A fresh look at understanding Compulsion training (ancient training, or backwards training like it is sometimes coined at Leerburg) and why it works for Police dogs and protection dogs, if properly trained, there is a lot you need to know and understand to master this form of training and very few understand it in its pure form let alone try to train in this fashion, yes it is and was an ancient form of training that has the roots to all training concepts I believe, considered to be modern today, the people of old lived and worked side by side with nature and all it had to offer, in this case dogs, dogs became fresh food, a means to protect against predators and had other uses as well. There was no training manual out so compulsion and repetition formed behaviour = training. Food was seldom ready available so an alternative was needed.

With this much said, I can start by explaining some basics of compulsion training with out writing a book, the first factor is:

Selection of the proper dog that will benefit from this type of training, factors to look at:
Are nerves, to understand nerves one needs to understand the mind of a dog and what effects it-

Nerve or emotions - manifest them selves in fear or aggression- either genetically inherited or emotional imprinted or even learned and lastly through their diet – studies have shown that young dogs deprived of protein or with protein deficient diets become emotional and nervous with over excitable personalities. So selection of dog is another factor, but dogs with weak nerves can also be trained in obedience and the nerved dog tends to become relax through or with all the interaction, strengthening the handler/dog social bond.

Now some may ask where is the reward or how do you reward, it’s simple -Hidden reward-attention from he owner if the dog obeys or behaves in a certain way, then through early learning and imprinting it teaches a dog for life, but there are several unexpected factors that also affects the dogs mind and training, hormones, anxiety, early prior experiences and genetics these make up the bulk, but which guides a dog behaviour further still is social behaviour, attachment and comfort seeking, just like with humans they need to know they belong and exactly where is it that they belong – with this said the first step is to establish a bond and dominance over the dog.

It is also important to understand that a dog trained in this fashion has two sides to his emotional state; the other side is excitement or agitated ness, or stressors.

Reactivity – to environmental stimulus has another bearing on a dog, even though generally excepted that weeks 8 to 14 forms the dog not much training can be done here but with ages three to ten months which are the most important time to un-learn natural fear of or reactive fear to stimulus, a specially in German shepherds, by a process of generalisation of fear levels, or rather threat levels, by introducing stress at the relevant time the dog is conditioned that all threat is equal to zero pain. Conflict creates anxiety in the dogs mind. So the aim is not to confuse the dog with bad stimulus during training always positive-positive, every training session ends this way.

Motivation, dogs are motivated by hunger, sex, thirst, attachment, need to claim territory and social status, a Maslou pyramid of needs if you may. So dogs with low trainability and pray drive can be trained with compulsion. Like the Pekinese, that can only stand one helping of food reward, so food wont cut it, as well as dogs with low reactivity to ball or pray drive like the Alaskan Malamute and Great Dane needs to be trained via other methods like compulsion training.

To understand compulsion training one needs to understand all this and what causes anxiety and what causes conflict, a dog needs to bond or get attach to a handler, if the handler now smacks the dog or beats him then he is sending two messages one of love and care the other hate and pain. It can be les dramatic – by virtue of inconsistent behaviour by the handler. So with compulsion consistency and reputation is what makes or brakes. Compulsion is not beating, or kicking or cruel in any way. We seldom make use of prong collars, tie outs or electrical collars, its mainly all body and voice, that controls the dogs behaviour.

Another factor is the persons state of mind, if he is emotional the dog tends to show more anxiety, so yes the right balance needs to be striked here with a lot of understanding of dog- human interaction and it’s influences on dog training and behaviour. This type of training can be followed in a step- by- step fashion that is easily followed by dog and handler alike, even young children.

So in conclusion I think the same can be said of most types of training today because the components are relatively the same, it’s only the methodology that is obviously different, I have yet to see a fail proof training method, I have never heard of a trainer that said I will be training the same exact way he did with his first dog right to his very last, this type of training turns out dogs with balanced nerves, less anxiety and better discipline under stress.

Your input on this is welcome.

Maslow, not Maslou. If you are going to try and look educated, spell the names right.

Do you enjoy having all your threads closed?

Just because a pekenese is small, saying that it can not be trained with food is STUPID. Not to mention, not sure what the heck that has to do with police dogs either.

Go find some other board to be a troll on.