corvus

No no, feel free to discuss. I just did it like Leslie Nelson said. I say my dogs' names quite a lot. Usually to get their attention, but not always. Sometimes I just say it to greet because I'm a verbal creature by nature. Inevitably, my dogs' names lose their sharp edge over time, even though periodically I might sit there with a pile of treats and go "Kivi" *treat* until they are all gone. I just say that name too often without a good reward. I see the ER as an easy way to preserve a good recall, although as I said, I think it still needs maintenance. At least I'm not saying it a dozen times a day just to give my dog a pat on the head or have them look at me or something, though. I talk way too much around my animals. I don't really need or want them to pay attention to me every time I say their name. Kivi's name IS his ER, but just said in a certain way with a certain pitch. I don't need him to pay attention to me every time I say his name, but he can differentiate tone, and I would like him to respond to his name when I say it in a particular way. I have a "look at me" way I say his name and a "we're going to do something exciting" way to say his name and a "I have roast beef" way to say his name as well as a "just wanted to touch base" way to say his name and so on.

Well, the way Nelson explains it, if you reward big every time, then when you don't have treats on you and your dog is running off towards a busy road, it doesn't matter that you have no treats. They'll come running and the fact that one time out of 200 they came and didn't get a big reward won't make much of an impact. We nearly always have something like roast meat or steak or rissole on us when we are going anywhere Kivi will be off leash. We certainly vary what we have, but recalls typically earn cooked meat of some sort. Sometimes raw meat or leftovers at home. I think maybe it needs a lot of maintenance, though. A month ago Kivi's recall was fantastic, but we haven't kept up the practice over the last few weeks, especially after getting the puppy, and today OH said he was not exactly galloping over like usual. OH treated this by giving him a lower value reward than usual, because his reasoning is that he didn't perform as well usual. I'm not sure that that's really the point. Does he even know that his performance was not up to scratch when a conditioned recall is basically a conditioned reinforcer, and a conditioned reinforcer is only as good as the last time it was reinforced? If he's thinking before he comes running, then it's not really conditioned and we need to work on it some more to boost it back to habit. Maybe OH should have gone over the top and rewarded really big for a slow recall to encourage a faster one next time? I should point out that the ER is not the same as a regular recall. The regular recall is treated more like regular training, with variable rewards. Sometimes a big one, sometimes a game, sometimes a rub, sometimes just a little tidbit. The reason you split them up is so you can have a conditioned recall you have the luxury to spend a long time building up without poisoning its effectiveness by calling when you don't have any decent rewards or when your distractions are too high for the level your dog is currently at. It took about 12 months for Kivi's recall to be fantastic in just about any situation.

There's something that I've been wondering about and not quite understanding since I started training Kivi's recall over a year ago. We know that dogs are gamblers and will work harder for unpredictable rewards. I trained Kivi's emergency recall following Leslie Nelson's Really Reliable Recall dvd. Nelson teaches that you ALWAYS reward the emergency recall with something really amazing. As I understood it, she was aiming for a conditioned response, I guess the way most people teach to ALWAYS reward after a click. So what I am getting at is are recalls more reliable if you have tried to build recalling as a conditioned response by rewarding big every time, or is it better to exploit the gambler in a dog by varying the rewards and reward rate? I probably should watch the independent breeds section of the RRR dvd, actually.

Hmm. I was just reading a book where the writer explains P- with the example of a dog that would scratch the door of the crate when the trainer was approaching with a meal, so the trainer would turn around and walk away when the dog scratched. Is that different to going to put a bowl down for the dog, but then pulling it away before doing so? This is why I don't like the quadrants very much. But I do think that it's important stuff and the better I understand it the better I will understand my animals and my training methods. ETA, could it be the presence of the trainer with the food was a stimulus for the scratching and not the food itself? In which case, if the trainer removes themselves and the food, could it be P-?

Thanks, that makes sense. I knew there was a reason why I felt like I shouldn't be doing it. I was giving Erik a little extra than I thought he needed as the breeder said she lets them eat as much as they like at this age, but I'm getting a good feel for how much he's going to eat, now, so I think I can feed him just enough that he'll slow down a bit at the end but clean his bowl. If he loses interest I think I'll tip the leftovers into Kivi's bowl and keep Erik locked up until Kivi is done.

Yes. I started writing out a very similar example and then realised that I didn't really know where I was going with it. So, say you are preparing a meal for your dog and they jump up and down on the spot. You ignore it and the food stays on the counter until there is a lull in the jumping. Over time the jumping fades away. Now say you ignore it, but when you go to give your dog the food they start really jumping, so you pull the food away from them and only put it down when they have stopped jumping and over time the jumping stops. Would it be correct to say that in the first scenario it's extinction but in the second scenario it's P-? Or is that a false distinction?

Erik seems to have this weird hangup where he won't finish what's in his bowl until I put it in front of the other dog, then Erik's head is in it along with Kivi's and they clean it up together. I feed Erik and Kivi seperately. I give Erik about 5 minutes to eat what he wants and once he's wandering around no longer looking interested in his meal, I take it out and give it to Kivi to clean up and let Erik out. I have this vague feeling that I shouldn't let this happen, but not really sure why. Kivi and Erik are comfortable sharing the leftovers and if Erik is super hungry, he finishes his meal without Kivi's help. To me it seems like Erik is just interested in whatever Kivi's got, but maybe I'm wrong. Could it lead to any problems later on, do you think?

Okay, I have a question about this. Could you offer an example?

The jargon isn't exactly clear anywhere if you ask me (which no one did). Aidan has pointed out to me that a correction can be positive or negative if it fixes a problem, but lots of people use it to mean the same thing as a punishment, leading to people like me getting irritated about using the word at all. I guess the same reason why I get irritated with words like dominance (even though it's often accurate) and leadership when used to describe how we relate to our dogs. And "negative reinforcement" is often used interchangeably with "punishment" even though they aren't the same thing. Some terms aren't particularly intuitive and some are misused or have come to carry connotations that change how the word might be interpreted.

No really, I'm glad you started this topic, Aidan. It helps me understand what we're doing when we use different training methods and why it works. Which is so useful in understanding why something might be not working, or working slowly.

I guess from him watching thousands of dogs and other animals. He was an animal behaviourist before he got his malamute and wanted to train it He still is a behaviourist, he still studies and quantifies behaviour. There is apparently no reason for baby dogs to have razor sharp teeth, generally for every animal there is a reason for whatever they have, the only reason baby dogs have teeth is because they hurt...seriously. They then learn very quickly how much force to use in play with other puppies. May I make a further suggestion? Perhaps defence is also a component? I don't think it is uncommon for puppies (wolf cubs) to be around older dogs/wolves that are not their parents. If they are anything like some of the adolecent dogs I've met, perhaps they get a bit rough with puppies and need the sharpness of puppy teeth to remind them to be gentle as well.

Interesting discussion. It seems to me that bite inhibition and bite threshold are being used interchangeably. If your dog in extreme pain doesn't bite, that's got nothing to do with bite inhibition as I understand it, which is how hard it will bite. A couple of times my old corgi was in extreme pain and did bite, but she did not break the skin and used only just enough pressure to make you think "Ow" but not actually whip your hand away. That's what I would call good bite inhibition. This topic interests me as we had a rescue dog once with no bite inhibition. She never showed any inclination to bite people, thank goodness, but when she bit another dog she did massive damage. Can you teach an adult dog like that bite inhibition? I'm of two minds about Dunbar's method of teaching bite inhibition. Kivi was an extremely mouthy puppy and has grown into a mouthy adult dog. He still mouths me from time to time and normally it doesn't hurt, but every now and then he mouths a bit hard, or at times when I don't want him to. I think with him I wasn't quick enough to phase it out. I hadn't read Dunbar's articles on it and had not been told by trainers that I would have to phase it out. I didn't with Penny; she grew out of it well before she was 6 months old. I think with Kivi I may have been better off just saying no biting at all right from the get-go. He already had great bite inhibition when I took him home and for all that he's always been mouthy, he's always been gentle. Erik is not as naturally mouthy as Kivi was. He doesn't bite as much, and as long as he's not at the height of excitement, I can feel him testing his bite and the yelp does work. When he's full of beans, though, I don't really waste time yelping. He will bite me way too hard and that to me warrants immediate, definitive action. I have decided with Erik to go back to what I did with Penny when I was 13 and hadn't read a dog book in my life, and gradually teach him to modify his bite and phase it out to not biting at all more quickly than I did with Kivi.

It's like reading a book written by someone who can't write as well as you can, jdavis. If I feel like I could have written a fiction book, I usually throw it down in disgust. If I wanted to read something I could write I would just go and read something I have written! I'm not a good writer, so if I've paid $20 for a book, it had better be superior to anything I could do. I'm no dog behaviour specialist and don't pretend I am, but I know about the evolutionary basis for behaviour, so if someone makes a statement about behaviour that doesn't make evolutionary sense to me, and if I then say why this doesn't make evolutionary sense to me in an effort to invite a better explanation and instead I get told simply that I am wrong, well, yeah. I don't trust people who answer with things like that. Just as an example. ;)

I hate the quadrants. And useless, vague criticisms from jdavis. I've read so many damn descriptions of those quadrants and I still get them mixed up. That's why I try to stick to "rewards" and "punishment" as much as possible. :D I suspect sometimes I forget that it can't really be anything until there's a measurable change in the behaviour of the animal.

Yes. Which is why I don't start these discussions in places where everyone will agree with me. Unless I'm feeling a little battered from discussing them here. :D I'm not in the business of converting, and I think that's where discussions about training methods can get messy and frustrating. Everyone does what they think is working best, and most people are pretty committed to that for obvious reasons. Having people come to your way of thinking is the ultimate in affirmation and everyone likes it. I don't flatter myself to think I've ever changed anyone's mind about anything and don't need to have done so to feel my opinions hold merit, but it sure is nice when you can add to a general knowledge pool or say something that makes someone think, whether it's about why they agree or why they disagree.

OMG! I just realised I made a big boo boo. :D I said I used R-, but I don't, I use P-. Man, what colour is red? ETA Thanks to NO ONE for picking up on that! Jdavis, if that was what you were referring to earlier, it might have been nice if you'd actually said that.

Thank you people. Alpha bet, some good lessons for me, there. I will endeavour to be less wordy in future and try to stay out of arguments.

I'm just putting this here because this is where the people I want to apologise to hang out. I just want to apologise for getting frustrated with folks. I'm used to people who know me a little better and know that I balance positive training methods with boundaries and consistency. It's been a long time since I've had a new audience that doesn't know that and might make assumptions from the gaping holes in my theorising that I have left in the interests of getting to the point. I then try to reassure people that I'm not one of those positive trainers that tiptoe around their animals on a case by case basis and it doesn't work, but I get caught up in it and just get increasingly irritated because we're not discussing what I wanted to discuss and now I'm getting criticised for long posts that I find tedious and annoying to write in the first place. I have been told I come off arrogant and snobbish. I'm not really sure why this is, but I'm here to learn, which is why I ask people how they do things at all. I know I then argue about it and everyone rolls their eyes and goes "why do you even bother asking if you're just going to argue about it?". That's a fair call. I guess to me a good discussion has different perspectives so I try to give mine so we can get to the bottom of why we do what we do. Sorry to everyone who thinks I'm being snooty and argumentative. I am honestly trying not to! I don't have this problem in real life. Also sorry to the people who do take my posts in the spirit I intended, and give me something I would like to talk about more only to get shunted aside because I'm too busy getting riled by the answers that weren't to my liking. I have come to see that I do have quite a few things in common with other people on this board when it comes to training methods. I post here because I would like to figure out what the similarities are and what the differences are and why they occur. I think this makes for good discussions, and I would very much like to have these discussions without aggravating people or making them feel like they have to defend their own methods. Could we start again, perhaps? I'll try to remember that people can't read my mind and you can all at least pretend you don't think I'm an academic snob what looks down her nose at everyone. I'm not! I promise. There'd be no point in me posting at all if I was.

I gave very little description because I was just trying to use it to get the ball rolling. I wasn't asking for advice. Just wanted to know what other people do out of curiosity and started with my own approach as an ice breaker. I think it's important to recognise the individual personality of your pup. I saw something in Erik that reminded me of a far more aggressive pup. This was a warning bell for me to be careful how I go, just in case. Even though I could see plain as day that he's not like that aggressive pup in other ways. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. But it got me to thinking how other people's experiences might have shaped how they would approach it. I should have communicated that better. Nekhbet, I ain't a normal working family that will send my pup to the pound rather than do some work with him. IME desensitisation doesn't take long. Barking Mad once had a dog that went from hysterics if a hot air balloon went over the house to being able to calmy sit right next to one in a field in 2-3 months of desensitisation. That blew my mind! It doesn't have to be a long and tedious process, especially if you do start early. Like, before the problem has even surfaced, which is what I'm talking about. I'm talking about pre-emptive desensitisation. On the off-chance that a problem arises sometime down the track if you did nothing.

Thank you M-J. I could kiss you right now.

No point I guess. I can say I agree with people on this board until my fingers are bleeding and I will still be accused of looking down my nose at some people I happen to disagree with on some things. The reason why I post here is because it's next to useless to post on a board where everyone agrees with me. What's the point in that? I post here more often because I'm sure to have people disagree with me. That (should) make for stimulating discussion, and I get just enough interesting discussion to make me put myself through this over and over again. I would like to say I post here to make myself feel good about myself. That would be smart. If you think it makes someone feel good about themselves to be ignored when they say something agreeable and attacked when they try to start a discussion with a little about themselves, then I really gotta wonder about you...

FWIW because I know I will also be totally ignored, I agree... sort of. If I found myself with a dog that's throwing a tantrum and walking away wasn't a good idea for whatever reason, I would absolutely restrain it or whatever it took. Dogs (and puppies) can't be allowed to get any kind of reward for throwing a tantrum, or any behaviour that's unacceptable for that matter. It's obvious, isn't it? My only caveat is that I'd rather not provoke a tantrum in the first place. Tough love is all well and good, but if it's avoidable I'll avoid it. In the past I've been a bit slow on the uptake and provoked something like that through my own stupid actions. But having been in the dubious position of holding onto a puppy intent on doing me harm, it's not something I would cheerfully provoke again. No one's being guilted out of using corrective methods, Nekhbet. If you can achieve your aims without them and want to, then what's wrong with that? Having been shown how to administer corrections on a dog incorrectly and done permanent damage in the process, hell would freeze over before I took a dog I had no trouble with to someone who will teach me the proper way of using corrections. If I judge my puppy ever needs a kick up the backside, he'll get one and I won't feel bad about it, but I will never again punish a dog because someone else has told me I should. Incidentally, I asked around and found a lot of people with dogs that have a fair whack of attitude and talk back, stomp around and throw themselves on the ground, or give their owners dirty looks when asked to do something they don't want to do. It's ignored and has never escalated. The dogs do as they are asked all the same. I spoke to one person who had a real shithead puppy (not like my pseudo-shithead who is phenomenally easy to train and is yet to get the shits with me) and he would go into screaming and snapping fits if he didn't like something. This person got a behaviourist in and was taught to handle the puppy gently and gradually desensitise him, coupled with tons of socialisation and gently introducing to things that were known to set him off in the past and rewarding heavily for good behaviour. Imagine that. This dog is now very relaxed about most things, so the approach worked for him at least, and he was a good deal more stroppy than Erik is. This morning Erik bit my bare ankle too hard and I shrieked and grabbed him by the scruff purely in the interests of my own wellbeing. I challenge anyone to mess around avoiding aversives when they are in pain themselves. I wasn't guilty about it at all.

See, this is also why I end up writing irritatingly long posts. Because I have to keep repeating myself and I figure obviously the message is not getting through, so I try saying it in several different ways in the hopes that one will make sense. Let me try again in another way. I'm not avoiding being consistent and I'm not teaching him that he can 'win' with undesirable behaviour. The rule doesn't exist until I think he can stick to it. Puppy licences work with me as well as other dogs. It's not consistent particularly, but nor is shaping, really. You ask for a little more or a little less or a slight variation all the time. I'm not really sure what you are referring to with letting him "win" with undesirable behaviour. Undesirable behaviour never wins here and I don't think I've given any examples where it has, even with Kivi. I also pointed out that I do use R-. I'm more concerned with what I do to avoid the undesirable behaviour happening in the first place. My original question was about situations where you can't just remove a reward or something. You've got a puppy in your lap snarling at you and trying to bite you. What do you do? Is being in this situation at all a result of something going wrong? I don't live in a fairy world where I have the luxury to desensitise to anything aversive that might happen to a dog in its lifetime. I just think if I can avoid introduing an aversive I will. It's much easier when you take the time to teach a dog to like things that they might find unpleasant. It doesn't mean I think I can do that for every unpleasant things the animals have gotta do. I do live with a hare I'm always banging on about. Just walking in to feed him is unpleasant for him a lot of the time. You do what you can is all. I have trouble with the notion that because dogs do it to each other it's what we should do to dogs. Dogs only have a limited amount of things they can do to tell another dog they don't like something, and for a dog that doesn't like something, they can either express it or live in misery until it's over. I'm a person and I have the brainpower to have a bunch of other options open to me when it comes to communication. I don't have to use aversives just because aversives exist and are a normal part of everyday life. But just because I don't like to use aversives doesn't mean a) I never will or b) I let my animals reward themselves with things I don't like just so I don't have to use an aversive. That's madness. I don't even have to use an aversive to avoid letting them reward themselves with tings I don't like. And I'm hardly going to sit around while my dog is about to, like, eat a spider or something and not do a thing lest it be aversive. I'm not going to waste my time listing more ways that my training methods are not like people here seem to think they are when I only end up repeating myself and adding more examples that get thoroughly ignored or misunderstood while everyone is patting each other on the back over things that I actually agree with. Thanks to those that did answer the question thoughtfully. You did give me something to think about, which was the point of the thread, but now I've lost enthusiasm for the discussion. Big susprise there.

I never! I expressed my distrust of behaviourists that don't know as much as I do. There's a difference. Would you trust a behaviourist that didn't know as much as you did? You might notice my first post was not that long. I find I constantly have to expand to cover every freaking eventuality or I get nailed. And yes, people here do often agree with me. It just takes 3 pages of long posts with me covering every freaking evenutality to establish that. I already knew that!!! I don't want to write long posts. I'd be happy if people just answered my questions without provoking me to explain myself in great detail. ;)

Well, I'm a little confused as well, huski. I got the impression from the "enforce boundaries and do not tolerate" message that people must use aversives on their puppies. Holding a puppy down until they stop fighting is an aversive. When I think "enforce" I think there must be consequences if the line is crossed, seeing as the very word "enforce" comes from "force", which means to compel against resistance, but in my household the consequences for crossing a line is no reward, which I was thinking is a bit different to forcing a dog to do something it doesn't want to. Furthermore, it has been said that dogs just have to accept that some things are unpleasant, and it is aversive for a puppy to endure something he doesn't like. It's aversive for an adult dog to endure something it doesn't like. Things dogs don't like are aversive to dogs. Having said all that, I do use R- with puppies when they are too bitey, which I guess is aversive, but I hadn't really considered it "enforcing" a rule due to my understanding of the word "enforce". But none of that really matters as my question was not specifically about puppies or whether aversives should be used with them. I was more interested to hear how other people handle puppies or dogs that throw noisy, bitey tantrums that escalate if they don't get what they want or talk back. If I were to put Erik in a situation he felt uncomfortable enough about to have a growly fest and try to bite me, it's already aversive before I even try to teach him that kind of thing doesn't run with me (which I would do by holding him still until he got over it - also aversive). I don't know how I could tackle a growly bitey puppy without aversives. You can't just ignore them when they're hurting you. You can put them down and walk away, but then you've just taught them that growling and biting works. This is why I would rather avoid getting myself into the situation in the first place by working Erik up to accepting things he doesn't like much right now. I would say my current method is a wee bit aversive because sometimes Erik starts squirming, but if I had a pup that was more shy I could do it without any aversives.