This is an article I came across during some of my late night internet reading and thought I would get opinions on it.
WHEN DID BALANCE BECOME A DIRTY WORD
The state of obedience in this country is at an all time dangerous low. This is not melodrama or exaggeration. It is tragic fact. There are more bites, attacks, maulings and deaths due to dogs than ever before. Obedience trials, the bastion of canine compliance, are too regularly marred by dog fights and mayhem. How has this come to pass?
Competitive obedience trials are 60+ years old. During most of that time, Novice dogs lined up to perform their Sits and Downs without muss, fuss or controversy. Open dogs waited patiently for their people to come back from out of sight.
But in the last 10-15 years, group Sits and Downs have become an “Awful, impractical, dangerous, foolish exercise.†How did the sport manage to get from Group exercises being a “no big deal†part of the sport, to a constant whining tempest?
A culture, quite frankly a cult, has risen. This is the POSITIVE ONLY culture. The ONLY techniques that should be used, or allowed, are Positive, and like zealots everywhere, the dedicated Positive Only followers demonize anyone who does not follow their path. You are a “Neanderthal†or more bluntly, an “Abuser†if you train any way other than their way. The rabid attacks on Ceasar Millan are a case in point. Whether you like and follow the man’s training theories or not, do they really deserve the ranting diatribes that are spewed? (Personally, like every other trainer/clinician/teacher I listen to, there are things I like and things I don’t) They delight in using loaded words. No correction can be anything except “Punishmentâ€. Simply say the word No, and you are punishing the dog. Lift your finger and jingle a dog’s collar, and you are punishing that dog.
Right now, Positive Only holds sway in the training world. Most every book, magazine article and TV spot are firmly on the Politically Correct side of Positive Only. It’s quite doubtful that you could get an article published right now that came from a more balanced approach.
Any criticism of PO is met with the rationale that this method is used to train dolphins. This method is scientific.
Yes, this method is used to get huge, intelligent wild animals to do pretty amazing tricks. But what is the alternative for those dolphins? They can work for a fish…. or stare at blank concrete walls for the rest of their lives. Not much of an option for an intelligent animal. I was watching a PBS show that went to a dolphin enclosure that was a fenced in lagoon. Yes, there is more room, yes the water probably “tastes†better to the animals, but it’s still walls. It’s still essentially a sterile training room. Take those dolphins out into Open Ocean and then prove how well PO works. When PO training hits the real world, the real ocean, it falls apart the same as it does when PO trained dogs venture out into the world.
The other part that is overlooked about these wonderfully trained dolphins is that they are trained by PROFESSIONALS. These people are college graduates for the most part, given extensive training by experienced trainers and work with these animals everyday for hours. This method is then marketed to accountants and hairdressers as “You too can train just like the dolphin trainers.†……in all their extra hours after work, home, family…
Science is our current god. There is no denying that it has given us wonders and an understanding of ourselves, our world and our universe unequaled by any other means. But at the heart of the Scientific Method is the Principle that every experiment MUST be reproducible for it to be valid. This means it must be able to work in the lab…or training room…AND out in the world. There was an article awhile back in the science magazine, Discover, explaining that diseases scientists could readily infect lab rats with, would not take root AT ALL in wild caught mice. The article was calling in to question how valid can the results be using lab-raised rats, if you can’t get the same results with “real†rats. It’s not valid science if you can’t reproduce it.
I’d be one of the first to say that the clicker technique is a valid technique and valuable tool. Clicker training is a very precise technique where an operator makes a sound, generally using a small plastic devise called a “clickerâ€. The sound is coupled in a creature’s mind with something positive, generally food. I’m using the word creature because the technique has been used on everything from fish to birds, to people. The technique does require the operator to have excellent timing, reflexes, and a clear picture and plan on the steps to get where they need to go to shape the desired behavior.
Then there is the bastardized version of clicker, “Follow the Cookieâ€. This version entails “luring’’ the dog’s attention and therefore his body into desired positions. Lift your hand…holding that cookie..up over the dog’s head. When the dog’s head goes up, the butt is going to go down. “You’ve got a Sit!†Drop the hand holding the cookie to the floor. The dog’s head follows to the ground and so does the body. “You’ve got a Down!â€
The very blatant problem with this technique is that dogs aren’t stupid. They very quickly learn to Follow the Cookie….and only the cookie. No cookie, no work. “Follow the Cookie†is just a sloppy, lazy attempt to “Stay Positive†without doing the real work of shaping required of clicker training.
I’ve used a clicker with a couple of dogs to teach them to retrieve a dumbbell. I had tried a couple of techniques with the first dog, minus the Forced Retrieve without good results. In a relatively short time, she was picking it up correctly by the bar (which had been the main problem) and bringing it back to hand. The second dog went even quicker, probably because I didn’t mess around a lot before and did a better job of shaping. I’m also experimenting with using it to help shape Heel position.
I find the clicker to be a valid useful tool in my teacher’s toolbox. I use it for targeted results. I use other techniques for other jobs. Like every other tool, it’s not the tool that causes the problem, it’s the person wielding it that makes the mess!
Despite it’s popularity the Positive Only philosophy has very serious problems. It is ineffective and dangerous to dogs. Both in the real world and in the various competitive arenas, Positive Only falls apart. Baby puppies, wild and unknowing, enter these classes. They follow the cookie, and respond to the clicks appropriately. They are stars of the class. Then they walk out into the world…. pulling, lunging, barking, and not responding to command, because P.O. works best in sterile training rooms. One of its vociferous advocates stresses that you must control the environment for it to be effective. Guess what? The world isn’t sterile! Once you leave the training room, people, animals, cars come from nowhere, act stupid, and don’t care to act the way you want/need them to.
PO’s record of getting dogs to advanced competition in other arenas is pretty sparse to nonexistent. There are urban legends of dogs earning their OTCH’s (Obedience Trial Champion) using PO….but no one can seem to come up with a name for this dog. Even if the PO people could come up with the name of this mythical PO OTCH, that makes one to…..oh, about 50,000 trained by other means.
“My odds of making OTCH using PO is 50,000 to 1….hmmm, which one should I pick?â€
Finding a PO dog at the advanced level in heritage function sports is a joke. Herding, tracking, lure-coursing, earthdog…..
PO can’t begin to help these dogs excel. People have the mistaken notion that heritage function activities are strictly instinct; turn the dog loose and he’ll just do it. Instinct IS where it starts. But there is NO GENE for running a specific lure-course, no gene for following a 1000 yard aged track with cross tracks and various surfaces. This takes work and learning. The instinct to drive sheep doesn’t care how it gets done…overrunning the stock, letting some get away, or wandering over hill and dale to eventually get to the destination. There is no gene for a dog gathering and driving sheep down a ruler straight line on a herding course. That comes from teaching.
Clicker’s strength comes from being able to “lock in†a set series of behaviors. “You always come to the end of a Heel and….Sit.†Click. “You always hit the end of the contact obstacles.†Click.
There is no “You always….†in heritage function activities. Scent tracks are laid down in always different locations, by different people, in different weather. Herding has at least 8 different course titles, with three levels of difficulty. The sheep are different at every facility, and weather conditions, which can drastically affect stock, change daily. Heritage function sports need thought and judgment from the dog. Clicker does not want or need, or promote thought from the dog.
Ineffectiveness is not the worst sin of PO. It is that it’s dangerous to dogs. People walk out of these classes believing they have a well-behaved, trained dog…and they don’t. They are a danger to themselves and others. If the dog gets off leash he is at serious risk of being hit by a car. They don’t listen, and they don’t come back. When they barge out the front door, they are gone.
Far more serious, is the problem that PO causes aggressive behavior. This comes from two base causes: an adrenalized mindset, and no consequences.
Children play a game called “Hot and coldâ€. The person who is “it†has to find a particular object. If the child steps closer to the object, the crowd yells “HOTâ€, if the child steps away, the crowd yells, “COLD!†The difference between this game and clicker work is the clicker operator doesn’t yell “coldâ€, because that is punishment…it’s a negative marker. Mustn’t be negative. So, the dog wanders around the room, only being told “HOTâ€, FOR EVERY BEHAVIOR, AND FOR EVERY COMMAND HE’S TAUGHT.
Can you begin to imagine how frustrating, how anxiety producing this must be? After awhile, if you were forced to learn everything by HOT/COLD, wouldn’t you just want to yell, “JUST TELL ME!†Constant frustration/anxiety creates a faulty adrenaline trigger; it’s low level “ONâ€, ALL the time. When a body lives in adrenaline, A) it’s not healthy and B) it can’t think. Adrenaline is all about, only about, Fight/ Flight/ Freeze. The dog is hyper-reactive. This kind of dog, when startled, has a high likelihood of defensive or reactive biting.
In Karen Pryor’s book, “Reaching the Animal Mind†there is a section called “The SEEKING circuit†page 184. In this section she ties together the response a clicker dog and that of a rat whose brain has been wired to receive a stimulus to his hypothalamus when he hits a bar. (This is the study where the rat will keep hitting the bar until he is exhausted). She quotes the doctor, Dr. Jaak Panksepp, doing the study, “…they don’t look to him like rats enjoying some nice sensation, but like rats on a hunt. They are excited, eager, EVEN FRANTIC…..â€
She goes on in the next paragraph, “Given stimulation in the same area of the hypothalamus, human medical subjects report a sense of excitement, quite enjoyable really, ALTHOUGH AGITATING.†Dr. Panksepp calls this phenomenon the SEEKING circuit. The SEEKING circuit is the part of the brain that initiates and maintains searching behavior.
These medical subjects did the experiment and then went home.
A dog trained to clicker lives and works this way his whole life. Constant seeking and searching raises adrenaline. If you have any doubt about this, think about the last time you watched a shopaholic try to find “just the right dress for the party.â€
Pryor clearly maps out in Chapter 10 that the clicker works from stimulating the Amygdala and Hypothalamus not the Cortex, the thinking part of the brain. The Cortex is the part of the brain that adds 2+2, AND translates foreign language….WHICH IS WHAT A DOG IS DOING EVERYTIME HE RESPONDS TO A COMMAND WORD. The Cortex can’t function flooded with adrenaline. Adrenaline leads to reactivity, reactivity leads to hyper-reactions…. such as defensive biting.
Next time you are around a PO dog, watch him. He can’t be still. He’ll be pacing, whining, pushing, panting and dancing. If he is ordered into a down to stop all the movement, he’ll roll in place and he’ll still looked wired…because he is. He has been taught to constantly SEEK.
The issue of “no consequences†comes to the heart of the problem with PO. Every living organism on this planet has to learn that there are boundaries…and that there are consequences for crossing those boundaries. An amoeba learns to not cross cold/hot boundaries, because the consequence is death.
Elephants spend 10 years teaching their young about how to be elephants. Because of poaching, there were a large number of baby elephants raised in captivity by people. Being raised by people, they never learned proper elephant behavior or culture. When they were old enough to survive on their own, they were turned loose in a game preserve. They acted like an out of control street gang of punks. They tore up trees, attacked rhinos and other animals. They could find food and survive predators, but they didn’t know how to be a successful herd. The solution was to bring in a couple of Matriarchs who proceeded to bang some sense into them. (I don’t know about you, but my mind stutters at attempting to “click†better behaviors into a rampaging adolescent bull elephant in the wild)
The child raising theories of 30 years ago, “Never tell your child No.†were discredited and thrown out for developing a generation of children who were spoiled self-centered brats.
We people live in a world of boundaries and consequences. Ignore the crossing light, and possibly get hit by a car. Speed in your car, and you risk a ticket. Be mean too many times to a friend, and you can lose them.
But in the PO Universe, there are no consequences for canine bad behavior. You are supposed to either ignore or distract bad behavior. Don’t correct the dog for chewing your shoes; pick them up. Don’t correct the dog for chewing on the carpet; give him a toy. Don’t correct the dog for jumping on you, step back or ignore it. If the dog is biting your hand, move it higher or ignore… he’ll quit eventually. Ignoring bad behavior will extinguish it, because they get no positive reinforcement for it. Calling a puppy away from chewing on the carpet and then giving him a toy will get him to quit going for the carpet. Really?
So….with this reasoning we ignore barking, lunging, snarling and snapping. All of which, are levels of aggressive behavior. Here’s another natural law, “Ignoring aggression, feeds it.†The English Prime Minister, Chamberlin tried to ignore Hitler….didn’t work so well. Ignoring a schoolyard bully gets you more abuse. And ignoring dog aggression ramps it up.
Aggression is a normal natural response. How you deal with it is the crucial part. If you have a baby puppy who growls over a toy, and you ignore it, you have okayed that response. The puppy tucks that information away in his learning center. When you take the puppy and try to cut his nails and he growls and snaps because he doesn’t like it and you back off, you have Okayed that response. The puppy tucks that away. The puppy is a little older and he growls over his food and your response is “Leave him alone when he’s eating.†He tucks that away. You have him out on the street and he starts barking at people, and you ignore it or simply walk away without ever saying anything about it. He tucks this piece of learning away.
So what do you get in a year or so of this kind of teaching? You have an owner calling an instructor and stating, “My 16 month Berner has been going to class since he was a baby. I’m very proud to say he has never heard the word No. I don’t understand why he bit my hand when I went to pick up his bone.â€
Or you get a phone call that starts with, “I did everything I was told to do. I went to the breeder I was told to go to. I went to the vet I was told to. I went to the trainer that my vet recommended. I did everything she told me to do. Someone needs to explain to me why my dog just bit my son’s 10 year old friend when they walked in the door.â€
Or yet another call, “My dog’s been thru a couple of classes and has been doing well, but when I took him to the beach, he scared me and everybody else because he was dragging me across the sand barking at them.†(Yes, these are all true case stories)
One of the staple methods PO trainers tell people to use when dealing with bad behavior is replacement or distraction. “If your puppy is chewing on a rug; entice him with a toy then give him the toy. He’ll forget about the rug.â€
Here’s a story that I tell most every student. There’s a little girl maybe three or four. Mom walks in the room and finds her painting big purple flowers on the wall with a crayon. “Go play with your dolly.†The little girl looks at her, drops the crayon, and goes and gets her doll. After awhile, she gets tired of playing with the doll and….picks up her crayon and goes back to painting on the wall. Why?…because she was never told that writing on the wall was wrong, she was simply given another task that she successfully accomplished. Once that was done, she went back to her previous task.
If causing aggression is the heart of the problem with PO, the crime of PO is that these dogs are only doing what they have been taught, get labeled as incorrigible. “It can’t possibly be the training method, so it must be…..just a bad dog….bad breeding….you (the neighbor, the kid, pick a suspect) must have done something to make the dog this way. You either need to put the dog on doggy Prozac, or put him down.â€
It seems wherever I look, that human nature and society works on a Pendulum. Something happens, an event, a new piece of knowledge or news, and the pendulum swings waaay to one side. Then everyone looks up and notices that, boy, have we gotten way off track, we need to go in another direction…..and all too soon, we humans have swung the pendulum waaay to the other side. The saving grace is, with each adjustment, the Pendulum seems to swing a little less extreme, a little more to the middle and Balance.
Training methods back in the day, were pretty harsh. When you start with the premise that you have to wait until a dog is 6 months old to be strong enough for the training….that’s kinda indicative. Now the Pendulum has swung all the way to the other side, and Positive is the only sound that may be heard.
If none of us can stomach the idea of going back to choke and puke methods, and PO is dangerous and ineffective, what is left to us to try?
How about a Balanced approach?
Balance, to bring into harmony or proportion.
What a beautiful, rational goal. To accomplish this goal, a savvy teacher seeks out and dumps words with an extremist leaning, such as Positive ONLY. When anything is an ‘’only’’, it is by nature unbalanced. Instead look for the balance of Positive and Negative Reinforcements.
Reinforcements are information. I’ve used the example many times that teaching a dog is the process of escorting him down a long hallway of doors. These doors represent choices of action. The teacher’s job is to help the dog make good choices. In the PO world, if the dog chooses to walk to a door, I can say, YES, behind that door is cookies, and hotdogs and all manner of good things to eat. If he walks to another door I can again say YES, behind that door is games and play equipment, friends and ball-tossers. If the dog walks to a third door, I can say nothing. The dog walks thru the door….and gets eaten by a tiger.
I think, “NO, don’t go thereâ€â€¦..would have been useful information. (Of course the old methods of teaching would have had you busting the dog until he finally hit the “right†door.)
We have gotten so far off track as dog teachers. How did the word Correction come to equal Abuse or Punishment?
Correction—to make right
Punishment—retribution through, pain, suffering or loss.
I’d say this word has a pretty extremist leaning when we are talking about trying to teach a dog!
If I have a little child sitting in front of me working on her addition, and she said to me “2+2=5, no one would think anything if I replied, “No dear, 2+2=4†But, oh my gosh, according to PO, I’ve punished this poor child!
So what are some rational, INFORMATIVE, negative reinforcements?
No—No is a negative marker. It’s information, like in the story about the little girl. I don’t know about you, but if I was starting out on a long journey….and I was heading out in the wrong direction, I’d sure want someone to tell me “NO, not that way!â€
Blocking/Stopping—Blocking is a common tool in herding. If a dog takes a wrong direction…Away instead of Go-Bye, you put your stick across his path…or yourself….and block the wrong answer. If the dog is wanting to come into the sheep’s bubble, block. It’s just as useful in obedience. If I tell my dog to take the Bar Jump in Directed Jumping and he goes to take the High, block. If I tell the dog to Down on Drop on Recall, and he keeps coming forward, block. It’s pretty clear information, “This is the wrong way. You are picking the wrong answer.â€
Collar pop/tap/hair pull---Before we go any farther, let’s put a definition on these. A collar pop is a quick jerk of the collar with immediate release WITHOUT the jerk making the dog’s neck or body physically move. If the dog’s body is being moved by the pop, you are risking the dog’s chiropractic alignment. Tapping a dog’s head or butt should be done with the tips of your fingers. You use it as a quick poke. Hair pulling is grabbing a tuft of hair on the neck or butt and giving a quick pull.
All three of these corrections, are about getting the dog’s attention….not punishment. When you use any of these three, the picture you should have in your mind is of tapping someone on the shoulder to get their attention. Hellloooo???? You in there?
As a generality, if a correction has to go beyond attention getting, the teacher needs to back up and seek out why. There are three situations that commonly get a dog and owner into this situation.
The dog is put into a situation beyond his skill set. Say the dog can do a sit in a quiet room, but when he’s asked to sit in the vet’s office, he is too overwhelmed and can’t function or think. Or, the dog can properly greet and deal with one person, but when flooded with a group, loses it. The dog’s set of skills, dealing with distractions, self control, whatever aren’t up to the problem set to him…he then goes into adrenaline overload and CAN’T feel the corrections.
The dog’s sense of trust in the protection and leadership of the person is in question. The dog enters a situation that triggers a defensive response. The dog feels he’s on his own to deal with the threat and tunes out the owner. Adrenaline is triggered and the dog can’t respond to the correction.
*The dog has been desensitized to a collar correction by constant, chronic, pressure on the collar. Collar pressure no longer means correction.
In each of these situations, a “harder†correction is not the answer. A hard correction is just a physical way of yelling. Yelling doesn’t transmit information effectively…other than telling everybody you are out of control. The answer in each of these situations is to back up and fix the problem.
*Teach the dog the skill set he is lacking…distraction skills such as the ability to focus, concentrate and multi-task when things are going on around you and self–control…knowing he has to do the right thing.
*Go back and fix the foundation partnership skills of attention, respect and trust. Step up and be the leader your dog needs in scary situations. Let him see that you WILL take care of him.
WHEN DID BALANCE BECOME A DIRTY WORD
The state of obedience in this country is at an all time dangerous low. This is not melodrama or exaggeration. It is tragic fact. There are more bites, attacks, maulings and deaths due to dogs than ever before. Obedience trials, the bastion of canine compliance, are too regularly marred by dog fights and mayhem. How has this come to pass?
Competitive obedience trials are 60+ years old. During most of that time, Novice dogs lined up to perform their Sits and Downs without muss, fuss or controversy. Open dogs waited patiently for their people to come back from out of sight.
But in the last 10-15 years, group Sits and Downs have become an “Awful, impractical, dangerous, foolish exercise.†How did the sport manage to get from Group exercises being a “no big deal†part of the sport, to a constant whining tempest?
A culture, quite frankly a cult, has risen. This is the POSITIVE ONLY culture. The ONLY techniques that should be used, or allowed, are Positive, and like zealots everywhere, the dedicated Positive Only followers demonize anyone who does not follow their path. You are a “Neanderthal†or more bluntly, an “Abuser†if you train any way other than their way. The rabid attacks on Ceasar Millan are a case in point. Whether you like and follow the man’s training theories or not, do they really deserve the ranting diatribes that are spewed? (Personally, like every other trainer/clinician/teacher I listen to, there are things I like and things I don’t) They delight in using loaded words. No correction can be anything except “Punishmentâ€. Simply say the word No, and you are punishing the dog. Lift your finger and jingle a dog’s collar, and you are punishing that dog.
Right now, Positive Only holds sway in the training world. Most every book, magazine article and TV spot are firmly on the Politically Correct side of Positive Only. It’s quite doubtful that you could get an article published right now that came from a more balanced approach.
Any criticism of PO is met with the rationale that this method is used to train dolphins. This method is scientific.
Yes, this method is used to get huge, intelligent wild animals to do pretty amazing tricks. But what is the alternative for those dolphins? They can work for a fish…. or stare at blank concrete walls for the rest of their lives. Not much of an option for an intelligent animal. I was watching a PBS show that went to a dolphin enclosure that was a fenced in lagoon. Yes, there is more room, yes the water probably “tastes†better to the animals, but it’s still walls. It’s still essentially a sterile training room. Take those dolphins out into Open Ocean and then prove how well PO works. When PO training hits the real world, the real ocean, it falls apart the same as it does when PO trained dogs venture out into the world.
The other part that is overlooked about these wonderfully trained dolphins is that they are trained by PROFESSIONALS. These people are college graduates for the most part, given extensive training by experienced trainers and work with these animals everyday for hours. This method is then marketed to accountants and hairdressers as “You too can train just like the dolphin trainers.†……in all their extra hours after work, home, family…
Science is our current god. There is no denying that it has given us wonders and an understanding of ourselves, our world and our universe unequaled by any other means. But at the heart of the Scientific Method is the Principle that every experiment MUST be reproducible for it to be valid. This means it must be able to work in the lab…or training room…AND out in the world. There was an article awhile back in the science magazine, Discover, explaining that diseases scientists could readily infect lab rats with, would not take root AT ALL in wild caught mice. The article was calling in to question how valid can the results be using lab-raised rats, if you can’t get the same results with “real†rats. It’s not valid science if you can’t reproduce it.
I’d be one of the first to say that the clicker technique is a valid technique and valuable tool. Clicker training is a very precise technique where an operator makes a sound, generally using a small plastic devise called a “clickerâ€. The sound is coupled in a creature’s mind with something positive, generally food. I’m using the word creature because the technique has been used on everything from fish to birds, to people. The technique does require the operator to have excellent timing, reflexes, and a clear picture and plan on the steps to get where they need to go to shape the desired behavior.
Then there is the bastardized version of clicker, “Follow the Cookieâ€. This version entails “luring’’ the dog’s attention and therefore his body into desired positions. Lift your hand…holding that cookie..up over the dog’s head. When the dog’s head goes up, the butt is going to go down. “You’ve got a Sit!†Drop the hand holding the cookie to the floor. The dog’s head follows to the ground and so does the body. “You’ve got a Down!â€
The very blatant problem with this technique is that dogs aren’t stupid. They very quickly learn to Follow the Cookie….and only the cookie. No cookie, no work. “Follow the Cookie†is just a sloppy, lazy attempt to “Stay Positive†without doing the real work of shaping required of clicker training.
I’ve used a clicker with a couple of dogs to teach them to retrieve a dumbbell. I had tried a couple of techniques with the first dog, minus the Forced Retrieve without good results. In a relatively short time, she was picking it up correctly by the bar (which had been the main problem) and bringing it back to hand. The second dog went even quicker, probably because I didn’t mess around a lot before and did a better job of shaping. I’m also experimenting with using it to help shape Heel position.
I find the clicker to be a valid useful tool in my teacher’s toolbox. I use it for targeted results. I use other techniques for other jobs. Like every other tool, it’s not the tool that causes the problem, it’s the person wielding it that makes the mess!
Despite it’s popularity the Positive Only philosophy has very serious problems. It is ineffective and dangerous to dogs. Both in the real world and in the various competitive arenas, Positive Only falls apart. Baby puppies, wild and unknowing, enter these classes. They follow the cookie, and respond to the clicks appropriately. They are stars of the class. Then they walk out into the world…. pulling, lunging, barking, and not responding to command, because P.O. works best in sterile training rooms. One of its vociferous advocates stresses that you must control the environment for it to be effective. Guess what? The world isn’t sterile! Once you leave the training room, people, animals, cars come from nowhere, act stupid, and don’t care to act the way you want/need them to.
PO’s record of getting dogs to advanced competition in other arenas is pretty sparse to nonexistent. There are urban legends of dogs earning their OTCH’s (Obedience Trial Champion) using PO….but no one can seem to come up with a name for this dog. Even if the PO people could come up with the name of this mythical PO OTCH, that makes one to…..oh, about 50,000 trained by other means.
“My odds of making OTCH using PO is 50,000 to 1….hmmm, which one should I pick?â€
Finding a PO dog at the advanced level in heritage function sports is a joke. Herding, tracking, lure-coursing, earthdog…..
PO can’t begin to help these dogs excel. People have the mistaken notion that heritage function activities are strictly instinct; turn the dog loose and he’ll just do it. Instinct IS where it starts. But there is NO GENE for running a specific lure-course, no gene for following a 1000 yard aged track with cross tracks and various surfaces. This takes work and learning. The instinct to drive sheep doesn’t care how it gets done…overrunning the stock, letting some get away, or wandering over hill and dale to eventually get to the destination. There is no gene for a dog gathering and driving sheep down a ruler straight line on a herding course. That comes from teaching.
Clicker’s strength comes from being able to “lock in†a set series of behaviors. “You always come to the end of a Heel and….Sit.†Click. “You always hit the end of the contact obstacles.†Click.
There is no “You always….†in heritage function activities. Scent tracks are laid down in always different locations, by different people, in different weather. Herding has at least 8 different course titles, with three levels of difficulty. The sheep are different at every facility, and weather conditions, which can drastically affect stock, change daily. Heritage function sports need thought and judgment from the dog. Clicker does not want or need, or promote thought from the dog.
Ineffectiveness is not the worst sin of PO. It is that it’s dangerous to dogs. People walk out of these classes believing they have a well-behaved, trained dog…and they don’t. They are a danger to themselves and others. If the dog gets off leash he is at serious risk of being hit by a car. They don’t listen, and they don’t come back. When they barge out the front door, they are gone.
Far more serious, is the problem that PO causes aggressive behavior. This comes from two base causes: an adrenalized mindset, and no consequences.
Children play a game called “Hot and coldâ€. The person who is “it†has to find a particular object. If the child steps closer to the object, the crowd yells “HOTâ€, if the child steps away, the crowd yells, “COLD!†The difference between this game and clicker work is the clicker operator doesn’t yell “coldâ€, because that is punishment…it’s a negative marker. Mustn’t be negative. So, the dog wanders around the room, only being told “HOTâ€, FOR EVERY BEHAVIOR, AND FOR EVERY COMMAND HE’S TAUGHT.
Can you begin to imagine how frustrating, how anxiety producing this must be? After awhile, if you were forced to learn everything by HOT/COLD, wouldn’t you just want to yell, “JUST TELL ME!†Constant frustration/anxiety creates a faulty adrenaline trigger; it’s low level “ONâ€, ALL the time. When a body lives in adrenaline, A) it’s not healthy and B) it can’t think. Adrenaline is all about, only about, Fight/ Flight/ Freeze. The dog is hyper-reactive. This kind of dog, when startled, has a high likelihood of defensive or reactive biting.
In Karen Pryor’s book, “Reaching the Animal Mind†there is a section called “The SEEKING circuit†page 184. In this section she ties together the response a clicker dog and that of a rat whose brain has been wired to receive a stimulus to his hypothalamus when he hits a bar. (This is the study where the rat will keep hitting the bar until he is exhausted). She quotes the doctor, Dr. Jaak Panksepp, doing the study, “…they don’t look to him like rats enjoying some nice sensation, but like rats on a hunt. They are excited, eager, EVEN FRANTIC…..â€
She goes on in the next paragraph, “Given stimulation in the same area of the hypothalamus, human medical subjects report a sense of excitement, quite enjoyable really, ALTHOUGH AGITATING.†Dr. Panksepp calls this phenomenon the SEEKING circuit. The SEEKING circuit is the part of the brain that initiates and maintains searching behavior.
These medical subjects did the experiment and then went home.
A dog trained to clicker lives and works this way his whole life. Constant seeking and searching raises adrenaline. If you have any doubt about this, think about the last time you watched a shopaholic try to find “just the right dress for the party.â€
Pryor clearly maps out in Chapter 10 that the clicker works from stimulating the Amygdala and Hypothalamus not the Cortex, the thinking part of the brain. The Cortex is the part of the brain that adds 2+2, AND translates foreign language….WHICH IS WHAT A DOG IS DOING EVERYTIME HE RESPONDS TO A COMMAND WORD. The Cortex can’t function flooded with adrenaline. Adrenaline leads to reactivity, reactivity leads to hyper-reactions…. such as defensive biting.
Next time you are around a PO dog, watch him. He can’t be still. He’ll be pacing, whining, pushing, panting and dancing. If he is ordered into a down to stop all the movement, he’ll roll in place and he’ll still looked wired…because he is. He has been taught to constantly SEEK.
The issue of “no consequences†comes to the heart of the problem with PO. Every living organism on this planet has to learn that there are boundaries…and that there are consequences for crossing those boundaries. An amoeba learns to not cross cold/hot boundaries, because the consequence is death.
Elephants spend 10 years teaching their young about how to be elephants. Because of poaching, there were a large number of baby elephants raised in captivity by people. Being raised by people, they never learned proper elephant behavior or culture. When they were old enough to survive on their own, they were turned loose in a game preserve. They acted like an out of control street gang of punks. They tore up trees, attacked rhinos and other animals. They could find food and survive predators, but they didn’t know how to be a successful herd. The solution was to bring in a couple of Matriarchs who proceeded to bang some sense into them. (I don’t know about you, but my mind stutters at attempting to “click†better behaviors into a rampaging adolescent bull elephant in the wild)
The child raising theories of 30 years ago, “Never tell your child No.†were discredited and thrown out for developing a generation of children who were spoiled self-centered brats.
We people live in a world of boundaries and consequences. Ignore the crossing light, and possibly get hit by a car. Speed in your car, and you risk a ticket. Be mean too many times to a friend, and you can lose them.
But in the PO Universe, there are no consequences for canine bad behavior. You are supposed to either ignore or distract bad behavior. Don’t correct the dog for chewing your shoes; pick them up. Don’t correct the dog for chewing on the carpet; give him a toy. Don’t correct the dog for jumping on you, step back or ignore it. If the dog is biting your hand, move it higher or ignore… he’ll quit eventually. Ignoring bad behavior will extinguish it, because they get no positive reinforcement for it. Calling a puppy away from chewing on the carpet and then giving him a toy will get him to quit going for the carpet. Really?
So….with this reasoning we ignore barking, lunging, snarling and snapping. All of which, are levels of aggressive behavior. Here’s another natural law, “Ignoring aggression, feeds it.†The English Prime Minister, Chamberlin tried to ignore Hitler….didn’t work so well. Ignoring a schoolyard bully gets you more abuse. And ignoring dog aggression ramps it up.
Aggression is a normal natural response. How you deal with it is the crucial part. If you have a baby puppy who growls over a toy, and you ignore it, you have okayed that response. The puppy tucks that information away in his learning center. When you take the puppy and try to cut his nails and he growls and snaps because he doesn’t like it and you back off, you have Okayed that response. The puppy tucks that away. The puppy is a little older and he growls over his food and your response is “Leave him alone when he’s eating.†He tucks that away. You have him out on the street and he starts barking at people, and you ignore it or simply walk away without ever saying anything about it. He tucks this piece of learning away.
So what do you get in a year or so of this kind of teaching? You have an owner calling an instructor and stating, “My 16 month Berner has been going to class since he was a baby. I’m very proud to say he has never heard the word No. I don’t understand why he bit my hand when I went to pick up his bone.â€
Or you get a phone call that starts with, “I did everything I was told to do. I went to the breeder I was told to go to. I went to the vet I was told to. I went to the trainer that my vet recommended. I did everything she told me to do. Someone needs to explain to me why my dog just bit my son’s 10 year old friend when they walked in the door.â€
Or yet another call, “My dog’s been thru a couple of classes and has been doing well, but when I took him to the beach, he scared me and everybody else because he was dragging me across the sand barking at them.†(Yes, these are all true case stories)
One of the staple methods PO trainers tell people to use when dealing with bad behavior is replacement or distraction. “If your puppy is chewing on a rug; entice him with a toy then give him the toy. He’ll forget about the rug.â€
Here’s a story that I tell most every student. There’s a little girl maybe three or four. Mom walks in the room and finds her painting big purple flowers on the wall with a crayon. “Go play with your dolly.†The little girl looks at her, drops the crayon, and goes and gets her doll. After awhile, she gets tired of playing with the doll and….picks up her crayon and goes back to painting on the wall. Why?…because she was never told that writing on the wall was wrong, she was simply given another task that she successfully accomplished. Once that was done, she went back to her previous task.
If causing aggression is the heart of the problem with PO, the crime of PO is that these dogs are only doing what they have been taught, get labeled as incorrigible. “It can’t possibly be the training method, so it must be…..just a bad dog….bad breeding….you (the neighbor, the kid, pick a suspect) must have done something to make the dog this way. You either need to put the dog on doggy Prozac, or put him down.â€
It seems wherever I look, that human nature and society works on a Pendulum. Something happens, an event, a new piece of knowledge or news, and the pendulum swings waaay to one side. Then everyone looks up and notices that, boy, have we gotten way off track, we need to go in another direction…..and all too soon, we humans have swung the pendulum waaay to the other side. The saving grace is, with each adjustment, the Pendulum seems to swing a little less extreme, a little more to the middle and Balance.
Training methods back in the day, were pretty harsh. When you start with the premise that you have to wait until a dog is 6 months old to be strong enough for the training….that’s kinda indicative. Now the Pendulum has swung all the way to the other side, and Positive is the only sound that may be heard.
If none of us can stomach the idea of going back to choke and puke methods, and PO is dangerous and ineffective, what is left to us to try?
How about a Balanced approach?
Balance, to bring into harmony or proportion.
What a beautiful, rational goal. To accomplish this goal, a savvy teacher seeks out and dumps words with an extremist leaning, such as Positive ONLY. When anything is an ‘’only’’, it is by nature unbalanced. Instead look for the balance of Positive and Negative Reinforcements.
Reinforcements are information. I’ve used the example many times that teaching a dog is the process of escorting him down a long hallway of doors. These doors represent choices of action. The teacher’s job is to help the dog make good choices. In the PO world, if the dog chooses to walk to a door, I can say, YES, behind that door is cookies, and hotdogs and all manner of good things to eat. If he walks to another door I can again say YES, behind that door is games and play equipment, friends and ball-tossers. If the dog walks to a third door, I can say nothing. The dog walks thru the door….and gets eaten by a tiger.
I think, “NO, don’t go thereâ€â€¦..would have been useful information. (Of course the old methods of teaching would have had you busting the dog until he finally hit the “right†door.)
We have gotten so far off track as dog teachers. How did the word Correction come to equal Abuse or Punishment?
Correction—to make right
Punishment—retribution through, pain, suffering or loss.
I’d say this word has a pretty extremist leaning when we are talking about trying to teach a dog!
If I have a little child sitting in front of me working on her addition, and she said to me “2+2=5, no one would think anything if I replied, “No dear, 2+2=4†But, oh my gosh, according to PO, I’ve punished this poor child!
So what are some rational, INFORMATIVE, negative reinforcements?
No—No is a negative marker. It’s information, like in the story about the little girl. I don’t know about you, but if I was starting out on a long journey….and I was heading out in the wrong direction, I’d sure want someone to tell me “NO, not that way!â€
Blocking/Stopping—Blocking is a common tool in herding. If a dog takes a wrong direction…Away instead of Go-Bye, you put your stick across his path…or yourself….and block the wrong answer. If the dog is wanting to come into the sheep’s bubble, block. It’s just as useful in obedience. If I tell my dog to take the Bar Jump in Directed Jumping and he goes to take the High, block. If I tell the dog to Down on Drop on Recall, and he keeps coming forward, block. It’s pretty clear information, “This is the wrong way. You are picking the wrong answer.â€
Collar pop/tap/hair pull---Before we go any farther, let’s put a definition on these. A collar pop is a quick jerk of the collar with immediate release WITHOUT the jerk making the dog’s neck or body physically move. If the dog’s body is being moved by the pop, you are risking the dog’s chiropractic alignment. Tapping a dog’s head or butt should be done with the tips of your fingers. You use it as a quick poke. Hair pulling is grabbing a tuft of hair on the neck or butt and giving a quick pull.
All three of these corrections, are about getting the dog’s attention….not punishment. When you use any of these three, the picture you should have in your mind is of tapping someone on the shoulder to get their attention. Hellloooo???? You in there?
As a generality, if a correction has to go beyond attention getting, the teacher needs to back up and seek out why. There are three situations that commonly get a dog and owner into this situation.
The dog is put into a situation beyond his skill set. Say the dog can do a sit in a quiet room, but when he’s asked to sit in the vet’s office, he is too overwhelmed and can’t function or think. Or, the dog can properly greet and deal with one person, but when flooded with a group, loses it. The dog’s set of skills, dealing with distractions, self control, whatever aren’t up to the problem set to him…he then goes into adrenaline overload and CAN’T feel the corrections.
The dog’s sense of trust in the protection and leadership of the person is in question. The dog enters a situation that triggers a defensive response. The dog feels he’s on his own to deal with the threat and tunes out the owner. Adrenaline is triggered and the dog can’t respond to the correction.
*The dog has been desensitized to a collar correction by constant, chronic, pressure on the collar. Collar pressure no longer means correction.
In each of these situations, a “harder†correction is not the answer. A hard correction is just a physical way of yelling. Yelling doesn’t transmit information effectively…other than telling everybody you are out of control. The answer in each of these situations is to back up and fix the problem.
*Teach the dog the skill set he is lacking…distraction skills such as the ability to focus, concentrate and multi-task when things are going on around you and self–control…knowing he has to do the right thing.
*Go back and fix the foundation partnership skills of attention, respect and trust. Step up and be the leader your dog needs in scary situations. Let him see that you WILL take care of him.
