I think treat training is cruel. - Page 10

"His behavior of not coming back results in a consequence of something bad happening.......Should the dog disobey my command, he will be punished swiftly and effectively by a strong yank on his collar. At the same time, I will invoke the use of a neutral stimulus, using a loud AAAYYYYY!"

But this isn't particularly effective in producing an association between the noise and the yank, as Pavlov himself showed us.

I missed this before:

"GSDs used to be bred very selective for particular traits.
one of them - willingness/urge to be always near the master and cooperate, whatever task is.

that is reward by itself."

Okay sure. But show me a dog that has been trained to any reasonable level whatsoever with no rewards but happy tone of voice. Someone please show me this. I'm being serious, I do want to see it.

Rik, thank you for the input.  I whole heartily agree with your comment about the dog’s success in those areas being influenced by what they were born with.  If I recall the old GSD standard, it identified his character, among other things, as having strong nerves, willingness to please, and instinctive behaviors that allow him to serve in the various service capacities.   I take instinctive behaviors as being something he is born with.

Jillmissal, thank you for your feedback.  I can’t elaborate on how effective it was other than my personal experience.  I had very good results with the dogs that I worked with.  I started teaching this later in my career and probably trained less than 30 other dogs in this manner.  In training, the dogs all performed well, but I have no idea once they left how effective it remained.  In actual application, it was seldom needed.  I can only recall, off the top of my head, one time of having to yell the correction to one of my dogs on a real bite.  I know I had to yell it twice.  This may have been influenced by me being behind a tree when I gave the command for the dog to come back to the heel position, and/or we were not far from where the car chase ended and some of the sirens were still activated.   I was a backup officer on a call when the handler had to use the verbal correction.  I remember that call pretty well because the dog came back to heel position beside me, instead of his handler.  In training we used a variable reinforcement and variable interval schedules for the rebite, but during actual street bites the dog was immediately secured upon his return to avoid any accidental bites.  I was not sure how the dog would react if I grabbed him, but fortunately the handler gave another heel command and the dog went into proper position with him.  I never followed up with how effective it was with other handlers during street application.  It was used a good bit on training recalls.  If the dog failed to recall on the heel command, the verbal correction was delivered.  If the dog again failed to respond, it was at that point the decoy would secure his position so the dog could not follow through with his drive goal. 

jillmissal:
Okay sure. But show me a dog that has been trained to any reasonable level whatsoever with no rewards but happy tone of voice. Someone please show me this. I'm being serious, I do want to see it.

i'm not sure what you're asking for?
first question is, do you mean (beside vocal prise) reward such like food, toy, action?
second, how you do imagine of that demo, you did request "Someone please show me this. I'm being serious, I do want to see it".

 

emoryg, that was interesting read.
i'm curious how much time being allocated for training process, before dog hit an actual street work?

Apple, I have no idea why you have addressed the above post to me. As far as I am concerned it has little if not anything to do with what I am talking about. Your post is mostly true and it is 6th-grade basics of psychology. However, FYI a dog working for handler does not exclude that he is working in drive.

jillmissal happy tone of voice and pat IS THE REWARD. Are you denying that praise in higher pitched then trainers normal voice a dog instinctually accepts as a reward?

Also JJ said ." What the heck have I been talking about here page after page? Marker Training is relatively new in training. This type of systematic training, is not thousands of years old. That’s just absurd to say that.

Where did I say that old ways and intuitive ways are not good? I said the excess negative reinforcement and punishment often used in the past is not good. Intuitive is ALWAYS good. Working with a dog, understanding a dogs motivation in order to use it as training is always good and can be done in many different ways. YES THAT has been used historically. ...But not systematic marker training as it is done today. That is relatively new. AND a great tool."



Prager: Please tell me what is so new about marker training system.
Training is not a brain surgery. Trainers just shuffle the basic rules into different pictures but there are only a limited amount of combinations. It is totally arrogant to think that there is anything new or modern in the system of marker training. Dog does something well and you reward it with treat and sound. yada yada yadi da,....This is a new "modern" system?. You can wrap it in nice book cover and put a bow on it but nothing new there.

 

I honestly can't with that topic. If you think training with food is cruel than you've never seen real cruelty. For ***** sake, stop calling every god damn mother******* thing cruelty!

I'm sick of it!

Admin edit, swearing removed. mrdarcy (mod)

Baerenfang, one would need to train using food reward before they'd even know the bennefit. So claiming the use of food reward is cruelty is just blabering about something they only watched on utube and came up with an outlandish conclusion. Not all dogs are motivated by a pat and high pitched voice. But it would take someone actually connected with dogs to recognise that.

Prager,
You are prone to hyperbole. I doubt there are 6th graders being taught principles of operant learning. My point was that learning principles were not defined, articulated or proven scientifically thousands of years ago. As a result, there was no consistent model which people could teach to others in a detailed fashion that would yield the best results. IMO, there are many people including parents and dog trainers that don't have a clue about the fundamentals of operant learning. Your hyperbole is also evident in saying "treat training is cruel." It is a ridiculous statement, so I thought you could use a refresher course on basic learning principles.