Aidan

I don't agree with that. I used these ropes to train horses, neither the horse or myself ever had a rope burn or any injury. The rope is lovely on the hands. I've had the gripper leashes and they're really rough on the hands. Give me rope any day. That cotton rope they use for horses is nice and soft, probably a bit heavy for a dog though, same with sailing rope (main sheet for a dinghy, that sort of thing). The sort of rope a person might get for a long-line for a dog thinking "this is about the right weight" is too thin, and almost always completely synthetic. It was halyard rope that I slashed my wrists with, people were very kind to me though.

Judging by the number of views, it certainly got some eyeballs.

Is that the "tracking" lead on their website? Wow, it's not cheap! That is the one, and yes you would want to be using it a fair bit (as I do).

698,000 views! I didn't think it was that special, there are any number of dogs here who could do that - even minus the remote training collar, toy or food. Whether we would or not is another question, I agree - too many "what ifs". My goldie has never chased a cat across the road - but what if he did one day? Chasing cats isn't beyond him.

Been there, done that, carry the scars... too dangerous to you, your dog or an innocent bystander. The same applies to rope.

If we ever do meet how will you know it's really me?

I should clarify that I am talking specifically about a punished response here, not any alternative response brought about by negative reinforcement through removal of the shock. These depend entirely on the magnitude of shock and the schedule of reinforcement used.

One of my dogs wears a long-line most walks and the one I keep coming back to is the Black Dog one, I think it's a "medium" but it might even be a "small". I initially bought it for the smaller dogs in my classes but it would take an awful lot to break it. What I like about it is that it never gets caught, even walking along the rocks on the foreshore, or sending for retrieves in thick scrub (which can be a shocker with most lines). If you have a strong dog and not strong hands, I would take a look at those grippy ones that k9pro sells.

Depends on the reinforcement history and how well the response has been conditioned. I'm not 'purely positive', but the value of an individual reinforcement v level of distraction becomes a non-issue even at my level of expertise. It certainly does depend upon reinforcement history but in the reliability crunch, there will be some distraction somewhere greater than the reward on offer and the dog will bolt, or disobey especially off leash. Diva was right, it is not that the distraction is "greater than the reward on offer" but that the dog is not conditioned, through it's reinforcement history, to respond in that environment. Believe it or not, it is not a competition between reward and distraction (unless we are discussing bribery). Otherwise how would you explain dogs who recall off live prey, not knowing whether there is a reward available or not? That's were a dog trained to recall to avoid punishment works in any environment. I agree with what you are saying here Aidan, but conditioning a dog to respond in so many different environments, there will be one environment missed being the time the dog finds it's fate. That's were E Collars etc come into play, drop means drop so to speak. Behaviours taught with -R don't necessarily generalise any better than behaviours taught with +R. The e-collar has practical benefits in the field but I wouldn't say that a dog wearing an e-collar was a more reliable dog than a dog who was taught the same thing with food if both were then put into a trial situation or maybe even a highly distracting situation (with the e-collar dog wearing the e-collar - they aren't magical!) If you were to compare two dogs in a Skinner Box, one trained with food and the other trained with shock, then removed the food and removed the shock I would put money on being able to train the one with food to perform more trials until extinction than the one trained with shock. I'd put that money down because I know the probability is higher from repeated experiments. Of course we don't train (or even trial) dogs in a Skinner Box, so practical considerations come into play. However, every year we see more and more dogs on the podium trained with more and more +R, we're finding ways around those practical considerations and even discovering some false economies in using aversives along the way.

That is not universally true. Selecting a few non-specific examples does not the truth reveal. It has been demonstrated repeatedly that positive reinforcement will produce extraordinarily reliable behaviours over thousands upon thousands of trials. Punishment does not produce the same level of reliability in the long-term. Practical considerations, not ultimate reliability, dictate the use of +P and -R in the field. What some of the K9 trainers have told me Aidan, is that some behaviours cannot be corrected effectively with positive reinforcement and punishment in those circumstances creates a better result???. I could say with some certainty that those behaviours could be corrected with +R, but as a practical matter it doesn't always make sense to take what might be the long way around (and sometimes it does, but we don't always see that either!)

I guess it depends on your definition, but Steve White was doing what I would consider to be purely positive training.

Depends on the reinforcement history and how well the response has been conditioned. I'm not 'purely positive', but the value of an individual reinforcement v level of distraction becomes a non-issue even at my level of expertise. It certainly does depend upon reinforcement history but in the reliability crunch, there will be some distraction somewhere greater than the reward on offer and the dog will bolt, or disobey especially off leash. Diva was right, it is not that the distraction is "greater than the reward on offer" but that the dog is not conditioned, through it's reinforcement history, to respond in that environment. Believe it or not, it is not a competition between reward and distraction (unless we are discussing bribery). Otherwise how would you explain dogs who recall off live prey, not knowing whether there is a reward available or not?

Selection played a very large part. Well bred dogs who perform the tasks that they are bred to perform are getting a TON of reinforcement. And if they didn't perform, they didn't get to hang around.

That is not universally true. Selecting a few non-specific examples does not the truth reveal. It has been demonstrated repeatedly that positive reinforcement will produce extraordinarily reliable behaviours over thousands upon thousands of trials. Punishment does not produce the same level of reliability in the long-term. Practical considerations, not ultimate reliability, dictate the use of +P and -R in the field.

Just be careful not to confuse reinforcers with antecedents. A reinforcer increases the likelihood of a behaviour. An antecedent predicts it. If food is not an antecedent then it isn't required to produce the behavioural response. In plain english, just because you used food while training the response - that doesn't mean that you will always need food. You can still use other reinforcers, and you can still use schedules of reinforcement. If you need to hide food in your pocket, then you have conditioned food to be an antecedent.

If I had a dog who was willing to pull on a halti hard enough to break it, I would not use a halti. As far as tools go, your options are front-attaching harness or prong collar. My preference is to use a double-ended "balance leash" and have the other end attached to a flat collar. This way you can walk your dog on the flat collar, but have the tool for leverage when required (depending in where you hold the leash). Some training for his reactive behaviour would also be beneficial, possibly the most important thing that this episode has highlighted. Depending on where you are in Vic there are several trainers here who are competent with this sort of training using modern methods.

Even some of the heavier show labs are still an athletic dog provided they are kept in hard working condition. I don't think agility presents any unusual physical challenges for a lab.

They were the "forwards", just doing their job.

The USF glossary of behavioral terms has a lot of definitions, none that I saw suggested that a behaviour chain needs to be a fixed pattern. However, each link must provide a cue for the next so I guess arguments could be made on that point.

I'll have to look for some definitions, I had never considered it a requirement that a behaviour chain is a fixed pattern.

Good application of critical thinking, I like it. What would you say happens when a dog has completed an obstacle? Does he look to the handler anticipating a direction? Is this a behaviour that might be considered part of a chain?

If you had time and money you could probably do a meta-analysis based on the exisiting data and start to form some conclusions. e.g stray dogs in cities as opposed to stray dogs in rural settings (it would appear that city dogs are less likely to "pack" than rural dogs, could this be because scavenging from bins doesn't require a team effort and running dog wallabies does?) Not as silly as it sounds! Lots of readily available data and nicely contained variables (except they keep changing the blasted rules). My argument (allowing me to take a position here) is that "doing what works" accounts for all the variability quite happily. Using the rugby analogy, you only throw in as many players as you need to secure your position or position yourself well for the next phase. Every player plays for their position because that is what works best; if you're fat you play in the forwards, if you're skinny and take care of yourself you play in the backs.

Explain to your family that you are "making an investment". Do not go out that door until she is quiet. Do not speak to her, or even look at her. Wait until she is quiet, even if only briefly, then click and open the door. It will take a while. She will not learn the first time you do it, but she will learn that the ONLY way she gets out the door is if she is quiet. You use the clicker to make it easier to mark a brief period of quiet, which can be extended when she begins to understand. Your whole family will need to be consistent with this. We don't want any "variable schedules of reinforcement" where most of the time you follow the rules and every so often you don't or it will become unbearable and very difficult to treat this way. Same as above. It will take consistency, co-operation and discipline. And a little time.

Chocolate labs should be OK, it's baboons you want to avoid in a vineyard: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36005735/ns/world_news-africa/

The broader field of psychology has never considered behaviourism to hold all the answers, but I'm not sure how this paper accounts for anything more than the fact that "dogs tend to do what works for them"? Which in itself is a very good thing, and I'm glad that scientists are continuing to be objective about the myths that "pop dog psychology" perpetuates. Probably if you were to analyse "patterns of individual participation and cheating in ruck and maul contests between groups of field-contained rugby teams" you would see striking parallels ;-)