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Location: LaLa Land
Joined: Oct 2010
Posts: 54
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Originally Posted by
waggytail
I regulary pick up a copy of one of the many Dog magazines available. I have noticed that increasingly these magazines appear to be filled with articles to promote "purely positive" training methods. a typical example is the recent issue of "Dog today" which has a 2 page spread from Victoria Stillwell on this subject.
My concern is that Dog training appears to be going from one extreme to another, Of course it is unacceptable for a dog to be beaten but is it really any better to exessively reward a dog to the overall detriment of their learning?
If the media continue to represent only one side of the debate then it will make it increasingly difficult for owners and trainers to have a balanced view on this issue. even organisations such as APDT are now taking this line, banning their members from using a number of techniques and products.
As a trainer and Behaviourist myself, I have seen both ends of the spectrum and I feel what is missing is a balanced approach. in order to teach fairly, surely dogs they need a mixture of both postive and negative consequences? I also feel that certain aspects of Dog psychology have been pushed aside to suit this new regime, Watch any pack of dogs and then ask yourself wether "leadership" is important or not.
I am interested to know what others feel about the representation of Dog training/trainers in the media? Have TV shows and magazines warped our sense of reality? is there now an increasing pressure on how we train our dogs? The methods we use, even the words we use (Don't say "Dominance!!")
As people are becoming more aware there are more questions being asked, more expectation of trainers and clubs and divided opinion on what is the right way to train a dog. I feel people have the right to learn from both sides of the camp but more importantly to find the acceptable middle ground.
Personally, I don't think there is a middle ground and given the nature of the two extremes I cannot see how combining the two could ever provide any form of 'balance' whatsoever. I also think that so called 'purely positive' training is something of a misnomer, purely positive implies that it is all just treat the good and ignore the bad, but that can never be true. Even in reward based training, failure to provide the correct response results in the witholding of the reward, which in itself becomes an aversive.
I think what is really needed is not so much 'balance' but more consistency instead. People need to educate themselves on how dogs learn and then work the rest out for themselves. Once you understand how they tick then the rest really is not rocket science. If you know how dogs think then it is easy to see why reward based training works so well, while at the same time you can also see why aversive methods work, but choosing which method to employ is a personal matter and the fact is that by their very nature, the two methods are mutually exclusive and are not compatible.
In my experience, using the two different methods results in two different dogs. All dog training is based on consequences and all dogs do what works, whether that is getting a treat or avoiding a punishment. No dog works merely to please its owner and anyone that believes they do is setting themselves up for failure. Dogs that are trained using aversives tend to be more reactive, they react to the owners direction in order to avoid the consequence that they have been conditioned to expect (ie the aversive) while dogs that have been positively trained are more proactive, they respond to direction because they have learnt that doing so makes something good happen, even if it doesn't happen everytime.