Thanks Bob!

I do see where confusion comes in, but it appears that the confusion surrounds holding a position, rather than going into a position.

This (of course) is my fault, since I made some mistakes with timing. Combined with situations where I am distracted in every day life and miss her getting up from a sit or a down. For example, she is on a down and the phone rings, and while I'm distracted she gets up and walks away, and I don't realize it for a minute because my mother is talking my ear off.

I feel the "blow off" is more in situations where I tell her to do something simple, like sit or down, and she walks away without doing it in the first place.

When we are outside I give her the benefit of the doubt that it may be situational and the level of distraction may be too high. But inside the house there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that she should know this stuff. She used to know all of it. But of course I will consider first that it is my own mistake.

Reading my new "Handbook of Applied Dog Behavior and Training" , I have decided that I am going to retrain with markers using the tables in the back of book three. If a dog doesn't know a position thoroughly after following through on all those variations there is something wrong!

A lot of it does come from inconsistency, but only because this dog has been a little bit of a training experiment. I have never trained with markers before, and the learning curve for me has caused some mix ups. All my experience training has been more along the lines of traditional balanced training. Rewards and lures used early in the training and corrections coming in much sooner.

Thanks for pointing me to those books, by the way. They really are fantastic.

 Quote: Aaron Myracle

 Quote: Tim Curtis

What types of behaviors are they referring to in the studies?

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/berg/anthroz/2002/00000015/00000001/art00005

http://web.sbu.edu/psychology/lavin/breland,%202000.htm

http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Breland/misbehavior.htm

Sounds similar (if I remember correctly from the video) to Ed's description of what he called Pack Drives.

What I got out of the quick read Tim, was that it's basicly useless to try and train away instinctive hardwired behaviors.

Rather like trying to teach a wolf to be a dog.
It hasn't been done by anyone, you either accept them for what they are or not at all.

One trys to train using the hardwiring, towards it if you will. Training against nature brings limited if any success.

 Quote: randy allen

One trys to train using the hardwiring, towards it if you will. Training against nature brings limited if any success.

This line should be chisled in granite.

A year ago I would'nt have understood what you ment. Now it makes a whole lot more sense. Work WITH the dog!

I agree, Tim.