Andre von der NexxJenn 9-11 months Obedience - Page 3

Apple we have to keep the specific to the specific and the general to the general . So you do PSA ..ok .. my message is that if you teach the dog to bite upper inner arm for PSA on field , then when you are not on the trail field the dog should bite upper inner arm in the same way if/when you cued the dog to . The notion is that on the filed /off the field the dog should still be competent and able to bite the inner upper arm when told and allowed to. If you taught biting the uper inner arm off field in your backyard , then the dog should do so on a training field . If you taught that on a training field it should likewise when told to do so , bite the inner upper arm in your back yard. Why , because you cue it to … As Valk wrote , if the dog is Obedient , the dog is to follow you direction . in absolute - it's not to be an issue . Heeling , I have several types of walks with my dogs ; " walk nice " , meaning walk as you please without pulling me " < an informal cue . " let's go to the car " , meaning move to the car with me < an informal cue /request , " Fuss " no matter what , if I am moving or standing be at my left side your shoulder even with my knee < a very very formal cue and request and last , and last of all , Fuss/Achtung , a heel in attention < a very very formal request. Many times I do not give my dogs "commands' I often just simply and plainly in normal voice just talk to them . If I teach something specific that is what I expect of the dog anywhere , anytime , any place… If I expect sosmething different whererby the dog can gereralize that behavior to different situations and contects , then I teach that to the dog.

I don't know if you are talking about a bite off the field on a suit or a live bite if there was a need for it. If you are talking about the latter, I would guess my dog is conditioned to bite the upper bicep, but in a PSA trial and training, the decoy holds the left arm up and out to the side, unlike KNPV. My dog also has been taught a leg bite just above the back of the knee which is for the escape bite. But in a real life situation, the person is likely to run or hold their arms up to protect themselves, or use an object to try to hit the dog, etc., so the dog would likely bite what he could get to.

I don't know if you are talking about a bite off the field on a suit or a live bite if there was a need for it. If you are talking about the latter, I would guess my dog is conditioned to bite the upper bicep, but in a PSA trial and training, the decoy holds the left arm up and out to the side, unlike KNPV. My dog also has been taught a leg bite just above the back of the knee which is for the escape bite. But in a real life situation, the person is likely to run or hold their arms up to protect themselves, or use an object to try to hit the dog, etc., so the dog would likely bite what he could get to.

Apple training so called real life protection is one totally different dimension and dynamic kind of training compared to sport . I realize that you know and understand this . That is why I frown on the word " Protection " when I hold face to face converstations with people. Even in the dog's mind they are two entirely different phenomena , sport protection vs do or die protection. We have to discuss like with like.

So if you do sport , what you have taught your dog to do , it should do . What you have practiced and taught your dog for real life it should do . Training for real life protection do or die situations and conext is entirely different than training for sport where a dog is required to bite a specific manner and/or in a specific way . Agai n we have to talk about lime to like and specific to specific. In sport , usually we teach a dog a prefereed way to bite , even using a bite suit , we gear the dog to bite where we want , where as real life and death , different teaching and interaction comes into play pertaining how , when , where [ meaning in context and also meaning on the body part ] , and why the dog bites .

If we are discussing sport , as I wrote , what you have taught in sport the dog should be able to do equally as well on field , off field , any where equally . Personal protection , although I had some dogs that innately instinctively protected , I never ever ever allow the dog to do anything on it's own accortd that I have not interacted with and taught [ unless I taught an automatic repsonse such as we do in ' defense of handler'] . In that sense even personal protection there should be a reliable and predictable outcome and that dog should in a manner of speaking of how and what was taught , perform anywhere , anytime any place - as we had taught / prepared for those events [ as best as possible that is]. In reference to you last post- you have done exraordinarily well and no doubt I am proud to hear that about you !! Simply our dogs should bite as to how we allow them  to and how we taught them  to.

Obedience is an altogther different aspect . Because Obedience is an Absolute. For example : Down is down . There is no difference in the down , here -there- anywhere- in any situation -at any time. Down [ taught fully and correctly ] means one and only one thing to the dog ! Any obedience   requirement having been correctly taught, the same expectayion  we should have … ditto , sit , stand , come , jump over , etc. . By the way ..... there is no such thing as    " stay / blieb " . That is a little bit of fautly teaching .

apple, i'm not against use of food, toys. just quite often people way overuse it and embedding into dog default habit - execution
of given command in exchange for reward. this was favorite topic in past discussions by member prager.
anyway, my point in regard of obedience is about substitution of true obedience by trained trickery to imitate obedience in certain
environment, on certain condition, for certain purpose (to pass trial, to gain points in competition).

Competition obedience is not fake obedience. Dogs are taught behaviors through operant learning principles which is how we all learn certain behaviors. The food and toys enhance the attitude, accuracy and attention of the dog. Toys and food not used in a trial. Prager thinks he is an canine iconoclast but I have another opinion of him.

    Apple Competition   as you described and by the method that you wrote,  I agree , it is not fake . But sometimes some competition or non competition obedience at times can be fake obedience. Depends … if a dog is not willingly , gladly , with the right attitude performing then that dog performs more so out of complying ,which is not by strict definition true obedience.

Valk , Apple's words : " The food and toys enhance the attitude, accuracy and attention of the dog." Is true. The confusion and what I work woith people is not the food per se , but the how , why , when and where the food is used. Instead of food I could also substitute the words : toy or bite tug they are in repsects similar to food and in that sense all makes no difference , makes no difference , except which is item is it that the dog responds to better or prefers . FOOD …. people associate that with being a REWARD . In you line of thinking Valk , here I agree with you … but I would tweak what you wrote by not saying 'over use ' but rather I believe you want to better use the word : " Mis use " !   I wish people would truly understand there is a very important difference between 'Reinforcement' and ' Tools '  for communicating to a dog as opposed to the use of a  ' Reward '.

On a level I see what Valk is trying to communicate . 30 years ago all this Positive Training bit , even DVDs came on the market to teach dog training . They showed for example people heeling a dog at heel with every step giving the dog a piece of food . Call that what you will and describe it as you will . I know scientifically and in learning theory what it is , but I pass on that at for the moment. Everyday of practice the heel was the same , until the trial day . At the trial the dog expected the food but none was used [ although one could rub a piece of food on their fingers before the trial heel , just saying ]. So , Valk does have a point , TRICKERY was used and my feeling is that other people unlike Apple , who is quite expert at the use of food and has great understanding of what he does and can do , those other people , they mis-use food , which often still is a form of bribery and trickery . In that sense yes , what can apeear as obedience , that type in which tools and food is used , as Valk refers to , is false obedience. However what Apple describes is true obedience , and is often achieved by what he wrote in his post , if done correctly .

Not always are food , toys and tugs are needed to communicate to a dog. Many times I use my voice , my hands and my legs/feet to model /communicate to the dog.

There are many different ways to teach, not all correct and not all incorrect. . I had written before that years ago the only tool we used to teach a dog were 1. a collar & 2. a leash .. and we were not able to utter a sound not even a word to the dog ! All those dogs gladly , willingly , immediately performed when they were cued to act .

The obvious reason for training a pup with food is that you can continually reinforce, which helps the pup quickly learn the behavior. Food is also good for luring to get the precise position which is required for sport. At a certain point in training, depending on the dog, food is phased out completely and a toy is introduced. As things progress, you fade the toy progressively until it is out of sight, but still use it to reinforce the dog. During this phase of training, you can add an e-collar at low stim to see how the dog reacts. If the dog totally accepts the e-collar you can use it and the toy to get precision obedience. When I am at home and have to drive out my gate, I platz my dog, drive out, lock the gate behind me and then give the release command and the dog comes to the gate for some praise and petting. He has been 100% reliable holding his down when ever I drive in or out the gate and food or a toy is never the reward. So for me, food, toys, e-collar, prong collar are all tools to get precision that carries over to reliable obedience in real life, practical applications. I put a lot of time training my dog to down and stay while leaving or coming in to the gate and started by having his leash attached to the fence so that he could not get out. This is an important thing to have reliability in because he could run into the road right outside my gate and get hit by a car, or if someone would walk by, he could go after them defending his territory.

The obvious reason for training a pup with food is that you can continually reinforce, which helps the pup quickly learn the behavior. Food is also good for luring to get the precise position which is required for sport. At a certain point in training, depending on the dog, food is phased out completely and a toy is introduced. As things progress, you fade the toy progressively until it is out of sight, but still use it to reinforce the dog. During this phase of training, you can add an e-collar at low stim to see how the dog reacts. If the dog totally accepts the e-collar you can use it and the toy to get precision obedience. When I am at home and have to drive out my gate, I platz my dog, drive out, lock the gate behind me and then give the release command and the dog comes to the gate for some praise and petting. He has been 100% reliable holding his down when ever I drive in or out the gate and food or a toy is never the reward. So for me, food, toys, e-collar, prong collar are all tools to get precision that carries over to reliable obedience in real life, practical applications. I put a lot of time training my dog to down and stay while leaving or coming in to the gate and started by having his leash attached to the fence so that he could not get out. This is an important thing to have reliability in because he could run into the road right outside my gate and get hit by a car, or if someone would walk by, he could go after them defending his territory.

Apple … this post for the record is not aimed at you .

So ……. Reinforcement ….. oh boy , oh boy , oh boy . E collars - for precision that is , oh boy , oh boy , oh boy …….
Reinforcement in and of itself , nothing wrong with that in practice . Dogs , people , throughout most of the day we are using reinforcement . But a bit is missing in conjuction with that notion / explanation of ' reinforcement ' when in comes to training our dogs .

E collars , I have seen much of tnis in currrent dog traing for precision : I ask myself : how much to the eyelash precision do I need and the degree of precision that I need , why cannot I get that exact precision , just by conventional interacting with my dog ? I remember seeing Bart Bellon on You Tube …/ and my first thought was .." REALLY ? " . At one point rhetorically , I ask myself , at what point does a certain behavior have to be exact to the eyelash that it enters in the realm of being neurotic or obcessive /compulsive ? My personal , biased opinion : whatever I do with my dog is Natural to me as well as the dog. Competing … goodness , if I have to make my dog programemed like my computer , for me something is drastically dratically wrong- people are not like that , nor are the dogs … Sometimes , poersonally as an opinion , when I see the new fad using the e collar , and I was trained to use e collar and to teach , using the e collar to do every single Sch exercise applicable , I think to myself : are some of these people out of their minds - Ok I understand competing , but have these people really lost it ? In Germany , I beleive I am correct, if you even use that to teach your dog , or practice with your dog- you are all done competing with that dog. So Apple do not take tnis personally , I am not aiming this post about you but it is relevenant to reinforcement , reinforcement** that many people teach , or fail to teach . Relevent to food use , tug use , etc. BTW ….. the toy , the food , the reinforcement …. is ALWAYS out of sight … or at least it should be. That is another issue.. if it is used as a reinforcement that is . A lure is different.