Originally Posted by
Wyrekin
Morning Firstlight. Firstly please let me apologise for the rude parts of my post yesterday, I made the mistake of reading the entire thread before replying and got myself frustrated with the way it seemed to keep going round in circles. Secondly, thank you for the detailed response.
I'm not going to quote from the first message as people can read it for themselves. Your assessment of the pup jumping up and biting I agree with. The pup thought the approaching person had hurt it and responded in it's own way.
I used to walk wolves on weekends one of the things you were told prior to handling them is never allow them to hurt or scare themselves, obviously we would do our best to avoid this anyway. My point is, one the walks we did had electric fence on it. If a wolf caught itself on the electric fence it would not stop and blame itself, it would turn and blame the handler, sometimes with dire consequences. I'm guessing your response to that would be that it hasn't been conditioned to accept that it's the wolves fault it got zapped. Now what I'm curious about, having read your description of conditioning the dog, at what point does the dog really seem to start getting it? How many shocks, on average, does it take?
Let me try an example -
For me training one of my dogs to sit, stay. With the dog already knowing how to sit. I'll use Bandit is my dog.
I put Bandit in a sit and give the hand signal for stay. I then move away a few paces, pause, return to him, release him from his stay and reward him with a treat or toy.
If he breaks the stay I return him to the original spot with no reward and start again. Once he starts to get the command I will (and I know some won't agree with me here) introduce a 'ah' sound should he start to break the stay. This means that when I think he understands a stay but is thinking about moving I say 'ah' and he pretty much immediately will slam his butt back on the floor and continue waiting. I can then go back and reward him sufficiently, I will give him a jackpot reward if I don't need to use the 'ah' sound.
Now some would say that if I'm having to introduce the 'ah' then I have not conditioned the sit stay well enough and in some ways they are right but by having the word as an option I can push that bit further and also should he start to break a stay because of distractions in a potentially dangerous situation I have a back up word to really get him focused.
Bandit now has a spot on sit, stay using the giving or withholding of a reward. I have not had to inflict any sort of pain on him and I know if I put him in the middle of a field full of dogs he would still hold that stay because I have spent many hours conditioning it and if worse comes to worse I can use the 'ah' sound to regain his focus and remind him of what he's supposed to be doing.
You could almost say the 'ah' sound is a threat as if he thinks how you say he should he is thinking to himself 'ah' means stay there or don't get a treat.
Prior to using the e-collar do you make a sound? Am I right in thinking that the shock would be given in this instance when the 'ah' sound is made thus making a link between the two?
If I am right then I still see no need for the introduction of the e-collar in this instance. I say this because Bandit has learnt that if I have to say 'ah' he gets a lesser reward (as opposed to a shock) than if he sit-stays perfectly. I'm in someways punishing him by giving him kibble instead of cheese. He soon learns that if he wants the good stuff he has to do a good job.
Out of interest do you use a varied reward system with jackpots? I have found it to work really well with the animals I have trained. If they give me a slow recall they get one boring treat, recall straight away at speed and they get several really tasty treats. It doesn't take them long to put two and two together and they really start to work hard. Then over time I gradually fade the treats out.
Wryekin,
What rude parts, I find you to be one of the politest posters on this thread. Take a look at some the other posts if you want to see rude, LOL.
Re: the wolves in the fence: Dogs are not conditioned to "accept the fact" that they are to blame for the shock;
collar conditioning shows the dog that he
controls the shock. Most dogs that have been properly schooled via traditional methods get it quickly, all three steps in about 20 minutes with as few low level shocks as necessary. Latent learners generally require two short sessions. There is really no average, they are all different and the sessions are tailored to the individual dog.
RE: training the sit stay (and BLESS you for posting this!), here is how I do it, and what you do that I don't and why:
Stays are compulsive by nature, and I do not use a motivator. When I
teach the stay, I engineer the setup so that I am doing everything possible to help the dog learn what "right" is, ie, we are distraction-free, the leash is held up and forward making
light collar contact to trigger reflexive opposition down and back, the signal hand remains in front of the dog until I break him. I pivot directly out front and only ask for three seconds of stay before I pivot back to heel, pause, quietly praise, pause, and then break the exercise on command. Part of this finish procedure is to teach the dog to take praise without breaking, so that I can use praise to reinforce in the middle of a longer stay later on, rather than just praising at the end when the dog has forgotten what he did to earn the praise. (you do know the 3 second rule for both praise and correction, no?). There is not a lot of reason for the dog to break this setup, but of course some do, I just give a firm "No" and replace him on the exact original spot, facing as he did at the start. I do not start over at this point, I just pick up the exercise from the point where the dog broke, without repeating the command. I condition the response via repetition until I am sure the dog under stands that he
can hold the stay, and that proper response is a good thing. The final step is to show the dog that he
has to do what he has been taught. There is a huge difference between "can" and "has to", and lots of folks who think they have a trained dog are quite dismayed to learn, usually the hard way, that they neglected to show the dog this critical difference.
I do not warn the dog he is
about tomake a mistake, ever. IME they need to make a clear error and not just be 'thinking about it" to fully understand what is required, it is possible to give the mistime the warning, and, most importantly,
warning the dog takes the responsibility for holding away from the dog.
You say you know he would hold in the face of strong distraction, what is the strongest distraction you have introduced so far?
I use treats in the teaching and conditioning stages of training and they have three functions: Focus attention, as a lure, and as a primary reinforcer, which is paired with a simultaneous secondary reinforcer I start with a constant reward schedule and fade to random, which I am sure you know is the strongest schedule of all. And yes, I do jackpot if the situation warrants it.
If you have waded through my prior posts, you already know that the collar has no place in the first stages of my training. When I do use it, the only sound involved is the command. Some of the collars have a warning tone as an option, I have never used one mostly because of the reasons given above. If I were to use a tone, it would
not be followed immediately by a shock, because the whole purpose of a warning tone is to give the opportunity to choose to
avoid the shock.
Clear as mud? I have tried to be as brief as possible (mostly because my aged fingers are developing rigor mortis!), please advise if you would like more information.