.

I believe pain is a method people choose. I’m not going to accept pain training just because PETA thinks that service dogs are slaves.

Comment by EmilyS — June 19, 2009 @ 8:03 am
Not do I accept your point about dog-fighting, but I also made exactly the same point earlier. Let me try to make my larger point again:

You say:

“I’m not going to accept pain training just because PETA thinks that service dogs are slaves.”

I say:

I am in full support of your decision to train your dogs as you choose. I just don’t want you (or a legislative body) making MY decisions for me with regard to how I train my dogs or what jobs they’re trained for.

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 19, 2009 @ 8:09 am
Gina, sorry, but I see a huge difference between the possibility that a dog will be injured doing work (herding, police work, SAR), or even competing in a sport (field trials, schutzhund), and using pain corrections to train for those things—particularly using pain corrections to train for the game version (field trials) of something that people have trained dogs for the real version of (hunting for food) without the tools now alleged to be “essential.”

Yes, PETA wants to blur the distinctions amongst all those things. I think you know what I think about PETA. I’m not impressed by that argument and don’t feel inclined to change my position to make it more similar to PETA’s.

Earlier, you compared Sonja Henie to today’s Olympic Gold figure skaters. No, she couldn’t compete. But it’s a bad comparison because a lot of what happens in ~~little girls’~~ women’s figure skating and gymnastics is destructive for the girls involved. Destructive in terms of their long-term health, consequences they don’t realize until they’re adults and their careers are over.

The ecollar used correctly is not remotely in the same category. But the fact that the intentionally undeveloped little girls are doing things the young women of previous generations couldn’t, is not a conclusive argument that what’s happening now is necessarily better.

I am just fascinated by the information that force-fetch training is also routine, and that not using force-fetch training would be noteworthy enough to mention in a dog’s history. Truly, if you need to force-fetch train your retriever, do you have a retriever at all, much less one that should be bred?

If a dog gets hurt doing something the dog loves, I don’t see that that’s any more an issue than a human athlete getting hurt doing something they love. And humans get hurt in training, too. But what doesn’t happen is putting a shock device on the human, and using it to “correct” the human when he or she doesn’t do the action correctly.

I do believe that most training devices can be used “correctly”, i.e., fairly and consistently so that the dog isn’t being abused, and will learn without being traumatized. But attitude makes a big difference there—and in my experience, it’s not just an unfortunate accident that Linda used the word “simper” to describe people doubt the wisdom of using shock collars. It is utterly typical, and it reflects an attitude that I would not tolerate in anyone training my dog.

This is one of the big differences between Cesar Millan and a lot of other highly vocal “traditional” or “balanced” trainers: he is not hung up on any tool, and does not get those demeaning little digs in at people who take a different approach to training or who don’t like a particular tool. I think a lot of his success is due to the fact that, as much as he really loves and respects dogs, he also likes and respects human beings—something lacking in a lot of people who call themselves trainers.

Comment by Lis — June 19, 2009 @ 8:21 am
The “such training methods are NOT necessary” pronouncements about working dog training and training methods from those who have little or no experience training working dogs or with the training methods in question are just amazing. Sadly, “my way or the highway” is becoming increasingly common.

The scary thing is, between these ill-informed, never-mind-the-facts pronouncements, and the pseudo-scientific nonsense spewing forth from the likes of AVSAB on the subject of dog training, the day is not long in the future when this ignorance becomes law.

I am in full support of your decision. I just don’t want you making MY decisions for me. Or for others whose dogs have jobs.

That’s it, in a nutshell.

Comment by LauraS — June 19, 2009 @ 8:39 am
Gina, sorry, but I see a huge difference between the possibility that a dog will be injured doing work (herding, police work, SAR), or even competing in a sport (field trials, schutzhund), and using pain corrections to train for those things

Please describe your experience and accomplishments training dogs in herding, police work, SAR, field trials, and schutzhund.

Comment by LauraS — June 19, 2009 @ 8:45 am
We’re getting back into a thrash again. … If you can’t advance the discussion, hit the mental pause button before you post.

There are a great many things I’ve never done, including manufacture pet food, but that doesn’t mean I’m not entitled to have an informed, well-supported opinion about the practice.

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 19, 2009 @ 8:50 am
Because - of course - those are the ONLY *real* training venues.

(snark hat off . . . . . )

Comment by The OTHER Pat — June 19, 2009 @ 8:51 am
Ooops! You got there before I saw it!

my bad . . . . . . .

Comment by The OTHER Pat — June 19, 2009 @ 8:52 am
You did great, Gina, waiting a whole week before calling about the pups. It must have taken a lot of willpower to resist the urge to call the new owners.

Comment by Colorado Transplant — June 19, 2009 @ 9:05 am
You did great, Gina, waiting a whole week before calling about the pups. It must have taken a lot of willpower to resist the urge to call the new owners.

Comment by Colorado Transplant — June 19, 2009

What puppies? I thought we were discussing dog-training. :)

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 19, 2009 @ 9:08 am
There are a great many things I’ve never done, including manufacture pet food, but that doesn’t mean I’m not entitled to have an informed, well-supported opinion about the practice.

The key words being “informed, well-supported”.

Some here continue to repeat misconceptions about training tools and training methods, and simply refuse to learn from those who actually do have “informed, well-supported” experience.

Comment by LauraS — June 19, 2009 @ 9:27 am
You know, this started out with a very nice piece by Gina extolling the joy of training a puppy…not just for the end product of a well behaved or trick-performing dog, but for the enjoyment by both parties of the process. And the fact that the particular litter of puppies being trained by Gina and her “dog in laws” have a nice head start on the training process because of the early socialization and “learning to learn” work that Gina did with them. Which comes back to the idea that all breeders are not the same. With the diversity of training techniques and wide variation in the skill of potential owners and trainers out there it is a real advantage to start out with dogs that have been carefully bred to have stable temperaments and the natural abilities associated with the breed’s original purpose. Retrieving and trainability, in the case of our breed. There are certainly those outside of this discussion who have brought up the idea that reliance on e-collar and forced retrieve training in retrievers may be muddying the waters in choosing breeding stock based on dogs’ success in the field “games”. Good breeders dig deeper than awards and titles on pedigrees and find out about the actual natural abilities of the dog versus the trained in skill. The same breeders producing dogs that may play at Field Trials or Hunting Tests are also producing dogs that will do real-life hunting, so the presence of those field games does provide a tool for evaluating potential breeding stock.

Comment by Katie Bruesewitz — June 19, 2009 @ 9:28 am
And of course, the funny thing about puppies is that Wednesday’s attentive, fast-learning little angel is Thursday’s wide-eyed “you talkin’ to ME?” puppy from hell.

Which she was.

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 19, 2009 @ 9:40 am
Surely not. ;0)

Comment by Susan Fox — June 19, 2009 @ 9:44 am
I guess the question I have at this point, honestly, is what do you do if you are unwilling to use any adversive methods and you have dog that simply does not want to comply?

It seems to me, correct me if I’m wrong, that “purely” positive training is predicated on the assumption that dogs want to do what you wish and the challenge is simply finding the best way to communicate that.

But my dog and plenty of other dogs I’ve met are intelligent, choice-making animals and they are perfectly capable of deciding to give you a doggy raspberry and then choosing to do what they want, not matter what enticements are offered.

And it doesn’t seem that the option is one giving up. I want a reliable dog off lead, not one that I can’t trust who then has to be kept on a leash at all times off the property.

This is not just an issue of the high drive working dogs that have been so much the topic of discussion, but medium energy and drive dogs like my collie.

How do you use purely positive, non-adversive methods to get the dog to accept that you are The Decider, not him? And that if you call him off approaching someone, then he’d jolly well better listan and obey?

It just seems like working with half a box of tools. But I’m listening. Tell me how.

Comment by Susan Fox — June 19, 2009 @ 10:07 am
Comments now number 120.

Is Faith going to have babies when she is old enough? Then you will have more dogs to train.
:D

Comment by Colorado Transplant — June 19, 2009 @ 11:42 am
“I am in full support of your decision. I just don’t want you making MY decisions for me. Or for others whose dogs have jobs.”

Nowhere have I told you what to do. And I haven’t seen anyone else telling you what to do. I have only said that I don’t like some methods.

While, on the other hand, the advocates of pain assert that to achieve “x”, a trainer MUST use these techniques.

Susan: There is NO method that will guarantee 100% reliability. Dogs are not automatons and sometimes they will choose to do something we have trained them not to do (or not do something we have trained them to do). This notion of force=100% reliability is one of the biggest myths of training.

What does the force trainer do when HER dog doesn’t comply?

Comment by EmilyS — June 19, 2009 @ 11:47 am
Is Faith going to have babies when she is old enough? Then you will have more dogs to train.
:D

Comment by Colorado Transplant — June 19, 2009

At this point I have to admit I am so exhausted from the work and worry of breeding and raising a litter that I can’t imagine doing so again any time soon, if ever.

McKenzie is being spayed next month, and Faith is years away from any decision — and may not turn out be a dog who should be bred.

I miss miss miss the puppies, but I really was a sleep-deprived basket case from the time we decided to fly McKenzie to Minnesota to be bred to the time I knew for absolutely certain that the puppies were off their planes and in the arms of their new families.

My sleep I have yet to catch up on, thanks to Miss Faith. :)

The work of litter-raising is over, but the worry will never end.

And that doesn’t include the annoyance factor: A steady flow of hate mail from people calling me a “greeder” (and much worse).

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 19, 2009 @ 12:05 pm
Its not as easy as easy as 1-2-3, raising pups, but now you have 123 comments, I will have to end it.

Of course you will always want to know how the other five pups are doing. How could you not! You helped bring them into this world.

Comment by Colorado Transplant — June 19, 2009 @ 12:26 pm
Lis writes:

“But attitude makes a big difference there—and in my experience, it’s not just an unfortunate accident that Linda used the word “simper” to describe people doubt the wisdom of using shock collars. It is utterly typical, and it reflects an attitude that I would not tolerate in anyone training my dog.”

I did not use the term to describe people who doubt the wisdom of using an ecollar.

I used “simper” to describe the attitudes people have about the use of a tool, any tool or any method; without having any first hand, practical knowledge of it’s appropriate use and/or functions.

I am not one so presumptuous to state that a method is bad or wrong, but I have seen plenty that were improperly applied.

People will read and understand what they want.

When someone comes to me and says that they were shown something, the first thing I question isn’t what they saw, but their interpretations of what they thought they saw.

Benefit from the history of dog training and do not sequester yourself to one or another contemporary, popular author or another. Study the genesis of training, from Xenophon to Abrantes and everyone in between.

Comment by Linda Kaim — June 19, 2009 @ 1:46 pm
Comment by Susan Fox — June 19, 2009 @ 10:07 am

I guess the question I have at this point, honestly, is what do you do if you are unwilling to use any adversive methods and you have dog that simply does not want to comply?

(By the way, there’s no “d” in “aversive”. Just a little detail like the fact that you don’t show dogs in “Confirmation” classes! G!)

Anyway, your question goes to the heart of why that traditional trainer realized that she just didn’t have it in her to do clicker, and the answer is deceptively simple. Basically, you lower your expectations. A LOT if necessary. You look for something that comprises some TEENY TINY ITTY BITTY LITTLE PART of what you’re eventually after, and you reward your dog for that. Then when your dog is giving you that 80% of the time, you increase your expectations - but just a little - and reward the dog at the new level until he is complying 80% of the time. And then you up the ante again.

It’s called “shaping by successive approximation” and yes - it can be painstaking and maddening if you have a dog who does not yet understand “the Game”. But oh - once they get it and “the Game” is on, it is really, really cool to watch.

Clicker trainers do something called “101 Things To Do With A Box”. The ingredients are you and your dog, one distraction-free room, and one box. You start to click your dog for ANY interaction he has with the box (and “interaction” is defined very broadly) and you never re-click for a behavior that the dog has offered three times. The amount of problem-solving and creativity that dogs can be capable of while playing this game can really blow your mind! (By the way, any time I refer to clicking your dog, the assumption is that it is always followed up by a treat. One click = one treat is the rule).

It seems to me, correct me if I’m wrong, that “purely” positive training is predicated on the assumption that dogs want to do what you wish and the challenge is simply finding the best way to communicate that.

For starters, the term”purely positive” injects a level of inaccuracy into the discussion that doesn’t reflect the reality of how most clicker trainers operate. It’s more useful to say that clicker trainers prefer to reward the desired behavior and avoid aversives when possible.

But my dog and plenty of other dogs I’ve met are intelligent, choice-making animals and they are perfectly capable of deciding to give you a doggy raspberry and then choosing to do what they want, not matter what enticements are offered.

You bet they are! That’s why part of controlling the consequences also involves controlling the environment. For example, the “distraction free” room mentioned above. YOU are the one with the IQ over 100 on this team (one would hope! G!) so it’s up to you to set up training situations that limit the dog’s choices so that the best choice available in the given situation is the one you wanted anyway! Then - as the dog learns (remember that pesky old learning curve!) you can start to lift the restrictions on the available choices - BUT ONLY INSOFAR AS IT IS STILL POSSIBLE FOR THE DOG TO CONTINUE TO MAKE THE CHOICES YOU WANT.

This - for a clicker trainer - is actually what is meant by “proofing” a dog. Not introducing distractions and then correcting for non-compliance. But rather, for gradually helping the dog to learn that he CAN comply in situations of greater complexity and distraction. And if the dog fails (you’ve set up the situation safely of course!), then you back it up a step to where he can succeed, and then try again with a smaller step (that old “successive approximation” thing again!

And it doesn’t seem that the option is one giving up. I want a reliable dog off lead, not one that I can’t trust who then has to be kept on a leash at all times off the property.

Shirley Chong has a wonderful set of instructions for teaching the recall on her website here:

http://www.shirleychong.com/keepers/Lesson6.html

This will give you a good idea of what is meant by “breaking it down into steps” and how systematically and gradually you increase the challenges to the dog in order to build back up to where you can “proof” the dog to real-world situations.

It’s interesting to note that towards the end of this article, she actually talks about the use of a shock collar. (gasp!). This one article got her pilloried in much of the clicker training community because everyone jumped on that ONE thing without bothering to notice the long and laborious the steps in training that were required before she could condone going to that step. And she notes that in dogs she’s worked with following her sequence, fewer than 10% of them required any kind of aversive to get the message that they were ALWAYS expected to comply. She only brings it up as an absolute last resort, and that needs to be remembered by anyone reading this article.

This is not just an issue of the high drive working dogs that have been so much the topic of discussion, but medium energy and drive dogs like my collie.

Exactly. Training for “the rest of us” that yields pleasant companions who are good public citizens and behave in a safe way.

How do you use purely positive, non-adversive methods to get the dog to accept that you are The Decider, not him? And that if you call him off approaching someone, then he’d jolly well better listan and obey?

See previous. And then realize that I’ve only scratched the surface in what I’ve written. As Bob Bailey says, “Clicker training is simple, but it’s not easy!”

It just seems like working with half a box of tools. But I’m listening. Tell me how.

The whole story is SO much more complex than can be more than just touched on here. You might enjoy getting involved with a discussion list such as ClickerSolutions (although they are a HIGH volume list, so be prepared!). Or find a trainer that you can rely on to get it right. One good start is the Certification Council of Pet Dog Trainers (I don’t want to throw in a second website and get this post caught in the filter, but you’ve got “da Google”!) Sadly, there are now “clicker trainers” out there who actually don’t understand how to do it safely and responsibly, as alluded to elsewhere in this thread. That never used to be the case, but it’s part of the price for the growing prevalence of clicker. So going to a CCPDT trainer is a good way to hedge your bets that you’re working with someone that will give you good training and sound advice.

How’s that for starters? G!

Comment by The OTHER Pat — June 19, 2009 @ 1:59 pm
I was on the ClickerSolutions list for a while, but it was just too darn much, even in digest form.

I found the book that derived from that list, “Click For Joy,” by Melissa C. Alexander, to be a helpful read.

And I agree with Linda: Read everything!

In fact, I’m going to start a “best training books” thread next week. (Save your answers.)

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 19, 2009 @ 2:20 pm
Oops! It’s the Certification Council for PROFESSIONAL Dog Trainers! Oh well - now I can post the site address!

http://www.ccpdt.org/

Comment by The OTHER Pat — June 19, 2009 @ 2:33 pm
“Aversive”. I noe how to spel, reelly I do.

Comment by Susan Fox — June 19, 2009 @ 2:44 pm
My dogs and I thank you, Other Pat, for your concise, comprehensive, and short synopsis on CT. For those of us who don’t pursue *REAL Training Venues*, but do frilly, meaningless sports like Rally, Tracking, Musical Freestyle, Racing & AG, your post is worth wading thru all the diatribes for. The rest of you are so damn ‘dogmatic’ you can bet your bippy I wouldn’t be ringing your chimes as a prospective client looking to further my own and my teams’ experiences. Bah!
And, Gina, continue with those important foundation skills with your girl even on those demon dog days. Just have Faith!

Comment by Anne T — June 19, 2009 @ 2:48 pm
For those of us who don’t pursue *REAL Training Venues*, but do frilly, meaningless sports like Rally, Tracking, Musical Freestyle, Racing & AG, your post is worth wading thru all the diatribes for.

Huh? Are we reading the same blog post? Nobody HERE has suggested that rally, tracking, freestyle, racing, or AG are frilly or meaningless.

Comment by LauraS — June 19, 2009 @ 2:53 pm
The Shirley Chong fifty-seven-step, eighty-eight week* recall training is, IMO, damned heavy-handed.

Yeah, I would find it unnecessarily tedious — and so would my dogs — but that’s not what struck me.

What struck me was how harsh the corrections are for a dog who has not only not been suitably introduced to the notion of “mandatory,” but has in fact been conditioned to believe “oh, optional” through the whole process. The scruffing, and then the use of the e-collar to shock hard enough to make the dog yip — wow.

There’s a difference between “a lot of training time” and “a foundation.” The right foundation training — which would include requiring the dog to take responsibility very soon in the process, albeit at short distances — makes the scruffing or e-collar use fair if the dog who understands his responsibility flips the owner the middle toe. “A lot of training time” during which the dog is kept away from interesting stimulus and fed for exercising an option, IMO, makes the lowering of the boom on the leash-wise dog very unfair.

The other thing that is weird for me is that I first heard of this woman was a couple years ago, in the context of her personal dog having taken off for the horizon and become the subject of a massive search. That happened the same month the web instructions for the “reliable recall” were last updated. And I was told at the time that it was not the first time he’d bolted and disappeared.

*I exaggerate, but not so much as you might think.

Comment by H. Houlahan — June 19, 2009 @ 6:12 pm
How’s that for starters? G!

I’m going to be candid and give you my honest reaction. No offense intended-

(I have absolutely no idea what the “Confirmation class” comment was about. Do you mean that no one who shows in them uses aversive measures?)

Interesting, but I don’t feel that it remotely addressed the issue that I had. But then, I do have the advantage of knowing my dog, who you have never met. But you seemed very certain that you knew exactly what I should do. Hummmm.

I had an attitude and behavior issue, not a training issue. I can’t fathom how clicker training as you describe it would even begin to convince Niki that he wasn’t in charge once we left the house.

Treats meant less than zero to him if there was something more interesting to check out. I could imagine clicking my brains out while he just did his thing down the road.

I can’t get past the fact, it’s just how it is, that I have NO interest is using a clicker. Frankly, the whole thing you described made me tired. Maybe when he was a puppy, but he’s six now.

So what other positive methods that don’t use corrections (or clickers) are out there that will address the issue I had?

I wanted a consequence that said ON THE WALK that I disagreed with his bratty, bossy behavior. I can guarantee you that no matter how much “distraction free” training I did in a room, that once we were out of the room and on the street, that we’d be back to square one.

This was the dog who I tried the “leave him a kong with treats in it when you go away and he’ll learn to associate that with good things”.
That worked as a distraction. Once. The second time, the mere appearance of the kong triggered the unwanted behavior.

I think I’ll have to go with maximum flexibility within a humane framework that is tailored for the individual dog.

Comment by Susan Fox — June 19, 2009 @ 6:19 pm
(I have absolutely no idea what the “Confirmation class” comment was about. Do you mean that no one who shows in them uses aversive measures?)

It’s conformation, not confirmation, that’s all. :)

Comment by JenniferJ — June 19, 2009 @ 6:22 pm
Got it. The reading glasses no worka so well sometimes when I’m typing.

Also wanted to point out that Niki was trained, starting at six months, off-leash with a combination of treats, verbal commands and hand signals. No corrections other than “uh uh”, no compulsion, no punishment.

Comment by Susan Fox — June 19, 2009 @ 6:33 pm
Heather, could you elaborate on what YOU mean about “taking responsibility”? The concept came up at a business meeting this week, and I’ve been mulling it over since then.

have recently begun using corrections for a few VERY well established behaviors with my service dog in training because she appeared to think that outside of training sessions, drifting along in heel position “Mom will tell me what I need to do” was okay, and I actively NEED her to be focused and WORKING and giving ME input. This is a dog who was started with balanced training (Yunke and Byron-style), got moved over to clicker at a year when I got her, and is now being polished up with the aim of graduating her to full working status this fall. Anyway, putting corrections into the picture has resulted in her focus going up 150% and REMAINING focused- she’s figuring out that her job is a full time one, not just part time. I’m NOT using an e-collar or anything complicated (collar correction, and yes, I *do* have them timed appropriately). I don’t have good evidence for this, but it FEELS like all the clicker stuff established WHAT to do, but not why to do it beyond party tricks. For a job that involved more inherent reinforcement (working livestock, for example), the job itself would be enough reinfocement. But while she loves working as a SD part time, that leap to “This is a JOB” hadn’t happened. And I think I can link where that appeared to when I introduced most of her task work through clicker training. Clicker training is definitely, definitely fun. It makes training a game, and I want training to be fun.

But I want my dog to work even when it’s NOT 100% fun- and I really do NOT think I am being unreasonable.

(And I have to brag on my girl- she woke me up from sleep for the first time when my blood sugar was low about 45 minutes ago- in the past, she’s only alerted when I was awake.)

Comment by Cait — June 19, 2009 @ 6:34 pm
Comment by H. Houlahan — June 19, 2009 @ 6:12 pm

The other thing that is weird for me is that I first heard of this woman was a couple years ago, in the context of her personal dog having taken off for the horizon and become the subject of a massive search.

You mean during the time that she was having serious surgery and the dog was in the care of her parents in an entirely different town? You mean THAT story?

Do you make a habit of passing along “I heard that”-type anecdotal accounts? Especially when they involve someone going through some truly difficult periods in their life?

Comment by The OTHER Pat — June 19, 2009 @ 7:42 pm
Comment by Susan Fox — June 19, 2009 @ 6:19 pm

But then, I do have the advantage of knowing my dog, who you have never met. But you seemed very certain that you knew exactly what I should do. Hummmm.

Huh? You asked what a “purely positive” (misnomer) approach would be, and I attempted to answer. In a pretty generic way, I might add. There is SO much more to this than can (or should) be covered within the context of a blog discussion thread which is why I directed you to additional resources. Trust me - generic Petsmart “clicker” classes notwithstanding - another basic tenet to clicker training is that you work with the dog who is in front of you, and you tailor the training you are presenting in such a way that THAT dog can succeed. It is NOT “one size fits all” by a long shot. But again, that is beyond the scope of the level of depth that is appropriate here.

Just like the traditional trainer I mentioned (and H. Houlahan, apparently), you may decide that this kind of a stepwise approach that accepts and rewards for VERY small successes just isn’t something you can get yourself to do. If that’s the case, there’s not really anything I can do to change things.

But you asked for a perspective and I offered it. Anything more in-depth is up to you (whoever the “you” might be who is reading this).

Comment by The OTHER Pat — June 19, 2009 @ 7:49 pm
Comment by Cait — June 19, 2009 @ 6:34 pm

I don’t have good evidence for this, but it FEELS like all the clicker stuff established WHAT to do, but not why to do it beyond party tricks. For a job that involved more inherent reinforcement (working livestock, for example), the job itself would be enough reinfocement. But while she loves working as a SD part time, that leap to “This is a JOB” hadn’t happened. And I think I can link where that appeared to when I introduced most of her task work through clicker training.

You may be interested in looking into the work of Sue Ailsby - a clicker trainer with very well trained Service Dogs. Or maybe not - your call - I’m just offering information.

Comment by The OTHER Pat — June 19, 2009 @ 8:36 pm
Pat - I’m very familiar with Sue Ailsby, however, her dogs are mobility dogs, and at least from the video and whatnot that I’ve seen, their tasks are almost entirely cued. Kaylee does great on the stuff that I cue, but is only at about 75% on the things that I need her to do them on her own initiative (she is doing these things when cued 99.something%). She IS getting reinforced for them when she initiates them- but I need that to come faster. Introducing corrections has had the effect that *SHE* watches her behavior. I’ve corrected perhaps 3-4 times over the course of a week or two, and she’s starting to LOOK for opportunities to do these things, not just wait till I offer the opportunity to earn a reward with the cue.

I love clicker training. I teach a class based on CU, I think it’s WONDERFUL for a clear form of communication. But I’ve pretty much discovered that at least with my own dogs, I cannot get the MOST performance that they are capable of with it. If this was just agility or obedience, fine. And I’m not saying that because they’re ‘frilly’ sports or anything, because I compete and enjoy those, but at the end of the day, those are SPORTS. This is work, and it’s different. If she really doesn’t want to do it, fine- but she acts like she wants to, but hasn’t realized that that means putting in the effort.

Comment by Cait — June 19, 2009 @ 10:07 pm
Hi Susan, I have a drivey squirrel and motion obsessed Smooth Collie and we practice Premack. Basically it tells your dog, eat your veggies and you can have your desert. Chasing squirrels, off lease romping beach access etc, are privileges , not rights. Not listening, is a learned behavior. The dogs learns that there are things in the world better than us. While it is hard to undo, it is not impossible, and us trainer types help people do it all the time. Think about the rescue dog who was aways picked up by the ACO before being re homed. Things take time. Don’t remember who said it first…change the relationship, change the dog. I think we could look to agility here for an example. It was said a couple of times here that agiliy is a job and rewarding in and of itself. Oh really and how did we get there so that it was rewarding? What do you think my collie wanted more as a 1 year old in an agility feild-the Dog walk/ Aframe, See Saw/ he was afraid of, or the squirrel in the woods? On another note- By giving a stuffed Kong- and then leaving -you created a signal, a precursor that you were leaving. With a real food obsessed dog, you might get away with that, but clever sensitive types- not. You could try giving meals in the Kong,and playing/fixating the dog on the toy, and giving it while you are home. Goal being to create a comfort item.

Comment by Nancy Freedman-Smith CPDT — June 20, 2009 @ 3:49 am
we practice Premack. Basically it tells your dog, eat your veggies and you can have your desert.

Ding! (That’s the sound of the bell going off in my haid.)

We don’t “practice Premack.” We provide work that is carrot-cake. The reward is endogenous, not exogenous. It’s not “you do this and then I let you have that.” Because that exchange inevitably causes the “vegetables” to be devalued. After all, if vegetables weren’t so awful, why would Mommy have to coerce me to eat them by withholding the good stuff? Neither dogs nor children are stupid. And both are masters at discerning our ill-concealed attitudes.

Not listening, is a learned behavior. The dogs learns that there are things in the world better than us.

So you believe that a dog’s unlearned default is to be obedient to our every utterance, and somehow the big bad world debauches them?

I don’t.

We love the big bad world. It’s where we live, so it’s also where we train together. It’s generally not “safely fenced.” It’s the place where the dogs learn their duties as well as pursue their pleasures. It’s more interesting than “the most boring room in the house.” It’s more interesting than “control the dog’s environment.” I don’t deny it to my dogs in a quest to avoid having it — or me — correct them for some mistake made while in it.

So there’s two differences, right there. Now I get it.

Comment by H. Houlahan — June 20, 2009 @ 6:26 am
Nancy-
I like hearing your “re-framing”. Here’s how I’ve thought about it as I’ve read and learned about dogs and my dog. Please comment more :0)

Yes, he learned that he didn’t have to listen to me because I had no way to “make” him if he was off-lead. Withdrawing that privilege was the first step I took. Then the battle was on.

I got clear in my own mind what I wanted to accomplish. A calm dog who walked next to me on a loose lead and who would do what I asked off lead no matter what. Like stopping on command if a car was coming.

He was on leash on walks, with pops and a “no”, if necessary when he pulled, until I started to have willing compliance and not a constant “Can I go now, can I go now?”. He’s on leash now until I see that his head is down and he’s just moving forward without all the other “stuff”.

Putting him behind me and backing him up, neither of which caused him any pain or real discomfort, triggered dramatic reactions and objections. He wanted to be out front leading, therefore in charge.

We’ve gone from the whole walk on leash sometimes if he’s still being snotty, to 100 yards or so, to within 50 feet of leaving the yard, to almost immediately. But he always has to be calm and compliant on leash when we go out the gate.

And you’re right, it took time, months in fact, to get through to him that it was more rewarding to accept that he was not in charge. He’s more relaxed now that he doesn’t think he has to run the show (and us). It’s nice to know that it wasn’t something I was doing wrong that made it take so long.

I’m thinking he somehow got the idea that his pushy “herding” behavior was what made the walks happen. Which would explain why he was so resistant to changing that behavior. That would make sense in his terms, wouldn’t it?

I worked backwards in the house until I realized that the pattern started when we got up from breakfast and went to brush our teeth. He was almost obsessively pacing and following us.

So then I blocked him from coming into the bathroom and atopped the pacing by putting him in a down/stay in the living room, with lots of whining at first.

Now, to my surprise, he often chooses to go outside and wait because somehow I finally got through to him that he can do nothing and walks still happen.

The kong- yup, that’s what happened. As near as I can tell, the only thing Niki “fixates” on is being with people and making them smile (eliciting that energy; you should see him work people for it). He can’t be fooled. And, yes, he can be very clever. Is that type of “cleverness” a common collie thing?

I think, once again, that it’s related to the walks, in that we ignored the whining and barking for years when we left the house or him in the car, on the theory that ignoring the behavior would cause it to go away over time. Not. If he thought that he was in charge outside of the house, then he would object to being left behind because it meant that he couldn’t do his “job”. Does that make sense?

I’m thinking now that it’s all related to what he has believed is true about who’s in charge outside the house, even to his behavior in the car. He now has to lay down and be calm first. Boy, did he object to that at first.

In thinking of a comfort item, someone a few comments ago mentioned that their dogs knew to stay on their beds when people arrived and they were told they could get up.

A light bulb went on and I’ve starting putting him on his bed before we start to get ready to leave the house, whether he is going with us or not. Being on his bed seems to be starting to lower the intensity of his reaction when we leave without him. He still whines and barks, but it’s not as borderline hysterical as before. He’s fine once we’re gone. It’s not the separation anxiety I’ve heard about. I guess I’m using his bed as his comfort item then.

As you can see, Niki has taught me a lot.

Comment by Susan Fox — June 20, 2009 @ 7:08 am
HH- you were obviously writing the same time as I was. I’d like your thoughts also, if you are so inclined. I’m finding the input of you all very valuable.

Comment by Susan Fox — June 20, 2009 @ 7:22 am
Shooting for the first 200-comment thread, Gina?

Comment by Lis — June 20, 2009 @ 7:53 am
Sure seems as if we’re heading in that direction. There has been a fair amount of nastiness, snarkiness and pigheadedness in this thread … but also a huge amount of really wonderful, thought-provoking discussion.

And you know: That’s what keeps us blogging. It’s such a different experience than writing articles or books. The discussion is just as — and sometimes more — important than the original post here. I really like that!

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 20, 2009 @ 8:17 am
And what’s really wonderful is that information-packed comment threads like this and the posts that prompted (or should I say “provoked” ;-)) them will never “go out of print”.

Comment by Susan Fox — June 20, 2009 @ 12:34 pm
@Lis… my post on closed studbooks had 284. I’m just saying.

Comment by Christie Keith — June 20, 2009 @ 1:48 pm
Not that anyone keeps track or anything …

Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 20, 2009 @ 2:29 pm
@Lis… my post on closed studbooks had 284. I’m just saying.

Comment by Christie Keith — June 20, 2009 @ 1:48 pm

Okay, then, what we have to do is shoot for three hundred. It’s good to have a goal, right?

Comment by Lis — June 20, 2009 @ 3:31 pm
Yes, and now this one is halfway there!

Comment by Christie Keith — June 20, 2009 @ 4:40 pm
Still a long way to go, but we’ll just have to keep plugging till we get there!

Comment by Lis — June 20, 2009 @ 4:51 pm
Just wanted to let you know, Christie, that we KNOW what you’re doing with the Designer Dog thread. We will resist.

Okay, we have not resisted.

Comment by Lis — June 20, 2009 @ 5:58 pm
I do not want to clutter up this post with too many comments (we do not want to rival anyone) but I wonder if it is time for Gina to call about the other five pups.

Maybe it is too early. I guess Gina will have to decide about the timing. Probably the period between calls will get longer and longer as the weeks go by.

Comment by Colorado Transplant — June 20, 2009 @ 6:38 pm
I forgot to add:

Those big brown eyes of Faith are fabulous (in the picture of the posting).

Comment by Colorado Transplant — June 20, 2009 @ 7:00 pm
Susan-with my own Collie who is OCD +, any time I can have things go in a different order he is much more relaxed. If yours is like mine, the bed thing may not work for long. But hard to say. Just keep his mind busy. Yes Collies are clever dogs, but they are a different clever than other herding breeds, maybe more control freaky about what they think needs controlling?
Heather, I never questioned what you do, how you do it, or the results you get. I do think that most people are not in your situation, and can’t “free range” their dogs. Most of the people I see go from leash/back yard to free and forget there are huge steps inbetween. I didn’t invent Premack, I just use it as a training tool when the situation fits. It is not the only tool in my tool box. By the way, I have three kids and it is not all Premack all the time with them either.

Comment by Nancy Freedman-Smith CPDT — June 20, 2009 @ 7:48 pm
Nancy-….”maybe more control freaky about what they think needs controlling?”

We think of it “as that Lassie thing”. Self-appointed guardian of all creatures great and small. But Niki, it really is ok for “mom” and “dad” to go somewhere without you occasionally. ;-)

Ideas for keeping his mind busy for after we’re out of the house or car to head off the tantrum?

Comment by Susan Fox — June 22, 2009 @ 10:13 am
Uh, Nancy, I’ve lived on the farm just a year.

Owned dogs for close to forty. Trained them for thirty-three.

Been a SAR handler for eighteen.

A professional trainer for fifteen.

This is not about free-ranging farm dogs vs. pets. We raised our first SAR dog in a second-story walk-up in the city.

The definition of “work” is different for my clients’ and students’ pet dogs than it is for my own, but the animals’ capacity to enjoy endogenous rewards is not. Most humans, too, have the same ability.

Self-control is not what you have to do to get the chocolate ice cream. Self-control, achieved through intelligent discipline, is the realm and privilege of a fully-actualized being who enjoys living in his own skin.

It’s the difference between a martial artist practicing at a high level and an institutionalized person whose daily behavior is manipulated by authority figures who have set up a token economy.

Comment by H. Houlahan — June 22, 2009 @ 10:53 am
Susan, one thing that frequently does work is the stuffed kong (or other super-fantastic long-chewing treat), but handled a little differently when the dog is already acting out when you leave.

What you do is get the dog all jazzed about the ritual treat, so it’s his super-speshul great yummy thing. I’m not above cutting his rations while you are doing this. You make a huge fuss about preparing the treat (one reason a stuffed kong may be better than an objectively more yummy frozen marrow bone). Let him have it for a short time while you are relaxing in his presence, and when he’s really maximally into it, working on it vigorously, you announce “time’s up” and reclaim the treat. Put it back in the freezer. (The treat should be designed to occupy your dog for at least a half hour, if not longer.)

Repeat a couple of times a day. For a while. “A while” depends on the dog — could be a couple days, could be a couple weeks.

When the dog is really enthusiastic about the treat, start bringing it out and putting it in view on the counter (again, with pomp and circumstance), but not letting him have it for several minutes to a half hour. Then let him have it for a few minutes, and remove it when he’s still very focused on it, as before.

You are establishing both sustained anticipation and focused interest in the treat.

Finally, you begin doing this when you are about to leave the house. For the first couple times, you bring it out and put it on the counter for several minutes before you leave rather precipitously (without the usual futzing preparations we make before going to work, going shopping, etc.), first giving the treat to the dog. Come back within a few minutes, and again announce that treat time is over.

When the dog is much more focused on the treat on the counter than on your preparations for leaving, you can start putting it out there as soon as you are getting ready to leave — when you start the coffee in the morning, whenever.

For most dogs who do not have true separation anxiety, you will see a change from the “Oh Mommeeee, don’t leeeeave meeeee” attitude to “Will you find your damned keys and get out of here already so I can have my kong?!”

With our guys, it was useful as a cue that said “Don’t get excited, you aren’t coming” if we were preparing to go somewhere without them. They were never anxious about normal going-to-work preparations when we both worked in no-dog environments, but would start bouncing around if they weren’t sure whether they were invited somewhere. The kongs lined up on the counter settled that question for them. And they really would get impatient waiting for us to actually leave, since the last thing we did was hand them the kongs.

Comment by H. Houlahan — June 22, 2009 @ 11:24 am
-With our guys, it was useful as a cue that said “Don’t get excited, you aren’t coming” if we were preparing to go somewhere without them. …..but would start bouncing around if they weren’t sure whether they were invited somewhere. The kongs lined up on the counter settled that question for them. And they really would get impatient waiting for us to actually leave, since the last thing we did was hand them the kongs.-

Yes, the “Don’t get excited, you aren’t coming…” is what I am trying to get to.

“Oh Mommeeee, don’t leeeeave meeeee” is exactly what we’re dealing with.

We’ve varied the routine to eliminate the triggers as much as possible.

I’ve blocked the whining (disagreeing with the behavior), for the most part, which has resulted in him being somewhat calmer .

But the trainer I worked with told me that if there was something you didn’t want a dog to do, that you needed to substitute a behavior that you DO want. In that case it was barking in the car when he was a puppy, so she had us teach him to do a nose touch to my hand for a treat, the idea being that if he was doing that, he wasn’t barking. Of course, now we have a rough collie who has a nose and knows how to use it ;0).

What I haven’t been able to figure out is how to apply that to this problem.

I think that what you are suggesting could work with his psychology and we will certainly give it our best shot. I really like that it relates directly to the problem we are trying to solve. The next trick will be to transfer it to leaving him in the car, but we’ll work on leaving the house first.

Thanks!

Comment by Susan Fox — June 22, 2009 @ 11:48 am
This is now my default article whenever anyone tentatively asks a question about breeding on our community site, DoggySnaps (www.doggysnaps.com). I state it’s my personal view, not Dogs Trust’s, but as far as I can see unless you’re prepared to do all of the above, you can’t really justify calling yourself a responsible breeder.

The pups are very lucky to have been born into a household where they received such exceptional care.

Comment by Alex — June 25, 2009 @ 12:54 am
Coming in here very late after being flat out on my back sick for several days…

I do a lot of ecollar training with my clients. I’ve put ecollars on literally hundreds of dogs. The idea that an ecollar can ONLY be used as a painful aversive is a common fallacy.

A really good collar - my favorites are the TriTronics models - can deliver stimulation at levels that are so low that nearly all humans find them neutral. In my not particularly limited experience, I find that most humans area lot more physically sensitive than most dogs so I’m convinced that - with the right collar - one can find a level that is not aversive to the dog.

Using these kinds of low levels I have successfully helped several clients train deaf dogs. We start out with a “click and treat” sequence that teaches the dog that when it feels the stimulation and looks at its owner, it will get a treat. Within MINUTES I have a dog that grins and wags its tail when its owner pushes the button.

I did a similar thing with my last puppy. When he was an adorably cute 3 month old. If you want to complain to the breeder about this - just drop a post to Houlie.

Like ANY tool, an ecollar can be a problem in the wrong hands. But my experience with average pet owners - not field retriever folk, canine officers or SAR handlers - is that most people are kind and considerate. It is not difficult to train an average pet owner to use an ecollar in a very gentle and fair way. The dog shouldn’t see the stimulation as a *shocking* painful thing - he should see it as a form a communication.

With an ecollar I can quickly show an owner how to control and extinguish self-rewarding behaviors without placing undue stress on the dog. I can give pet owners a way to get their dog’s attention at a distance - without having to resort to a big, shocking jolt. I can help people who live in rural areas and/or who have access to offleash areas how to get offleash obedience quickly and fairly.

If that dooms me to hell, it’ll be a hell I’ll be proud to call home.

Comment by Janeen — July 1, 2009 @ 3:13 pm
Janeen, we’ll be seeing a lot of each other there.

Comment by Linda Kaim — July 1, 2009 @ 3:33 pm
Another common fallacy is that something that qualifies as an aversive always involves pain.

Not saying that your description involves using the e-collar that way. Obviously, if it’s not something the dog works to avoid, then the dog doesn’t view it as an aversive.

But a consequence - ANY consequence - that the dog/training subject subsequently tries to avoid is an aversive. Whether pain is involved or not. (See my previous anecdote about perfect attendance records).

Comment by The OTHER Pat — July 1, 2009 @ 3:34 pm
Push ecollar button and dog wags tail. I think that Skinner would call that a conditioned positive reinforcer.

In this specific instance the dog does *not* try to avoid the stimulation. He responds to it by giving attention. I do the same thing with dogs and puppies who can hear by saying their name as I offer the treat. We condition name = attention and treat. With deaf dogs, “name” is useless - so their “name” effectively becomes “stimulation”. I did this with Audie just as for fun.

Comment by Janeen — July 1, 2009 @ 3:45 pm
Yes, and I and others discovered, very low-level electrical current from an e-collar is often much more neutral than the “neutral” stimulus of the pager feature on the same collar.

I am not much of an e-collar user — it’s not the first tool I reach for in 95% of my cases. I am often in the position of outspoken critic of e-collar overuse — not because it is cruel, but because it is as addictive to the trainer as a bait bag. (Tool-bound e-collar and clicker trainers alike anticipated the hot new malady of Blackberry thumb by a decade. These are people who make me scream and want to strip them nekkid and hand them a nice Labrador, a loop of twine, and a one-week deadline for a reasonable heel, a solid stay, and a rocket-recall — all of which are perfectly reasonable expectations of a pro or serious hobby trainer.)

But to really grok what good e-collar trainers are doing when they are working a dog at very low levels, it’s really necessary to think outside the Skinner box. Attempts to translate the dog’s experience into “four quadrants” inevitably fail to satisfy Occam’s Razor, and lead the ersatz translator and her baffled audience into noise and confusion.

Comment by H. Houlahan — July 1, 2009 @ 5:23 pm
#

If that dooms me to hell, it’ll be a hell I’ll be proud to call home.

Comment by Janeen — July 1, 2009 @ 3:13 pm

Janeen, we’ll be seeing a lot of each other there.

Comment by Linda Kaim — July 1, 2009 @ 3:33 pm

***********

Ladies, I’m bringin’ the salsa and the single-malt, we will heat that place UP.

Comment by H. Houlahan — July 1, 2009 @ 5:25 pm
Heather, I have Blackberry thumb. From a Blackberry no less.

Have the Lab too. Who just did her very first “blind retrieve” at the tender age of 8 months.

And when you come to hell, please bring homemade salsa, I am still remembering your pickled beans. They were awesome!

Comment by Linda Kaim — July 2, 2009 @ 4:43 am
BTW, there is a Hell in Michigan. I saw it on TV and some people get married there.

Of course, there are devils painted on a lot of the stores. The residents seem happy living in Hell..

My two black cats would fit right in, don’t ya think so—but I cannot leave right now.

Comment by Colorado Transplant — July 2, 2009 @ 6:17 am
A former Michigander, I’ve actually been to Hell several times. One of my favorite photos is of me and two friends mugging it up next to the sign.

Does that make me the Bitch From Hell?

Comment by Janeen — July 2, 2009 @ 6:37 am
No, it makes you the B who has been to Hell and Back.

:O)

Comment by Original Lori — July 2, 2009 @ 6:52 am
Faith and Gina have had 171 comments (including this one).

Could it be because of the adorable picture on the posting?

It seems your Faith generates all kinds of good happenings.

Just went to Whole Foods (without my cats) and got some lucious watermelon to try to beat the heat. It might be hot as Hell outside soon, I dunno. I don’t want to find, either, as I find a cool, heavenly spot. :oD

Comment by Colorado Transplant — July 2, 2009 @ 9:53 am
Some silly and clever friends of mine cast their dogs in an “episode” of “Survivor: Hell, Michigan.”

Story in pictures, here.

It’s pretty darn cute.

Comment by Gina Spadafori — July 2, 2009 @ 1:43 pm
Really clever of the friends to cast the “episode” of “Survivor: Hell, Michigan”

I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Comment by Colorado Transplant — July 2, 2009 @ 3:23 pm
Will the last one from Hell, please turn out the lights?

Comment by Linda Kaim — July 2, 2009 @ 4:11 pm
What, and have darkness! I want light, light, heavenly light—whether I am in heaven or Hell.

Besides, if I ever took my Black cats to a darkened Hell, how could I see them. :o)

Gina, I was wondering, does Faith eat what the other dogs do or is he on a puppy diet? Just wonderin’, that all.

Comment by Colorado Transplant — July 2, 2009 @ 7:04 pm

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