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Dogs behaving badly

Free spirit said:
!My dog knows nothing about trying to fit in with the pressure of modern life.He gets up eats poop runs around barks , wags his tail poops again ,lies in front of the fire and finally goes to bed and never gives modern life a thought he just does dog all day, he never a day in his life. Off out now.
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Whoopy do !
I didnt say about trying to fit in. I said adapt.
Life changes , for example many more people working full time then there used to be , Dogs left alone all day , left in crates , etc
Your right , I am crazy , Im crazy about dogs and Im passionate about learning about their behaviour .
I'd rather be crazy than ignorant.
 
Free spirit said:
I first of all took him to the tennis courts in my local park because he had no recall at all i would call him back and slap my knees and always reward him he came back. I then moved into a long training lead so that if he ran off i could put my foot on in (if you need one i will give it to you i don't use it any more) i will post it to you. I used the command Buster come and at first he would.sometimes ignore me if he saw another dog, so I decided to use an emergency stop i go a whistle online a practised blowing it and always giving him a high value reward (chicken or cheese) it took very little time to get results even though he had ingrained and habits as he was 3 years old when I got him. Please believe in your ability to train your own dog . Buster has turned himself around and is now a pleasure to me. X
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Can I post you Harri to train? He knows what he is meant to do but whether he does it depends on whether he wants to or not. You can see him stop, think about the options and then do whatever he wants! Even sausage, chicken and cheese are not high value enough in his universe to get him back if he's found an interesting scent or there is a dog on the horizon.

It's a good job he is so sweet but he really is his own worst enemy.
 
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I can only add my support to the many above, who note that punishing a dog MAY work, but in the long term, it damages the relationship -
& when used with sensitive or timid dogs, punitive tactics — such as shouting, smacking, over facing them via flooding, etc — and / or the use of aversive tools [prong collar, shock collar, harsh handling, choke chains, etc] can profoundly damage such dogs’ abilities to trust humans, quite possibly for the rest of their lives.


I’m one of the pet-pros who has seen & worked with severely damaged dogs, who’d been owned by ppl with good intentions, but zero knowledge; they imitated some photogenic dweeb on TV, or bought a book by an uncredentialed booby, or just did what their parents & grandparents had done... but with THIS dog, it was a disaster.

Positive reinforcement, OTOH, can be used with any species whatsoever that is capable of learning a behavior - thus it works for any dog of whatever temp, & it is safe, effective, humane, & efficient.
Don’t forget efficient - not only does teaching a desired behavior & rewarding it WORK, for any individual of any species, it works much faster than ‘traditional’ training.
:)


For just one example of the contrast in time to criterion, a well-known Pos-R trainer was traveling in India [I think it was Marc Bekoff - Animal Emotions , but can’t swear to it],
& he saw a mahout hitting his young elephant “to train him” to LIFT HIS FOOT on cue.
He challenged the mahout - he would train any elephant the mahout chose to lift their foot, on cue, by rewarding the elephant, & the mahout would train his elephant. IN TWO DAYS, they would meet, & see which elephant was better at lifting their foot on cue. // It’s a simple behavior, & should be easily learned.

The mahout pointed him to an elderly cow & told him to train that one - he got a bucket of apples, & went to work, asking her for her foot up, & giving a piece of apple ... 1st for rocking wt OFF that foot in prep to lift it, then for the least elevation, then for raising it incrementally higher, then to *hold* it very briefly above the ground, higher, hold it up longer, etc, etc.
In a very brief time, he had her raising her foot as high as it could physically go, & she would hold it there willingly UNTIL HE SAID to rest / put it down. // Next morning, he walked toward the cow & called her name, carrying his bucket of apples, ready to start more training.
BEFORE HE GOT THERE, she trumpeted, turning toward him when she heard his voice, & eagerly LIFTED THAT FOOT as high as it could go, & held it there, *anticipating* her reward. :D Needless to say, he won the contest, or rather “his” elephant did, & the other mahouts all teased their buddy mercilessly, being beaten by a white man who had no experience training elephants at all.


As we all know, the plural of anecdote is not ‘data’, so I will append some data from the Belgian Army per their military k9s & the effect on the dogs’ performances of more punitive training, or more reward-based training.

The Effect of Training Methods on the Efficiency of Learning | Psychology Today

In sum, dogs trained mostly with rewards were less distracted, less stressed, & performed the tasks better vs dogs trained mostly with punishment. The more aversives were used, the more likely the dog wound up in the “low scoring” group.
*shrug*

U can argue with many things, but U cannot argue with outcome; the methods shown on many TV dog-training programs such as CM/DW, “Dogs behaving badly”, Dog Borstal, “End of My Leash” [Vlad Prattison - AKA Brad Patterson, Canada’s home-grown version of CM/DW], & similar, are largely punitive, after-the-fact techniques, which are stressful for the learner, & don’t get as good results as reward training.

Reward training is not “new” - it’s been around for many decades; on U Tube, U can see dogs & cats & other animals who were trained to do tricks in the 1930s, using rewards. These animals performed in vaudeville, circuses, street acts, rodeos, etc; traveling troupes of trained dogs have been around for a very long time.

However, post-WW2, punishment based training was massively popularized in the USA by ex military dog handlers, who after they were mustered out, became “dog-obedience trainers” for civilians who owned pet dogs. KOEHLER was the best known of these, & by the 1960s, he became a household name, when he was Walt Disney’s in-house trainer for animals in his movies & TV shows.
His dog-training book from 1961 is still in print, & it’s a DIY handbook for animal cruelty, in my full & frank opinion. :eek: Teaching one’s dog “not to dig” by attempting to drown her or him in the holes s/he has dug is beyond horrifying as advice, but it’s in there. :(


So yes - sources matter, credentials matter, methods & tools matter. :)

- terry

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JudyN said:
An example of a shut down dog (on the left) as compared to a happy one (on the right). The scary thing is the vid on the left was used by the trainer as an example of how effective their approach to teaching the dog to walk on lead was...

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10154814833717001
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:eek:
Oh poor dog , it makes painful watching. he's so subdued and suppressed. Trapped and scared .
His body language is telling us everything. What an ignorant "trainer".
 
QUOTE, Free spirit:

Next time i need an elephant training I know exactly where to come.
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Great! :)
But when U schedule a session with Marc, be prepared to set a date some months in advance. ;)



Just a few of the uncountable species, trained via reward training?...

Planaria - flatworms who lack even a spinal cord, let alone a brain.
Amoebae - not flatworms, but ditto on the lack of a CNS.

An extremely-endangered species of ibis, who never habituated to captivity & flew in a panic, crashing around their habitat whenever a keeper entered; each bird was individually taught to stand on HER OR HIS own particular rock, whenever a human entered, so that there were no more injuries & the birds were calm and unstressed.
This also meant that each bird could be assessed for general health at a glance, by seeing their posture, feather condition, any favoring of a wing or limb, & so on.

Gorillas & orangs & chimps & other primates, all taught to OFFER AN ARM on cue for blood draws.

Dolphins & other cetacea, taught to roll belly-up & allow blood samples to be drawn from the only reachable vein under their blubber: in their tail fluke. // This in particular illustrates the extraordinary level of trust that can be achieved using reward training, as they must SUBMERGE THEIR ONLY ‘NOSTRIL’, the blowhole, for the blood draw.

When i was in 9th grade, I had an extremely good teacher in Biology; he offered me the chance to have one of his experimental mice for my own, but to get it, i had to teach the mouse a chained behavior - of my own choice & design.
I taught Nicodemus to run a complex obstacle course at full speed, much of it while upside-down on a suspended cord. He could run it flawlessly, even in complete darkness. // He was my much-loved pet for 3 more years, an advanced age for a mouse.
I did not then know about clickers or other markers; i simply put food on the other side of every obstacle, so that when he reached the other side, there was a small pile of goodies, such as millet, or sunflower seeds.

I will paraphrase another well-known trainer, who remarked, “If we can teach a killer whale to pee into a cup, you don’t need a choke chain to teach your dog to sit.”


- terry

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leashedForLife said:
I will paraphrase another well-known trainer, who remarked, “If we can teach a killer whale to pee into a cup, you don’t need a choke chain to teach your dog to sit.”
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I love that :D

@Free spirit , there's different ways to quote a post:

1) Press the 'reply' button at the bottom right (not the quote button), then delete the bits you don't want to quote, and write your post underneath.

or 2) Highlight the bit of the post you want to quote, then press 'Reply' which appears below it. Then type your message in below the quoted bit.

Hope that helps.
 
QUOTE, JudyN:

I love that. :D
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Me, too. :D. It came from Ted Turner - not the gold-plated jerk who owns a massive hunk of property west of the Missisippi & bilks the Feds annually for big money to NOT grow crops on it, but the former head of Sea World’s ‘training & behavior’ dept.

I despise Sea World;
SeaWorld's Hypocrisy

i deeply appreciate Ted Turner as a trainer. :)
As a human being, he’s a bit more complicated - he & several other ex-SW trainers left to form “Ocean Embassy”, a for-profit headquartered in Panama that CAPTURES & SELLS wild-caught cetaceans for captivity.

Ocean Embassy | Champions for Cetaceans

The Solomon Islands have become the go-to place to kidnap wild dolphins, paying the islanders to capture & hold them - many die, kept in shallow fenced pens in warm dirty water. :(
If they survive, they face a lifetime in small pools with poor care & lousy water quality, scattered around the world.

- terry

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JoanneF said:
I haven't been watching it as I have come across Graeme Hall before and my tv is too expensive to risk me throwing things at it when he spouts his nonsense. The man is a charlatan whose so called qualification can be bought on line. The Dogs Trust, Battersea, the APDT and another organisation that I can't remember offhand have written to Channel 5 voicing their concerns over his methods, and other behaviourists in the areas he has been working in are having to pick up the fallout of the damage he has done to the dogs he has been working with.
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Gosh that is awful! So much put on tv fir the entertainment value surely there must be something in place to ensure some level of correctness!? I’ve stopped watching TV totally I am so saddened by what is put out to the public and the morons are too stupid to think for themselves and many animals suffer over this! . That Countryside program was prime example! Horrid humans!
 
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