Working to get my dog to get more serious - Page 17

There are plenty of dogs, if trained correctly with a toy, that will go up in drive without a toy in a trial or who will work with no toy in trainng once the dogs learns the behaviors.
 

apple, training is reward behaviour with toy, for example,

as soon as the dog knows the routine, he MUST do it ,once in a while without reward,at a trail

 but directly after the trail, trainer will go back to rewarding desired behaviour with a toy

 

as soon as you stop rewarding behaviour for longer time you will see routine will go down

That would be consistent with operant learning principles. It is no different than if a person gets a cut in pay and decides not to work as hard. But there are other rewards that are part of training such as praise and petting that are used with toys and while a dog might come down in drive some if a toy is no longer used, that doesn't mean they won't obey their handlers at all. If a dog is training to obtain titles in sport, there is no reason to remove the toy during training. I also believe dogs trained with food and toys have more reliable obedience. It is more work to train a dog with food and a toy because the handler has to always be aware that he is rewarding the correct behavior at the correct time if he wants precision. I don't see any detection dogs being trained without a toy, so it is not just a sport thing. And many good K-9 handlers use a toy to play with and train their dogs.

Good posts Apple

To start and learn  some exerises its ok rewarding with ball or food

But there are still dogs who like to work  without food or  toys  because they have enough natural drives , if  i must bring the dog in drive with toys or food  the whole day and rewarding thats not the dog I,m searching for.I went a dog who is happy bacause the dog LIKE to work not only work for that ball or food.
 

valK excellent post. being "successful" is not a panacea. One can be successful in cutting down sequoia pine tree with a steak knife.
To Susie I would like to say this. While in sport keeping the dogidrive is OK even though in my opinon it comes with baggage whcih shows in sports like PSA. However, in a real world, you can not keep the dog in drive all the time. When you go for walk in the park, for example, the dog does not heel in drive focusing on you nor the dog is in a constant protection drive around people enjoying their Sunday afternoon in a local park.
The point I am making is that dog needs to be trained to go from non drive - what I call "calm mode" or for short "calm" into a drive on command. And then it follows that such dog should be able to be taken out of the drive on command to go back into "calm mode"

Duke: prager, your off, expectation and drive are not the same call "pozor" to your dog in an empty room and see how in drive he will be,"

 

Prager: Thank you for saying this. I will assure you that when I am in an empty room with my dog and he sleeps in the corner lat say and I say POZOR then such dog gets immediate into drive and looks actively for the BG. Thank you for helping me to make my point. Alert command is there to put the dog in drive. Conversely, I have another command to take the dog out of the drive. The dog goes in and out of drive on command same as during obedience he sits or downs or heels. 

 In drive the decoy can pet and cuddle the dog and drive the dog wants to kill him. Back and forth,... repeatedly.  You can not do this safely when the dog is in a drive where petting by the decoy is perfectly safe if I take the dog out of the drive. 

 

I agree with duke's post above. Also, I would like to comment on Apple who said:"If a dog is training to obtain titles in sport, there is no reason to remove the toy during training. I also believe dogs trained with food and toys have more reliable obedience. "
this is not true since dogs often become trial wise where the dog learns that at the trial there is no toy or food reward and such dog also learns rather quickly that if he disobeys he will not get punish nor corrected. So his obedience becomes sluggish. On top of it Some dogs when not rewarded during trial think that they are doing something won and became depressed because they do not know what it is.

As far as Apple's statement on "reliability" goes that is true only when you have the toy or treat is in hand and on top of it, in the real world to the dog treat or toy is "beans" if the outside distraction stimulus is stronger than the potential reward of toy or treat. In such situation, then such dog will flip you a finger and go -....let say a chase that deer or rabbit,..damn your toy. For that particular reason training with food or toy while pretty when it works, is totally UNRELIABLE around distractions of higher value then toy and treat. Which there are an infinity of those.

I have not been on this forum for a while and was pleasantly surprised to see the debate my video has generated. A lot of good input from very experienced "dog" people. Just a little background on the video that sparked this debate. We have only started training for PSA about a 1.5 months ago as I had mentioned before (and this was taken during week 2) as I was looking for a trainer/sport/club to train with. The purpose of the video was to teach my dog to target the inner bicep (required by PSA) as he was only used to targeting a sleeve. As far as my dog is concerned - I can turn him "on" or "off" with commands. If I don't give him a command to turn "on" he will turn "on" on his own when he sees a decoy, he will do so also in real life when not on a training field - typically happens after dark or very early morning when we go out and he sees someone (in all cases a lone individual) - in these cases typically his tail goes up, he goes into a stare mode with closed mouth, and is trying to drag me towards the individual. If I tell him to "relax" which is my "off" command he won't try to drag me towards the stranger but will still keep an eye on the individual till we pass. I will try and post a video of turning him "on" and "off" from one of our training sessions, obviously can't do it from real life scenarios. However; I have to say there is a marked difference in him when he goes "on" during training vs real life. During training - when he turns "on" he is pretty much in prey and very relaxed throughout the session - in real life his "on" is different - the only way to describe is - more "intense" and he typically does not bark but his whole demeanor changes - I guess this is the difference between "sport" and "real"?

As some of you have mentioned PSA requires a tremendous amount of control especially with the distractions being thrown at you and also the different scenarios - so obedience is paramount and you need a dog with high drive and environmentally sound who does not shut down because of the control being put on him/her. In our case, we had problems with the "aus" as we were trying to do it with force (hard corrections and yelling) prior to joining the PSA club, we finally figured out that we were not communicating with him as in the previous example it only made him bite harder. Now, I use a normal "tone" and with a slight correction if needed and he pretty much does it on a consistent basis so that was a huge step forward. Also, the "aus" has had zero effect on his drive and intensity of his bite work (as it should not, for a strong dog that understands what is being asked of him) - in fact he left a really nice bruise AGAIN on the decoy's bicep through the bite suit during last Tuesday's training - AFTER the "aus". This is because now we can actually send him on a bite from a distance where he is jumping out of the back of my truck and launching into the decoy with some momentum to add to his bite force which was strong to begin with - I believe Hans saw evidence of that in the picture I posted on his forum a few weeks ago - and I have the control over him to do the "aus". Here are 2 very brief clips of him getting used to the "aus" from last week. Also, during bite work at our club we are throwing in different scenarios so it is not routine and we have others around us in pretty close proximity to put even more pressure during this. We will now start having other club members wear bite suits while we are doing bite work to add to the complexity.

https://youtu.be/vUJ7uEt9-qo
https://youtu.be/o_jedtZ54_Q

I look forward to what comments/discussions these videos generate.

Cheers

apple, you have to read what I say, I dont say people dont use toys, and yes toys trigger preydrive, we know all that and that is the point, but if you take out the toys for whatever reason,you also take away the trigger, and the commant you tought him will not trigger the drive, it only gives the dog the idea that if he performs, you will pull out the toy for reward

@ Prager, same goes for your story, if you call pozor in empty room the dog will expect helper/trigger, but since there is no he will be confused after some time and say, hey you said pozor, so now by my pavlov way of learning, there must be a decoy jumping out now, if that happens that will trigger my drive

if the decoy doesnot show up for 5 or ten times the dog will get more confused and eventually stop reacting to your "Pozor

 

command triggers expectation, not drive 

duke, why someone in his mind would be cheating his dog like this?