SCIENCE-BASED DOG TRAINING (WITH FEELING)

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The development of off-leash, puppy/adolescent, socialisation and training classes caused a paradigm shift in dog training away from the on-leash, physical restraint/prompt/punish methods of competition/working training to whelp an entirely new field of Pet Dog Training.  However, after nearly 30 years, pet dog training is in dire need of re-invention.  Off-leash, science-based techniques were unparalleled for 20 years or so but over the past decade, pet dog training has gone downhill.

Certainly, the fun factor and dog-friendliness of pet dog training has increased over the years, but criteria and standards have dropped dramatically.  Many owners become frustrated with lack of success and so seek help elsewhere - often adopting aversive techniques, thinking (erroneously) that physical domination and pain will be more effective.  In reality, science-based training is effective regardless of the choice of training tool.  However, few owners are being taught reliable verbal off-leash control without the continued need of training tools.  Whereas it is easy for dog owners to find classes that teach beginning lure/reward and beginning clicker training, seldom are they taught how to completely phase out training tools such as lures, clickers, food rewards, collars and leashes.  Hence, lures become bribes and compliance often becomes contingent on the owner having good lures and rewards, or the ability to physically restrain or punish.

Initial training appears to go well but then surprisingly quickly, without reliable off-leash control, everything falls apart during adolescence.  Seemingly insignificant behaviour problems of puppyhood become major reasons for surrender or abandonment.  Adolescent dogs become inattentive, distracted, anxious, fearful and maybe aggressive to other dogs and people, causing on-leash manners and off-leash reliability to take a precipitous nosedive.  Consequently, walks and romps in the park become less frequent, which impacts enormously on the dog's quality of life.

All of these developmental problems are utterly predictable and quite easily preventable.  Successful pet dog training is all about extremely early socialisation and training, ongoing socialisation and training and establishing off-leash reliability in order to adequately prepare puppies to successfully navigate adolescence.  It's all about adolescence, (hence my two Adolescent Dog seminars scheduled for Orlando and San Francisco).

As I see it there are four huge areas of concern that need to be addressed and resolved before science-based dog training reaches "tipping point" and is universally and permanently acknowledged, accepted and practiced by dog owners and trainers.  These issues will be the focus of my seminar series this year and next.=

1

The incredible opportunities of puppyhood are still largely wasted.  Prevention is easier (and much quicker) than cure but we are still not preventing the major reasons for surrendering dogs to shelters, namely:- house-soiling problems, destructive chewing, excessive barking and separation anxiety.  Moreover, socialisation is pitifully and scarily inadequate.  We are not even coming close to preparing puppies for adolescence and successfully preventing fearfulness and aggression.

2

Temporary training tools have become permanent management tools.  Few owners progress beyond the initial stages of science-based training and fail to phase out lures and prompts or clicks and food rewards.  Few owners achieve reliable off-leash verbal control without the continued need of training aids and especially for times when the dog is at a distance or distracted.  Thus few owners learn how to control their dog when off-leash at home, on walks or in the park.=

3

Computer-generated learning theory has many severe constraints when applied in dog training.  Schedules of reinforcement and punishment need to be completely re-evaluated in terms of effectiveness and expediency in pet dog training.  Consequences are binary - from the dog's perspective, either things get better, or they get worse, yet far too many owners and trainers focus on how things got better or worse in terms of choice of training tool (praise, food, toys, reprimands, jerks, shocks, etc), or psychological principle (positive/negative reinforcement/punishment).  Additionally, far too many trainers practice only half of binary feedback (reward-only or punishment-only).  Teaching owners how to stop undesired behaviour is essential, otherwise they will resort to aversive techniques.  Undesired behaviour may be effectively inhibited and eliminated without the use of aversive punishment.

4

Dog training is in danger of losing its soul.  Far too many trainers have adopted impersonal, quantum consequences (clicks, treats, jerks and shocks) in lieu of verbal feedback.  Trainers have become technicians, which although beneficial for refining timing or learning how to set criteria, lacks feeling when teaching people to develop relationships with their dogs.  Just because computers had to dispense quantum kibble and shocks as consequential feedback does not mean that we cannot talk to our dogs.  Moreover, by using instructive and analogue verbal feedback, people may transcend the training abilities of any computer.  Well-timed quantum feedback only provides information vis a vis the desirability of specific behaviours, whereas a single word may provide the dog with several pieces of information: whether the behaviour is desirable or not, the degree of desirability or potential danger of the behaviour, plus specific instruction for how the dog may immediately correct undesirable behaviour=

Friday, 2 July 9.30am - 5.00pm

Predict and Prevent Adolescent/Adult Problems

Many dog owners and professionals continue to neglect far too many absolutely basic aspects of husbandry and training.  In particular, we are not even close to fully capitalising on the opportunities of early puppyhood, yet we are still surprised when dogs develop utterly predictable and preventable behaviour, temperament and training problems during adolescence.  We have to 'predict and prevent' puppy/adolescent problems.  Prevention is quick and easy but treatment can be difficult, time-consuming and sometimes dangerous and, of course, sheltering and re-homing is extremely expensive and sad.

A long-term and short-term confinement schedule effectively prevents the development of expected and common puppy house-soiling, destructive chewing, excessive barking, separation anxiety, plus specific obsessive/compulsive/neurotic tendencies.  Similarly, socialisation and classical conditioning prevent development of the predictable fears and lack of confidence of adolescence that are characteristically expressed as dog-dog and dog-human aggression.  However, we are simply not doing one tenth of the training, one hundredth of the socialisation or one thousandth of the classical conditioning required to provide puppies with the manners, confidence and social savvy  to successfully navigate adolescence.

Few people even think of classically conditioning a sociable and confident puppy, even though behaviour and temperament are in continual and predictable flux and adolescent/adult fears and aggression are just a couple of months away.  Socialisation is a four-step process and the puppy must be maximally socialised at each stage before entering subsequent stages: 1. Birth to 8 weeks in original home.  2.  8 to 12 weeks in new home.  3. 12 to 18 weeks in puppy class.  4. During adolescence in the world at large.

Saturday, 3 July 9.30am- 5.00pm

Quick & Easy, Reliable, Off-Leash Verbal Control

The ultimate goal of teaching basic manners and obedience is verbal, off-leash reliability, including times when dogs are at a distance or distracted and especially without the continued need of any training aid.  Additionally, the training techniques should be quick and easy and entirely suitable for pet dog owners.  Time and trials to criterion is always of the essence in pet dog training.  Many owners embrace beginning lure/reward and clicker training but few achieve the criterion of off-leash verbal control without the need of a food pouch. Instead, they continue to use lures (which soon become bribes)  so response reliability becomes contingent on the owner having food in their hand.  Eventually and predictably though, the dog blows off all lures in adolescence.  Thinking that behaviour is antecedent-driven, owners pursue a futile Sisyphean quest of upping-the-level of the lure and eventually, everyone smells of dried fish.  Other owners learn how to successfully drive behaviour using training rewards but few succeed in weaning their dogs off food.  Response-reliability becomes contingent on the owner having food on their person and compliance wanes when the dog is off-leash at home and in the park.  Owners become discouraged and frustrated and often resort to punishment that increases in frequency and severity.

Owners desperately need to learn:-

• How to successfully achieve realistic, progressive criteria to establish off-leash verbal control without the continued need for training aids.
• How to teach dogs the meaning of our instructions - human words for doggy behaviours and actions, so that the dog understands what we want him to do.  The 1-2-3-4 of lure/reward training is by far the quickest way to teach dogs ESL (English as a Second Language): 1.Request  2.Lure  3.Response  4.Reward
• How to train both puppies and adult dogs off-leash from the outset, in order to prevent physical prompts and physical restraint from becoming difficult-to-phase-out crutches.  Physical prompts and restraints are much more difficult to phase out than non-contact lures and rewards.
•  How to introduce training aids, including food and toy lures and rewards, collars of all types, leashes, halters and harnesses, so that they are easy to phase out.
• How to phase out food and toy lures and replace them with hand signals (motion lures) within the very first training session.
• How to phase out hand signals and other motion lures and replace them with verbal commands.
• How to teach dogs to want to do what we want him to do by phasing out all training rewards (especially kibble, toys, clicks and treats) and replace them with positively huge, Premackian Life Rewards and thus, create a dog that is internally-motivated and self-reinforced, so that, for the dog, 'just doing it' is more than sufficient reward.
• How to objectively quantify response-reliability via a Test-Train-Test sequence to provide continued proof of success and speed of training in order to motivate otherwise frustrated and overwhelmed owners.
• How to enforce absolute compliance (when occasionally required) without physical force, fear or pain.  Verbal control must be independent of tone and volume, otherwise the dog will likely baulk the very first time an emergency command is shouted.

Sunday, 4 July 9.30am - 5.00pm

Science-Based Dog Training with Feeling

Dog training is in danger of losing its soul.  So many trainers are forgetting to talk to their dogs and provide continued verbal instruction and feedback.  With the exception of lure/reward training (and much less effective physical prompting), effective instruction is minimal and feedback primarily consists of quantum rewards (clicks and treats) and/or (but much too often, or), quantum punishments (leash-jerks and shocks).  Additionally, theoretical discussion (and argument) often takes precedence over actually training dogs to criterion.

Please don't panic, I am not being heretical.  Our little book of learning theory is valid; several hundreds of thousands of laboratory experiments cannot be wrong.  Existing learning theory is absolutely valid for when computers use non-instructive, quantum feedback (kibble and shocks) to train rats and pigeons in laboratories.  However, I think we should question whether people should even try to emulate computer-generated learning theory and methods when training dogs.  First, we cannot, and second, surely we can do better.  Much better, in fact.  Yup!  Our creedal learning theory is in dire need of evaluation, deconstruction and reconstruction for practical application in pet dog training.

People are not computers.  People have neither the computing power nor the consistency to calculate and administer reinforcement schedules, or to punish immediately on each and every occurrence following undesired behaviour.  Hence, many laboratory schedules of reinforcement and punishment simply do not work that well when applied to train animals (and people).  Both speed of training and response-reliability suffer.  But it doesn't have to.  We are cognitively smarter than computers, (didn't we build computers?) and so, we can devise practical reinforcement schedules that are even more efficient and effective and we can make occasional (non-aversive) punishment work extremely effectively.=

But why did we come to rely so much on non-instructive quantum feedback (clicks, treats, jerks and shocks)?

Of course, computers had to because they couldn't talk to , cuddle or stroke their trainees.  But just because computers had to use kibble and shocks does not mean we have to follow suit.  There is such a thing as advancement in science.  I mean, we now go to the moon via rocket; we don't walk, bicycle or go on horseback.  Whereas computers are brilliant at objective quantification and consistent immediate feedback, computers still lack the heart, mind and soul for complex qualitative assessment and instructive analogue feedback.  We, though, have an eye for quality, panache and pizzazz.  And we have language.  We may teach dogs the meaning of words to instruct them what to do and instructively reprimand them when they err.  Moreover, we have emotions and feelings and so our verbal feedback is analogue.  Not only can we inform a dog whether he gets it right or wrong but we can effectively communicate how well he did or the relative danger of his failure to comply.  By using our voice in training we may transcend the training ability of any computer.

Technical training is precise and wonderful (in a laboratory) ... but it is sterile.  "Give them a scalpel and they would dissect a kiss."  For me, training a dog is all about establishing a relationship based on clear communication, representative feedback and feeling - The Tango of Training - enjoying learning doing something together.

From the trainee's viewpoint, feedback is binary; consequences of actions cause things to get better, or worse.  Even so, far too many trainers have become sectarian fundamentalists, only accepting, believing and practicing one half of our little book of learning theory - either quantum rewards only, or quantum punishments only.  Many owners and trainers believe that punishment is always aversive and because understandably, they don't want to frighten or hurt dogs, opt to use only reward-based techniques - positive reinforcement and negative punishment.  Other trainers believe that punishment has to be aversive in order to be effective and so, only use aversive stimuli for positive punishment and for negative reinforcement.  In actual fact, punishment by people need not be aversive to be effective.  Therefore, in pet dog training, punishment should not be aversive.=

So many people have blithely dictated, "punishment is an aversive stimulus", that we have come to believe that it is true.  Punishment has become synonymous with pain and retribution.  However, nowhere in the annals of learning-theory does it state that punishment must be aversive, it's just that computer-generated punishments were always shocking.  Surely though, we are not going to adopt schedules of computer-generated shock as our model for education?  Learning theory defines punishment as: A stimulus that decreases the frequency of the immediately preceding behaviour such that it is less likely to occur in the future.

Don't think about beating a dog, a horse or a child.  Instead, think about softly spoken instruction to correct mistakes when teaching a child to read, or when learning how to cook, play tennis, golf, ski or dance.  Think about educating children and employees.  You don't just zap them for not doing it your way.  Instead you clearly instruct them how you would like it to be done and then instruct them as to how they did (via calm binary, verbal feedback).

Now, there are some people that might want to argue forever that softly-spoken, instructive reprimands are not punishment and that they are interrupters, DROs, DRIs, repeated commands, or mindless nagging.  As they argue, I just get along with successfully using a binary feedback of praise and instructive reprimands to teach off-leash reliability and so, my dogs are obedient indoors and get to enjoy off-leash romps on trails and in parks.=