corvus

I am not aware of any code of conduct that forbids negative punishment, nor would the example given be negative punishment. Preventing the antecedent is just management. That was mentioned at the RSPCA Scientific Seminar a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure exactly what code of conduct it is, but apparently it is somehow related to circus animals. I don't think it is adhered to and I don't think it specifically forbids use of negative reinforcement, just says that it shouldn't be used. Paul McGreevy made the point that if that was the case, they wouldn't be able to lead an animal out on a leash or halter. I have heard it argued that negative reinforcement is not necessarily aversive, but I have difficulties with that reasoning. If it's not aversive, why does the animal repeat behaviour that results in its removal? That's not to say it can't be very mildly aversive as opposed to strongly aversive. I think pressure release training can be used exceptionally well with great subtly leaving the animal feeling more confident and comfortable, but I also have seen people unknowingly using R- by shouting at their dog until it stops doing whatever they don't like. Of course, do that enough and the dog probably will stop paying much attention to shouting. Or they become like OH's parents' dog and just won't try anything new at all because they can't figure out what earns shouts and what makes them stop.

If it looks and acts enough like a Dalmatian to win Dalmation conformation awards, then it's a Dalmatian.

The topic is entitled Bark Busters and Cesar Milan. I'm confused why you're talking about purely positive trainers and how people choose them because they market themselves as kinder to dogs. The very first post I made would suggest otherwise. I am yet to meet one of these "purely positive" trainers, but I've met a few that claim to be positive that have turned out not to be. In every case it was the aversives they chose to use that were not working very well, and their use of aversives that they did not understand very well. You are going to have to be more specific.

This week has had me thinking about subtle signs of a dog that is not quite fulfilled. I noticed a few little patterns that may or may not be patterns. When my poking maniac has had more exercise than usual, he doesn't poke things nearly as much. When both dogs haven't spent as much time in the yard as usual, they are more unsettled. When they get their off leash exercise in a place not big enough for extensive play, the younger one takes longer to settle when he gets home and the older one seems to store up more playful energy he releases next time we take them out. I'm not sure if those sorts of patterns are meaningful, but it got me thinking how you tell if your dog is unfulfilled in some way. Beyond the obvious things like they are bouncing off the walls or barking excessively or engaging in obsessive behaviour, what might be other clues that something is not quite ideal in their lives?

Did you miss the first post? Do you know what methods Bark Busters and Cesar Milan use? How is this about "positive only methods"? Bark Busters are relatively clear on their website about the role of "reprimands" in their training approach. We've all seen how CM uses aversives by now. This is NOT one of your "quite often" scenarios. And what's more, so far every lay person in my area I've spoken to who has hired a private trainer has hired BB, and one on numerous recommendations from others. So I think that your reasoning is a weak front for getting back up on your usual soap box about trainers misleading the public through their "positive only" methods that apparently don't work for every dog. Please, keep to the topic, or at least try to make your rants relevant to it.

He doesn't have any general symptoms. Separation from the house was not in the slightest traumatic for the first 9 months of his life. It just spontaneously became traumatic one day out of the blue. No indication whatsoever that something was developing. He doesn't care if he's left or locked away anywhere else as long as it's not that yard.

My boys have the kitchen and usually the lounge room when we go out. We have a semi-fenced pool in the backyard. When we moved in we erected a fence so we could keep the dogs away from the pool, but it also put them a good distance from the doors into the house. One dog barked all day trying to get out, and a few months later the other dog started doing the same thing. More than 2 years later he still freaks out if someone pulls the gate shut on him when he's in that yard. Sheer panic. I do not know what happened, but he is truly afraid of getting trapped in there. He is perfectly happy to stay in there with the gate open, but every hour or so "calls" for me to come and check in with him. I am suspicious that one of the neighbours did something to terrify him one day. He was fine out there for 9 months and then one day he just snapped and started barking hysterically and that's how it's been ever since. Rather than try to counter-condition an unknown stimuli, we just put them inside. Neither barks much when they are inside. I am more worried about someone messing with my dogs than them being stolen.

I wonder what part of "this is not a discussion or argument about positive versus correctional training" some people failed to understand? Let's be honest, here. Whatever side of the fence you sit on, you KNOW that the other side works as well. We all know it works. Personally, I have never met a dog that is non-responsive to positive methods. All animals with the ability to learn are responsive to rewards! If the dog is not responsive than you are not using an appropriate reward or have not addressed the underlying antagonistic emotion. How hard is this?? All animals with the ability to learn are responsive to punishment! If the dog is not responsive, you are not using an appropriate punishment or have not addressed the underlying emotion. Are we seeing a pattern, here? Those of us that choose to avoid aversives in training are not kidding ourselves that we are "purely positive". We know we use other quadrants, we are just wary of negative associations because they can be counter-productive to other training and conditioning aims we have. That is our choice and it is NOT a bad one. It is just the way we like to do things. Can we perhaps get over constructing opposing mythological arguments of sweeping generalisations so we can pull them apart and just be grown ups for once? Once again, this is not a discussion about training methods. It's a discussion about the spread of training information to lay people and what leads them to make the choices about trainers and methods they do. And it is an expression of concern about the spread of misinformation by people that are being paid a lot of money for their advice.

I would think it would be hard to get foundation stock if you didn't intend to show.

I was doing it last night in the UD ring between exercises - pushing Moo away with my leg - and yep he enjoyed the game. Yeah, that kind of thing. I think I have a video of playing around teaching Erik to push on YouTube, but if I do it's unlisted. Don't really want the whole world to see my little experiments. ;) He didn't really like it to begin with, but didn't take long to start pushing back. As much as I find the likes of Kevin Behan of Natural Dog Training to be tedious and pseudo-sciencey at best, I think they might be onto something with pushing games. Play isn't really that well understood in general, but it seems to me from the various things I've read that there's a potent "social confidence" kind of feeling from play that promotes a lot of positivity, and in quite different ways to typical reward and anticipation. It's fascinating stuff, and frustrating trying to piece it together from incomplete knowledge. I think I am a bit gung-ho about what we can teach animals to like. I'm currently kind of teaching my hare to push, too! I didn't really set out to do it, but I thought he needed to learn to accept touch and I found rather than reaching my hand towards him sometimes it's better to let him move into my hand naturally. So I cue a target to give him something he can confidently focus on and then hold out the reward so that he has to move against my other hand to get it. It's surprising how much he will push when he is just SO close to getting his piece of strawberry. For an animal that is so nervous about being touched that even looking like you might want to do it will send him smartly out of range, I'm somewhat amazed at what he'll tolerate with incentive. He's even coming to like some tactile.

That seems expensive to me. Especially considering the kind of advice they apparently give! Do people think that's a fair price for private training? How many people don't get help because they can't afford it?

I let both breeders know that we feed raw and what goes into it and both were happy with that. Kivi was on a puppy kibble when he came home to us so we could switch him to raw gradually. We tried to do that, but he was sucking the mince off his kibble and spitting it out again, so we gave up after a couple of days. So we didn't really follow our breeders' diet recommendations so much as agree together on a diet.

Got a few theories about this from affective neuroscience. My hunch is pushing games might turn out to be a good alternative to tug games. I've started teaching it as a secondary reinforcer with my dogs. It does interesting things to them, particularly cuddly teddy bear Kivi.

This isn't a discussion or debate about positive versus correctional methods. I worry about trainers essentially charging people to give them what is likely incorrect information, and I worry about dogs subjected to training methods that may be not only aversive, but ineffective. It troubles me to think that people are encouraging other people to use a one-size-fits-all approach to managing their dogs that is known for being aversive and scientifically flawed. I don't know the full story, here, but what I did hear didn't make me feel very confident about the help people are receiving for their dogs. The person I spoke to the other day thought that BB were very expensive. I didn't ask how much they were charging her, but I wonder if cost factors into people's choices, or just recommendations from others? Maybe it just comes down to exposure and advertising?

True, Gayle. They live next to the dog park, which is a pedestrian thoroughfare for folks coming back from the local train station. I take it the dogs therefore alert bark a lot. I imagine they wouldn't do it so much at 3am if they were inside, but apparently one can just become pack leader and that will solve the problem without having to change any habits or routines.

I used to move my hand in a little semi-circle stroking motion in the direction I wanted Erik to swing. He's a short dog, so used to swing out a lot when he was heeling so he could look up at me. I started signalling him to come in tighter when he started to swing. I found pretty quickly he didn't need many signals. I was just doing it for fun and abandoned it not long after, but I now in agility I still use it to get Erik to straighten up in front of an obstacle. He's a bit rusty, but still gets the gist. Incidentally, I've just started Kivi on this exercise using the logs on the ground at the dog park. Kivi doesn't move to keep facing me. I think he feels a bit unsteady. So I taught him to walk sideways with his front feet on the log and back feet off to get him started, then started teaching him to balance on the logs, and with a bit of muscle conditioning he is starting to move around a little more. Funny how some dogs are just naturally quite dexterous and agile whereas others are a bit clumsy. Seeing Kivi try to balance on those logs, it is very hard for him. He is improving every day, but meanwhile, Erik is walking backwards up stairs and balancing in a down on the logs and running along every raised barrier he can fit his feet on. I swear he's part cat he is so agile and balanced.

Nope. I don't know any trainers in the area that have a good reputation and neither asked me for a recommendation anyway. Besides which, I don't know what the BB trainer is like, either. Sounds like rubbish, but I don't know the full story.

Just wanted to bump this and thank everyone for their help. Erik is doing super well learning to chase new objects. I ended up just using a toy on a ribbon he likes and shaping him to run to the toy he didn't want for a go with the toy he did want. I'm now moving towards shaping him to pick up the toy he didn't want. He prefers whatever toy I have in my hand, but using several toys at once seems to be helping with building his interest in the one I'm tugging with so when I do finally throw it he's ultra keen to chase it. Missed training this week and haven't wanted to do much equipment until I'm happy with the chasing thing, but I did run him through a couple of weave poles a few times and he's finally doing it at a run instead of a jog. Yaay! :D

Perhaps more to the point, the 'prey drive' of a hunting dog is not as easily adapted as a reward, and they don't have the human focus that working breeds do. Plenty of focus on what they are doing. My mother has an extremely prey driven dog who is otherwise dead lazy. He is only a 10kg dog, but he tore a hole in the garage wall trying to get to a trapped possum, and he has maintained a 2 day vigil on the wood pile where he last saw a live rat, hanging around in the hated rain looking wet and miserable, but not ready to give up on the rat yet. He is insatiable when it comes to hunting. I guess many terriers are the same. Watching a rat terrier at work is a little bit disturbing and scary. They certainly don't mess around. Not exactly biddable, though. Biddable hunting dogs are a bit of an oxymoron. They have to be able to do much of their job on their own.

I don't think anyone is suggesting Huski shouldn't bother with her dog, are they? Personally, I'd hate to see a dog like Erik in an average pet home. Seriously, he takes some very proactive management. He stayed with my mum while we were on holidays and at one point I called up and asked how it was going and she said he'd been picking on one of her dogs and she had just thought she would let them settle it amongst themselves. I was aghast! What did I tell you about being proactive?? You can't let this dog sort things out for himself! You won't like what he comes up with! You have to tell him what to do before he gets a chance to think of something. It has become a way of life for us, but only because we persisted until we got it right and discovered that our bundle of energy was a really likeable dog once he had some structure in his life. I think some dogs are a bit too much for the average dog owner. THEY have to have the drive to make it work. As Erik's breeder says, Erik probably wouldn't be popular with "low drive" people.

It is thought provoking. The more I think about it the more unsure I am what exactly drive even is when we talk about it in discussions like this. There are a few personality studies that have been done on dogs that seem to result in a construct that describes high drive versus low drive, but I think there is always something else we talk about in the "package" that isn't explained by a single factor in a multivariate analysis. Do we lump traits into a general concept of "drive" when they aren't necessarily related? Reactivity, persistence, energy level, extraversion/confidence, trainability, opportunism, attention towards rewards, novelty seeking...?

Arg! Me too. These two dogs are like models of submission. I have a photo of one on the ground with Erik trying to out-submit him. Of course, that doesn't mean they don't try to stick their heads in your treat bag. They just do what they've learnt works. I wonder if to some degree it's a lot of confirmation bias. They are sweet, gentle dogs and I think there's every chance treating them as if they had a dominance problem would actually work. If it didn't, it would at least make the owners feel better about it all. It gets me riled, though, that people get fed rubbish, and then it works for an entirely different reason, and then this just perpetuates the myths. Sometimes I think dogs are their own worst enemy. Most of them don't punish stupid advice with 20 stitches.

Every time Kivi has seen his breeders they have got extra special cuddles and kisses. To me, they are definitely more than just faces in the crowd. But he doesn't seem to recognise their dogs.

This morning I was chatting to someone at the dog park. I commented on the lovely temperaments that her two dogs have and she told us that she was getting Bark Busters in because they were barking at 3am when drunk people were walking past their house. She said the fellow from BB said over the phone that the dogs are barking because the humans aren't the pack leaders. I kinda scoffed a bit. I mean, we've all heard it before and it's ridiculous that he could say that without even viewing the dogs. She said she had hired BB on recommendations from lots of other people, and was impressed with a video they sent her of a well-trained dog. I expressed surprise that she had heard so many good things about them and she asked if I had heard otherwise. I just said I hadn't had any dealings with them so I couldn't really say, but just to be careful to be honest about whether the techniques are working or not and don't pay too much attention to the actual explanation. This was the second person I have spoken to at the dog park that has said they were hiring Bark Busters. The other folks had a Great Dane pup and they had been told they had to stop giving out treats. So OH asked me if I was wrong about BB. If people thought they worked and were good, maybe they were? We had a discussion about the two separate issues of whether something worked and how you explained why it worked or didn't, but in the end I find it a bit worrying. We go to puppy school and are taught to reward the good and ignore the bad, which I think is a good message. But then, when problems arise as they inevitably do, people flounder, trying to teach a dog NOT to do something rather than teaching them what to do instead. This lady we were talking to this morning said she had been told by friends that Bark Busters and Cesar Milan would solve all her problems. A chilling thought to me, but maybe I'm making unfair assumptions.

Lots of people have already said that supposedly low drive dogs do compete and even win. That hardly makes them unsuitable. I think everyone who had a choice would prefer to train a high drive dog for competition, but why should that exclude dogs of moderate or low drive? Given how much my lower drive dog loves to train, I don't think it's a waste of time trying to get the most out of him. It's fun for both of us. Training my "suitable" dog is fun as well. I think for those of who just want to have fun with our dogs, there is no reason not to train a dog that is never going to be a super strong competitor.