Any Tips For Keeping Attention During Distractions

[JulesP]

How are you using the treat to refocus the pup Rileys mum?? I find a lot of people like to stand there and show the treat but no little actual giving of the treat. I like rapid giving of treats at times like this, until the pup is looking for the next treat, I would save his fav treat just for this exercise. I also really baby talk to the dogs during this stuff.

I also see a lot of people standing in class chatting. I am always talking, patting or interacting with my dog in some way. This builds my value. I don't encourage my dogs to play with other dogs at school either. No onlead play at the start of class.

[Aidan]

How are you using the treat to refocus the pup Rileys mum??

Good question, treats should not be used to distract, but to reinforce.

[Rileys mum]

I use treats once he gives me the desired outcome. I also use a clicker to mark the good behaviour prior to treating too.

I have used the treat in the sense of trying to redirect him into a 'watch' command ( with the mentality of taking him right back to basics) but as I've said it's never successful during those times of complete distraction.

I don't use the treat to bribe him into his attention, and, at this stage in his training I reward him every time he gives me what I ask.

My dog will ' watch ' and 'leave it' at all other times the instant I ask. During his distracted moments he breaks out of a sit to a stand and will not sit or watch AT ALL. He knows these commands very well, just not during a distraction.

I took him for a walk past the local dog park today which had several dogs running in it. He was very distracted by the dogs but interestingly enough I was able to get his attention easily with my watch command and he would sit and watch for as long as I told him. I'm wondering now if he is struggling during obedience class due to being mentally tired. It's not a long class but that may be another possibility.

I'm confident he will nail the attention side of things, just gonna take some time.

[Aidan3]

I took him for a walk past the local dog park today which had several dogs running in it. He was very distracted by the dogs but interestingly enough I was able to get his attention easily with my watch command

Excellent use of a good training opportunity. Just distracting enough to be a challenge, but still successful.

[SpecTraining]

Hows about teaching the dog an appropriate response to a distraction before the need ever arises for a correction? Too simple? Ok get out the prong collar

who mentioned a prong collar? How about the dog is disobeying a direct obedience command. The dog is asked to focus on the handler and is ignoring them.

This forum seems to be attacking anyone that mentions a correction lately, I dont think enough of you understand what they are and hence come raining down with hellfire and sarcasm when someone mentions them. Plus how many of you are actually obedience instructors or professional dog trainers that work with many dogs apart from your own? I am seeing a lot of 'oh I would never use it on MY dog/s".

Corrections dont have to be hard or painful. They can be enough to simply tell the dog, no we dont do that. You have a leash attached to a collar on your dog for a reason - it is a valuable tool in helping the dog understand what you want from it. The dog in this case would not be forced to watch, it would be corrected for ignoring its owner. I have no issues with non aggressive dogs watching others, but if they start totally ignoring the owner then it's a problem.

I would be looking at why the owner and the reward they have to offer is not high enough value before anything else. I was told to simply correct my dog and it did nothing to build our relationship and increase my value for her.

neither myself or spec training only said to correct. Rewards are a massive part of fixing this problem and the corrections would only be minimal, enough to simply help the dog understand what we dont want instead of waiting for them to take their focus off another dog - I dont wait for a dog to finish a bad behaviour. Personally if this was my dog I would NEVER simply wait for him to finish his focussing or try and drag him off. What are we teaching the dog? That the owner is simply a treat dispenser at the end of the lead and when doggy gets too distracted they'll wait until dog is interested enough in what they have to offer. Sometimes you CANNOT compete with what the dog is interested in - stock chasers, aggressive dogs, no boundry dogs etc. If they want their target, you have no chance of being good enough compared to it. So a correction shows the dog, no you cannot have your target interest. So what do you have ... me, or nothing. So invariably the dog will calm down, and happily listen to what you have to say.

Excellent post

[m-j]

Sometimes you CANNOT compete with what the dog is interested in - stock chasers, aggressive dogs, no boundry dogs etc. If they want their target, you have no chance of being good enough compared to it. So a correction shows the dog, no you cannot have your target interest. So what do you have ... me, or nothing. So invariably the dog will calm down, and happily listen to what you have to say.

I'm sorry but I don't agree with the above. It can be amazing what a strong history of reinforcement for a cue can do. The Greys (rescues not my dogs initially)I work with have genetics and several years history of chasing combined with reward and a lack of prepardness to work with humans for me to contend with. If I corrected them when they become distracted by something they find intrinsically rewarding I would have to give a hefty correction to stop their interest. They certainly wouldn't turn back to me and happily comply to a cue. I'm also guessing with some I would probably have fallout somewhere in their training future, something I prefer to avoid.

cheers

M-J

[SpecTraining]

Sometimes you CANNOT compete with what the dog is interested in - stock chasers, aggressive dogs, no boundry dogs etc. If they want their target, you have no chance of being good enough compared to it. So a correction shows the dog, no you cannot have your target interest. So what do you have ... me, or nothing. So invariably the dog will calm down, and happily listen to what you have to say.

I'm sorry but I don't agree with the above. It can be amazing what a strong history of reinforcement for a cue can do. The Greys (rescues not my dogs initially)I work with have genetics and several years history of chasing combined with reward and a lack of prepardness to work with humans for me to contend with. If I corrected them when they become distracted by something they find intrinsically rewarding I would have to give a hefty correction to stop their interest. They certainly wouldn't turn back to me and happily comply to a cue. I'm also guessing with some I would probably have fallout somewhere in their training future, something I prefer to avoid.

cheers

M-J

A dog in your example M-J that is conditioned to chase and not used to working with humans we could call a "green" dog to formal obedience training. I agree that in those circumstances you described, a very heavy correction would probably be necessary, but I would work a dog like that with some distance between the distraction where the dog's focus can be shifted back to the handler, condition that and work on it from there.

Can't really agree on handler fallout people talk about from result of correction process, not unless the handler applies a correction way above the requirements of a particular dog which borders into cruel domination of a submissive dog, but I have had some seriously handler aggressive dogs that wanted to kill me intitially in the past, that have been transformed into friendly quite handler submissive and reasonable dogs once they realised that the handler could kill them if they act aggressively. The dogs didn't hate the handler more from heavy correction, they respected the handler with affection. The only time I have ever seen fallout, is heavy handedness with a soft dog corrected with force exceeding the dog's requirements which is handler error, not because an aversive was applied. Had the handler used lesser force to suit the dog correctly, fallout would not have occurred IMHO.

Garry.

[SpecTraining]

Hows about teaching the dog an appropriate response to a distraction before the need ever arises for a correction? Too simple? Ok get out the prong collar

This is a perception that interests me as to what the advantages are for not applying a correction, in other words, what do we think is better in the training result between a dog trained with corrections or aversives and a dog that hasn't???. For what purpose should we try to train without corrections in hope of achieving what exactly???.

Just trying to understand this philosophy

Edited October 1, 2010 by SpecTraining

[m-j]

A dog in your example M-J that is conditioned to chase and not used to working with humans we could call a "green" dog to formal obedience training. I agree that in those circumstances you described, a very heavy correction would probably be necessary, but I would work a dog like that with some distance between the distraction where the dog's focus can be shifted back to the handler, condition that and work on it from there.

Which is basically what I do I do understand about green dogs but prepardness I believe can create training issues also

Can't really agree on handler fallout people talk about from result of correction process, not unless the handler applies a correction way above the requirements of a particular dog which borders into cruel domination of a submissive dog, but I have had some seriously handler aggressive dogs that wanted to kill me intitially in the past, that have been transformed into friendly quite handler submissive and reasonable dogs once they realised that the handler could kill them if they act aggressively. The dogs didn't hate the handler more from heavy correction, they respected the handler with affection. The only time I have ever seen fallout, is heavy handedness with a soft dog corrected with force exceeding the dog's requirements which is handler error, not because an aversive was applied. Had the handler used lesser force to suit the dog correctly, fallout would not have occurred IMHO.

Garry.

I have seen the reaction you have talked about with dogs to other dogs, but I also seen those dogs jump through a loophole when one presented itself on more than one occasion.

I do agree with the over-correction (bearing in mind the dog determines this, not the handler), but to me fallout can be as small as the dog loosing a little bit of enthusiasm or even just a momentary reaction from the dog like it's ears being laid back then returning to a more relaxed position as the situation continues. Just like you can poison a cue I believe you can poison the training concept for the dog, especially if the dog can see, hear or possibly smell a correlation with the handler in the situation of that moment, after even one previous inadvertant over-correction or a suitable correction for another situation. Handler nerves in competition comes to mind. I know I'm being nitpicky but as I said it is something I would prefer to avoid as Greys are pretty soft dogs in a training situation.

cheers

M-J

Edited October 1, 2010 by m-j

[Aidan3]

Hows about teaching the dog an appropriate response to a distraction before the need ever arises for a correction? Too simple? Ok get out the prong collar

This is a perception that interests me as to what the advantages are for not applying a correction, in other words, what do we think is better in the training result between a dog trained with corrections or aversives and a dog that hasn't???. For what purpose should we try to train without corrections in hope of achieving what exactly???.

Just trying to understand this philosophy

I have a question for you Garry, how do you know that you are achieving anything over and above reward alone by using the correction? Think about it, because I know it sounds stupid to a lot of people when I ask them to think about this.

The assumption seems to be that there "needs" to be a consequence for non-compliance, and while I wouldn't disagree that aversive consequences aren't useful at times, I know from experience that there doesn't "need" to be an aversive consequence for non-compliance. So if there doesn't "need" to be one, the only reason for doing it would be to benefit some aspect of learning.

Introducing a correction could have two possible effects:

1. it could speed up the learning process by providing a contrast between non-compliance and compliance

2. it could hinder learning by adding mild stress or additional cognitive processing about what, exactly, the correction was for

Given that you have moved the dog below the threshold at which a harsh correction is necessary, is there still a nett benefit in introducing the correction?

This is, of course, a hypothetical and no answer will be right in every case, and no experiment has been devised thus far that has allowed us to draw any conclusions on this problem (you could have a look at "Estes" if you want some empirical data though) but it is worth consideration, IMHO. By considering the problem, you might also gain some insight into why others make the choices they make not to use a correction in this sort of situation. To benefit your understanding, it might prove to be a more fruitful exercise than getting someone else's opinion on the matter.

[Vickie]

I have a couple of dogs coming at the moment who have distraction issues. Here are some of the things that we are working on with them:

Rather than small pieces of their favourite food, try carrying a big chunk & breaking pieces off it.

Rather than delivering once piece of food for attention/correct behaviour, try delivering multiple pieces.

Use a word to let them know that they are working with you. Mine is "ready". The word "ready" means fun & rewarding things are about to happen.

Use a bridge word to mark correct behaviour to signal that a reward is coming. Mine is "yes".

The above 2 words are practised at in every environment possible, but especially at home. Once you start seeing the desired response to them from the dog, you can start to use them in low distraction environments & work your way to high distraction.

If the activity you are involved is not rewarding in itself to the dog, make it an activity that is. Try teaching tricks outside of that activity & use those tricks during downtime when distraction is likely.

Keep moving & be interesting. It is a big call to ask a young dog in a distracting environment to sit beside you & watch you while lots of things are going on.

Reduce the length of your training sessions. Instead of doing a one hour class, start with 5-10 minutes & build it up.

THIS IS THE BIG ONE. Be aware of things that may distract your dog BEFORE your dog is aware of them. Be constantly watching for things that may catch their attention & make sure you get in first.

I am not big on leash corrections. Mostly because I believe that the average person does not have the skill nor experience to make it effective. Our training is never done on leash anyway so other methods have to be employed. Hopefully some of the above points give some food for thought.

[m-j]

(you could have a look at "Estes" if you want some empirical data though)

Who or what is "Estes"? Googled but with a quick look all I could find was chemical companies , rockets, hospitals. I'm guessing they weren't what you were referring to

[huski]

A common problem I see at my obedience club frequently are people who only ever train their dogs in low levels of distraction then take them to club for training and ask them to work in a very high level of distraction.

To me the problem in that instance is not that the dog needs to be given a heap of leash corrections but that it needs to be trained to focus around distractions more gradually.

I am not saying don't ever use corrections, I don't have any problem with them. But getting focus around distractions is a very common problem and often occurs because people go from low levels of distraction to high levels of distraction missing the stages in between - that to me is handler error not something the dog should be punished for. Time before distraction before distraction.

The people who I see take their dogs from low levels of distraction to club training and then try to deal with their dogs by correcting them instead of gradually building focus don't tend to build a very reliable, drivey or focused dogs... JME.

[Kavik]

I have found the clicker invaluable for getting focus with distractions. Diesel is still my most easilly distracted dog (bit of an airhead and social butterfly whereas the Kelpies want to WORK!) and he is more difficult to train around distractions as he also doesn't have as much drive, but waiting him out and marking and rewarding attention has helped a lot. This is still MUCH easier with my other dogs as they will look back at me quicker than Diesel will. As Vickie suggested having small short behaviours or tricks that the dog likes to do also helps to keep their attention or get it back if it wavers. Kaos and Zoe like hand touches and spins, and Diesel likes Come Fore exercises and Finishes.

[Aidan3]

(you could have a look at "Estes" if you want some empirical data though)

Who or what is "Estes"? Googled but with a quick look all I could find was chemical companies , rockets, hospitals. I'm guessing they weren't what you were referring to

This ought to keep you going for a while:

http://suppes-corpus.stanford.edu/techreports/IMSSS_123.pdf

[SpecTraining]

A dog in your example M-J that is conditioned to chase and not used to working with humans we could call a "green" dog to formal obedience training. I agree that in those circumstances you described, a very heavy correction would probably be necessary, but I would work a dog like that with some distance between the distraction where the dog's focus can be shifted back to the handler, condition that and work on it from there.

Which is basically what I do ;) I do understand about green dogs but prepardness I believe can create training issues also

Can't really agree on handler fallout people talk about from result of correction process, not unless the handler applies a correction way above the requirements of a particular dog which borders into cruel domination of a submissive dog, but I have had some seriously handler aggressive dogs that wanted to kill me intitially in the past, that have been transformed into friendly quite handler submissive and reasonable dogs once they realised that the handler could kill them if they act aggressively. The dogs didn't hate the handler more from heavy correction, they respected the handler with affection. The only time I have ever seen fallout, is heavy handedness with a soft dog corrected with force exceeding the dog's requirements which is handler error, not because an aversive was applied. Had the handler used lesser force to suit the dog correctly, fallout would not have occurred IMHO.

Garry.

I have seen the reaction you have talked about with dogs to other dogs, but I also seen those dogs jump through a loophole when one presented itself on more than one occasion.

I do agree with the over-correction (bearing in mind the dog determines this, not the handler), but to me fallout can be as small as the dog loosing a little bit of enthusiasm or even just a momentary reaction from the dog like it's ears being laid back then returning to a more relaxed position as the situation continues. Just like you can poison a cue I believe you can poison the training concept for the dog, especially if the dog can see, hear or possibly smell a correlation with the handler in the situation of that moment, after even one previous inadvertant over-correction or a suitable correction for another situation. Handler nerves in competition comes to mind. I know I'm being nitpicky but as I said it is something I would prefer to avoid as Greys are pretty soft dogs in a training situation.

cheers

M-J

I haven't ever trained a Grey to any great extent M-J, but I have experienced similar with a Belgian Malinios expecting the correction resilliance of a German Shepherd and I understand you point of view in regard to handler sensitivity. I wish I had the answer to handler nerves in competition, still working on that one

[SpecTraining]

Hows about teaching the dog an appropriate response to a distraction before the need ever arises for a correction? Too simple? Ok get out the prong collar

This is a perception that interests me as to what the advantages are for not applying a correction, in other words, what do we think is better in the training result between a dog trained with corrections or aversives and a dog that hasn't???. For what purpose should we try to train without corrections in hope of achieving what exactly???.

Just trying to understand this philosophy ;)

I have a question for you Garry, how do you know that you are achieving anything over and above reward alone by using the correction? Think about it, because I know it sounds stupid to a lot of people when I ask them to think about this.

The assumption seems to be that there "needs" to be a consequence for non-compliance, and while I wouldn't disagree that aversive consequences aren't useful at times, I know from experience that there doesn't "need" to be an aversive consequence for non-compliance. So if there doesn't "need" to be one, the only reason for doing it would be to benefit some aspect of learning.

Introducing a correction could have two possible effects:

1. it could speed up the learning process by providing a contrast between non-compliance and compliance

2. it could hinder learning by adding mild stress or additional cognitive processing about what, exactly, the correction was for

Given that you have moved the dog below the threshold at which a harsh correction is necessary, is there still a nett benefit in introducing the correction?

This is, of course, a hypothetical and no answer will be right in every case, and no experiment has been devised thus far that has allowed us to draw any conclusions on this problem (you could have a look at "Estes" if you want some empirical data though) but it is worth consideration, IMHO. By considering the problem, you might also gain some insight into why others make the choices they make not to use a correction in this sort of situation. To benefit your understanding, it might prove to be a more fruitful exercise than getting someone else's opinion on the matter.

I learned to train in aversive methods which back then were pretty much the standard practice, then as reward based training evolved providing added benefits, I tended to form a combination of the two methods to the point where most of my practices are reward based, but I do correct where I feel a correction will result in the right behaviour in a shorter time frame and work it from there.

Where I think that adding a correction benefits behaviour modification is from my own experience as the 2nd or 3rd trainer of particular dogs that have been spared corrections by reward only methods and still exhibit unwanted behaviours or are intemittantly unreliable to voice command. In my way of thinking, these particular dogs I have worked with, have absolutely no sense of boundaries of what is expected from them in terms of good and poor behaviour and react upon a basis of most valuable reward which may be the handler or chasing a cat, another dog etc. The question presented will be something like, "my dog is really good, but I can't stop him wanting to chase cats and looses the plot when seeing one".

So the dog in this example sees chasing a cat as high reward and has been subject to months of positive redirection type training that so far has failed. The dog in my assessment is totally oblivious to the fact that chasing cats is unwanted behaviour, so what I may do is to teach the dog that chasing cats will result in a consequence for the dog to learn that cat chasing is in fact not a rewarding exercise at all and cat chasing will result in unpleasantness which an aversive to a cat chasing reaction draws a definitive line for the dog to make it's own choice. Bit like throwing a ball for a puppy. The puppy races down towards the back fence in pursuit with full focus on the ball and slams into the fence, doesn't whack the skids on fast enough. Slamming into the fence wasn't pleasant and the puppy learns quickly to hit the anchors early enough next time to avoid the aversion. In practice, they learn to race full pelt towards stationary objects and stop just short of running into them which the dog learns by itself. The same basis applies from adding an aversive into training.

How do I know that adding an aversive works???. I stopped the dog chasing cats where the reward only based trainers before me failed to correct the behaviour. The dog IMHO needed to learn consequence where it previously took the stance of reacting towards what it sees as high value reward and the dog knew no better.

Hope my explanation provides the understanding I am trying to project Aidan I will check out the link, thanks

Garry

Edited October 2, 2010 by SpecTraining

[SpecTraining]

A common problem I see at my obedience club frequently are people who only ever train their dogs in low levels of distraction then take them to club for training and ask them to work in a very high level of distraction.

To me the problem in that instance is not that the dog needs to be given a heap of leash corrections but that it needs to be trained to focus around distractions more gradually.

I am not saying don't ever use corrections, I don't have any problem with them. But getting focus around distractions is a very common problem and often occurs because people go from low levels of distraction to high levels of distraction missing the stages in between - that to me is handler error not something the dog should be punished for. Time before distraction before distraction.

The people who I see take their dogs from low levels of distraction to club training and then try to deal with their dogs by correcting them instead of gradually building focus don't tend to build a very reliable, drivey or focused dogs... JME.

That's common Huski and is basically throwing the dog in the deep end where nothing really works well without the foundation training to work under high level distraction. I wouldn't personally take a dog at that level of training to an obedience club where it's bound to fail and apply corrections in hope of improving behaviour which is essentially unfair on the dog. Corrections work best IMHO just on the good side of the dog's threshhold where distance to distraction is the most important aspect. A correction can be as little as a wiggle on the leash and a verbal NO. A correction is not necessarily a high level aversive, in fact I have seen some purely positive trainers who swear to have never corrected a dog as they are actually applying leash manipulation which are essentially corrections as they speak

Edited October 2, 2010 by SpecTraining

[Aidan3]

How do I know that adding an aversive works???. I stopped the dog chasing cats where the reward only based trainers before me failed to correct the behaviour.

I make a fairly sharp distinction between things we can control and things we can't control and make decisions based partly on that. The evidence you have presented is confounded in that it's likely that no attempt has been made (by client or positive trainer) to work at graded exposures with cats doing things that are likely to elicit prey drive. That is not to say that corrections would not be expedient where cats are involved, cats are not easily controlled In my experience the correction needs to be fairly severe to stop a cat chaser with any sort of drive. But the confounder is that you don't know that +R wouldn't be equally as effective and reliable at stopping a cat chaser (but probably not as expedient), so again I would argue that it wasn't necessary for learning, strictly speaking.

However, in the example being discussed we are able to move away from the other dogs, we can control the environment. I can think of a few good reasons why we would use corrections at this point, I can also think of a few good reasons why we wouldn't (and generally I wouldn't).

One benefit to using very mild corrections in low-distraction environments is that if you intend to go into very strongly distracting environments you have a basis for learning through aversion and can usually increase the intensity of the correction and the dog has a pretty good chance of figuring out what the correction was for. However, in this particular situation I'm not convinced that it is necessary, or any faster than +R alone (done well). Even with very reactive dogs we can get them working alongside other dogs very quickly without corrections.

[m-j]

(you could have a look at "Estes" if you want some empirical data though)

Who or what is "Estes"? Googled but with a quick look all I could find was chemical companies , rockets, hospitals. I'm guessing they weren't what you were referring to

This ought to keep you going for a while:

http://suppes-corpus.stanford.edu/techreports/IMSSS_123.pdf

Thank you.