corvus

To be honest, I think it's pretty funny to have five dogs lined up in sits in front of me and only two of them being mine. And it tells me I'm in the company of people that at least ask their dogs to sit before giving them a treat, which makes me happy. But we don't often have problems. The odd dog that has discovered we have treat pouches full of food and try to stick their noses in it or jump on us, but hey, we're dog lovers and the owners always call their dogs away if they start doing that. We train our dogs in the dog park every time we go and have never had to stop because of a sticky beak wanting food. Toys are a different matter and I have had to put away toys to avert disaster. Kivi will sit for other people if they have food they are trying to give to their dogs, and I guess normally we would call him away, but usually we get asked if he can have some because no one can resist a dog that sits so politely instead. I don't think it is accepted at the park we go to that if you turn up with food you will be mobbed the whole time. Most dogs will come away when called, or at least most owners can and do distract them if you want to train. I did talk to a fellow today who had stopped bringing food because he'd end up with half a dozen dogs gathered around him, but we didn't have any trouble. I've never seen a fight break out in our park over food. Toys, yes.

Yeah, but Dogdude, anything a dog is feeling, anticipating, or intending is evident in its body language. That's what body language is for, and it's why social species are so much fun to work with. Incidentally, Kivi's recall was trained with high value food rewards. He comes at a gallop and he'll do whatever is necessary to get there. At times, that has meant dodging dogs that are trying to tackle him, or yesterday it was leaving a fast and rough game of tug with me (thanks OH) and running about a hundred metres to my partner whom he could not actually see. I've got a YouTube video up of him getting taken out by Erik when he only just gets going and he gets up and keeps running. He gets tired towards the end and drifts a bit, but he's a very easily flattened dog. Huski, I keep the movements to Kivi's level of motivation. When we get out into the dog park he often gets a lot more animated and I follow suit with bigger and faster movements. If I move it faster before he's in the mood for it he'll disengage and wander off. The whole point is that he has fun, so I don't push him. I have a recent video of Erik clicker training in which he looks much the same as these dogs working in drive, but iMovie is playing silly beggars and refusing to acknowledge it's existence. Hopefully I can get it to work soon.

Ooops, forgot Kavik. I think seeing videos is important to see the enthusiasm and motivation in the dog. Both Kaos and Ella jump readily trying to get at the toy, and it generally takes a bit of motivation for an animal to put that much effort into an activity. Kaos has the same ears and intense gaze as the other dogs. You can see with both him and Ella that they move their heads very quickly, which I think is also characteristic of a dog "in drive". ETA Here's something intersting that kind of illustrates the drive continuum. This is a video of Kivi playing tug. He's really not at a particularly high level of motivation, and it's interesting to note that his movements are slower than Ella and Kaos and you can see that while he is motivated enough to jump for the toy, he is hardly at the same level of motivation that they are. He doesn't jump as readily and tugs more lazily.

I'm putting my analysis hat on. Before anyone gets to accusing me of not knowing much about dogs, this is for my benefit and maybe it will help other people put in words what a dog "in drive" is. Seita: that's what I think of as working level of drive, as you can see Ella is highly motivated, which gives her movements enthusiasm, but she is well in control of herself. I'm not about to get into the prey vs play argument again, but it's such a great example of what I think of as play drive. The way she puts bounce into her movements and lifts her front legs kind of stiffly when fetching the toy screams "I'm playing and it's so fuuuuun" to me. I think it's important to note that even though she is enthusiastic and focused, her ears are not always up and forward. It's hard to see on the videos, but you can kind of track her anticipation through the movement of her ears. Shell: Zero's ears are the most obvious signal to me. They are very high and forward, which I take as a signal that the dog is very focused on something, but it goes beyond that to intention. Zero's anticipating a high energy activity that he finds intensely rewarding. Kivi gets this look when he's about to pounce on something. Possibly Erik, maybe a skink. He also gets this look when he wants to chase something. Arawnhaus: What I love about this photo is that with the Rotti you can see how everything is pointing forwards. He (she?) can't put his ears up like Zero's, but you can see they'd be up there facing forward if he could. I also love the focus in those eyes as it just seems so diagnostic to me. It's nearly that glassy-eyed look when a dog is over the top. If the mouth was tighter and the tail higher, I would say it was. Now compare that to this dog: He's alert and interested, as you can see from the ears that are again high and forward, but his face is far more relaxed, his gaze has no intensity about it, his tail is relaxed, his body has little tension in it, his mouth is soft and his ears are not as forward as Zero's or Cisco's. Now look at this little guy: He's somewhere in between to me. His ears are up again, quite high and forward. The difference to me between him and Kivi above is mostly in his eyes. His gaze is more intense and there is more tightness to his mouth, although the slightly ajar look I interpret as happy anticipation. I fancy his ears a little more forward, but maybe not. ETA those last two are not at what I would think of as in drive. I'm adding something out of drive to compare.

If in doubt, act superior and accuse someone else of not knowing as much as you. I'm starting to take this as a sign that my arguments are better when I'm the accused. Again, no one here is talking about "purely positive" methods. We're talking about the rules of punishment. I will ask you once again to consider the topic when next you post.

Ah, I see. I used to get the same thing from my barely trained corgi. My mother has a dog that weighs up pros and cons every time you ask him to do something. Neither dog was/is as carefully trained as yours, though, and my mother's dog is overcoming his "why should I" attitude with a stronger reward history. I think you can overcome these things with conditioning, but dogs are like any animal and sometimes what is going on in their head is different to what is normally going on in their head. At least, that's my theory. Just like some days you get on a forum and stick it to someone even though any other day you would just walk away and not bother about it. There are always reasons why you feel particularly invincible or particularly careless, but sometimes you don't even know what they are. I have a sneaking suspicion some dogs are harder to condition than others. It seems to me that some dogs have that spark of independence and alertness where they are often conscious of what they are doing and are in the habit of thinking before leaping so to speak. I do agree with this but I had taken this into consideration when doing the retraining knowing that dogs will only be reliable if you add as many criteria to proofing as you can. I worked this dog in many different situations (different places , me doing different things, different distances, the sheep doing different things) until he didn't respond to the sheep at all and actively looked away through choice. One of my theories was that maintenance training hadn't been done for a long time as the dog did nothing to be punished even though he was exposed to sheep on a regular basis and responded how I wanted him to....dunno . :) You're probably onto something with the maintenance training. Kivi's supposedly conditioned recall is about as good as the last time you practised it. We try to practice it every time he's off leash because give him a couple of weeks of no or very little practice and the reliability will go down significantly. Erik retains things for much longer without practice. Different dogs and so on. But you know, sometimes it's just really hard to account for things. I've plenty of times seen animals do bizarre things I have trouble explaining. I expect it's mostly my lack of knowledge, but I think that sometimes we have to accept that they aren't robots to just do exactly what we've gone to great pains to teach them to do and nothing else. They no doubt have ups and downs as well, and moments of near insanity. ;) I guess I don't really believe in 100% in nature. There's always someone doing something that flies in the face of all reason. There's always a chance that your dog is one day going to do something completely unexpected that he's never done before. I don't remember what rule we were discussing, now.

I feel that "drive" is being used a bit freely to describe several different things. For the sake of clear communication (and the fun of looking at doggy pictures and videos), post your pictures/videos of dogs "in drive" here.

You mean apart from the fact that I don't think he and I see eye to eye on the origin of behaviour...? What's the point in having a lesson with one person on something that many people are using to describe many different things? This is a standardisation issue to me. I know what I think of as a working level of drive, but what's the point in me talking about it if other people mean something else? I'm trying to make sure I'm talking about what everyone else is talking about, but it's kinda hard when no one can really explain what they see with their eyes when they see a dog they consider working in drive. I posted several videos of dogs drivey for different things in the last drive discussion and got a whole lot of "You don't understand drive" and none of "I think that is a dog in drive because..." Who doesn't understand drive? I want it quantified, dammit! Okay, ignore the overwraught Dawkins groupie. I'll start the thread and anyone who has a definition in their head no matter how wordless can post it in picture/video form.

.... Oh, please. Spare the rod and spoil the dog? Do you like to be punished, Diablo? How about I choke off your air supply every time you post something I don't like? Should be a gift to you, because it'll save you from serious injury when someone else snaps and introduces you to Mr Lead Pipe. Of course, I'm not threatening you, but illustrating a point. That argument is ridiculous and actually kind of offensive, much like my above statement would be if it were said to your face in an aggressive tone. Just because punishment is a way that any animal on the planet learns doesn't mean we are somehow denying our dogs of something natural to them that they need. We desex them, don't we? That's even more fundamental to life than operant conditioning. Firstly, why are we talking about your civil aggressive GSD? I don't know any dog owners that have to handle such a thing except that one person in the States with her working line GSD. I know she had some civil aggression problems with him at some point, and she didn't need corrections to get it under control. However, I do know aggressive dogs that GOT WORSE when punished. I know dogs that got PTS because their initial fear aggression was treated with punishment and they spiralled out of control. There are always exceptions, but arguing against a set of general statements with exceptions to the rules is, well, not very convincing or useful I'm afraid. Secondly, no one here is talking about putting a dog to sleep because they have tried positive methods and they didn't work but they refuse to try punishments. Would you like to discuss the topic at hand, now? Are there any rules that you specifically disagree with, or are you just kicking against reward-based methods in general?

Interesting post, M-J. This one confuses me for the punishment to keep the behaviour stopped doesn't the dog need to expect there to consequences for displaying the behaviour that is undesirable to the handler. Hence the reason, I believe, for rule no 5, (5. The punishment must be associated with the behavior, but not with the trainer. Otherwise, the trainer becomes part of the punishment and the animal starts fearing and disliking the trainer.) The reason why I agree with this rule is that when a punishment becomes predictable it will lose effectiveness and become nagging rather than an actual punishment. In my mind, if an animal is expecting a punishment then you're using them too much. Presumably, if your punishment is working, by the time it becomes expected the dog will have stopped doing the thing you are punishing precisely because it has become expected. So I kind of agree with you, but my understanding of this rule is that it's aimed at the naggers out there. That is a great point, and the reason why I don't use punishments to teach anything. To me, punishments in the P+ sense are for creating an inhibition and that's about it. Maybe there should be an extra rule about the complexity of the behaviour you're trying to stop? Or the number of reps it should take? I think if it takes more than a handful of reps you're drifting into making it predictable and thus losing effectiveness and also drifting into more punishments than rewards territory. I think there are two issues, here. The first being dogs in such a state of drive or arousal that punishments are as nothing. I remember someone on another forum with a Dogo who would take off after Coyotes. When he got back he would have cactus spines actually lodged in his underbelly and balls, but obviously he didn't much feel them when he was chasing one of those pesky Coyotes. I think it's clear from the dogs' behaviour that these things aren't punishing enough for these dogs in these circumstances. There's a good chance they'd have to seriously maim themselves before physical pain had much of an impact on them in this state. Secondly, you have mentioned reliability. It's a fair call that it's sometimes near impossible to punish every single time. My approach is that if I can't punish every time then this is not a behaviour to punish. The same approach as some positive trainers take to training reliable recalls: don't let the dog choose the right thing without being rewarded and don't give them an opportunity to do the wrong thing. So if your dog is off leash and you think he might not come when you call him, don't call him. This is a bad situation for any trainer to have got themselves into, but it happens, and it's not the end of the world. We also have poor judgement sometimes and are surprised when we call and the dog blows us off. These things happen, but I am guessing that if it happens rarely, then you can recover with a little extra work with punishments the same way you can with rewards. But maybe it is easier with rewards because you can set them up to win rather than waiting for them to do the wrong thing again. ETA an acknowledgement of what Kavik said. There is an attitude shift, and IME, it made training a lot more fun for me as well. It's a vital point, but one that usually seems to get overlooked.

Yeah, but what does it look like? What differentiates it from a dog that is engaged but not "in drive"? What are the ears doing? The eyes? The tail? Are the movements free or tight? And so on.

I don't think I'm understanding what people mean by triggering into drive. Alert or fully revved or anywhere in between? I have trouble understanding what people actually mean when they talk about drive. It's a continuum, right? How do you describe where on the continuum the dog is when you say they are in drive? What defines it? Would people participate if I started a thread for photos or videos of dogs "in drive" and what body language they considered to be indicative of that state?

I don't think anyone is saying that, though. I don't know about others, but my point has always been that following those eight rules can be quite difficult, even if you know your dog well and have good timing and a good understanding of dog body language. I have met professional dog trainers that at best possess decent timing and that's all. Why should we as dog lovers encourage the use of something that is not only unpleasant to dogs but difficult to pull off effectively? If I waited around to correct Erik every time he did something I didn't like I'd spend most of my life unteaching him things I don't like instead of teaching him things I do like. It's so easy to start training proactively instead of just reacting to whatever your dog comes up with and keep the punishments for fixing accidents in messing up with environmental reinforcement control. It's much easier to stick to the eight rules that way, and what's more, you get to spend most of your time telling your dog they are awesome and putting lots of positive reinforcement in the piggy bank for those moments you do decide you need something negative in the mix.

I work with animal lovers. They don't think I'm weird. :D But I think doggy daycare was pushing it for some of my non-work friends and family.

To me the word justify means that someone needs to explain themselves why they did something that was "wrong". If I follow my own definition then Im certainly not justyfing anything in this thread. To be asked to justify yourself is NOT an assertion or even a suggestion that you have done something "wrong". It is providing proof of validity, and scientists are expected to justify pretty much everything they say. I'm happy to justify my avoidance of punishment and have done repeatedly. I'm happy to justify my reliance on rewards. I justify everything I do with my dogs, to myself and anyone that wants to hear my reasons for why I do what I do. I feel my reasoning is sound and have nothing to hide. Justifying something to yourself through the use of special circumstances that may or may not be hypothetical isn't real convincing, though, and without putting words in bedazzled's mouth, perhaps that's what they were driving at, there.

I know someone in the States who is heavily into working lines of GSDs and her training mentor used to train police dogs. She says that most police and military dogs are trained with positive reinforcement over there these days, and that is purely because the dogs perform better. They bring in corrections when the dog is already trained to proof and that is all. She knows her stuff.

Mine understand the concept that the safest place for something tasty is in their bellies. Erik and Kivi wrestle objects out of each other's mouths several times a day. It's one of their favourite games. They don't act differently if they take something the other one wasn't really intending to give them. Kivi will just sit back and let Erik take whatever he wants and Erik assumes that this is his right. With us, he assumes that if we say "Erik" we have something even better for him.

Just a note of caution on testing your recall, we suffered a few setbacks with Kivi this way. There were a few times we called him before it was properly conditioned and he was in the middle of doing something fun and so he blew us off. It set us back a bit and we had to go back to easier recalls for a while. Here's a video I took of Kivi's emergency recall earlier in the week: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=melsta...u/2/ERdHMPks9rM He normally comes in much more direct, but Erik was severely distracting him!

I often hear people talk about teaching dogs that there are consequences to their actions. I'd just like to point out that there is no need to do that with punishments. Rewards are a consequence as well if you think about it in those terms.

Jindos are Korea's national dog and they don't export them. I would not drop the leash, because if my dogs run and the other dog catches them, god knows how far they will be from me. I would rather hold onto them and make sure I'm on hand if I'm needed. Plus, a running dog is just an invitation for a chase. This has happened to me a few times and I'm just not a screamer in a crisis. I don't make any noises and that's not something I can control. I've had a small dog in the past when it happened, and twice I physically lifted my dog out of the path of the charging dog at the last minute by the leash. It prevented my dog from being savaged both times. This is the reason why my dogs now wear harnesses. It has happened to me once with Kivi, who is too big to lift out of the way. He wasn't on leash at the time. He didn't seem phased by this setter roaring down on him with teeth bared, but I was ready to do battle and shoved Kivi behind me. The setter came to a screeching halt at the last minute and turned out to be friendly, just having a very bizarre way of meeting new dogs. Last year I had a dog try to jump up to grab my small dog out of my arms. I just kept knocking him aside with my hip or my arm until someone grabbed him. I was lucky I was tall, because I had my dog over my head and he was a pretty big dog.

Kivi is a lot like Bubby. I didn't train much with him because he was just so freaking easy to live with as he was. Since I got Erik, though, I would say I train them about equally. Mostly because if I train with one the other one wants some as well. Erik probably gets a little more training because he needs more structure in his life. Or more to the point, I need more structure in his life. He can be really inventive if not given enough direction. The more I train with my two the more I appreciate the differences between them and how that affects the way I should interact with them for the best results. Motivating Kivi is a little harder, shaping is even harder, and free-shaping can be quite difficult. But Kivi gives me beautiful focus and teaches me how to micro-shape. Erik is just a joy to train and has made me realise why people love biddable breeds so much.

Sorry, misunderstood. But how do you know they aren't affected for immense periods of time? I don't know. I take it for granted that Kivi recovered from all the times I accidentally punished the hell out of him because I have a lot of positive reinforcement in the piggy bank, but I don't know when it comes down to it. It's that uncertainty that drives my actions. And the happy discovery that I needn't worry about it if I don't even have to do it. so if he never got fed unless he had to do a behavior for it he would starve himself to death because you're not fun enough? Maybe you misunderstood my post. If your dog does not value something highly enough then you remove all other sources of it and make him work for what little he gets. Quality over quantity. But it wasn't a matter of not valuing the reward highly enough. It was a matter of not being rewarded often enough, and that led to unsurety, which led to less fun for him, which led to less effort and a lower frustration threshold. Because you dish it out so easily. He gets excited because he probably knows the tide of favourite treats will come forth with with only him having to show a little more interest in you. Ain't it great? It's a no-brainer for him to participate and do as he's asked. Don't need to correct him and his waistline is fine. There's no need to be miserly. I have plenty of treats, he wants them, he'll work for them, I deliver. Everyone is happy. I get loads of enthusiasm and rock solid reliability with very little effort, he likes to offer behaviours I have rewarded just in case I choose to reward them again, and most importantly, everyone trusts each other and has fun. I keep telling OH to quit asking him to roll over when he's trying to do exciting doggy things at the park, but OH can't resist and Kivi just keeps encouraging him with all that willing compliance! Gah! Yah, that was the exact point I was making. I wasn't comparing; I was contrasting. Yes, that's because Operant Conditioning works on any animal with a brain. I feel like a broken record sometimes. What's the difference? My dogs do everything because they choose to as well. Including the things that they wouldn't choose to do if left to their own devices. Including the things they instinctively don't want to do. The only difference to me is that my dogs will tolerate a punishment if I decide to use one. I don't think it is whether the animal will do it with rewards or not, but whether it's worth trying to train it. There are certainly limitations to work within, but sometimes even if you can do something, it would take so long and be so stressful to the animal that it's not worth pursuing it. It doesn't happen much with domestic animals, but I know some people who have decided management is better for their dog than putting them through the stress of retraining.

Well, they do call them the wolves of the sea. They are known to hunt in groups. It doesn't matter, though. If you want to talk dogs, I can and have offered similar examples. But FWIW, drives and methods don't matter as long as you have the reward right. And that holds for any animal. Although there's a slight problem with building motivation in animals that graze or browse all day, don't engage in play or other social activities, and run at the first sign of danger. The principles are still the same.

I believe there are variables to this ie, depending on how often the action has been reinforced (self reinforced), depending on whether the dog has successfully achieved full predatory drive sequence and/or whether it's just the thrill of the chase with no killing involved. It would be extremely difficult (albeit not impossible) to compete with a dog which has fulfilled the entire predatory drive sequence. I wonder if you caught my living example at the beginning of the thread? Pyry has "fulfilled the entire predatory drive sequence". Multiple times. His drive to kill animals is frighteningly intense. At his worse he has turned on humans approaching a live animal he has bailed up. Didn't bite, but it's the only time in his life he's ever even threatened a person let alone made an aggressive move towards them. He's otherwise a very sweet dog with no resource guarding history. I don't know that he'd go through barbed wire, but if he can smell the animal and knows it's close and can't get to it, he will injure himself trying. Yet, now he will leave a live animal he was about to kill when called. It hasn't stopped him from hunting per se, but it does show the power of conditioning. I do not think that it would necessarily work as well on other dogs. Pyry is a thinker and is not interested in chasing animals he won't catch. He's small, so that means he can't take off on exciting, high speed chases over the countryside like my mother's other dog can. He can, but the prey will leave him to eat dust, so he doesn't bother. I think that with chasers, they tend to switch off and not hear verbal commands when they go into chase mode. IME with Kivi, you can certainly build up so that they are far more likely to hear you when in chase mode, but Kivi doesn't put his all into a chase and would never injure himself, so I don't know how that holds with a more driven dog. I think that when they get glassy-eyed, whether they are chasers or killers, you HAVE to make your move the moment they even think about it, regardless of which method you're going to use. I would have crated the chicken-chasing dog for the day. What's so bad about that? Seems a better deal than a few waps on the head with a broom and 30 minutes out of your day to wave the broom around. I don't think there is a good outcome for a dedicated stock chaser if the owners don't want to put in any time or effort. Edited to shorten.

We pretty much fall over backwards when someone knows either of our breeds. In fact, it's only ever happened at a dog show. It's also a bit embarrassing when we're like "that one's a Lapphund" and then the folks say "And the little one? Is he the same only young?" "er, no, he's a Vallhund. Finnish Lapphund, Swedish Vallhund. Yes, we like hunds." For some reason people always think Erik is a German Shepherd cross. It bewilders me. They all say he looks like a dwarf shepherd.