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Location: East Midlands, UK
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 8,775
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Originally Posted by
Brierley
Just obervations, but I see one or two problems. Firstly, you seem to have the mindset that a northern breed is somehow special/different and so learning theory cannot apply to them. It does - just the same as it does with any animal including humans.
This guy came to you with little training and he upset the routine/family set up in as much as your other dog(s) naturally had to adapt to the newcomer.
The fact that this boy descended from a dog you previously owned gave you and your OH a pre-conceived notion of what he would be like and constant comparisons are made and often used as 'excuses' for his lack of training.
In a period of 6-8 months, the lad was not only subjected to a new environment, new people, new dogs, but also to a myriad of training techniques offered up by various local farmers, gamekeepers, gundog trainers - none of which, at a guess, have used or are interested in techniques that don't sit well with their own ethos.
Mary Rae? Well, she's fantastic at what she does in the training sphere. However, if you get to meet her again, ask her how her own training has changed and improved over the 13 or so year gap since you last met her - not least of which has been her introduction of clicker training into her work.
No one will change your mind, Gnasher - you've gone from coping with the introduction of Ben into your family and at the same time trying many and various things to try to get him to work with you to finding what you currently believe to be the best thing since sliced bread.
I've seen it so many times before and also seen what happens when complacency and reliance on a training aid takes place.
I truly hope that Ben's current training holds and that he's one of those dogs where the single learning event has taken place. However, your reports of needing the vibration setting to 'remind' him of that event leads me to doubt this.
I also get the impression that it's your OH that 'rules the roost' as far as what is and what isn't acceptable in the name of training and that you have to convince yourself that he's right. Maybe wrong, but it's what comes over strongly in your reports
Nice post, Brierly, thank you that. I suppose because hubby does the bulk of the walking as I work very long hours far away from where we live, I do allow him to have the brunt of the walking. I do as much as I can at weekends, but then I have all the housework to do - a woman's work, and all that
Once I start returning home in daylight, instead of the dark, then perhaps I will be able to take Ben out just on our own and spend some time training him. I need to do a similar thing with Tai, because he is slipping back into his old ways of running at the fence where the chickens are kept to frighten them. But at present, it is dark when I get home at night.
I take your point also about reliance on a tool - I dislike that intensely, I dislike having to rely on anything except for my voice and my whistle, which of course are always present unless I have laryngitis!! I will probably take Ben out without wearing the e collar, or if he is wearing it,only using the pager button if I absolutely have to. Another of Hal's sons from a previous litter lives with a farmer friend of our's, and he was trained not to jump up and take pheasants out of the air on shoots, and now his owner never takes the control unit with him, the dog just wears the collar. In fact by now, even that may have been dispensed with because when I saw him in the back of the car at the pub the other day he certainly was not wearing it.
thanx for your very thoughtful posting Brierly, it is appreciated