Post by maugh on Aug 23, 2006 17:41:03 GMT -5
First, Pete the Liberal Elite may have got it right. At least if you don't train, you probably don't screw up your dog. And I'm slowly coming to the position that if you don't have the right knowledge or the right assistance or the right whatever - don't do it.
Last night at the gun dog training center a guy showed up with a 7 month old yellow lab. He watched some of us train including puppy Gangster and Sr Retriever and Upland Hunter Madonna. He scoffed because we were working on fundamentals. He boasted that he had done all the foundation work himself, his dog was steady, etc. etc.
Finally it was his turn to bring out the dog. The dog was a basket case. It was afraid of people, and wanted to just run away when presented with either a dead or alive bird. Then we noticed that the further it got away from its handler the more willing it was to work! Too much compulsion without giving the dog any inkling of what the work is all about. False comfort zones (if I don't do anything I won't get corrected.....hmm if I can get away from his sphere of influence so he can't correct me this whole thing about the birds could be interesting....)
Moral is not that you shouldn't correct your dog, rather that you should show him how to win when he is corrected. A well-executed forced retrieve does just that - the dog learns that the pain stops when he holds the retrieve object with a firm, calm grip.
Anlother trap that trainers fall into is what I call the "black hole zone". Black holes are energy attractors, they pull objects in by sapping their energy. Once in a black hole, the energy that an object had is impossible to observe, and the object cannot escape.
Example. You play with a dog with a certain kind of tug or sleeve and the dog becomes comfortable on you. Taking that dog out on the protection field may now be worse than if you had done nothing. Things are totally different, and the dog has no idea how to win in this new, strange environment that he is not prepared for in spite of all the well-meaning efforts of the owner.
A second example: Giving a retriever tennis balls to fetch. Now the dog thinks only of the retrieve as putting something totally in its mouth and possibly chewing it. Two problems, two habits that must be broken before you can even begin at point zero.
I have seen a dog that is petrified of birds, yet will pick up a dummy covered with feathers - the comfort zone again.
I watch carefully that I am not creating comfort zones. They sap a dog's energy, and what drive should be there is simply trapped inside that zone so that given new grounds, new stimulus, new people, there is no drive visible. I've been there. A specific object, e.g. a Frisbee, a favorite tug, a favorite sleeve, a favorite place to track, favorite articles, time of day, jump positioned a certain way - these are all fine things but they are also potential hazards.
This seems especially to be the case in protection work and in bird work. There the whole idea is that a dog must be strong enough to create his own comfort zone out of the materials given him on that day at that moment. This is now what I train for - teach the dog that it must judiciously receive energy from the objects around it and create its own zone. That requires a mixture of motivational and techniques as well as some that toughen a dog up so that it develops confidence in its own problem-solving ability.
Motivational training fosters desire, but compulsion fosters focus. You need both.
Cheers,
Maugh
Last night at the gun dog training center a guy showed up with a 7 month old yellow lab. He watched some of us train including puppy Gangster and Sr Retriever and Upland Hunter Madonna. He scoffed because we were working on fundamentals. He boasted that he had done all the foundation work himself, his dog was steady, etc. etc.
Finally it was his turn to bring out the dog. The dog was a basket case. It was afraid of people, and wanted to just run away when presented with either a dead or alive bird. Then we noticed that the further it got away from its handler the more willing it was to work! Too much compulsion without giving the dog any inkling of what the work is all about. False comfort zones (if I don't do anything I won't get corrected.....hmm if I can get away from his sphere of influence so he can't correct me this whole thing about the birds could be interesting....)
Moral is not that you shouldn't correct your dog, rather that you should show him how to win when he is corrected. A well-executed forced retrieve does just that - the dog learns that the pain stops when he holds the retrieve object with a firm, calm grip.
Anlother trap that trainers fall into is what I call the "black hole zone". Black holes are energy attractors, they pull objects in by sapping their energy. Once in a black hole, the energy that an object had is impossible to observe, and the object cannot escape.
Example. You play with a dog with a certain kind of tug or sleeve and the dog becomes comfortable on you. Taking that dog out on the protection field may now be worse than if you had done nothing. Things are totally different, and the dog has no idea how to win in this new, strange environment that he is not prepared for in spite of all the well-meaning efforts of the owner.
A second example: Giving a retriever tennis balls to fetch. Now the dog thinks only of the retrieve as putting something totally in its mouth and possibly chewing it. Two problems, two habits that must be broken before you can even begin at point zero.
I have seen a dog that is petrified of birds, yet will pick up a dummy covered with feathers - the comfort zone again.
I watch carefully that I am not creating comfort zones. They sap a dog's energy, and what drive should be there is simply trapped inside that zone so that given new grounds, new stimulus, new people, there is no drive visible. I've been there. A specific object, e.g. a Frisbee, a favorite tug, a favorite sleeve, a favorite place to track, favorite articles, time of day, jump positioned a certain way - these are all fine things but they are also potential hazards.
This seems especially to be the case in protection work and in bird work. There the whole idea is that a dog must be strong enough to create his own comfort zone out of the materials given him on that day at that moment. This is now what I train for - teach the dog that it must judiciously receive energy from the objects around it and create its own zone. That requires a mixture of motivational and techniques as well as some that toughen a dog up so that it develops confidence in its own problem-solving ability.
Motivational training fosters desire, but compulsion fosters focus. You need both.
Cheers,
Maugh
