Kevin wrote:

"As for a dog with so much drive that it will knock you down and swallow a ball, I can't agree with that. If either of my dogs jumped on me in that manner, they would be corrected. I'm sure Vince will disagree with what I have said, but I have found it to be true. I don't expect you to just believe me because I said it, but think about it yourself. Does this make sense?"

Kevin,

Training puppies through compulsion (no food, no toys, no play) makes sense only if you haven't tried anything else. I will try to explain this from my personal experience. First of all, IMO, there are two ways of training obedience--either through compulsion (correction) or through motivation (food, toy). There may be people on this board who think you can train dogs through some kind of a mystical connection, but I haven't reached that high of a level yet. I've tried both--my first GSD was trained in compulsion because I was absolutely clueless at the time and that was the only option available to me. Did it work? Sure. Did I like the results? No.

It's true that like Vince, I train for the sport, but my dogs are also companions and I can take them into any kind of environment. My current puppy (15 mos now) was an absolute terror from day one--and she never had a physical correction. If she preferred walking to the park while firmly attached to my leg and pulling with all her might, that was fine, as long as the grip was full and firm :. Her favored way of greeting people was jumping as high as she could to bite their nose (just a friendly hello). Of course, I could fix that in a hurry with a moderate jerk on the leash--but instead I chose to warn people to hold on to their noses. Extreme? Maybe. But she's in for some extreme training in the future. There were nights when I would be lying there totally dazed watching her bounce off the walls, thinking maybe this one is REALLY crazy. And you know what, all this craziness just went away by itself, don't even remember when and how. All her obedience training was done in play, and as Vince said, she had no clue she was being trained. If I put together all the time she was actually "trained" it would probably amount to no more than 3-4 hours. And yet she passed her BH test at 13 months with flying colors, and the judge's comment was "we see a very good relationship between the dog and the handler".

You don't have to take my word, Kevin--you don't know me or my dogs from Adam, nor do I consider myself an authority, but maybe you can take advice from someone like Bernhard Flinks whose resume is readily available on Ed's website. I attended Flinks' seminar a few years ago with my now retired SchHIII bitch. On the first day of the seminar Bernhard asked 6 people with dogs of various ages to come out on the field and just play. I went out last, as mine was the oldest. When I was done, he smiled and said: "Ahhh, now here we see a very good relationship between the handler and the dog. I can guarantee you that tomorrow we will see very good bitework from this dog". He then proceeded to say that at his own club he doesn't allow new members to progress to bitework until they learn how to play with their dog to his satisfaction.

I strongly recommend that you either attend a Flinks' seminar or at least purchase a video from Ed. If that's not going to sway your opinions even a little bit, then I guess your methods are far more superior (but I'll still stick to mine) <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

You don't have to accept unacceptable behavior, like jumping on people, to train positively. You can train the dog positvely by giving them something else to do that is acceptable and reward for that. If they get their reward for positive behavior, what ever the reward is, they will quit doing the unacceptable behavior because it is no longer rewarded (the technical term is extinction). Again reward is the most powerful method of training any animal, including people. In fact extinction comes in second and punishment is a distant third. Part of the problem with punishment is that it is dependant on the punisher being present all the time to enforce the punishment.

The biggest problem is often finding a behavior that is inconsistant the undesirable behavior. Using the jumping behavior as an example, rather than just punish for jumping I teach the dog to sit to get petted. The dog still gets it's reward (being petted) for sitting, but not rewarded for jumping on people. It doesn't take long for the dog to learn that jumping gets it nowhere, but sitting will get it petted every time. So it will sit instead. You don't have to accept just train another behavior instead. The other good thing about training positively is that the training will last longer. The reason is that an intermitant reward will still maintain the behavior better than punishment. You will work better if you are payed rather than if you are not, but you don't have to be payed every day to maintain your work ethic. Even if you are paid every other week you still do your job the day after you are payed in anticipation of your next payday.

Catherine:

How can you say this act was non-thinking? He associated a positive response with downing. No he did not recite Shakespeare but not bad for a puppy.

Johne:

Good question. My dog associates his tracking lead with tracking and food on the floor. So he knows that only when he has this lead on can he search for food.

Kevin:

You give me your pup at 12 weeks old and a prong collar for 15 minutes and I can guarantee you this pup will never work again. Give me the same dog at 3 years old and if it does not bounce back I would be surprised. Your corrections will not be as pronounced as mine so the results are less noticeable. But are still there. You just never knew what you would have had otherwise.

Your dog begins to wine out of excitement to work and he has no drive?

prizgard1204 :

What happened to this dog? My TD and helper took a much needed rest from the sport and left my dog in the hands of a traveling Belgium helper who was on a life time quest to visit and train in as many clubs around the world as he could. Ed told me that it was time to start my dog in defense before it would be locked into prey. He said Ed was full of it and did not know this dog. In a couple of months his threshold for defense increased so much that it was either sell him now or he would be ruined forever. Ed bought him and began civil agitation on him and he went on to replace his retired PSD Otis. He died shortly after due to an accident in travel.

Renne and Chris:

I’ll take your remarks as busting my chops. You have never been rude to me before. I was laughing as I was digging out the toy. Not standing there with my hands in my ass as he was downing.

Renee:

I have no trouble with people who also use their SchH dogs as house pets. In fact I encourage it to everyone except me. A little cheating never hurts. Will your corrections for your dog jumping up on people now render the dog incapable for SchH. No ofcourse not. But you can see my point why I choose not to deal with this.

Richard and Joy:

Why do you continue to harp on prey drive being necessary to work a protection dog? Prey is not real so it has no business in protection training.

I could not find anything that I disagreed with you guys on but I could not play favorites. LOL.

Vince

Yep simple "chop busting". My comment was simply a back up to Renee. I thought she hit the nail on the head about the pup learning to perform a known behavior to get what he wanted.

Plus I had this image of a pup with that "Hey Dad aren't you paying attention" look on his face. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Chris:

I understand.

Why is it assumed Kevin's dog has less of a desire for a reward because he doesn't use food or toys? Sounds like the work is part of the reward. Also sounds like Kevin loves to track - dogs pick up on things like this and it affects them.

There is much more to correcting a puppy that can't be explained by operant conditioning. Does it take into account attitude, emotion, body language, etc? If you damage a pup's 'drive' then you're either not doing it correctly or you have a poorly bred dog. Corrections are guidance as they are with children. When done by a patient, gentle hand they do not damage their confidence. Are our children today better off for all the new child raising techniques? Certainly a subjective matter but I don't think so.

Drives are theory. For example, is a dog really 'driven' to eat or does it eat when its hungry? Does it track because its 'driven' to track or because there is a track to do? It doesn't make sense that a dog is simply serious in what its doing or not? Why is it always working through 'drive'? I used to believe that years ago but as time goes on it makes less sense to me.

If your dog will do anything for a ball or food, is that dog really in tune with you or just in getting the ball or food? If a dog is staring at your face during obedience is that dog really attentive to the handler or is it in effect begging for food?

Catherine,

The thread of this is for Obedience only in a familar territory not drives. Stay on topic.

Sorry about that. It did veer off...

You give me your pup at 12 weeks old and a prong collar for 15 minutes and I can guarantee you this pup will never work again. Give me the same dog at 3 years old and if it does not bounce back I would be surprised. Your corrections will not be as pronounced as mine so the results are less noticeable. But are still there. You just never knew what you would have had otherwise.

Vince-- I'm sure you could screw up a dog in 15 minutes. But you wouldn't if you paid attention. I'm not being rude here, just making a point. I said earlier, the correction needs to fit the dog's age/personality.

Kevin--you don't know me or my dogs from Adam, nor do I consider myself an authority, but maybe you can take advice from someone like Bernhard Flinks whose resume is readily available on Ed's website. I attended Flinks' seminar a few years ago with my now retired SchHIII bitch. On the first day of the seminar Bernhard asked 6 people with dogs of various ages to come out on the field and just play. I went out last, as mine was the oldest. When I was done, he smiled and said: Ahhh, now here we see a very good relationship between the handler and the dog. I can guarantee you that tomorrow we will see very good bitework from this dog. He then proceeded to say that at his own club he doesn't allow new members to progress to bitework until they learn how to play with their dog to his satisfaction.

Renee--No thanks on Flink. While I am sure he has trained many dogs. I do not train for shutzhund so the fact that a dog is a shutz.III does not mean anything to me. I don't believe that shutzhund today is anything like it was when developed. I also do not think a relationship is shown by how you play with a dog.

Your example of tracking is a description of a dog with good drive, that is why he whines to go track. Like a lot of things in dog training the idea is the same, the terminology is just different.

Richard--My dog does not whine because of drive. Why does everything a dog does have to be associated to a drive? It makes no sense. It's like saying when I get up in the morning I have good wake up drive, then I brush my teeth and I'm in hygiene drive, then I eat and I'm in eat drive. I go to work and some one tries to rob me and I defend myself, so now I'm in.....I'm not sure, can you help me out here? Defensive or Fight drive?

Yes Frawley, I'm off the subject but I'm responding to posts.

Kevin-

What happened to Rabiatt after he ate the ball?