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Originally Posted by les
Your dog barks, you give a treat and reward. Your dog bites you, you give a treat and reward. Not sure when that started to sound reasonable to anybody!
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I don't think you have a reasonable perception of reward based training
1. Positive training does not = food. Positive training is finding what is most motivational to your dog and using that to sculpt behavior. The reason food is used most frequently in this scenario is that food is a primary reinforcer (primary reinforcers are things a dog needs no conditioning to find rewarding). Any good trainer will use primary reinforcers to condition secondary reinforcers (like toys, sniffing a tree, even other obedience behaviors) and fade the food rewards once the dog has learned the behavior.
2. What I think you are describing (no trainer rewards actions like that) is called classical conditioning - separate from general training. This is where you are changing the dog's emotional response to something that frightens or agitates them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI13v...layer_embedded
Quote:
Originally Posted by les
I believe in using treats to first teach a behavior but once they know it, I expect them to obey it whether I have a treat or not. No excuses. And if you don't, you get a correction and a quick repitition.
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It's been proven in laboratory experiments that dogs learn fastest and release the fewest measurable stress hormones when they are trained with positive reinforcement and not exposed to negative reinforcement or positive punishment. These slow the learning process because the dog is afraid to make mistakes. Dogs are proven to offer fewer behaviors when trained with aversives and show more signs of stress directed at their handlers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by les
Something else I always ponder ... have you ever noticed it seems all "positive" trainers are the ones with the out of control dogs? How positive is that really?
I would argue my dogs are much happier than those positive trained dogs. My dogs get to come every place with me - because they behave. They're not like the dogs who have never felt a correction and get to spend all day long isolated because they have no idea how to behave!!
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I think my dogs are rather well behaved and that you have a really skewed perception of positively trained dogs.
My dogs go everywhere with me and offer good behavior for all privileges. We walk daily off leash in designated areas (including busy city parks) and on forest trails. I can recall my dogs off of anything without force, instantly (examples: deer, bears, squirrels, rabbits, other dogs). I have put my dogs in a 5 minute down-stay in the middle of a park while I walked away. I can do an entire training session outside, in areas full of distractions without my dogs breaking eye contact. I can do these things without ever resorting to corrections.
In fact, it has been my experience that it is aversively trained dogs who are out of control or unhappy.
When we go walking in the park, there is always at least one example of each of the following:
Dog A is running off leash wearing a choke or an e-collar whose owners are screaming at it to come back. This dog will follow us because we have a toy or will jump on us if we are carrying our own snacks (our dogs no longer need food rewards). Our record is 35 minutes (dog following while owner tries to retrieve).
Dog B is always walking on leash with their tail tucked and ears pinned back curving their body away from their person, or straining on leash while their owner offers continuous and ineffectual leash pops.
You seem to equate reward based training with dogs who are out of control, but it is my experience that dogs who are trained with rewards have an expectation of needing to work for them. Ergo, they have a much higher level of self control (especially off leash when they know they cannot be corrected) then dogs who are infrequently rewarded - these dogs are used to having to find their own rewards.