Never said it was the only way, and obviously folks across the pond have an alternate one which is better. I just wish y'all (generic y'all) would be more forthcoming with the how of your method, so that I could actually learn something other than the fact that your method produces great results, and that you hate shock collars and their users.

Do you not agree that folks would be better trainers if they understood the genetically driven behavior of the animal they are working with, e.g., differences in the behavior of prey animal vs. predator, and the impact of that behavior on learning? And do you not agree that there is not, and in practical reality, cannot be, a book that covers all the mistakes both dogs and trainers make when learning, and what to do about them?

Both people and books are "inadequate" for the reasons I already gave. Based on my experience as an instructor of others for over 30 years, I would change your "some people" to "few people". I can give you examples of people's "inadequate" interpretation of things they have seen/heard/read that would absolutely curl you hair, and these misinterpretations are common as dirt.

You and I obviously have vastly different interpretations of the word "enjoy"!

The camaraderie I enjoy most the is that which exists between me and my dogs. I am proud of my dogs for what they are, as well as for what they have learned. I have already given very detailed (and lengthy!) accounts of why, and how, I use the collar.

My motivation for engaging in "sport" was provided by my first retriever; long story, suffice to say I never would have gotten involved in any form of hunting if I had not had her. Quite the contrary, I was borderline anti-hunting before I got her.

And as an aside, I am well aware that many of the folks in your country are anti-hunting, and I have to wonder whether that sentiment is coloring your opinion of me and my methods.

I think you'll find that there are a fair few of us in this country that work our dogs, and actually most that have commented on this thread are open minded about it.

You asked about training for what you do without a collar, very basically its reward the good ignore the bad, accept that a dog and certainly a working dog is an intelligent being, and work with it.

I have a dog that came to me at sometime between 8 months and a year, she is the most driven dog i have ever seen, she has no interest in treats or toys, she lives to hunt, to the exclusion of anything else, its also taken her 5 years of being here to voluntarily go to my husband and ask for his attention, such was her lack of trust with people especially men, someone had hurt her and hurt her badly at some point, she associated people with fear.

She has worked on my shoot the last two seasons, and we've done it by patience, her reward is a kind word and a fuss on the chin, she adores been told she's good, i could have put a collar on her, after all i move in circles that has access, but i didn't, that would have destroyed her trust again, how did i do it, by hrs and hrs of repitition with a whistle, to me the quick fix that the collar would give wasn't worth the damage it would do to my dog, and my relationship with her was much more important.

The other dog that works we have had from a pup, and she's a cracking working dog, reliable in both the beating line and the picking up team, and we used rewards to train her, we used tennis balls to teach her quartering, hiding them left and right and getting her to find them, and started training retrieves, intitially with a ball, then moving on to Dummies, Rabbit skin diummies, and finally on to cold game before moving on to warm, again this was reward the good and ignore the bad, ie she did it well she was rewarded, if at any point she ran in the item that she was retrieving was removed game over, because lets face it its all a game to them.

I honestly think the difference between us is that you want perfection out of your dogs, me i'm willing to accept that my dogs will occasionally make mistakes after all they do have minds of their own thats why i love them, and before you say it, its up to me to manage where they make mistakes so that they're not in a situation thats threatening to their lives.

Not quite the same thing, but I remember well the owner of a young dog who was being taught to walk nicely on the lead. Standing still 'til the dog settled, taking a couple of paces backwards then restarting forwards was working very well for this particular youngster.

He 'got' it in the training field, 'got' it in the car park then it was time to take it out into pavement walking. The ideal stretch of pavement was across a quiet road.

Half way across the road, lead went tight, owner stopped and was about to take two paces back <sigh>.

It was urgently explained that you do not train in the middle of a road no matter how quiet that road is.

The fault was not the dogs, not the owners, but mine. We often forget when teaching that things can be misunderstood and we can also forget that both dog and owner are nervous whilst on the journey of learning so can take things just a little to literally.

We obviously have vastly different interpretations on many "words".......yet your use of the word enjoyment ...

Translates to the same meaning...one is happy doing what one is doing/ its pleasurable.

Insert the word "little" in front of "enjoyment", it suggests one is not having good time, and if one is NOT having a good time, then why is one partaking,

Along with the "pride in your achievments" that jumps out of your posts, its obvious you DO enjoy your hobby. hence my disbelief in your statement that youdont get pleasure /enjoyment out of your hobby.

Not at all, I am pro hunting, it has nothing to do with my opinion of you and your training methods

Lizzy, thank you for this post, your love of your dogs is very apparent. I hope you can find the time to wade thru the following.

I think one of the problems between us is that we are comparing apples and oranges with regard to the type of hunting we do. I believe you do driven shoots on upland game (which I have seen vids of), which is very different from what I have done for the past 37 years. Our seasons, combined, run from September thru April, and I am fortunate enough to be able to hunt at least 4-5 times a week throughout all of them; we start with geese in warm weather when the biggest potential problem is heat stroke, mostly fields with some water. We move on to ducks, which is mostly over water and is a split season. During the split we do pheasant and chukar, all upland, then another stretch of waterfowl (this one in full winter), and after that more upland. When those seasons close, we hunt pigeons and more recently have taken up crow hunting.

It would be safe for you to assume that, given the sheer amount and type of work we do, I have encountered many more situations with the potential for disaster (e.g., ice, strong water currents, etc.) than you have. Additionally, I have dogs that are very creative at finding unanticipated and unique ways to kill themselves (One of my bitches: "Wounded pigeon sitting on the gutter of a barn? No problem, I'll just climb to the top of the silage bunker that is the same height as the gutter, and jump across the 15' gap between the two, and add that bird to the dead one I already have in my mouth"; "Bird lands in the tiny bull's paddock, no sweat, I'll just jump this pesky 6' high stone wall that surrounds said paddock").

Lizzy, I never said I "expect" perfection, and I most certainly do not; but these are examples of situations where I do indeed have to insist on it, because anything less could very likely result in something too awful to contemplate. I don't believe for a minute that you do not see that the very qualities which you most admire in your dogs, the drive and minds of their own, have the potential to get them killed in some situations, especially given the fact that you experienced such a situation yourself; you are far too intelligent and knowledgeable to have missed that fact.

I know what working with damaged dogs is like. My first retriever came to me at the age of two, toting a lot of baggage from her rotten prior life; I later had an even older one sent to me with even more severe trust issues than the first one. I had no problem getting either one to trust me, and it came quickly (the worst one turned around in two days). They initially continued to have reflexive responses to situations that had created the mistrust, but you could see them stop and "say", "oh wait, you are not like the other idiot trainers I had", and recover and move on. These responses diminished dramatically with time.

Like you, I teach in gradual steps, building on a sound foundation. One difference between our dogs seems to be that mine do not consider retrieving to be a game, to them it is very serious business, right out of the gate. They could care less about food and praise when when hunting, I had two that would actually give one the stink eye and move away from a hand that was petting them when hunting, very obviously annoyed because the petting was interfering with their concentration on the task at hand. The reward for them is the retrieve . When I teach, I do not allow a dog to make a mistake that results in the dog get rewarded with a completed retrieve, because the reward would reinforce the mistake. I instead set things up so that the dog cannot complete the retrieve; i.e., make the right response easy and rewarding, and the wrong one difficult and and non-rewarding.

Some of you folks (generic you, Lizzy, does not include all of you) seem to assume that my collar training consists of slapping the collar on a 4 month old pup and happily zapping away (which is what some morons actually do as part of their "collar program"). First of all, I have no clue as to how you reached that conclusion if you had actually read and understood my posts (and if it is a case of not understanding, please do me the courtesy of asking for clarification, I am more than happy to provide it). Second, it is SOP for me to hunt my dogs as early as 5 months (in carefully controlled settings), and title them starting at 6 months (which is the youngest age at which they can run formal tests here). No collar involved at that point, just training as I described above.

Lastly, I guess most of you do not feel it is necessary to share the training method you would use to keep your dogs safe in the situations I have described because you have never encountered such situations. Well let me advise you folks, to never say never. If you do as I do with your dogs, and even if you do not and your dog's job of is strictly one of beloved pet and companion, it is entirely possible to experience a heart-stopping moment in everyday life; and it only takes one of them to kill your dog. The use of the collar allows me the option of doing something other than what Brierley described as "pray and hope", and dramatically increases the odds in favor of success; and that, fellow dog lovers, is the primary reason that I have chosen to use it.

Oh yes, this one:

"We concluded that shocks received during training are not only unpleasant but also painful
and frightening. Furthermore, we found that shocked dogs are more stressful on the training
grounds than controls, but also in a park. This implies, that whenever the handler is around,
the dog seems to expect an aversive event to occur. A second unwanted association might
be that the dogs have learned to associate a specific command with getting a shock"

http://eldri.ust.is/media/ljosmyndir...hockcollar.pdf

Personally yes I am anti hunting, but that does not stop me being friendly with some good dog trainers and behaviourists and long term owners who are pro hunting. One of my best friends took her flatcoat on a shoot and I didn't break the friendship over it, so, although I disagree with it as a sport I don't let it stop me being friends with someone who partakes in it, nor does it stop me talking over methods and experiences.

The only sentiment that is colouring my opinions is that I have been against shock collars for many years, never having seen or heard or spoken to anyone who has altered my mind. I've done a lot of research, watched a lot of vids, etc etc but I believe they are abusive to dogs overall and should be banned.

You've "sort of" answered my question but I haven't really found out why you use a shock collar for sport.

I can understand, although disagree, with people who use it for (as they imagine) saving a dog's life. But sport? It's not life or death, it's sport. It's a game, it's fun or there are motivations to do it.

Some will do anything to gain a win, to get "kudos", or to be the person who wins the money or carries home the cup.

I am trying to find out why you feel it is OK to use a shock collar for sport. I don't really see an answer in your posts yet.

You can just write a small paragraph, it does not have to be a lengthy post.

Wys
x

Many of us have used the old "jerk and yank" method, but were rather relieved to alter our ways when other info such as Dunbar with lure and reward, Pryor with clicker training and an intro to operant conditioning arrived. I basically use lure and reward, or usually clicker to train, I think Brierley has gone into this before.

Books can be great, as long as owners are not "overfaced" hence when I recommend I try to recommend really easy books/articles re training and behaviour, because I recall how it was when I was learning and a lot of things seemed confusing; however once I got to grips with it, like anything, it is very understandable and clear.

I am anyway, a bookworm and love books in general!

Wys