Just curious - how old is Koehler's stuff, when was he actively training?

I don't know about everyone else here, but I find it refreshing that everyone is not elevating a single trainer to god status. Training has come a long way and now people realize that one method does not and should not work for every dog. People can carefully select their dogs to fit their method and get through life while being close minded, but that certainly doesn't make a person a better trainer or give them a better understanding of animal behavior. You can try to stick to one method, but why? It's better to know multiple methods and try another when the first one isn't working instead of trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole.

Sorry for the rant, but this is something that really annoys me and IMO ends up putting a lot of dogs in shelters. Some pet owner decides to save a few bucks on obedience classes and tries to train the new dog the exact way as their old dog and it either results in a dog that doesn't listen or a fear biter.

I think the review on culture clash has a good message namely culture and in this case civilian culture vs. police and military culture, so this is exactly where choice come’s in.

- well as Koehler said -----“Reliability off lead should always be the most significant criterion when evaluating and comparing training methods.” (Koehler 1962) ---------we like standards, and we like to be measured, if you look at the local trend in Schutzhund, it’s dropping every year, becoming easier and easier to qualify.

Lee – here is your answer - DICK KOEHLER
1934 - 1998
http://www.koehlerdogtraining.com/bio.html has a full write up

Well Kelton I am a little confused here and before I dive in, I thing this tread should be moved to general or training, but I cant do it and the debate must continue, lets just check if we are on the same page here my definition of Ethology:

Ethology-is by definition: the scientific study of animal behaviour as it occurs in the animals natural or usual environment. In this field of study three types of training is identified.

1) Learning by observation -
2) Classical conditioning –
3) Operant conditioning –

And it deals with animal specific behaviour The DOG is one, so this is where you lose me, all our training revolves around these studies as well as prepping of dogs, and I would totally disagree with the statement you made about the total usefulness of Ethology to a trainer being non essential – if one only concentrates on the dog.

Lauren I take your point and I share some of your perception, I am not pushing Koehler as the golden boy of all dog training, but my point is this he was to dog training what Albert Einstein was to science. Imo and we should recognise that, the second half is this and all the big trainers tend to steer around this issue, if you can not pass on the revolution and evolution of your training to the next generation, are you doing any one a favour.

A person would not be so bold as to write a book if it did not and has not worked for some dogs some where– the training that is, even if it is in a cook book form with no scientific explanations, I do things with dogs that I can not explain in words either,but maybe if i showed you, you would be able to get the same result, but It works, can we not just give the one’s that tried some credit – if not for content the at least for trying.

Kelton - here is another little surprise I could not find the book “The dogs Mind” by Bruce Fogel either, so it is a selective book club or not yes/no or in my opinion people have become to lazy to read.

 Quote:

Originally posted by kelton sweet:
I'll look up the book on "learning and cognition"....not sure how the author defines cognition. Behaviorist rarely use such a term, but I suppose there may be some way of fitting it in...I don't know.

The reason that Behaviorist don't use the term "Cognition" is becuase it is contrary to their entire belief system..

Behaviorist believe that organisms are cause-effect based. They lend very little to cognitive capabilities (which is why I am not a "born again behaviorist")
Cognition lends much more credit to the ability of an organism to actually reason (e.g. mathematics, philosophy, etc)

Behaviorism leans on conditioning (OC, CC, etc) as the main methods of learning...

any behaviorists want to set me straight? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> I am sure I botched a term.. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Originally posted by REINIER Geel:
Lauren I take your point and I share some of your perception, I am not pushing Koehler as the golden boy of all dog training, but my point is this he was to dog training what Albert Einstein was to science. Imo and we should recognise that... I am not comparing Koehler to Einstein, but since you made the comparison I will add a few points. I'm taking a circuitry course right now. We have never even talked about Einstein's light bulb. It was a great invention at the time, but now it is only useful as part of a history course. Training using the Koehler method is much the same. It's not the best thing out there anymore because of advances in training and behavioral knowledge.

ethology and behaviorism: what's the use!

Ethology is of some use I suppose. To put it too simply, I would think that it is mainly useful in this kind of scenario "hey, my dog digs holes!!! What shall I do! Is he crazy?"...and an ethologist might be able to say, "it's ok, some dogs do that" (of course, it doesn't necessarily take a degreed ethologist to say that...it could just be someone who has observed dogs)

your quote:
""""Ethology-is by definition: the scientific study of animal behaviour as it occurs in the animals natural or usual environment. In this field of study three types of training is identified.
1) Learning by observation -
2) Classical conditioning –
3) Operant conditioning – """

Observing animals in their natural environment sounds accurate to me, but I'm not sure that "training" is a part of ethology. I do not know much of ethology, but from what I have experienced, an ethologist observes and describes...and they are well known for making fancy graphs and statistical analysis of stuff they observe. They also have a fancy lexicon.

An ethologist might be able to tell a behaviorist that a dog 'tends to dig holes" or "tends to chase prey animals or balls"...and might be able to tell me the statistical probability that a certain number of animals will exhibit these behaviors out of a population. This sort of information is interesting, but is likely of little use to a trainer or behaviorist.

No matter what a person says about the "tendencies" of an organism (high drive, aggressive, civil or whatever), these terms are not very specific and are constantly under debate...so the value of these terms may be of some use, but even that is limited. If someone tells you this sort of stuff, does it tell you exactly what you are going to do when modifying the dog's behavior? I would say not. You still have to meet the dog, manipulate a few variables and see how the dog responds specifically and go from there. It's a one-on-one affair AND it's not necessarily in the natural environment.

Behaviorist work with one organism at a time, and most of what they do is manipulate environmental variables of which behavior is a function. They study these environmental variables, systematically alter them, and see what happens. (sort of like dog training) Behaviorist have discovered many important principles with regard to the fundamentals of environment/behavior interactions....and these things are directly related to practical matters of training. Directly. It appears to be the foundation of most of the newer dog training books.

I don't know that ethologists spend much or any time at all with operant conditioning or respondent conditioning. If they do, well, they are then studying behaviorism!

Behavioral science is a biological science...it is not a philosophy like many psychological theories out there. It studies an organism's response to environmental variables just as a physiologist studies the response of a cell to a chemical. There ain't a lot of philosophy in that!

Also, if a person see's a dog doing something bad...and they swat the dog....they are using behavioral principles even if they can not articulate it. The dog is also training the owner...."you must swat me in order to escape from witnessing my bad behavior.....I am rewarding you for swatting". Behavioral principles are always working in both directions...we attempt to manipulate the environment while it is manipulating us.

Whew!

 Quote:

Originally posted by REINIER Geel:
Ethology-is by definition: the scientific study of animal behaviour as it occurs in the animals natural or usual environment.

Not exactly. Ethology is the the scientific study of animals' natural behaviors. This may or may not occur in animals' "natural or usual" environment. Some of the most important research in ethology was done using animals in captivity.

Ever hear about baby birds imprinting and bonding to whomever they first make contact with... momma bird or a human? That's a finding from ethology using animals in captivity.

There are things that can be learned about animals' natural behaviors by studying them in captivity or unnatural settings that cannot be learned by field observations in their natural environments.

Laura Sanborn

Geel, have you read the book that this thread is about?

If not, go post elsewhere and let this thread continue.


Does Amazon.com ship to you?


Any more comments about Culture-Clash? Lets try to get back to that.

This discussion has now taken on a new direction...too bad their isn't a 'science' topical area in this forum. I'll start a new thread under "training references: General Discussion".

Sounds good, this one is closed.