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The + and – of Dog Training

I am weary of hearing about OC (Operant Conditioning) and people who believe OC means clicker training. Yes, clicker training can be defined by OC or by another name Instrumental Learning as well as by Pavlovian Conditioning. But damned these things tend to come with some politically charged opinions among the uneducated!

So, let’s look at learning as it pertains to dogs or humans for that matter. What is positive reinforcement? It has nothing to do with “good”. We must deconstruct this laboratory language! Positive means you added something like the + in mathematics. Reinforcement is something that results in the animal referenced doing the behaviour more. So positive reinforcement pretty much means you gave a dog something that caused it to repeat the behaviour. This is viewed as a result, in other words past tense. If I give my kid $20 allowance which includes cleaning his/her room each week and they continue to do this then I have used positive reinforcement to accomplish teaching this behaviour.

  • What happens if they fail to clean their room?
  • Then I withhold their $20 This is negative punishment…get it I took their $20.

This is intended to decrease their behaviour of failing to clean their room. If it does change their behaviour and they go back to cleaning their room, then we say they learned through negative punishment. What if they thought that $20 was not a big deal? Well you may deal with them in another way maybe by adding a different punishment. You failed to do a known task and you received an unpleasant experience. However, this approach really relies on the kid knowing what was in store. The kid must be aware of the defiance for this to work! Here is the crux with dogs that I have found over the years, they understand less than we believe they do and defy less than we believe they do. I am not going to say that a rolled- up newspaper, known as a correction, doesn’t work. I got a smack across the mouth for bad mouthing my mother once and some fifty some years later I remember it and would not do it again. I knew it was wrong at the time but defied her and got the back of her hand. This is a perfect example of the application of positive punishment. In dog training it is limited in usefulness until training is well accomplished. Yet, for dogs that have many highly rewarding behaviours like our working dogs have through breeding and rearing, it does have a role.

Despite what the uninformed say about it.

There is one other area of reinforcement that we need to discuss. This is where we remove something uncomfortable. So, if you are given a new sweater and it itches something fierce what do you do? You take it off. That sweater just taught you through negative reinforcement. Yep, it is very common in life. Ever wander into a wasp’s nest? Yep, you get the hell out of there! You have learned through negative reinforcement to not hang out around a nest. Natural consequences! The experience of having an unpleasant stimulation you need to do something about, is used in dog training as well. Many trainers use this technique very successfully. It is part and parcel to a disciplined retrieve, to a place board reinforcement (stay on the board or else). It is the heart of most e collar training. Now don’t get all positive only on me here! Or I will positively punish you by kicking you off here – yep that is positive!!! Not all positive is pleasant. It is just an addition.

I was involved for a long time in military dog training and we placed these results under two broad categories. These are inducements and compulsion. In inducements we have things like luring, and capturing using things like food, toys, praise. In compulsions we have punishments using voice, collars, even a heeling stick. There is also enforcement which covers removing an aversive (uncomfortable feeling, stimulation like our sweater example). So when someone tells you that to train in OC you must have a clicker just hold your breath and walk away because they only understand a part of the story!  A part I haven’t even included here.

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Dog Training – And So It Starts

My pack Wingello State Forest Weekend

A short half century ago my dad, military and stern, took my sister and I to the pound to pick a dog of our very own. Blackie was Kelpie from head to toe and in-between. A jumping, digging, barking gem of a dog and I loved him dearly. He lived a good life, always with me and together we got up to so much mischief that usually included packing my school bag to run away from home in search of adventures. It seems such a gentler world then.

Blackie started a lifelong obsession with all dogs. It was however, the abandoned and surrendered canines with issues born of inadequately informed or morally bankrupt humans, that stole my heart.

People think I train dogs. Don’t get me wrong I can train your dog from basic manners to scenting truffles or drugs, or even ride a skateboard if that’s what you would like, but that’s not who I am or what I do. I’m a dog behaviourist, which means I rehabilitate dogs and that I train people. Not all trainers are behaviourists please bear that in mind. Not all behaviourists have qualifications, nor do they need to, but they must have experience and be self taught to read canine language effectively….. and believe me it is sometimes very subtle. I need every ounce of my 40 years of practical experience plus my academic achievements in both Human and Animal behaviour to deal with some cases.Beaudesert

It’s an important distinction, and one that can be hard for people to understand.

Let me explain.

People believe that getting a dog to behave is the same as training. It’s not.

There are well-trained dogs that still have behavioural issues. These dogs could do a lot of tricks, like sit, shake hands, roll over, or retrieve an item — but still chewed up shoes and furniture, still barked non-stop, and still pulled on the walk.

Training is meant to teach a dog to perform a specific task when given a specific stimulus. It’s the process of associating, for example, a word with a behaviour. In this decade, the most utilised of these methods and least understood is positive reinforcement. If the dog does the trick, the dog gets a food treat.

A lot of dogs are willing to do anything for food. Enough repetition and you can even get the dog to do the trick without the reward. You say shake and they raise their paw. It becomes second nature.

What dog training does not do is solve behavioural issues. I’m sure many of you reading this have had the experience of calling your dog to come to you — something you’ve trained them to do — but they ignore you because they see a dog, or the postman is invading the dog’s territory, or something else has their attention. In these cases, the training goes right out the window. Even Lassie, (sometimes played by a female) one of the most famous trained dogs in the world still had behavioural issues because training a dog does not address the issues that actually cause misbehaviour.

In order to rehabilitate a dog, you need to figure out what it is in the dog’s environment that is causing the misbehaviour. Are they bored? Frustrated? Overexcited? Fearful? Is there a biological or physiological reason at play? If you don’t deal with those issues, you can have a well-trained dog that will sit on command and still be completely bored or frustrated and so on.

Now this one is a biggie!! I speak about it all the time ENERGY ENERGY ENERGY. I am an extrovert and I need external energy to keep sane and centred. When I am with my pack, and yes, I have a pack of 9 at present, I am always aware that anything I do or say fuels the environment. This in turn, in a dog’s environment, affects its’ behaviour. Let’s say that again. It is the energy of the people around it that affect a dog’s behaviour. Dogs are our mirrors. They reflect back the energy we give them, and if we are not calm, consistent and assertive they cannot be calm, consistent and submissive.

It then comes to reason that I rehabilitate dogs and train people. If we show humans how their energy is affecting their dog, and then how to change that energy to get the desired behaviour we start to see improvement in all manner of dog behaviours. In conjunction with this, if you as a person provide whatever the dog is lacking in order to fulfil the dog’s needs then you will bring it to a calm place.

Over the coming weeks I will share some real life stories of dogs’ past and present that were changed forever and changed me forever.

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