CAN YOU TEACH A DOG TO COMPETITION LEVEL WITHOUT "NEGATIVE" TRAINING? - Page 1

On facebook today someone asked a question about a puppy that was leaning, pawing and jumping. I made a comment at one point for the leaning issue to push the dog away if other suggestions I offered didnt work. I personally feel that leaning is a form of domanance and I correct it when a dog trys and does it with me. Someone else suggested that dogs do it to show they want to play???? I was advised that negative correction was not to be discussed on that thread. I thought about it and now wonder:

Can a dog be trained to a competition level without any negative correction? I have not found this to work (ie positive reinforcement all the time with no negative correction). So can you teach a dog such as a shepherd with only positive training and will the dog respect you?

You can teach the dog to learn to 'Perform Exercises' - but his/her Reward (treats or toy or play) need to be available by the table at the finish of the Round.  Watch Competition dogs in the Ring, then watch them outside - there is quite a contrast in their general behaviour.

Gaining a dog's respect I feel is far more rewarding between Owner and dog.  Getting more into their world, and therefore bringing them closer to ours.


Regards,
Vixen

I guess the problem I'm facing is that at some point there needs to be some respect (consequences if they choose not to perform the task) so in that thought process, it would be considered negative.

Just like with my son. If he chooses to do something that is against the rules, if he knows that that there are no consequences to his actions, what is to prevent him from doing it? If I only reward the good behavior, thats well and good, but he still try's to pushes the boundaries and has to know that negative correction is close by should he choose not to follow the rules.

There is nothing wrong to appropriately correct - dogs do!  But guidance and interaction should not end purely with the training exercises, the relationship should extend.  You obviously do not switch off being a Dad to your son, so you do not switch off from being the leading/guiding figure to your dog.

Regards,
Vixen

Oh I agree with that. Actually more bonding is occured when not in training. Im a mom btw

In answer to your question - no you can not acheive a competitive level dog ( nationals) without some form of correction along the way.  At some point a dog with the temperment to go the distance will say "make me" and you will need to do it.   Correction is always Firm, Fair, and Fast. 

Sorry, I stand corrected - LOL

The emphasis is often put on the formal training, when you need to establish a close bond of the dog listening in his/her regular interaction informally.


Regards,
Vixen

TEACH with Motivational Techniques...Food...Toy...etc...

TRAIN with Motivation and Compulsion...Finishing each session with Play and Motivation...

PROOF with Compulsion...Finishing with Motivational Play...

~Bob~

"Make me" LOL..... Gotten that before

I've been thinking a lot about this issue lately, and there's been quite a bit of debate about it on another message board I frequent. Here's a very lengthy post I wrote about clicker training, which is most likely the method the people Baugh is talking about are using.

And BTW, even in clicker training, there is NO SUCH THING as completely positive training. Witholding the treat is a negative reinforcer. Those that say they use completely positive training do NOT understand how operant conditioning works!

I studied animal behaviour in university. Most of what I learned was based on B.F. Skinner's work. He developed a method called operant conditioning to study animals.

For the most part, this involved a box that contained an animal (often referred to as a Skinner Box). The animal was offered a choice between two stimuli (let's say a square and a circle). If the animal chose the square, (for example) it would get a food reward. It would not get a reward for choosing the other items it was shown. Often, a light would go on, too, or there would be a sound to show the response was 'correct'. This was called a secondary reinforcer

This type of conditioning has evolved into clicker training, with the food being the primary reinforcer, and the clicker the secondary reinforcer.

I have been trying to articulate just why total dependence on this sort of training bothers me, and I finally found the explanation in Cesar Millan's book, "Cesar's Rules".

Temple Grandin writes:

quote:
"He (B.F. Skinner) taught that all you needed to study was behaviour...you weren't suposed to speculate about what was inside a person's or an animal's head...you couldn't talk about it. You could measure only behaviour, therefore you could study only behaviour."

The now-famous Grandin was just a college student back in the 1980's when B.F. Skiner was God and the science of behaviourism was Gospel. "Behaviourists thought these basic concepts explained everything about animals, who were basically just stimulus-response machines. It's probably hard for people to imagine the power this idea had back then. It was almost a religion."

When Grandin finally got the chance to visit her idol at his office at Harvard, they had a very revealing conversation. "I finally said to him, "Dr. Skinner, if we could just learn how the brain works."

Skinner responsed, "We don't need to learn about the brain, we have operant conditioning."

Grandin says, "I remember driving back to school going over this in my mind, and finally saying to myself, "I don't think I believe that."

One of my professors, like Grandin, wanted to understand what was going on inside 'the black box we call the brain', so he approached animal behaviour by studying the physiology of neurons, and how they work together within the brain. He was known on campus as 'the man who tortures cats'. He would implant electrodes in the skulls of his research subjects, and record the activity of their brain cells. Animals could be made to do remarkable things by directly stimulating the pain and pleasure centres of the brain.

A third approach to understanding behaviour was ethology. The scientist who poineered this approach was Dr. Konrad Lorenz. I liked this approach the best, because it studied the animal in its natural environment, and recorded how it interacted with its environment and other members of its species. Lorenz worked extensively with the greylag goose, and, after observing the very human-like depression a goose experiences after losing its mate, even dared to speculate that animals have emotions, and suffer grief.

This is something that the operant conditioning approach to behaviour does not do. It does not look at the animal as an individual, or as a member of a particular species. It is limited to stimulus/ response/reward. I see it as a very mechanistic approach to training: you stick your money into the machine, and out pops your reward.

Cesar goes on to say that some of the trainers he interviewed for his book found the operant condition method of clicker training to be a little too constricting:
 

quote:
"I rarely used clickers anymore," says Joel Silverman, who started out as a clicker-based marine mammal trainer at Sea World..."people who think clickers can solve every behaviour problem in every situation are fooling themselves. You take a high-prey aggression dog that wants nothing more than to go after somebody, and I'm telling you, treats and clicker and cookies and kisses are not going to do it."

Gee, I seem to recall Ma Shiloh saying the same thing! (Ma Shiloh was the breed founder of the Shiloh shepherd. Before she bred Shilohs, she worked with GSDs, and even did schutzhund with them.)

Mark Harden, another trainer Cesar interviewed for the book, has this to say about clickers. Of all the trainers Cesar quotes, he sums up my own feelings towards clickers the best:

Mark has been training animals for movies and television for over 30 years. He says clickers work really well with animals like cats, because "They're not reading my face." But in working with dogs, "The clicker is a waste of a perfectly good hand. I mean, when I work, maybe I've got a look stick (pointer that the dog is to focus on) in one hand. I've got a bait bag, and I'm trying to get food. I'm trying to time my pay. My theory is that the dog I'm working with are very in tune with me. Dogs have a way of reading my face. My vocals. My body language. They read everything about me. So to me, the clicker becomes this sort of anonymous noise that I have to teach them to understand. and I can do everything and more with my voice. Personally, I find that most people don't use the clicker corrrecly, and then it screws up your timing like crazy."

The pioneer of clicker training was not Skinner himself, but two of his grad students, Marain and Keller Breland. They later went on to train animals at Marineland, Parrot Jungle and Six Flags. They eventually found, however, that clicker training sometimes didn't work. There were times when instinctual behaviours overrode the desire for the offered reward.

"The Breland did not overstate the problem, nor did they quantify it," writes patrick Burns. "They simply stated a fact: instinct existed, and sometimes it bubbled up and over-rode trained behaviours."

As a result, "the Brelands took the first step toward incorporating the concepts of the animal ethologists - scientists who study animals in their natural environments - into their operant conditioning and training work, which made their methods even more effective. They turned out to be light-years ahead of their mentor, B.F. Skinner"

Cesar concludes by saying: "The Brelands' paper back in 1961 was the beginning of putting it all together to understand that we have to honor and rspect the whole being of a dog or any animal before we can clearly communicate with it."

 

There is a trend now for people to treat dogs, especially small dogs, like children. One local dog business even says on its website: ...because dogs are just kids with fur!

Anyone who has seriously trained dogs for competition knows this is false. IT'S A DOG!  It willl NOT have a nervous breakdown or be scarred for life if you raise your voice to it, or correct it with the leash, or give it a push because it's leaning on your leg!

One reason I respect Cesar Milan's approach to training is that he looks at his clients as dogs first, then as a member of a particular breed of dog, with the needs of that breed, then as an individual dog.

In training, we DO need to be aware of how dogs think and act: learn 'how to speak dog', and as someone said upstream, dogs DO correct each other for misbehaviour.

You don't want to correct your dog, because it might scar poor, poor Fluffy for life? What happens if Fluffy decides to run out into traffic?

Poor, poor DEAD Fluffy!