View Single Post
  #10  
Old January 23rd, 2007, 01:41 AM
Luvsthelabs Luvsthelabs is offline
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Canada
Posts: 2
Thank you for your comments. Over the last week my trainer has been testing this new reward containment system. It was amazing!

It is more like a recall system than a containment system. It consists of a treat feeder located in a central area and a voice collar mounted on the dog. It is mostly reward training but has an optional static discomfort for users that use discomfort training.



The dog is condition to the word “come” from the voice collar. The dog learns to return to the feeder on command “come” and is reinforced with a treat. The training starts by first training the dog to do simple commands like sit and lay down and come. Each time the dog performs these behaviours correctly, you push a button and the collar calls the dog to the feeder with the word "come" and the feeder gives the dog a treat. Over time the dog is conditioned and the behavior becomes habit.



The feeder can be used inside or outside and can be used in wireless mode or wired mode. So it's portable and you can take it camping or to a friends house.



I was very skeptical. But then I saw my 12 week old pointer puppy and his 10 year old lab being trained on it.



It was impressive. Both dogs totally understood the commands. The trainer had the following feedback.



* The learning of the recall command both on the older dog and puppy took three 10-minute sessions. It then took him another 10 times with the lab to train him on distractions like humans or dogs. He did use a leash to help reinforce the behavior with the lab on distractions.
* The trainer was confident that the system could be as effectively as a well-trained dog on the command come. Well-trained dogs take time to turn commands into habits.
* He has experience with the optional stimulation mode. Basically an adjustable static e-collar. The dog learns to avoid the discomfort by recalling faster. The dog is always reinforced with a treat on completion of the recall. The trainer said this was very effective because the dog first understood what the command was, and both reward and discomfort enforcement was used. However, he felt that discomfort really was not needed if the training continued with more repetitions of reward training only. He said it is really no different than any other type of non-punishment training.
* He agreed with the manufactures advantages over conventional punishment only systems.
o Dogs loved the system and got very excited when it came time to train them. It was like a game.
o Fast to train
o 90% of training can be done in the house
o Totally portable, no retraining for different locations inside or outside because the dog is responding to a command not learning a physical boundary.
o There are no side effects like you get in conventional systems (such as aggression and nervousness) because it does not use continued discomfort to teach an alternate behavior.
o Will not shock your dog if it comes back the yard.
o Will try three times to recall the dog if he goes out of the boundary.
o The dog will not get shocked if he stays in the middle of the boundary zone.
o If used in reward/discomfort mode it is much more effective than conventional containment systems.
o Can be used to reward train lots of other behaviors like sit, heel, come, down, etc.



* The trainer had some concerns like dogs would learn to activate the system to get a treat. This was overcome by a control that did not feed the dog every time. The trainer felt the best way to use the system was to feed your dog his meals from the system.

Needless to say I'm excited to see how my dog progresses with this system, but so far so great! My puppy is only 12 weeks old and he comes, sits, lays down, and goes to his bed. All without any punishment.
Reply With Quote