itsadogslife

Contact an experienced dog trainer and explain the problem. This is something that sounds to me can be overcome with the right advice. In the meantime stop taking your dog to dog parks where he is likely to meet Staffy's as it only reinforces his behavior or worse, it could lead to trouble for you and your dog.

I think most dog trainers will tell you that the electronic bark collar is far more effective than the citronella collars. That's because the collar can cause skin irritation if left on too long. Maybe so, but they are far more effective in terms of 'training' than 'debarking' or 'pts'.

Why don't people use electronic barking collars? Why don't local councils sell such collars?

Try putting a light line on your dog around the house. When she has something in her mouth use the line to bring her to you and praise her when she gets there. Gently take the item from her mouth and praise again. When she starts accepting this put the behavior on command. So now say 'fido come' and then praise when she comes. Then put the 'give' on command, I use 'thank you' and then praise. Use the line to enforce the behavior and never give the command unless the line is on the dog. Keep the line on until she is reliable.

A method that is based on the principles of behaviorism will more often than not be best explained by those principles. Assuming of course, that the method works. If it doesn't, then it may or may not be appropriate to reconsider one's ideas in regards to the dog's behavior. The dog is put into a situation created by the long line which offers two different consequences, one good, one bad. It does not take long for the dog to work out (on his own) that paying attention to the handler is the better option as opposed to not paying attention which can result in being caught at the end of the line.

I can only explain the principles that are at work in Koehler. As for other methods I have no opinion. I simply do not accept nor see any compelling reason why I should accept the description of what is going according to behaviorism. I do not accept the principles on which behaviorism rests.

Indeed, and one of those ways (amongst others) is to work the dog on a long line. I agree, hence I wouldn't say such things.

Yes. Although I would modify the above by saying that what the dog learns is that the consequences of his behavior are within his ability to control. Hence it is the dog's own actions which bring about reward or punishment. It is the dog's ability to control the consequences through his own action that brings reward. It is no different for any animal (including humans) in my view, the ability to control one's environment through one's own agency is itself intrinsically rewarding.

And if you have a dog that is not 'driven' to work for you and doesn't have a high value for the rewards you offer? It doesn't matter. Train using the methods that work best for you and your dog. I never said otherwise.

I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. Very true.

But you don't think Koehler trainers realise this? The point of view that matters is not yours, but the dog's. Actually, I think the dog will learn a great deal, it just wont be the kinds of things that he needs to learn in order to successfully negotiate the environment in which he lives. I am firmly of the belief that dogs will either shut down or become aggressive in the face of corrections that they perceive as unfair or incomprehensible. This does not happen on the long line. It does not happen because the dog perceives that it is his own actions (and not the handlers) that determines the consequences both good and bad.

I don't. But the greater the contrast between the choice the greater the clarity for the dog. When people talk about giving dog's choices I notice that in many cases the consequences of those choices seem only to apply to one side of the equation. Again, the greater the consequences of our choices the more meaningful such choices become. But I am sure that there other methods that use similar principles to that operating in Koehler.

Your observations are based on the assumption that “behaviourists took the view that we couldn't measure what was going on in the mind, so they wanted to investigate what actually happened - overt behaviours (or "operants"). My observations are based on the belief that “he best picture of the soul (mind) is the body.” In other words, my assumption is that the best way to tell what is going on in the mind is by observing the overt behavior. Behaviorists on the other hand, start with the assumption that we cannot tell what’s going on in the mind, so that its best to observe what is going on in behavior without reference to the mind. Yes, philosophy is my field, so let me explain this to you. The problem of other minds is a problem in philosophy because it is irrefutable. There is simply no way that you can prove that other people have minds. Now of course, the reason it is a problem is because no philosopher actually believes this (that other people don’t have minds) hence their forlorn and unfruitful attempts to prove the skeptic wrong. Yes my field is philosophy, so I will once again quote Wittgenstein: “The best picture of the soul (mind) is the body.” My evidence is the dog’s behavior. No I am not, I am simply choosing to speak of the dog’s actions in a way that acknowledges the dog’s own volition and it’s capacity to learn and be rewarded and corrected through it’s own choices. Of course getting caught on the end of the line is aversive. I don’t know what gives you the impression that I would deny that. But getting caught on the end of the line ‘conditions’ the behavior of the dog? No. It is like saying, what motivates the sports person is the fear of losing, rather than the joy of winning. I see no reason to accept your take on what motives the behavior. You ask what is the evidence. The fact that the long line method has proven efficiency in building the confidence of even the shyest and most fearful dogs. If you don’t believe me that’s fine. You have no reason to. But if you really wanted to know, I would suggest you speak to someone with over 30+ years experience with the method, such as Tony Ancheta, or perhaps Margot Woods, or maybe Harold Hansen, or George Hobson or Pat Nolan. Unfortunately they are all in America, but you can find them if you wanted. So could any behaviorist if they really wanted. The dog will get caught on the end of the line. Freedom entails the risk of error. Reward would have no meaning in a world where there was no punishment. Why is it that one of the most common complaints we hear on these kind of forums is that the rewards one is using are no longer motivating to the dog? And why is it, that often the most commonly given advise is to increase the quality of rewards? If my training did not entail a rapidly diminishing schedule of corrections I would seriously question either my training or method. My dog Riley is now on his second week of training. He has gone from the 15ft long line to the 6ft lease. It is almost impossible for me to catch him on the end of the line regardless of the distraction. I wonder why it is that you don’t understand the principle of the long line. I am not doing anything, I am not talking to the dog, I am not engaging the dog, I am not correcting nor rewarding the dog. I am trying to stay out of picture as much as it is possible, so that the dog may reward or correct himself through the choices he makes. Because the choices the dog makes on his own that reward him are ultimately more rewarding than anything I might give him.

Then our differences can be expressed quite easily by a quote from Wittgenstein: "The best picture of the soul (meaning 'mind') is the body".

What a dog, or anyone finds reinforcing in any given situation depends on the situation. Any and all situations come with constraints of one kind or another. When we move from one situation to another, we are simply moving from one set of constraints to another. I know perfectly well (as you do) what will happen or not happen in the above scenario. Why do you find this significant? If I put my dog in an open field with lots of distractions and offer him a treat, should I then conclude when said dog ignores the treat for something more interesting that treats are therefore not rewarding? What a stupid thing to say. Of course, as I am not stupid I realise that what is and isn’t reinforcing depends on the situation. You seem to want to conclude that because my dog would not choose to follow me around without the collar and lead attached that somehow disproves my point. As if you had not changed the situation and thus the constraints acting upon the dog. It would be just as silly for me to say that treats are not rewarding on the basis of saying, well, why don’t put your dog off-lead in an open field full of distractions and then see how rewarding your treats are then. I said: But that’s because the behaviorist having already ruled out the mind as being relevant to behavior, simply cannot see nor recognize the intrinsic reward that comes from exercising one’s own agency to work things out. You said: Sorry, but this is utter nonsense. There are very few radical behaviourists who might take this position even as a theoretical side-trip. Did you know that the notion of intrinsic rewards comes from behaviourism? Ok, I will ask the question again. Where in the behaviorist description of the line long as aversive conditioning, is notion of the dog’s agency and the role it plays in learning? I said: Saying that the dog’s behavior is being aversively conditioned is such a god-awful, ugly way of describing things. Worse, it robs the animal of it’s dignity. It refuses the animal it’s agency and autonomy. It refuses to recognize how empowering the free exercise of one’s own agency to work things out for oneself really is. You said: But putting a check chain attached to a long-line around a dog's neck is none of these things in your view? No. I call it teaching. The dog can freely choose to pay attention to the handler or not. That the dog will choose to pay attention to the handler merely shows that dogs aren’t stupid. And by the way, during a whole week of the line long exercises the dog will probably only get caught by the line 4 or 5 fives times. Yet the amount of times in which the dog self corrects himself during this period without hitting the end of the line will be far in excess of the times he is caught by the line. Yet in your responses you are trading on the (false) contrast on the dog being constrained by the leash as opposed to the dog being unconstrained, such as when you say – The difference here, as always is not between constraint and the absence of constraint, but two different situations with different constraints being in place. How a dog behaves in one situation as opposed to another is dependant on what set of constraints are being applied. What a dog finds rewarding in one situation as opposed to another also depends on the situation. I know you know this, but for some reason you seem to forget when discussing the long line. The dignity is allowing the dog to learn through his own choices. Just because I have restricted those choices to either pay attention or don’t pay attention it doesn’t follow that I am not allowing the dog choices. Because making the right choice is rewarding to the dog. I have no idea of what you mean by this, other than the suspicion that you are once again trading on the idea of constraint versus the absence of constraint. Are you saying for instance, that bitches never correct their pups? Or are you saying that bitches ought not correct their pups? That they ought to simply allow their pups to follow whatever blind impulse their biological impulses bid them to do? Do you really think that wild animals just blindly follow their biological impulses? You do realise that many wild apes of the male gender never get to procreate? You don’t think they want to?

I am not familar with the tenets of psychological behaviorism. As my background is in philosophy I tend to take a philosophical perspective, but I am not referring to any particular philosophical position other than my own. Not sure if that helps.

Aidan, I have taken one of your comments from the other thread and put it here. This is probably the better place to have our discussion. No it doesn’t. There is no such thing as an ‘objective’ observation if you mean by that, observations uninfluenced by our assumptions. The assumption that guides behaviorism is that the mind is irrelevant to explaining and/or understanding behavior. Hence behaviorists simply do not see the mind in behavior. You may be aware of a long standing problem within philosophy of Other Minds. How do we know other people have minds? How do we know that other people are not merely mindless automations? My point is not to argue the case, but to simply point out that philosophers have taken this problem seriously because of its plausibility. There is little doubt that behaviorism can plausibly explain behavior without recourse to the mind. After all, intelligent people have been doing it ever since Skinner. You have said: Now I don’t understand this at all. You say that “for me, the focus is on letting the dog make good choices…rather than setting him up to make bad choices.” But if you don’t allow the dog the freedom to make bad choices then in what sense is letting him make good choices really a ‘choice’. It seems to me that instead of allowing the dog to make choices you are in fact making the choice for the dog – by precluding the dog the opportunity to make bad choices. Where in this perspective is any notion of the dog’s agency? Where is there any notion here as to the intrinsic reward/reinforcement that comes from freely exercising one’s own agency to work things out? Why do you think that some people buy the paper every day to work out the crossword puzzles? I mean there’s no obvious reward for this, they get don’t paid for it. Is it not because using one’s mind to work things out is itself intrinsically rewarding? You say: But that’s because the behaviorist having already ruled out the mind as being relevant to behavior, simply cannot see nor recognize the intrinsic reward that comes from exercising one’s own agency to work things out. Making sense of the world, of one’s situation, is I might argue, the most powerful motivator of all things. Saying that the dog’s behavior is being aversively conditioned is such a god-awful, ugly way of describing things. Worse, it robs the animal of it’s dignity. It refuses the animal it’s agency and autonomy. It refuses to recognize how empowering the free exercise of one’s own agency to work things out for oneself really is. Do not let the long line attached to the dog confuse you. There is no such thing as ‘free agency’ if by that you mean agency without constraint. We are always and already under constraint. Our agency is freely exercised by our capacity to make sense of those constraints in a way that allows us to successfully negotiate the world.

I think you may be right on the question of competition. Koehler's method was devised at a time when the emphasis was more on trial than competition. The working in drive and highly animated performance of dogs in competition was never Koehler's aim. Koehler trained dogs are rarely flashy. I don't really know about this, you may right, but I suspect it is more a training issue than issue of the long line. The send out in Koehler is built off the retrieve, if you have a good retrieve then I suspect you will have a good send out.

This is an interesting comment and probably marks a distinction in the way I (in more truthfully Koehler) approach training. In this situation of overstimulation I would not do anything to redirect attention back on me. The point is for the dog to learn self-control - for that to occur, the trainer must stay out of the picture and not interfere with the dog's learning.

Aidan, I will start another thread in answer to your questions. I don't want to hijack this thread into a philosophical discussion on behaviorism. I will probably do it tomorrow or the next day when I have some time to consider it.

I don’t need to. The study only discusses the drawbacks to using what it defines as ‘confrontational methods’ it does not address or even consider the benefits of such methods. It is of course unable to do so because the study is biased to present only those instances where it didn’t work. It is in the discussion of the results that the bias is clearly shown. It will never look good for ‘confrontational methods’ if studies such as this decline to address or even consider the benefits as well as the drawbacks. Everything we do has a cost/benefit. When you only consider one side of the story you’ll always get the result you a looking for. Aidan, science is what scientists do, it’s not something independent of scientists. I might add, that many of the disputes in science come about as the result of the one group of scientists (the older group) doing science in one particular way and the younger group doing it differently. The older group reject the younger group’s way of doing things because they don’t see what the other group is doing as science. Science does not proceed in a linear, progressive way piling up the facts. It is as much a creative enterprise as it is an empirical one. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. Read Thomas Kuhn’s ‘Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ if you are interested. And I am sure they will remain silent. LOL. They are hardly going to take your money and tell you differently. Anyway, I am sure they will disagree with me. That’s fine, it’s all part of contest of ideas. Science that recognizes and explores the role of the mind in behavior. For instance, a while ago we were discussing the way the long line worked. You said it worked by aversive conditioning the dog. I would say it worked by setting the dog up to make choices. You would say the aversive of being caught at the end of line is what motivates the dog, I disagree. Certainly it tells the dog he has made the wrong decision, but I see the motivation coming more from making the right decision to be the more powerful motivator. And the choices we make that reward us, are far more powerful motivator than external rewards. Check out this video, nothing more than food for thought, but suggestive in ways that I find far more interesting than a behaviorist account of behavior. Also check out this post on some recent discoveries in science on how the mind works; http://smartdogs.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/great-expectations/

I am sure that Aidan is effective at handling dogs - much more skilled than I would be. Riley is in his second week of training, he is the second dog I have trained. My handling skills range from average to inept depending on which day you see me. As for video, i don't have a very good camera, but I will see if I can get something on video in the next couple of weeks. I cannot imagine any effective training method that is not built on rewards. It depends on what the trainer means by rewards. It was a silly remark. I would not go near this kind of trainer. This is the kind of dog that the Koehler Method produces. Many people are not impressed. Fair enough. Choose the method that produces the behavior you want. I might add that the video shows the dog in the ring - the behavior of the dog (as it is trained by Koehler) will be the same whether inside or outside the ring. Check out the obedience page on her website for the video - http://misterrugby7.blogspot.com/

Well you can start by not biasing the results right from the start. The people being surveyed in this study were attending a behaviorist vet. People who go to such vets go because whatever they are doing has not worked. Hence you have ruled out from the study those interventions that succeeded with the use of adversives without any adverse effects. The history of science shows that scientists have as much difficulty in changing their views regardless of the evidence. How much they resist change depends on how much their reputation as scientists are based on the outdated view they support. In science, change most often comes when the older generation die out and are replaced by the younger generation not wedded to a certain view. Did you know that behaviorism that was originally intended as a theory of human behavior has long been discarded in the human sciences as being inadequate to explain behavior? Perhaps one day, the animal sciences will likewise catch up. Personally, truth be told, I don't regard behavior science to be good science nor adequate in understanding behavior.

Tony Ancheta: Distractions are a focusing cue Corrections are a re-focusing cue, and Praise is the principle point of focus. Is your training both in balance and in focus? If not, it's all a blur to your dog.

Yes it is. And learning off someone like that with real world experience is the best kind of learning a person can get.