British Labs / No Force????

[Bartona500]

Sorry, everyone. I swapped it to "public" before uploading yesterday, but the upload failed. I guess it reverted back to private when I successfully uploaded it today. It is public now, so the link should work!

[WRL]

Yep, I know this against the women's code to say in mixed company, but it's true I'm a little hormonal this week. And hubby has a cold, which means snoring which means no sleep for me.

Jen

WHAT???!! You just single handedly set the women's movement back 100 years!

Do like the rest of us and put the phone down, move away from the computer keyboard and EAT A SNICKERS BAR!

Now repeat after me....."There's no crying in baseball!"

WRL

[Bartona500]

Darrin, see my quoted post above. I asked the same question in post 55 and no one has bothered to respond yet.... Perhaps it's more fun to take shots at each other than to have a real discussion...

There is certainly compulsion in my training and most every trainer I've seen who uses a "British" method. I think calling it "Positive Reinforcement Only" isn't necessarily truthful. Perhaps "much more +R than -R plus no collar/FF" would be more fair.

[Jennifer Henion]

WHAT???!! You just single handedly set the women's movement back 100 years!

Do like the rest of us and put the phone down, move away from the computer keyboard and EAT A SNICKERS BAR!

Now repeat after me....."There's no crying in baseball!"

WRL

It was a dang chocolate shake from McDonalds instead of the snickers. Stupid McDonalds!



Bartona500: Neat videos! Love hearing that ACME whistle again.

[DarrinGreene]

There is certainly compulsion in my training and most every trainer I've seen who uses a "British" method. I think calling it "Positive Reinforcement Only" isn't necessarily truthful. Perhaps "much more +R than -R plus no collar/FF" would be more fair.

What do you mean when you say -r?

[Bartona500]

What do you mean when you say -r?

Any form of correction, effectively communicating "no" when a dog does something undesired. In my video, I whistle & say "no" two times (when she breaks & when she refused a cast in water). Both are -r

[Colonel Blimp]

Darrin, see my quoted post above. I asked the same question in post 55 and no one has bothered to respond yet.... Perhaps it's more fun to take shots at each other than to have a real discussion...

I dropped out of this thread thinking it had not only gone on far too long, but it had strayed off what was already a pretty well worn path anyway. However since you ask ..

I can't and don't speak for Bob Milner or anyone else, this is just my own experience.

Within UK there is a continuing drift towards more reward based training and away from some of the old aversive methods. I grew up in an era when giving a Spaniel a bloody good hiding before even before taking it out was quite unremarkable; several people who were considered to be good dog men (and IMO were) published works which included advice on the best way to use a fan belt and /or administer a thrashing. One of these was Peter Moxon whose book has gone past nineteen editions. The move away from such stuff obviously proceeds at different speeds and in varying ways.

You may have seen the video of the working dog display at Crufts ... that trainer is a big advocate of wholly positive training. I've posted a few videos with Edward Martin in action ... wholly reward based trainer and very successful. Most of the well known retriever trainers don't go that far but their has been a revolution in both thinking and training. As Bartona says the only thing a N American trainer might view as force, punishment, whatever, is in administering a rebuke for an infraction of known standards, force as used in the the sense of Force Fetch or Carr based training is quite unknown and was never in vogue anyway.

Again, for me, I don't believe dogs deliberately choose to disobey a known and understood command, so I rarely if ever punish. When I do the maximum I go to is a scruff shake.

I'm off out picking right now, so must close.

Eug

[kennel maiden]

I've also stayed away from this, as there didn't seem much point, when many on here don't want to look at how so-called 'British' training methods may actually work or have some value vs e-collar/ff/ear pinch etc. I don't know why people post things like "I wish this thread would go away"? Why don't they just not look at it, if they are not interested? Weird.

Anyway, to answer the question about aversives, for those that are interested, as Eug says, yes British trainers use aversives, some more so than others. And these come in the form of vocally correcting the dog "no!" or "oy!" (some times followed by the odd expletive!), and also by taking the dog back out to the spot of infringement and restarting or giving it a bit of a shake.

But as Eugene has said, there does seem to be much more of a move by some of the newer/more modern trainers (in line with other canine disciplines) to use positive methods of reinforcement (such as using a clicker in early stages of obedience training, and markers for good work). I would count myself in this group of kinder/modern/positive trainers...

I guess we teach positively, and then if something does go wrong we either 'correct' or use attrition or back track and try and get it engrained again.

So, at this point I would comment on the video posted by Barton (hope he doesn't mind). In that exercise, which to us is a straight forward blind retrieve with a marked distraction at an angle. I would line the dog for the blind and send it on that line with my cue word for a blind, rather than a mark, giving the dog a clue it is going for a blind rather than the mark it has just seen. I expect the dog to take my line that I am giving it. Other trainers here would indicate the 'poison bird' and command 'leave that' and then turn the dog onto the blind. I don't like doing this as I just simply want the dog to go where I am sending it - horses for courses. If the dog takes, and holds, my line it is going to fall over the bird on the stubble. And, to me, this excercise is about taking and holding a line (not whether a dog will handle/re-cast - I would practise that separately). So, in Barton's case the dog went only so far, and then was off line and required not one but 2-3 stops and re-casts.... To me, that wouldn't be acceptable (but to many handlers over here it is, if they are just picking up with their dogs, or doing the odd test). As, I say, I want the dog to take the line and hold that line until told otherwise (fairly simple on a flat field, but later will have to do this over fences, through cover, across ditches etc). So, I send the dog off and if it doesn't hold the line I will either (depending on the sensitivity of the dog) give it a vocal correction 'ah ah' once it has come way off line, recall and start again, or simply recall it and start again without a correction.

With a young dog, if it didn't manage this within a couple of go's I would then either simplify (walk out and show it the dummy and walk back) or walk further forwards to the dummy, shortening the distance of outrun (but keeping the exercise the same 'take my line and hold my line and you will find a dummy').

Until I had got this concept of blinds with distraction totally right, with the dog not sucking towards the 'poison bird', or as we would say 'challenging my line' then I certainly would not be setting the same exercise up on water!!! From the clip you see the dog challenged 3 times on land, and then on water this was a whole lot worse, around 8-9 commands to get the dummy. So, I would get rock solid on land, before going onto water.

Also, I would not always send for the 'poison bird' but sometimes go and hand pick it.

Not saying any of this is right or wrong. More than one way to skin a cat... but just giving an example on how I would train for something like this, here, with 'Brit methods'. For those that are interested. And for those that aren't, I can't believe they are still dipping into this thread?!!!....

[rmilner]

Eug, you and I are on the same page. I do not think that dogs disobey. It is not in their nature. They have spent the last 15,000 years evolving from a wild wolf in the forest to a valued companion living in the house. That move from forest to the fringe of the village fire to the yard and then into the house came about through breeding selection as dogs became more useful and more pleasing to humans.
Dogs do not disobey. They do fail to grasp the task to be performed when it is not adequately communicated, and they do fail to perform a task for which they have not been adequately prepared. Both of those instances are the trainer’s responsibility.

[hotel4dogs]

Devil's advocate here....
My dog, an intact male, is very well trained in obedience. He knows what "leave it" means. I am 100% certain that he knows what that command means.
Now suppose we are quite near a bitch in standing heat. He is whining and chattering. He attempts to mount the bitch, and I tell him "leave it". He looks at me, then ignores me and continues to try to mount her.
Has he just disobeyed a command which I am certain he understands? I believe he has.