Deprivation In Training

[Vickie]

I'm probably spoilt by having Border Collies, who, while they have a really good off switch, are/should be IMHO

genetically programmed to want to do 'stuff' with their person if their person is doing 'stuff' - if that makes any sense.

makes perfect sense .

I just walked into the backyard...it took precisely 2 seconds for a ball to be dropped at my feet

[corvus]

Frustration is a dicey thing, though. If you frustrate them too much their motivation plummets.

Thank you I will keep your advice in mind....so far so good

Sorry, that probably sounded condescending. Kivi doesn't cope with frustration very well. He is better, but I just try not to frustrate him much at all if I can help it. That's why I've been target training with him.

I certainly think that deprivation is a useful training tool, whether we're talking about what you think deprivation is or what I think it is. It is undoubtedly a useful training tool in either sense. I think it behooves us to understand what we are doing and why it works and how we can use it more efficiently. It's good to know what the options are and what they might do. The only thing that concerns me about deprivation is when it may compromise welfare. For example, social deprivation in a young social animal can do nasty things to their ability to cope with stress later in life. I have no idea whether that can occur to a pet dog, but I'd rather not take my chances. Whether I choose to use it or not in other contexts is just simple personal preference. I have an ethical stance on it, but that doesn't mean I think everyone else should have the same stance. Diversity in opinion and ethical stances is what makes discussion forums interesting.

[Staranais]

Staranais wrote

In other words, the reward is the exciting interaction with you, not the mere toy. And the dog is deprived of this exciting interaction except when he is performing for you.

Yes!! This is how it seems to work for me too.

My problem with that reasoning is that it assumes the dog is in a state of "hunger" for interaction with you whenever you are not playing tug with them. Now, don't get me wrong. Erik certainly has ways of telling me he would badly like to play tug now, please. But it's related to arousal levels and expectations. He's not perpetually trying to get me to play with him. Only when he's aroused and has nothing constructive to do with his energy.

No, that is a complete exaggeration of my position. It is not so black and white.

What I assume is that your dog would like to play with you more often than you are currently playing with him. Not that he wants to play with your whenever you are not playing with him.

It's pretty simple to test, I guess. For the next few weeks, go and praise your dog & play with him & feed him exactly like you do as a training reward, randomly throughout the day, as often as you can persuade him to play with you or eat a treat, until he is utterly sick of the sound of you and can't fit another treat in. And then see if he works as hard to earn the praise & play & food as he would normally do when he is "deprived" of them to some degree. I'm guessing he won't. But if he does, then you are correct, and deprivation in any form isn't necessary to train him.

[Vickie]

[Erny]

[corvus]

What I assume is that your dog would like to play with you more often than you are currently playing with him. Not that he wants to play with your whenever you are not playing with him.

Okay, that's a fair call. I just don't really think it fits into the paradigm of deprivation as I understand it. Because the ultimate question is, does the dog have a "hunger" for play with you? What they want and what they like are two different things. Wants are all about appetite and returning to homeostasis and likes are about what makes an animal feel good. The latter is regulated by shifts in what they find rewarding so that an animal doesn't overdo it. The former is regulated by satiation. There are all sorts of potential confounding factors. For example, both my dogs are social contact maniacs. I think it's an opponent-process thing. The more contact they get the more disrupted they feel when they're not getting as much contact as usual. Erik is a bit that way with training. If I saw no change or an increase in motivation for playing, I wouldn't know if it was an O-P situation or if it was just a whole lot of anticipation. And if he worked less hard, then how would I know whether he was working less hard because he was sated or because he was just fatigued (mentally, emotionally, or physically)?

Anyway, it doesn't matter, as regardless of whether you (I) are creating an EO through deprivation or through anticipation of rewards you're (I'm) still creating an EO, which is what increases the motivation. The effects are comparable. As I said, it doesn't mean much to argue these finer points.

[Staranais]

What I assume is that your dog would like to play with you more often than you are currently playing with him. Not that he wants to play with your whenever you are not playing with him.

Okay, that's a fair call. I just don't really think it fits into the paradigm of deprivation as I understand it. Because the ultimate question is, does the dog have a "hunger" for play with you? What they want and what they like are two different things.

But again, I honestly think that's a matter of degree. My dog likes to eat most of the time, but after a few days of food deprivation, she'd need to eat so for her physical wellbeing. She likes me to stay home all day and keep her company, but I don't believe it is a need - as in, I don't think it is seriously affecting her quality of life that I leave her alone in the house on weekdays. But obviously to some degree, company is a need for her, and it would be cruel to deprive her of it to that degree.

My point being, these things shade into each other. There is no one exact discrete point in time when a want for something becomes a need.

We can all agree that some extremes of deprivation are abusive, and we can all agree that very mild deprivation (such as only feeding a dog two meals per day, or only giving him the very tastiest treats when he is working for us) are pretty much unavoidable if you want to motivate your dog at all. It's the middle ground where people argue - to what degree is it OK to deprive a goal to acheive various goals?

[Aidan]

Deprivation isn't a word I have seen used much in animal training or scientific literature. The more rigorous or demanding the application (e.g customs dogs or pigeons in 8 hour auto-shaping procedures), the more the resources are controlled as you would expect. At the end of the day all we really want to be able to do is reinforce the responses we are looking for on a schedule, and sometimes it takes a bit more to establish operations for that than just training before dinner. I think this might be one reason why e-collars have become so popular in certain circles - you don't have to establish operations for an e-collar, you don't need to control the resources in the dog's environment so much.