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Location: God's Own County
Joined: Apr 2005
Posts: 7,584
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Originally Posted by
scarter
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But to help you to understand where I'm coming from, I think 'learned helplessness' is probably behind the success of many methods. You seem to equate it to punishment, but the way I see it if you make sure something ALWAYS has the same outcome then sooner or later the dog will stop testing to see what happens. So for example, if you make sure that over and over your recall always succeeds then your dog just assumes that it has no option but to obey. Everytime it's allowed to fail your dog learns that it doesn't have to obey.
In the example of the elephants in india that I posted earlier they tied the baby elephents to trees - by the time they were fully grown elephants the could tie them to twigs and they wouldn't even try to wander off. No different really from putting a dog on a lead? At first the dog/elephant might pull to get away, but in time if you stand firm, or reward it with treats for not trying to escape it will believe it can't. Now in the case of large, powerful dogs they could get away from a small handler quite easily. But they've been conditioned not to. Now whether you get best results from being firm, from physically restraining the dog, or from enticing it with treats and cuddles I would have thought would depend very much on the qualities of the dog and the handler.
You cannot compare an elephant to a dog in their learning processes, elephants have to be"tamed"in order to get them to accept their change from being totally wild to being semi domesticated. Dogs are already domesticated & need to be educated not "tamed"
I hate the fact that a wild animal is used for man's purposes, if you have ever seen the work done with the orphan elephants in Africa they do not need to be tied to bond with their carers, their carers spend 24/7 with them the same way their mother would be & the carers stay with them until they are old enough to form their own matriarchal herd.
Dogs on the other hand have been living in the world of the homeo sapiens for millennium's at first of their own free will & later by"design"
To use the methods advocated by this man is not teaching he dogs humanely, but by domination, force & threat.
Someone mentioned the little dog that could not walk(yes it could not walk not did not want to walk as he stated)properly, it wasn't mothered by the dogs in his"pack"but was being bllied, the poor little dog was almost blind & had severe neurological damage & died within weeks of the program being made from it's medical condition.
The Rottweiler was not "working the sheep"as we would accept here in the UK nor anywhere else I bet, it was running after the sheep, which had obviously been well dogged & so moved simply because the dog was there. It is not the correct way to introduce a dog to sheep, especially one not specifically bred to work sheep, even then border collies of the age of the Rottweiler are not simply let loose on sheep. Rottweilers are not herding dogs they are drovers dogs & used on cattle far more than sheep, so allowing the dog to chase the sheep the way the"shepherd"was doing could have a negative outcome
I never watch CM with the sound on, I have the subtitles on & watch the dogs closely. It is so sad to watch the dogs shut down one after another, gone is their character & life, their tails go down & stay down, they rarely wag, unless it is to show uncertainty, with the tail tucked firmly under the body.
I took my 14 week old BC to a large indoor obedience/breed show yesterday. He only wears a lead outside the house or at the dog training clubs & I do all his training off lead at home, so he has had a lead on(a form of compulsion in my eyes)under a dozen times. He has mixed with dogs at training club, but not the number he met at the show(nor the variety). He was so unfazed by meeting so many people & dogs he didn't even notice that one dog went for him. Mish met him & can vouch that he wasn't affected at all.
His behaviour really pleased me(except that he nicked a sandwich from a friends bag
good job she is a very good friend
I didn't need the slip lead held high up the neck at the top of the neck & pulled tight to get him to walk nicely, if he did something I didn't want him to I stopped him by a verbal instruction.
CM's programs show nothing of basic obedience training classes were the owners can learn how to humanely prevent their dogs from developing unwanted behaviours, unfortunately this would put people like CM out of a job