Obedience Training
lareviewofbooks.org
lareviewofbooks.org
If any of y’all reading this need dog operational training, seek out trainers that have gone to the Michael Ellis school for dog trainers, and use his methods.
Wife breeds white Swiss shepherds, has been to a few of his classes, and it’s how we raise our own pups. I have trained multiple dogs now, have done obed competitions, agility, and even some protection work.
Don’t use positive only, and don’t use the koehler crap.
Ellis style is all about letting the dog decide his actions, and then rewarding it when it makes the choice you want. for instance, to teach a pup to sit, we lure the dog into a sit using a treat. when he sits, you mark the reward with a word (some people use clickers) and then treat. You end up with a pavlovian response, where when the dog hears "yes" or "good" he expects a treat, and gets excited. After awhile the dog will start sitting on his own, and you mark/reward that. Later on you can add in the command, when the dog is performing the action on its own.
The difference between the two methods is that with the ellis style, you end up with a dog that WANTS to work, and looks to you for direction rather than being dead inside.
I could go on more, but don't really have the time.
They used (parts of) Koehler, the slow way. We used a pinch collar and a long lead, and a lot of treats, and went very slowly. In total we spent probably 18 months in obedience classes, went all the way through advanced. We spent at least 30 minutes a day, every day, working on training.
It worked. She started out being the worst behaved dog in the class, to the point that my wife disavowed she knew me when I had the dog. But by the end, she was the best dog in the class and it wasn't close. And she turned out to be the best dog to ever live. She literally saved my daughter's life twice. We could let her out into our unfenced front yard and know, without a doubt, that she would scope out the property lines and alert us if anything crossed them but not go over them herself... unless the kids ran off, in which case she would tail them and bark when my wife called to let her know where they were. It was like having a third adult in the family.
It's been ten years since she passed, at age 15, and I still cry when I think about her.
Done wrong, it isn't Koehler.
There have to be consequences to choosing to blow off a command.
You _can_ definitely use positive only training to teach an alternate behavior (e.g. recall or distance down) and proof it under progressively more difficult scenarios (distance/duration/distractions), backing up every time the dog makes a mistake. Until that command is such a strong habit that the dog will reliably do the behavior on cue. And in the meantime prevent the bad behavior (with a leash) to prevent ingraining the undesired behavior.
Not saying negative reinforcement _should_ not be used (it may be more effective, and may even be the difference between achieving or not achieving the desired behavior with the amount of effort any particular trainer can put in). Just that it's not as absolute as you say.
Of course that takes a lot of training, where you can control the situation to give the dog a fake choice (by leashing him) and/or ensure the bad choice is the right amount less awesome than the treat.
I am not advocating against negative reinforcement here. It can help build good habits by steering the dog towards the good choice and preventing the bad one. I'm just disagreeing with the notion that the end result should be the dog deciding based on expected reward and punishment.
(I know this is quite idealistic.)
I wonder if someone has tried to try to do a research study to compare the dogs that are outcomes of different schools of training. I imagine it would be hard to define and measure 'desirable' outcomes.
There’s no one training Koehler in high level IPG (IPO/schutzhund) or one of the ring sports.
I’m also not aware of actual LE/Mil doing anything Koehler. They’re all using all four quadrants of the operant conditioning.
It's less obvious for the average person who just wants a well behaved pet.
It's more doable if things are controlled (e.g. take a bunch of German Shepherd puppies given to very experienced trainers at birth), but those circumstances don't necessarily tell you what the "best" method is in a generalizable fashion.
Dog training is a proxy for parenting.
Our psychological need to convince others to follow our own preferred methods of dog training is a proxy fight for the battle to parent ourselves in a way that is preferable to the way our parents parented us.
We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
We adopted a shelter dog, so she came with a slew of emotional scars. She started showing signs of potential aggression, and apparently was on her "third chance" from the shelter already. We didn't want her to have to go back yet again, nor did we want to risk anyone or her getting hurt. So we searched around and found a trainer.
Again, I don't know what "method" this trainer used. But it was a single (expensive) session, 1.5hrs long, in our home with a former K-9 trainer. Afterwards it was like flipping a light switch on her. She no longer barked/growled/lunged at passersby or even other dogs. She's perfectly calm around other aggressive dogs. She won't leave or enter through doors without our permission. We can stop her dead if she chases after an animal in the backyard.
And it's not just us; our vets continually re-affirm how much better behaved she is while with them.
All that after one session and continued re-enforcement from us.
We also crate trained her, so sleep isn't an issue. That was another amazing transformation; going from crying all night to getting up and leaving the couch for her crate when it's past her bedtime and looking back at us like "you guys going to bed or what, geez!"
As for separation anxiety, which she definitely has, I came up with my own technique for that. First, we stopped crating her when we left. It caused her too much anxiety. But that didn't help completely. People suggested playing music, but that just made her more anxious as well. As did giving her treats before leaving. The thing that really worked: before we leave I just talk to her and tell her that we're leaving, tell her if we'll be back "soon" or "later", and tell her she's a good girl.
It's weird, but after a couple times, it now works like a charm. She definitely doesn't like it, but she immediately settles down and lets us leave without trouble. And she doesn't wreck the house while we're gone.
I'm not sure how much of what I say she "understands", or what part of my magical incantation is actually salient. She has an incredibly accurate sense of time, so I figured she might be able to correlate "soon" or "later" to how long we're gone. Hopefully that's communicating some expectations to her that help her be less anxious.
It's amazing the transformation a little training can do. To go from an aggressive shelter dog on her third lease on life, to one of the better trained puppies we know is an incredible journey.
When we got our first GSD's, decades ago, I had no clue what I was doing. We hired a local trainer recommended by the local pet shop. She was great for about four months and that was that. She was way out of her league once these dogs turned about six months of age. They were assertive and smart. I knew nothing at the time and still knew we needed a different approach. No amount of clicking and treats was making a difference.
We were about to have our first kid. My requirement was simple: A kid should be able to reliably walk the two GSD's simultaneously without a leash. That last part is because, if you can achieve that the leash simply becomes a formality. An out of control dog on a leash can be very dangerous. Never mind strangers, a 120 pound GSD can make an 80 pound kid go flying if it decides to bolt after another dog, or worse, cross the street.
We got another trainer someone recommended for more assertive dogs. The guy was a complete asshole. Violent. No. He lasted a week.
I don't remember how, we finally got connected with a Schutzhund community and ended up hiring this young girl (21 at the time) who trained GSD's for all aspects of the competition. That's when I finally went to "Dog Training University". It was amazing. I learned so much.
Yes, we used slip collars and e-collars. NO! They are NOT torture devices. Anyone who uses them to hurt the dog has no clue what they are doing AT ALL. Properly used they are no different from touching the dog or a gentle tap. In particular, e-collars are one of the most misunderstood tools. This is terrible because it is actually the best tool by far. Again, properly used. If anyone is interested I can certainly expand on this.
Our dogs went from being almost impossible to control to being able to walk off-leash just about anywhere without any issues whatsoever. The level of attention and obedience was almost incredible. Here's a simple example: I could go to a busy dog park, tell them to sit-stay, walk hundreds of feet away from them and they would stay there no-matter-what. Somewhere I have a video of a whole gaggle of dogs running in circles around my two dogs sitting under a tree while waiting for my command from the other end of this football field sized dog park. From that distance I could tell them both to lie down, sit up, advance (one at a time or together) stop, lie down again, or run towards me. And no, these dogs were not "dead" or beaten into submission, in fact, they loved to train so much we did it every day (which is what it takes) for hours (I worked nights back then).
Since then I have trained many other GSD's. Not at the same level, I just don't have that kind of time any more. We currently have three GSD's. They are very assertive. They are not pushovers. However, when my little girl was seven years old she had full command of them no matter what the situation.
That said:
I am very familiar with Michael Ellis's methods. Being that this has been a hobby for decades I have consumed a great deal of material from top trainers. He is one of them. I own a bunch of his DVD's and books.
I would definitely recommend Michael's methods for most house pet dogs. If applied correctly you will have a very well behaved dog. Getting to that level of full off-leash control requires a tremendous amount of work, regardless of the method one might use.
The caveat with regards to Michael's --or any other method for that matter-- is that they don't tend to work very well at all for dogs that are on the assertive-to-aggressive (or potentially aggressive) scale. Have you ever tried to stop a person who is in full rage mode just using words and positive rewards? I don't think there's anyone alive who has done this successfully.
We must not humanize dogs. They are animals and, as such, capable of some pretty horrific behavior. They are not kids that you can fix by cuddling-up with them. In fact, stuff like that will ruin a dog more often than not. Dogs understand, want and react well to structure. Provide that and they will thrive. Provide chaos and you'll end-up with problems. One of my current GSD's is big and super-strong and assertive as hell. Pure breed and bread to work. He would fit very well as a military or police dog. And yet we have full control. Happiest dog in the world. You'd never know the level of training he has except when my daughter can make him stop, sit, down, approach, retreat, etc., without saying a single word.
One of my absolute favorite series of books and methods are by The Monks of New Skete. Regardless of the breed you own, these books should be required reading for dog owners.
Here's a fun look at Schutzhund (my dogs could do all of this and more):
You don't fix children with significant psychological problems that way either.
As you said, same with kids. We have a friend going through this right now. The culmination of this story has been that they had to send their kid to a 90 day program to deal with behaviors they likely caused over years of lacking structure and rules. You can be your kid's friend so long as you don't forget you are a parent first.
It's incredible how much I learned about raising kids from what I learned about raising dogs. They both need exactly the same thing: Leadership, structure and rules. It's that simple...and that complex for some.
I always think of dogs are mirrors into the owner's very soul. Every behavior you see is intimately linked to every interaction the owners have with the dogs. Dogs are rarely the problem.