From: rhh@alice.att.com (r hardin)
Newsgroups: rec.pets.dogs
Subject: Re: Motivational Methods
Date: 29 Sep 92 00:05:19 GMT
Article-I.D.: alice.23746
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill NJ



Charlie Sorsby writes:
>If your definition of correction is sufficiently flexible to
>include showing the dog what you expect, I couldn't agree more.  If
>it means punishing the dog for not being able to read your mind, I
>couldn't *disagree* more.

(and other things I won't requote: just marking the article -  )

We agree on almost everything - Koehler is largely making introductions
pleasant and more than adequate, so that when the time comes for correction,
when the dog is no longer being rehearsed but is now responsible for the
first time, then the impersonal, effective correction is used.

We disagree about flexibility -

First, because flexibility is usually taken to mean, when someone says
that you have to be flexible training dogs, to mean that you shouldn't
correct but try to understand the dog's particular difficulty.

Then something is added like, if it's willful disobedience, then correct
(though some don't even add that).

No.  The correction is necessary after an adequate introduction, it teaches
that this is non-negotiable.  The dog knows you, you who are responsive in
all manner of things, who takes him out when asked, who rubs his tummy
on command, etc., but you don't negotiate even slightly on this point.

That provides clarity, an understanding that the command is not negotiable.
It shows what a command is, and you and the dog are both commanded by it.
(Very complicated to say in a line, but the command must be absolutely
impersonal, and that has to do with this.)

Some people, for instance, when they have trained the heel with motivation,
when they have tried to sympatathize with the dog's distraction by
this or that, have simply taught their dog that distraction is okay,
or negotiable at least, that it obedience can be deferred under conditions
that are not clear but always interesting to discover in the particular
case.  The dog winds up believing that.

Then corrections don't work!  It's too late, the dog thinks that next
time you might negotiate, and it takes a LONG time to get him over that.
Meanwhile he chases off after a horse, and you have to correct him a zillion
times, or more likely give up on it.

A dog corrected from the beginning has quickly made it a way of life,
and you never correct him again for it.

Second, because flexibility, knowing lots of tricks, gives the beginning
trainer a very tentative attitude, which acts against training; the
beginning trainer is unable to MEAN what he commands when the syntax
of training is indefinite for him, if I can put it that way.

Third, because flexibility is a cop-out in obedience classes.  The fact
is that most dogs do not get trained, and the leading cause of euthanasia
is not disease but behavior problems.  People TAKE their dogs to obedience
classes not because they want to be trainers but because they need help,
and it really burns me that they can't get it, and drop out, discouraged.

I wish I had a dollar for every person who's stopped me and said
that he wished his dog was half as well behaved as mine, and
THAT HE'S BEEN TO OBEDIENCE CLASS BUT IT DIDN'T HELP, HIS DOG IS
TOO UNCONTROLLABLE.   These are the drop-outs that the obedience
instructors seem to forget when they tell how well their flexibility
is working.  The guys that don't come back.

The fact is that most people do not want to correct their dogs,
they want to be nice, not cruel, and they are confused about
what niceness is and what cruelty is, and it is the responsibility
of the obedience instructor to straighten them out on this.

That's why the rhetoric in Koehler is necessary (look at it), he's
very harsh, very harsh with the handler.

But god the thing really works.