British Labs / No Force????

[Mark Sehon]

HRCH TTF Sehon's Renigade Zeke MH QAA. Not bad for British, Irish "FIELD" bred dog! USA training.

[gdluck]

Yes, of course there is more than one way to train a dog......... but, to train a dog to successfully compete at the upper level of the AKC FT spectrum the logical choices are very limited

john

And it will stay that way as long as people keep crushing anyone that wants to try to do differently. In order to improve you MUST try new things and sometimes revisit old ones. These attempts may fail 9 out of 10 times but the 1 success is a step forward.

The name of the site is RETRIEVERTRAINING. it is NOT CarrBasedRETRIEVERTRAINING, or ForceBasedRETRIEVERTRAINING, or ModernONLYTechniqueRETRIEVERTRAINING, or FieldTrialONLYRETRIEVERTRAINING. Maybe the name should be changed, but until then we are all here because we like training dogs, period. Who cares which way somebody wants to train their dog, it's their dog and they will have to live with the results, NOT YOU. Why don't we all just support whatever way somebody wants to train and take our collective knowledge to improve those ways. It may just increase our training toolbox and make everyone a more versatile trainer.

[Rnd]

Below is an article I found in Gun Dog magazine. I would like everyones thoughts on British Labs and British training methods that apparently "do not use force"?

Gun Dog Article:

There’s a new movement making British Style Field Trials popular again, along with the British strain of Labrador retriever. These Labs are largely born with the behavior of delivering retrieved objects to hand, making it unnecessary to force-fetch them. They are also bred to be calm companions as well as peak performers in the field, according to Robert Milner, who breeds British Labs at Duckhill Kennel. And from what I saw of his 5-week-old puppies to 5-year-old adults, it’s absolutely true.

The big attraction to these trials and British training methods, for me, was the lack of force training. No force to pile, force to water, force anything. For dogs bred to be highly trainable and good at hunting, like my golden, this philosophy says it’s not necessary to use force. It’s very believable after watching several British-trained dogs complete 175-yard blind retrieves through walls of 5-foot tall brush and woods, guided by whistle and hand signals, then stand at heel, steady as a rock, while they watch another dog work.

Is just me or did anybody else find it odd that someone would post a quote from a magazine and not credit the author??

Credit where credit is due

RTF's own Jenifer Henion: http://www.gundogmag.com/2012/04/27/...fields-trials/

[Mary Lynn Metras]

Is just me or did anybody else find it odd that someone would post a quote from a magazine and not credit the author??

Credit where credit is due

RTF's own Jenifer Henion: http://www.gundogmag.com/2012/04/27/...fields-trials/

RND Thanks for sharing.
Jennifer good for you and going over and seeing first hand. Very interesting.

[Becky Mills]

Excellent writing, Jennifer. Very interesting.

[Jennifer Henion]

Thanks for the compliments. That made my day!

Will say however, that I wrote that a year ago, though it wasn't published til much later. Since then I've purchase and raised an American bred field dog who has proven to be born with the same traits I spoke of in the article. Natural delivery to hand at 7 weeks (even pigeons) and extremely trainable.

Also have learned a lot about force training in the last year and know that it is not what I first thought it to be when I wrote that article.

This thread has been a neat discussion. So glad to see the openness and civil back and forth!

Jen

[Gun_Dog2002]

Civil? Interesting. Guess is just depends on who posts the insults...

/Paul

[Ken Bora]

....Jennifer good for you and going over and seeing first hand. Very interesting.

Over?
Tennessee is a foreign country?

[Jennifer Henion]

Civil? Interesting. Guess is just depends on who posts the insults...

/Paul

Right, I forgot parts weren't so civil. But it seemed to end well.

And yes, Tennessee may be considered a foreign country compared to California!

But I can say that cause I grew up there - TN that is, swimmin pools, but no movie stars.

[mitty]

And it will stay that way as long as people keep crushing anyone that wants to try to do differently. In order to improve you MUST try new things and sometimes revisit old ones. These attempts may fail 9 out of 10 times but the 1 success is a step forward.

The name of the site is RETRIEVERTRAINING. it is NOT CarrBasedRETRIEVERTRAINING, or ForceBasedRETRIEVERTRAINING, or ModernONLYTechniqueRETRIEVERTRAINING, or FieldTrialONLYRETRIEVERTRAINING. Maybe the name should be changed, but until then we are all here because we like training dogs, period. Who cares which way somebody wants to train their dog, it's their dog and they will have to live with the results, NOT YOU. Why don't we all just support whatever way somebody wants to train and take our collective knowledge to improve those ways. It may just increase our training toolbox and make everyone a more versatile trainer.

I think you hit the nail on the head when with the word "anyone."

The pom poms over the R+ stuff and clickers is coming mostly from RTF newbs about newbs. It just seems naive to me. And at what point does clicker training quit being new? Here I am being naive, I just assumed that everyone taught basic stuff using marker training. Again, color me naive, but my lab from FT lines delivered to hand (not sure what this means though), was tractable and bidable...I assume most are. The people I train with rarely press the buttons on their ecollars.

I am also highly skeptical that anyone can develop a "new" training program to build a competitive field trial retrievers by training a single dog or patting each other on the back on the internet for trying. The successful trainers who have developed programs for the masses have experience training many dogs to be competitive in all age stakes. Should the lone trainer be so lucky and talented to produce a FC using the "new" method we will need to try it on several more retrievers to see if it generalizable, so we are talking about not knowing the results for many years.

What we need is someone who already knows what the end product is supposed to look like doing the experiments. Otherwise it is like my husband in the kitchen, wondering why the first cake he ever baked didn't turn out after he undermixed the batter.