Donaldson/Dunbar DVD

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by Sunsilver on 27 January 2009 - 07:01

The current issue of Dogs In Canada has a review of the DVD, Fighting Dominance in a Dog Whisperer World, by Jean Donaldson and Ian Dunbar. Now, I have to confess I don't understand the new, positive reinforcement type of dog training, and believe as someone who's seriously interested in training, I really need to get exposure to this 'school of thought'. Like most of you on this board who are on the wrong side of 40, my first exposure to training was Kohler, and his methods are still pretty much what I use for training, with a few additions (yes, sorry Bill, I DO use treats to teach new behaviours.)

I have to confess I'm a bit leery of the 'positive-only' approach, and feel it is the product of our permissive society, which seems to fear our kids and dogs will have a nervous breakdown if someone ever tells them 'no'! However, I do want to keep an open mind, and am thinking of giving the DVD a try, but at $40 bucks, I'd like to get feedback from board members as to whether it's worth the money.

Your thoughts, please....

by Sue-Ann on 27 January 2009 - 10:01

Positive reinforcement is the way to go. Dogs work for the pleasure of doing the work vs the fear of being hurt. Dr Ian Dunbar is brilliant. He has several books out you can puruse vs spending the $40 on the DVD. Sheila Booth uses positive reinforcement as well and her training is more specific for GSDs, and schutzhund style training. Get her books for even better insight to training with your dogs.

I use a combination of motivational training and compulsion. The success of any trainer comes in recognizing the dog's personality and matching training style to the dog's individual needs. One can never approach training with a one size fits all approach :-)

by ocoey on 27 January 2009 - 13:01

SunSilver;

I too was raised the old school way and I encountered some real challenges learning the 'new' way. For one thing the behavior is learned before the command is added. To be perfectly honest I started learning the new methods because I feel you should actually take the time to learn something before you bash it. Nice attitude, I know.

There are definitely some worth while things to be learned. It truly is amazing what you can teach an animal: how specific you can get and how easy it is to explain what you are looking for. I find it isn’t all that different from training in drive. It is definitely my first choice when teaching a behavior or working with a problem i.e. dog isn’t going out far enough in the directed jump. I also withhold reward for some things rather than correcting. I find it is a very useful tool but it is part of a larger picture. I still use corrections and every dog I have ever owned knows what ‘No’ means. Not all that different from a click if I think about it, just in reverse. If my dog refuses to do something or chooses to ignore me there are consequences. There isn’t any jumping on visitors, stealing off the coffee table or picking fights.

I have run in to more ‘clicker’ style trainers that condemn compulsion without knowing the first damn thing about it. Just because you use compulsion does not mean the dog is in fear of being hurt. I spend more time getting past their attitude than I do learning their methods. Isn’t that using compulsion to train me??

I’m sure, like me, you have seen many great dogs ruined with bad corrections but I have also seen complete monsters that were clicker trained to do really neat tricks…when it served them.

Our permissive society indeed!! There are few people around that simply need a good swift smack (at the night moment, of course). I say take the time to learn the science. All the methods, even compulsion, are based on the same thing. Even some bad trainer have a trick you could learn, just don't forget what you already know. Obviously you are already able to adjust accordingly, like you did with Kohler’s stuff. If you sign

by ocoey on 27 January 2009 - 15:01

up for classes take a good health dose of patience. Although I do not have a problem with Dundar or Donaldson I find their matterial to be geared toward pet owners....they gloss over the important stuff.

by schdiva on 27 January 2009 - 15:01

Go to www.dragonflyllama.com and look at the training levels for dogs. This explains everything very nicely and easy for dogs and humans to understand!

by Sunsilver on 27 January 2009 - 16:01

Although I do not have a problem with Dunbar or Donaldson I find their matterial to be geared toward pet owners

That's sort of what I figured, after spending some time on Ian's website last night! Pet owners are the ones to most likely be afraid to correct a dog for misbehaviour.

Well, I've just been told my 7 year old male GSD SD got into my room-mate's purse and ate a piece of chocolate cake that was in a plastic bag. When she tried to take the plastic bag from him, he refused to give it up, and swallowed it instead. He also, despite my efforts to break him of it, counter-surfs. This from a dog who, when wearing his cape, will not even touch crumbs on the floor if told 'leave it!'

If I find a trainer who can help me with this, I will be MORE than pleased!

There's always room to learn something new with training!

by Langhaar on 27 January 2009 - 16:01

I am on the wrong side of 40 and train my dogs using positive reinforcement, works for me...........

JD is an excellent writer who has some very good things to put across about basics of dog behaviour irrespective of whether you are a "pet" or competition owner etc

by Micky D on 27 January 2009 - 16:01

"I have to confess I'm a bit leery of the 'positive-only' approach, and feel it is the product of our permissive society, which seems to fear our kids and dogs will have a nervous breakdown if someone ever tells them 'no'! However, I do want to keep an open mind, and am thinking of giving the DVD a try, but at $40 bucks, I'd like to get feedback from board members as to whether it's worth the money."

Dunbar is definitely geared toward the average dog owner (pet owner). He is a veterinarian who has a doctorate in behavior and over 40 years of training and lecture experience. He is firmly committed to the idea that training saves the lives of dogs (which it obviously does) and is a strong proponent of early puppy socialization and training. In my opinion, his methods may not produce "podium grip sport dogs", but let's face it, the dog sport community is a small segment of the U.S. dog owning population.

To teach a pet dog not to jump on visitors, Dunbar has the owner teach the pup to sit for attention. It is only given positive attention when it's sitting, so the jumping behavior extinguishes quickly. Dunbar teaches puppy owners to make sure the pup is exposed to many different people from a young age. He encourages puppy to puppy socialization in his Sirius dog training classes.

While Dunbar's philosophy is in no way geared toward bite sport enthusiasts, imho, his methods make far more sense for the average pet owner than do Cesar Milan's.

by Prodogz on 27 January 2009 - 16:01

Although I have not studied either one of their training methods it seems that the discussion of compulsion vers motivation comes up quiet often. With that said I think the words “compulsion training” is only acciated with forceful methods of training, basically teaching a animal merely with compulsive methods. But compulsive training can be everything from a verbal "NO" to harsher methods like the force retrieve. Often we forget that a bitch will use compulsion to teach her young, we see this when a bitch is trying to wean her puppies, the puppy will try to follow her around to nurse and mom will turn around growling or sometimes act aggressively. At first a bitch will try to just play keep away but eventually when that doesn’t work she has to make her point clear. When I am working with my club members we face some what of the same issue, if we are working on focus and we have taught the dog through motivation but the dog keeps making a decision to look away it takes a certain amount of compulsion to teach the dog that that’s not a acceptable behavior BUT when the correct behavior is shown he or she gets heavily rewarded, if done right the dog learns how to avoid the compulsion. Lets say we don’t use any compulsion, then we have to make the reward greater in order to compensate the desire to look away, only difficulty is that as training progresses we end up babying our dogs. My point is compulsion training to a degree is a natural way of learning but, when used wrong or become you become reliant on it you see an unpleasant picture.

by GSDkatrina on 27 January 2009 - 18:01

HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transiti I also withhold reward for some things rather than correcting. I find it is a very useful tool but it is part of a larger picture.

I used what was called called negative reinforcement at times too-I also, use a combination of positive reinforcement and traditional/Old School-then counter conditioning-whatever tools work best!

I took the advice of and old trainer 15 years ago when he told me to "shock" my rescued female GSD ( rescued at 13 months) when she lunged over my shoulder at anyone on the side of the road and almost caused me to drive off of it many times! She startled a construction wokrker so that he actually yelled out loud -and the cop standing with him-laughed at him!
The trainer said in that case I needed to show her that was not acceptable-so he rented to me a shock collar that had 3 levels- he said to go right to level 3! I did it on level 3 ( the highest on that collar)-she got it immediately but not without negative consequences!
After that anytime she saw a person-dog-bike etc while we were driving- she would go into a fearful state and try to avoid and hide on the floor. I felt terrible!!:(
I Never knew anything ( obviously or I would not have used that collar in that manner) so I tried to figure out how to make her realize that it was ok to look out the window and nothing was going to hurt her if she did-so I acted happy and treated her every time I saw a person bike etc ( now I know this is a combo -of desensitizing and counter-conditioning)to my amazement she was -calm relaxed- looking for people and bikes etc for a treat:) then I weaned off the treats and used happy talk whatever worked LOL...I never knew about counter-conditioning then- so I relied on common sense which I was shocked that I had any of that as well LOL....
I love this board!!!!!

Karina

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