in the past few months i have been giving more thought to a phrase that flinks uses repeatedly. i hope i am gaining a better understanding of what he means. at his seminars, he does explain what he means by drive, compulsion, drive but in my thickheadedness, i don't think i understood the importance until recently. i think the word reinforcement could easily be used in place of compulsion. at one time, and with certain other trainers, i had a somewhat mistaken view of compulsion and reinforcement. i associated them both with negative acts, but now i am beginning to understand how compulsion can be used (and should be) in connection with communication very effectively and with better results. flinks uses the sit as an example. he will give the command and at the same time pull up on the leash and possibly push down on the butt of the dog. now, if you are using his methods, you have already built drive in the dog. he is ready to work. he is up so to speak. you give the command/compulsion and as soon as the dog is correct, go right back into drive building. i guess the thing that has been impressed on me here lately, is how much more effective it is to give a little reinforcement/compulsion while the dog is in drive (actually used as communication) than it is to rely on corrections after you have already allowed the dog to do it wrong. if the dog is in drive, you give command/compulsion, the dog does it correctly because you have helped him, then you are able to give praise and rewards at the end of the excercise rather than corrections. i think a lot more of us are doing this than what we even realize. it is becoming clear to me that corrections are the least effective way of teaching a dog or in communicating with them. corrections come after the dog has already erred. drive is on its way down. and if they are not sure what they are being corrected for, they become confused and sometimes hectic or frantic. personally, i like the idea of being able to give praise and rewards because they are correct. its a lot more fun for dog and handler. not only that, but if the dog never learns the wrong way, you have nothing to fix. fixing takes a long time. compulsion/reinforcement need not be cruel or harsh, but needs to be firm enough that it will "force" the correct behavior. now, after spending about 3 months mulling this over.....i need to see if i can actually do it myself. that's always the hard part. knowing and doing are very different things. i'd like to hear what some other folks think. have you relied too heavily on corrections to show your dog what you want? do you use compulsion and reinforcement in conjunction with your commands and if so do you find this more effective than using corrections? do you have any tips for using compulsion in certain situations, things that seem to work better than others? if you prefer to use corrections, why?

i'm giving this a bump-up because i'd really like to hear from others regarding the use of compulsion rather than corrections. will, are you on board? i know you are a flinks advocate; i was rather hoping you might have something to say on this.

Yeah, with my current dog, now that his drive is really high, I've gotten more success using a lot of compulsion while in drive vs. what I used to do when he was a puppy, wherein I waited for him to make a mistake and then corrected him (albeit lightly). What I see is you're not really teaching obedience any more than you're teaching almost a reflex response, which makes for a really fast response and gives the dog very little margin for error. Also, for my dog's case anyway, force during drive increases his drive to the point that sometimes I have to stop what I'm doing and use slow movements to get him to lower his drive.

kristine, i was glad to see some response. i worried that maybe what i had written was not very clear, but i can see you understood exactly what i meant. it took me a long time to see how important compulsion is. to give a command, without the aid of a little compulsion/reinforcement, is setting the dog up to fail and corrections follow suit. and as you also understood, compulsion need not be a harsh thing. much can be done with a flat collar, harness and hands. anything that will convey to the dog exactly what you want and given in conjunction with the command.
i am still hoping for more response from others who use some compulsion in their training and what has been the experience with it. in the past, i either failed to use compulsion or if i did, it was too harsh. there has to be a happy medium somewhere between none and too much.......too much being the point where it diminishes drive. we want the dog to stay in drive, yet be "compelled" to carry out the command.

Dear Patricia,
You asked me what I think about your post.
I think it is an interesting piece of conversation that you brought up.
The only thing before I can respond back to you, I need to know what compulsion means to you.
Regards,Francesco Carotenuto

http://www.K9Nation1.com

I wouldn't really call this compulsion as most of us have come to know that term (mostly as Koehler-like methods, or no-reward methods). Flinks' compulsion is motivational...because the dog wants something for himself and all he's doing is learning the fastest way to get it. Try doing this without the reward or out of drive or with the wrong dog and you will get the opposite effect...so it should be done with some care.

see that's what i was saying.......i always associated compulsion with something undesireable, but after thinking about it, i realized that it doesn't have to be that way. as i said, we want the dog to stay in drive, so maybe the type of compulsion i am talking about could better be called "aids."
i just know that flinks says, "drive, compulsion, drive" repeatedly and i suspect the compulsion is a big part of getting success during training. giving a command without compulsion (reinforcement/aids) is giving the dog a second to decide if he is going to comply or not. ofcourse, if he doesnot comply, the correction is forthcoming. wouldn't it be better to insure success by helping them to be correct at least initially or until they are solid in an excercise.
i asked francesco and will to take a look at this post because i thought they might have a deeper understanding of what flinks actually means when he says, "drive, compulsion, drive." i am also looking for some creative forms for compulsion, things that will insure that the dog follows the command, yet at the same time not harsh enough to diminish drive. i have to admit that administering corrections is the biggest thing that i dislike in schh training. because schh requires that the dog be very very correct, it seems like the handler is correcting all the time. it looks to me that corrections are really a less effective way to train and the real secret to success is apply just enough compulsion to insure that the dog is correct, but without bringing him down and diminishing drive.
on the other side of the coin, i know that flinks works with some dogs that require far more and harder compulsion than i would ever want to exert, but then i don't work with that sort of dog, either. the severity of the compulsion would naturally be an individual thing, too. handler sensitive dogs would require less compulsion and handler hard dogs might require more. with the sensitive you'd have to worry about keeping drive alive, but with the hard ones you'd have to take care not to push the dog into a fight mode. that would create more problems than it would solve.
sounds kind of like walking a tight rope and is probably the reason so few find the niche. bumblefoot, here, has a hard time to keep from falling over her dogs. there's a lot to worry over and a lot to watch out for while training. i guess that's the reason why we are able to laugh while someone else is out on the field and then become retards when its our turn to provide the entertainment.

Patricia, You were very clear, that is why I couldn't really add anything. As you know a Flink's seminar was the first training seminar that I had ever attended. I understand his methods because I have a natural tendency to train this way. I actually hadn't given this much thought until I read your article. There seems to be many definitions for compulsion. I think this is where the "failure to communicate" problem comes into play.

As you said, I think most of do the drive/compulsion/drive thing more than we realize. I think there is a difference in teaching a dog and training a dog. I prefer teaching(drive/compulsion/drive) unless I'm totally confused!

While I didn't respond to your post, I have been thinking about it since you wrote it, and I do hope that others who are more experienced than I will add their thoughts.

Will think about this some more while I cook the turkey! Happy Thanksgiving!

Debbie

Dear Patricia,
After reading your post I can now give you maybe a more clear understanding of compulsion.
Compulsion is a correction. Like Debbie High said many people give different definitions of compulsion, the only difference is the INTENSITY on the correction.
What I believe and I believe this is what Bernhard believes when he says drive,compulsion,drive , the dog is receiving Light correction and that can be administered with a prong collar with several fast and light jerks. It can be administered with a electric collar on low intensity (sometimes it depends on the hardness of the dog). It can be administered with a choke collar ,with the same principle of the prong collar, definitely not with a harness like someone posted previously here.
After the dog receives light correction (compulsion) he gets praise to balance the compulsion to bring him back in high drive.
It is difficult to explain on paper or computer because every dog is different so sometimes you have to approach him in a different way. Some dogs they are so high in drive when they receive the compulsion and they are already in drive they increase their stage of drive and they do not need to be praised. The only thing with this type of dog you have to be really careful how you use drive,compulsion,drive because if you are not an alpha handler, in the trial you can lose control of your dog.
I really do not use alot of compulsion on my training because I make my life really easy choosing from the beginning the right dog and for sure it is not easy to find. When you have a really good dog 20% is training and 80% is genetics.
Patricia, you mentioned something about prevention and it is one of my main philosophies . If I prevent the problem I do not need to fix the problem. What I mean and like you said if I train my dog to do the right thing from when he is a puppy the only thing he learns is the right thing, period. The dog is learning the right thing if the handler teaches the right thing. If the handler teaches the right thing from when he is a puppy he will need less compulsion in the future.A really good dog with high level drive he doesn't need compulsion to bring him back in drive if you do so like I said before you just increase his already high level of drive and it can be dangerous if you can't control him. A dog with not a lot of drive you have to be careful how to administer the compulsion because you can have an opposite effect and kill completely his drive.
Anyway it is difficult to answer this completely on paper and we can write another ten pages and probably it is still unclear for some but Patricia let me know if this was helpful.
Sincerely,
Francesco Carotenuto
http://www.K9Nation1.com

francesco, not all compulsion is correction. remember that compulsion in dog training is the act of making the dog act compulsively, most of the time you do this with a correction, but you have to also remember that a good dog is in "drive" the whole time you are training, a good dog will go into higher level of drive when using compulsion, whether its corrections or repitition or voice. (we all know its really the combination of all of these).

someone once made it very clear to me by saying 3 illustrations about compulsion.

1. think about someone who washes their hands compusively, its compulsive behavior because of the repitition. that person only feels good when they are washing their hands! in fact they feel weird when they dont get to wash them as much as they would like...

2. think about someone who eats chocolate (or some other type of food) compulsively, they are only happy if they are eating chocolate cake.

3. compulsion is seen in protection with the whip based on association, we crack the whip, the dog barks, the dog sees the blind, (with or with out the helper in it) and the good dog begins to bark and show intensity everytime.

the main thing i learned from this is that compulsion is the act of creating reliability in your dog. the dog does not know anything different than what you have taught them, for instance in the retrieves you only allow them to hold the dumbell calmly, then amazingly they do not even know how to do it differently... doesnt mean that force is always to be used, some dogs will never chew it, then over and over and over they dont chew it, then pretty soon amazingly enough they still dont chew it! thats also compulsion.

the same guy also asked me one time "why did you train your dog to do that?" everytime i was talking about some problem my dog had in training! he is right, they only do what we train them to do, or allow them to do.