Gundogs/training In Drive

[The Spotted Devil]

the minute her leash comes off and I take the gun, she just goes into "the zone" - takes no notice of anything or anyone else - it's just me, her and a couple of retrieves.

Is that a bit of a gundog thing? Most gundogs I've met seem to be capable of phenomenal focus.

Possibly - but I think it's something you select for in a good hunting dog. Em's breeding is in that category. If you hunt over a dog all day, for example, you want them to work tirelessly - they cover a LOT of miles - and pay no heed to the other dogs or people around them. When they get an opportunity to rest you want them to take it. Em goes from being curled up asleep in the car to flat out crazy in seconds. Straight back in the car, eyes closed with guns going off and other dogs having their turn. Same with the working Kelpies - when they work they are single minded. When they're resting you barely notice them.

[The Spotted Devil]

Also wanted to add that traits that make a good working dog might not equal a good competition dog and vice versa.

[corvus]

the minute her leash comes off and I take the gun, she just goes into "the zone" - takes no notice of anything or anyone else - it's just me, her and a couple of retrieves.

Is that a bit of a gundog thing? Most gundogs I've met seem to be capable of phenomenal focus.

Possibly? My dog is the same during work, even boring stuff, as long as the reward is worth it. Training/work is perfectly possible in very distracting circumstances with my dog as long as I concentrate. If my concentration goes.. Well.. That is not the dog's fault lol

Thanks BJ, that is interesting. I'm not much of a gundog person, but I had some cool gundogs in my study with not much relevant training history but an amazing work ethic. Once they got down to business they were very solid workers. It was a real treat to watch them.

Huski, either we're saying nearly exactly the same thing using different words or we're not even on the same planet. Nearly everything you say about drive makes me think "Yeah, that's arousal." The Yerkes-Dodson law is about optimum arousal for a given task. It's more subtle than being at the right level or the wrong level, because arousal is malleable and there's a lot of conditioning that comes into it as well. When I say conflict I don't mean something unresolvable or even necessarily bad. I mean the arousal and the activity don't perfectly match from an ethological perspective. From a training perspective, sometimes you want that. I had some pretty high drive dogs in my study and enjoyed watching the professional security people training them. No idea if it was anything like what you say every day. I mostly enjoyed working with them as well, although what I wanted them to do was very different to what their trainers wanted them to do. I had a very high exclusion rate. I spoke to an accomplished ex-military dog trainer about it, which was very helpful and enlightening.

[Santo66]

Training in drive is merely using a dog's drive (desire for something) as a reward for displaying a desired behaviour. Training a dog to sit on command for a treat reward is training in drive. Drive suppression is for example a young dog seeing a food treat and starts launching him/herself at you to snap the treat from your hand, instinctively the dog's drive for food is to lunge and snap for it and what we do is teach the dog to sit instead and the treat is forthcoming. So the dog learns to suppress it's drive from instinctively lunging and snapping for food to sit quietly being the fastest way to receive the reward. The same principal is used training in prey drive, however training in prey drive requires a dog with enough genetic prey drive like Kollenberg's Malinois Huski is referring to for the method to work at maximum advantage.

Drive suppression is achieved by negative reinforcement withholding reward until the desired behaviour is achieved, however with high drive working dogs some Malinois, GSD's, etc especially in particular dogs where prey drive can easily switch into fight drive, the balance is to provide the reward before the dog blows over threshold and starts biting the handler or spinning chasing it's tail or something crazy for drive self satisfaction which requires a conditioning process to gradually increase the duration of reward withholding on the good side of a drive blow out until the dog learns to cap it's drive for the required exercise or routine.

Speaking of high drive working dogs of protection breeds, without the ability of the handler and the training on the dog to suppress a drive blow out and the dog switches into fight is a scary experience to loose control of a volatile dog at full arousal with aggression......dogs like this are not fun for inexperienced handlers

Edited June 30, 2013 by Santo66

[Kavik]

Actually I would say that Training in Drive is a term for a specific way of training using drive. While I use drive (both food and prey) in my training, most of my training would not come under the specific methodology of training in drive from how I understand it (some of it would). There are many ways to use food and toys in training, there is not only one right way.

[Canine Coach]

Excellent & concise explanation

I guess I would want to ask the original poster

GOAL

1-what specific behaviours do you to achieve?

2-What is the present state of the dog in relation to the achievement of those behaviours

3-What drives (Prey, food, prey, pack drives are all expressions of drives) Which one(s) are strongest in your dog in various location i.e. back yard, house, field, trial, on a walk

4-What have you tried so far & which things were successful & in which environments

EXAMPLE

I incorporated on & increased my Standard Poodle's "play drive" & trained him to American Kennel Club Hunting Retriever titles, using play drive to teach retrieve in all sorts of situations. I then added withholding of reward, (getting to retrieve), to teach impulse control i.e sit & wait till sent, retrieve to hand do not chew, etc

On very difficult retrieves, (long distance, heavy cover, blind retrieves ) I shot fliers/birds & used live shackled birds (legal in USA), to build prey drive to persist in finding

the game.

This dog exhibited very high food for Obedience work It was the ONLY way to motivate him to attain his USA & Australian UD titles

However the same dog, was not interested in ANY kind of food in field work. He just LOVED to swim & retrieve, food was not high on his list of priorities in the field work

[Canine Coach]

PS

I "meant to say" Excellent & concise explanation SANTO 66 & Nekbet!!

I also meant to add, that I have seen a few working line Golden Retrievers trained almost completely in "pack drive"

"strong desire to cooperate"

Many of that breed, seem to have inherited a very strong drive to work while eagerly submitting to the wishes of the perceived pack, This, in order to achieve instinctual survival goals

I think a lot of confusion about TRAINING IN DRIVE comes from some people associating it mostly with PREY drive.

[huski]

Training in drive is merely using a dog's drive (desire for something) as a reward for displaying a desired behaviour.

I disagree, there is a huge difference between giving the dog a drive reward and having the dog work in drive.

Training a dog to sit on command for a treat reward is training in drive.

Not if the dog isn't in drive for the reward, then it is just food exchange.

Drive suppression is for example a young dog seeing a food treat and starts launching him/herself at you to snap the treat from your hand, instinctively the dog's drive for food is to lunge and snap for it and what we do is teach the dog to sit instead and the treat is forthcoming. So the dog learns to suppress it's drive from instinctively lunging and snapping for food to sit quietly being the fastest way to receive the reward.

If you are suppressing the dogs drive you aren't training in drive.

The same principal is used training in prey drive, however training in prey drive requires a dog with enough genetic prey drive like Kollenberg's Malinois Huski is referring to for the method to work at maximum advantage.

It is definitely easier to train in drive with a dog with extremely high drive, but it isn't a necessity, we train dogs with a range of different drive levels.

Drive suppression is achieved by negative reinforcement withholding reward until the desired behaviour is achieved, however with high drive working dogs some Malinois, GSD's, etc especially in particular dogs where prey drive can easily switch into fight drive, the balance is to provide the reward before the dog blows over threshold and starts biting the handler or spinning chasing it's tail or something crazy for drive self satisfaction which requires a conditioning process to gradually increase the duration of reward withholding on the good side of a drive blow out until the dog learns to cap it's drive for the required exercise or routine.

I think we are talking about different things, we don't aim ever to suppress a dogs drive when TID. When you do try to suppress a dogs drive especially when it is a high drive dog that is when what you are describing above can happen.

Edited June 30, 2013 by huski

[corvus]

I think a lot of confusion about TRAINING IN DRIVE comes from some people associating it mostly with PREY drive.

I think this thread illustrates quite well where a lot of the confusion about training in drive comes from. There are only a handful of people who have put forth any kind of definition and at least two of them conflict quite a bit. Santo66 seems to be talking about motivation and reward selection and operant conditioning. Huski seems to be talking about building a dog's ability to remain cognisant and controlled under the influences of increasing arousal. There has also been some talk of building anticipation for a particular reinforcement. All of these come into a lot of different training paradigms where they are not called training in drive. If I asked 6 different people for a definition of training in drive, would I get 6 different definitions? If it's not clearly defined it will be confusing.

[huski]

For a methodogical perspective when I talk about training in drive I am talking about a specific training program designed by Steve. Other people may have their own version of what TID means or train with their own version of the method, but our method is specific to the program Steve designed.

Training in drive in its basic form is about teaching a dog how to achieve drive satisfaction through working with you and utilizing its genetic instincts.

[corvus]

Can you define it without using the word "drive"? :)

[huski]

Can you define it without using the word "drive"? :)

Teaching a dog how to satisfy its genetic instinct through complying with a command.

[Kavik]

When I think of TID I think of methodologies like Steve's or Michael Ellis or other people coming from a Schutzhund/obedience perspective.

SG, while she does talk about drive, she mostly talks about arousal levels, and relationship building. In the same session/exercise she will switch between food and toys (eg start the session with tugging for relationship building/drive building (getting arousal levels up), then go to food for shaping, then back to tugging for a balance break or relationship building to end the session), from what I understand of TID they don't tend to do that.

[corvus]

So, what's genetic instinct? There was a great big discussion about this in General recently. Lots of different ideas.

I like the way SG switches between reinforcers. I don't like ranking reinforcers. I'm leery of thinking myself into a box.

[Santo66]

For a methodogical perspective when I talk about training in drive I am talking about a specific training program designed by Steve. Other people may have their own version of what TID means or train with their own version of the method, but our method is specific to the program Steve designed.

Training in drive in its basic form is about teaching a dog how to achieve drive satisfaction through working with you and utilizing its genetic instincts.

Huski, the dogs you are referring to have drive by the truck load.......ramping drive is NOT something that needs to be handler induced, drive is part and parcel of the dog........capping or suppressing drive for specific tasks is the essence of control, drive suppression doesn't mean the dog is no longer working in drive, it's just working at a lower rate of arousal to suit the exercise. There is a massive difference in drive level required to produce an animated heel compared with the drive level required to face an opponent in a protection routine where the dog needs the ability to switch from prey into fight and defence and back into prey........that is controlled by the decoy not the handler anyway.........the handler controls drive as in a heeling exercise and if too much drive is ramped into a heeling exercise the dog will be launching it's self at the handler.......a good animated heel is actually quite a low level drive application in order to get the precision.

Obviously Steve will have good foundation training on these Kollenberg dogs, but you take a green dog like that with no training and try a heeling exercise activating instinctive drive, the dog will be wrapped around your shoulders in a self reward frenzy.....thus drive suppression learned in foundation training provides the control to work at lower arousal levels to suit the specific exercises, that's from my experience with these types of crazy driven dogs anyway

I think we are talking about different things, we don't aim ever to suppress a dogs drive when TID. When you do try to suppress a dogs drive especially when it is a high drive dog that is when what you are describing above can happen.

You actually are suppressing the dogs drive otherwise they will blow over threshold, getting the reward suppresses the drive also, the anticipation of the reward is what builds the drive.....as I said previously, the balance is to provide the reward just prior to blow out or just before the behaviour deteriorates then increase the duration in a repetitive cycle......the dog learns to cap drive in order to be rewarded?

Edited July 1, 2013 by Santo66

[Santo66]

Can you define it without using the word "drive"? :)

Teaching a dog how to satisfy its genetic instinct through complying with a command.

Correct........the dog has a genetic instinct to eat food so complying with a sit command to get a treat reward to satisfy it's instinct for food is a fundamental level of training in drive........most of us probably do this everyday multiple times and don't even realise are training in drive

[Kavik]

So, what's genetic instinct? There was a great big discussion about this in General recently. Lots of different ideas.

I like the way SG switches between reinforcers. I don't like ranking reinforcers. I'm leery of thinking myself into a box.

Actually, SG is really big on ranking reinforcers. One of the first things you have to do in Recallers is rank what your dog finds reinforcing (including environmental reinforcers), and she includes ranking types of food and types of toys. In some exercises she wants you to use a low and high ranking food reward in the same exercise (Crate Games and some Recallers games), and others toy rewards of different ranking. I do tend to rank toys (as my dogs definitely have toy preferences, though I am working on that, and Nitro will play with a wide variety of toys), I don't tend to rank food as much, apart from moist treats having more value than kibble, and I will use moist treats in high distraction environments.

[corvus]

Ha! I think the TID program is aimed at pet dogs moreso than working dogs. But maybe it's equally adaptable. And maybe you're talking about drive compression rather than suppression. ;)

ETA

I didn't say I like everything SG does. :) In the past whenever I've tried to rank reinforcers I've ended up thinking it wasn't very useful because my dogs don't show a whole lot of preferences, really. And I think I'm being arbitrary. And what I think they should like inevitably starts to creep in. And once you decide your dog likes x more than y you kind of start closing the door on updating that assessment. At least, I do. I think it changes readily and needs to be updated a lot. I switch around usually to manipulate arousal or get the surprised "Holy crap, CHEESE! I was expecting kibble." look.

Recall treats are slightly different, but really only for Kivi. E will come running for the hell of it.

Edited July 1, 2013 by corvus

[Santo66]

When I think of TID I think of methodologies like Steve's or Michael Ellis or other people coming from a Schutzhund/obedience perspective.

SG, while she does talk about drive, she mostly talks about arousal levels, and relationship building. In the same session/exercise she will switch between food and toys (eg start the session with tugging for relationship building/drive building (getting arousal levels up), then go to food for shaping, then back to tugging for a balance break or relationship building to end the session), from what I understand of TID they don't tend to do that.

The difference in tug work is that the Schutzhund or police dog eventually has to have the drive to go after an opponent and bite, so it's limited in what a handler can do in tugging biting with the dog not to blur the line.......you can't have your dog wanting to fight you, but in obedience and relationship building I think Susan's methods are still a good foundation even for essentially biting dogs, the basics of what Susan teaches like wise with Ellis and Balabanov in foundation training is on a similar platform really?

[Kavik]

Ellis and Balabanov are similar, SG uses toys quite differently IMO. Things like how toys are handled/manipulated/placed, and also how they are talked about and thought about. Also Ellis uses luring, SG uses shaping.