Drive Question - Food Or Prey

[ness]

Your totally right there Vickie. I guess I sometimes have doubts as to whether I am assessing things correctly or whether its because I "wanted" a dog with more drive. She is different in personality to Ness - there is no doubting that but I think I had a part to play in encouraging what I wanted in the beginning.

She has enough drive to always be up for a game but more importantly has a biddable personality and wants to work which I think is more the point then how much drive she may or may not have.

[Vickie]

Just enjoy her & do the best you can.

You are no different from the rest of us. We all want our next new up & coming dog to be as perfect as possible. The reality is that they are never as perfect as we dream them to be when we get them at 8 weeks. I am happy if I achieve/improve on things with my youngest dog that I got wrong with the one before but I know I will still make some mistakes. With each dog, we get new challenges, with each challenge we become a better trainer/handler.

[ness]

Very true Vickie and if you had said I'd have her first title on her abet a freestyle title (or she would have travelled interstate and actually passed a trial) this time last year I probably would have said nope your having me on, pull the other one .

Life is seriously to short to dwell on all the negatives and she gives great cuddles and really does enjoy life most of the time and I couldn't picture my life without her regardless of what issues she might have.

[JulesP]

From what you have written on Drive threads before Ness I don't think that you actually work in drive. I think that the drive work as per what K9 Force & Leerburg teach help the dogs to stay in the drive state in face of other pressures. Maybe that is something to explore.

[BC4ME]

Very true Vickie and if you had said I'd have her first title on her abet a freestyle title (or she would have travelled interstate and actually passed a trial) this time last year I probably would have said nope your having me on, pull the other one .

Life is seriously to short to dwell on all the negatives and she gives great cuddles and really does enjoy life most of the time and I couldn't picture my life without her regardless of what issues she might have.

I agree sometimes we analyse our pets too much looking for the perfect pet/training partner or what ever. I see you are having a training seminar with Steve K9 Force coming up

I have been a fan of Steve's for many years now and truly believe him to be the best behavourist/trainer in Australia. I have done many of his seminars and everytime I come away with something new, I love the way he can gets into the minds of how dogs think he has a passion about helping people understand their pets issues.

Steve's methods work this has been proven time and time again, this is why people go to Steve to fix what others can't.

Just enjoy your dogs until you see Steve, he is fantastic and will be able to answer all your questions and he will send you on the right direction for training for Ness & Kenzie.

You won't be disappointed I promise you of that.

I saw your DWD Utube clip Well Done

Edited February 8, 2010 by BC4ME

[ness]

That is on the list of things to do JulesP but at the moment I am biding my time until I am told - well until the seminar but doesn't stop me posing the question does it. I have read through topics started by other people and they always raise interesting questions that sparked my interest further so thought maybe I could post a topic and do the same.

And it was consideration of looking at starting some drive work that actually sparked my motivation for this thread - which if we come back to my original post was to do with the use of food verses prey and whether it might be worth trying to manipulate some food motivation if that is what she was happier with when she was anxious. As threads do we sort of lost the original train of argument.

[Seita]

I don't think that just because a dog's drive is easily squashed that they therefore have low drive. IMO, there are two things at play, there. There's motivation, and there's bounceback. To me, they are pretty independent, in that you can have a low drive dog with good bounceback, or a high drive dog with poor bounceback.

Hey what do you know I actually agree with something you've said Corvus!

Agreed that just because a dog is knocked out of drive quickly does not mean it has low drive, quite the opposite actually. Dogs have different drives we all agree there, and some dog have high thresholds and low thresholds for going into those drives. So for example Kenzie sounds like she has a low threshold for prey drive (in other words it's easy to get her to go into prey drive) but she also has a low threshold for her fear drive (again she goes into this drive very easily). I dare say her threshold for fear is very low which is why she gets knocked out of a positive drive like prey or food very easily when she is under a bit of pressure (by this I mean scary people).

[Vickie]

Was just thinking about this some more & it occured to me that most of the very high drive dogs I know in agility are also dogs with some fear issues. Many of them are sound sensitive and don't like dogs or people in their faces. All are trained/conditioned to overcome that fear in competition.

I would put my Trim in that category. At one point during the trial last weekend, I noticed that she was worried about lightning flashes she could see in the distance. She is not dreadful in a storm but clearly uncomfortable & chooses to come inside & sit near me. I took her out to run her & wondered how she would run. Once she got to the start line, nothing else existed & she gave me the run of her life, seemingly totally oblivious to the storm that had worried her so much 5 minutes prior.

Having said that, there may well be a heap of very high drive dogs who are only high drive when they are not worried, but I can't think of any off hand.

Edited February 8, 2010 by Vickie

[ness]

Yep Vickie - thats not a surprise as I have heard that before as well and had that discussion with another friend of mine. Something to do with the way anxiety and drive are wired into the brain. Bit of a catch 22 and I do believe that is in part what kicked into her brain in the freestyle in Sydney, and really about 3/4 of the way through the first HTM routine.

She isn't quite ready for an agility trial so it will be interesting to see what happens there when it comes to having a strange judge and whether it is reflected in how she performs. I suspect it will be one of these things that I have to work through and have no expectations when she is finally trained to the standard I want prior to entering her.

Agility will certainly I hope be less problematic then obedience.

[Heidii]

I have yet again been pondering this question so thought I would open it for discussion since there are plenty of people who have some knowledge on drive training and probably more knowledge then I do.

The question is this - my logic tells me my youngster is more prey driven. She is a mad ball/frisbee chaser and tugger and will take a toy over food under normal circumstances. For example tonight we were at the park and I had stopped off to get tea on the way. I was sitting on the grass eating my tea - my older one sitting with me hoping I might share, the younger one when offered a chip left it on the ground and then spent all of tea fetching her ball while I threw it for her. She also managed to drop the ball right on top of the few bits I had saved to go and do something with my older one after tea. Food left on the ground she ignored while fetching her ball.

For the first 16 months of her life she was never really interested in meals and would often skip meals.

However, she is also extremely people timid but in that context she will not play tug or fetch a ball, will totally shut down however will now take food.

My thought would be whatever was stronger "drive" would be the last to go and whatever was the lesser drive would be the first to go.

So I guess my question is has anybody else observed a similar situation and more importantly does anybody have any explanation as to why this might be the case.

I always thought it was dependent on how well you 'trained' prey drive... I know dogs have it naturally but of corse you can enhance it with teaching to tug etc.....

My view is which ever one has higher value, simply from the trainer reenforcing CORRECTLY and making it fun is one the dog will prefer

Edit to say........for a puppy food is more dominate as getting a meal and eating it before all litter mates is continually reenforced....as the pup gets older you can introduce prey drive by playing and if you do it right and make it fun, fun , fun it will overide food drive.

Edited February 8, 2010 by Heidii

[ness]

Just on your comments BC4ME re Steve - I guess that was part of my motive for posting. Its no real secret that the initial suggestion re a workshop was driven by my own personal curiosity/interest. I have also been around a number of dog trainers over the past 9 and a half years and had the good fortune of lucking into advice and a friendship with some of Australia's top obedience competitors. I'd have been lost without all of what I have been given to date.

I guess I posted on here because I wanted to see if anybody had come across a similar issue and if they had tried anything I hadn't and whether in my quest to have a prey driven dog (my older one has always been super foodie) I was some how using a "drive" that might not necessarily be suited to the particular situation.

Everything posted in this thread however has only confirmed my original thoughts though. I guess I thought the potential for using food drive might have been a better idea then I would have considered that. I still think food drive is more easily manipulated then toy drive.

[JulesP]

I think you misread my post Ness. It was related to your initial post and the fact Kenzie drops out of toy drive, let us say toy play. If you can harness drive, rather than just play tugging, then it might not be a problem. She might stay in regardless of what is going on around here.

Have you tried using pack drive at all? Lots of verbal encouragement around the figure of 8. Both Poppy & Brock have a higher pack drive, so pats and cuddles are their most valuable thing. Kenzie has always sounded like she loves her toys.

[ness]

Kenzie likes pats/cuddles and any form of interaction whether that is with or without a toy. She will come flying in with her ball and throw herself in my lap when we are at the park and I am sitting down on the grass being lazy. I am not keen on the whole verbal encouragement bit because of the fact it can reinforce the dogs response in a situation. Last week I just ignored it her freaking at the post and then rewarded the moment she looked back at me and decided it might be ok. Second time around the post she was still casting sideways glances, third time a little less, forth time better again. Still her heelwork does slip out of "drive". You can feel the difference when I am handling her even if its not totally apparent when watching.

[JulesP]

I think you will only reinforce the behavior if you talk to her in coddling type manner. If you talk in a happy upbeat way then that shouldn't be an issue.

Also think about what you are doing when she slips out. Are you thinking about her being worried about people? BC are so in tune with their owners. When Poppy slips out in her heeling it is usually because I have got distracted first! Leopuppy was a post on my figure 8 on Sunday and that made me anxious and Poppy's heeling reflected that.

[ness]

Nah not worried about the people. I go into auto pilot cruise control .

[corvus]

I don't think that just because a dog's drive is easily squashed that they therefore have low drive. IMO, there are two things at play, there. There's motivation, and there's bounceback. To me, they are pretty independent, in that you can have a low drive dog with good bounceback, or a high drive dog with poor bounceback.

Hey what do you know I actually agree with something you've said Corvus!

Yeah, I'm going to ruin it by saying something controversial again...

I have said this before and I'm going to bring it up again because it's relevant. I truly believe that excitement and fear are closely related. I think this makes sense when looking at behaviour within an arousal framework. Fear and excitement are both linked to high arousal, and according to the book on stress I'm reading, often involve the same hormones and chemicals but in different ways. For instance, the chemical that is responsible for dopamine release during anticipation of something very rewarding is the same chemical that is responsible for the all sorts of nasty stress-related effects in th body. Interesting, huh?

This is pure speculation on my part, but I have a feeling that when an animal is wired, they can tip more easily from a positive state to a fearful or aggressive state than they would ordinarily.

I was going to give a hare example, but look, I've restrained myself. Erik is about 7 months old and is finally starting to get a handle on the idea that one can actually relax sometimes. It is very typical of him to become hypervigilant when he's wired. He'll leap up at the slightest noise and tear outside barking his head off. Get him in, calm him down a little and off he goes again after some other noise I didn't hear. When he is in this state it is dead easy to get him to become a tug monster.