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Thank you!!! I will start doing more of this Impulse control. I didn't know that I was doing some of it or why I was doing it. I see how important it is now. Thank you and I did not mean to high jack this thread!

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10 hours ago, NW_MONTANA_BC said:

Thank you!!! I will start doing more of this Impulse control. I didn't know that I was doing some of it or why I was doing it. I see how important it is now. Thank you and I did not mean to high jack this thread!

I don’t think you hijacked the thread at all. I think clarification of “impulse control” can be helpful in situations like the ones described in the original post.

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@Journey The idea that dogs are turned into shelters because of R+/force free training is a myth. It stems from the fact that dog training is an unregulated business. There is no education required to be a dog trainer. So naturally, on both the "balanced" side and the R+ side you will find uneducated people who haven't a clue what they're doing giving people bad advice. I can find you hundreds of examples of incompetent  balanced trainers who have majorly screwed up dogs. And you would say that's not a fair representation of balanced training. Just the same, I will say that if a dog is screwed up by R+ training, the trainer is incompetent, and therefore that is not a fair example of R+ training. 

Because others have said it before me and said it better, I like to offer reading material. I know full well that 99% of the time people won't bother with it, but I like to offer it anyway in case someone is interested in learning more. 

https://eileenanddogs.com/2015/05/05/myths-about-positive-reinforcement-based-training/

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22 hours ago, Journey said:

Food for thought since these boards are slanted to positive only for some reason...

 

https://www.growingupguidepup.org/2016/06/07/the-punishment-of-positive-only/

No food for thought here.

It is very clear from what the author says that she knows nothing about how positive reinforcement training, or working with a clicker, works. Nor does she understand how it is done. She makes several fallacious statements in this article of hers, revealing her ignorance.

It is always so easy to criticize something about which you know nothing.

Very good article, Baderpadordercollie. Thanks.

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And you both are making my point. There has to be balance in training. The OP has an 11 mo., not a puppy, and a behavior that is being self rewarded for him, and painful to the owner. All the desensitization in the world may or may not work, yet the cycle will/can continue. Whereas a good solid correction can stop this pretty quickly. I am all for *teaching* proper behavior, however, when teeth are involved at this age I'm all for stopping it, immediately. Fastest way to a shelter is biting, drawing blood, not behaving. As was said, not many trainers have perfect *timing* how much blood is allowed while trying to desensitize? Common sense, and it sounds like the OP has it, says stop the behavior. Period. It's not fear based, it's lack of mental control.

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6 hours ago, D'Elle said:

It is very clear from what the author says that she knows nothing about how positive reinforcement training, or working with a clicker, works. Nor does she understand how it is done. She makes several fallacious statements in this article of hers, revealing her ignorance.

It is always so easy to criticize something about which you know nothing.

My thoughts exactly. 

If anyone who was interested in the article happens to be sick in bed or has an inclination to spend their weekend reading, there is a whole page full of articles by the same author that go into more depth about different aspects of R+ training which I found one day and could not stop clicking and reading. It's a very interesting subject.

https://eileenanddogs.com/common-misconceptions-positive-reinforcement/

 

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I’ve been following Eileen’s Facebook page for a while now. I like using Facebook for these things, because the article links automatically pop up on my feed.

Patricia McConnell’s page is another good one.

https://www.facebook.com/Eileenanddogs/

https://www.facebook.com/PatriciaMcConnellPhD/

Journey: I agree there has to be balance in training. My dogs are familiar with the phrase, “knock it off”.

 

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I am no expert in psychology of either dogs or humans, but the arguments for and against positive reinforcement training are uncannily similar to the discussions, articles and forum debates with regards to parenting. The extreme ends of parenting were those who believed physical punishment (such as a smack) were absolutely necessary for teaching a child self control (consequences) versus those who felt any kind of admonishment would be detrimental and praised lavishly for every little desired behaviour in a smiley singsong voice ("Good Girl! You are playing with that toy so nicely"). Most parents, like dog owners, fall somewhere in the middle, but parenting discussions always got heated.

I'm in the camp of setting them up for success, using avoidance and distractions where necessary and rewarding well when they get it right. However, some people are not able to keep distracting and smiling forever when their patience is being pushed to the limit (or when they are getting hurt). Especially if they are a non-professional (parent/pet owner) with an emotional component. Expressing displeasure earlier on might prevent it building up until they lose their rag and over-react. In my case expressing displeasure would mean a verbal reprimand and removal of child/dog from whatever they are doing (eg sending them to their room or crate). I don't think of it so much as punishment, more as keeping everybody safe and giving myself chance to think how best to approach this behaviour. Often after a little think I realise that the behaviour has a reason (tiredness, boredom, anxiety, ignorance) and can then make a more effective plan for next time (more naps, more toys/activities, desensitising, educating).

I have noticed with my dog that when I train a behaviour I want, it takes a few goes before the dog understands the connection between what I am asking and why he is getting the reward. If we use a negative re-enforcer then it will surely still need a few attempts before the dog makes the connection between the thing it was doing (grabbing and biting) and the thing you are doing (shouting/grabbing its neck/stuffing it into the crate etc). If it doesn't make the connection then it won't learn. This is where for me the positive reinforcement training comes in. Rather than doing the thing that makes the dog misbehave so I can punish him, I encourage him to offer a different behaviour instead and reward him for it. This has worked really well for us and our little wheelie bin problem. Now we (me and the puppy) take the wheelie bin for a little walk every day without lunging and biting at it :) 

Editing to add: I've just read it back and it sounds really preachy, it isn't meant to and I'm certainly not trying to tell anyone how to train their dog as I realise most people on these boards are way more experienced than me. I was just musing out loud about the things I'm discovering. I'll delete it if people find it offensive.

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Jami74, I absolutely agree that when the person starts to get really frustrated, put the dog away, think about it, and try again later. When I get frustrated, that's when I make mistskes, plus I'm not thinking clearly so I'm not going to accomplish anything. Sometimes I just have to say, okay, we're done for now. 

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8 hours ago, jami74 said:

In my case expressing displeasure would mean a verbal reprimand and removal of child/dog from whatever they are doing (eg sending them to their room or crate). I don't think of it so much as punishment, more as keeping everybody safe and giving myself chance to think how best to approach this behaviour. Often after a little think I realise that the behaviour has a reason (tiredness, boredom, anxiety, ignorance) and can then make a more effective plan for next time (more naps, more toys/activities, desensitising, educating).

Yes, this. This is especially important if the behavior is fear/anxiety based. No amount of "knock it off" was going to solve my problem with Hannah's fence rushing/barking, because, "but there's a danger on the other side of the fence!" was where my dog's head was at.

As far as the OP's issues go, I don't want Denice's insight to get lost in the R+/P+ discussion. I think she might be on to something re: her question, "is the dog responding to movement"?  It is possible that the dog's reaction to an attempt to take food away has a different motivation (guarding) than his reaction to the act of dusting or mopping up spills (becoming overstimulated by movement).  I do think it helps to try to figure out the reason for a behavior. 

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21 hours ago, Journey said:

And you both are making my point. There has to be balance in training. The OP has an 11 mo., not a puppy, and a behavior that is being self rewarded for him, and painful to the owner. All the desensitization in the world may or may not work, yet the cycle will/can continue. Whereas a good solid correction can stop this pretty quickly. I am all for *teaching* proper behavior, however, when teeth are involved at this age I'm all for stopping it, immediately. Fastest way to a shelter is biting, drawing blood, not behaving. As was said, not many trainers have perfect *timing* how much blood is allowed while trying to desensitize? Common sense, and it sounds like the OP has it, says stop the behavior. Period. It's not fear based, it's lack of mental control.

This. Not every behavior modification responds well to the "positive only" approach. Some even " not at all". If the behavior is so self rewarding that there is no other reward that can top it then you have a real problem on your hands if you are not prepared to correct said behavior. Even Karen Prior herself admits readily she could not, using her positive only methods keep her terriers from hunting local wildlife ( fun fact, she uses an invisible fence to manage that. Automated corrections, and in this case pretty painful ones are apparently  a-okay in her book...).

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@Smalahundur I can give you all the information in the world about how and why this type of training works and why using physical corrections and intimidation are harmful to dogs, but it would be a waste of my time as you clearly are not open to learning. Everything you could ever want to know is out there for all to read, I'm not going to spoon feed it to you, nor will I be baited into an argument. 

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@Smalahundur, this is for you because I know you are a shepherd who trains his own dogs.

The first day I made it out of the round pen and into a bigger field with my dog, I knew the baby steps were to ease me out of the pen with knee-knocker sheep.  My dog, a seven year old who came to me pre-packaged off-the-shelf trained, knew her way around a flock. I was (and still am) the newbie.

Most of the flock was huddled in the shed, with some stragglers standing along the fence line. My trainer told me to send my dog to fetch the sheep.

When Jan got between the fence-line and sheep to gather the stragglers, met them up with the ones from the shed, and brought them to me, my heart was bursting. This is routine for sheep farmers, but I am in awe of these dogs.

And I had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Anyone could have sent my dog.  Someone else put in the training, and incidentally, made her a delight to live with in the process.

I seriously doubt there is anything I could teach you about training dogs.

Respect!

Sorry to hijack the thread.

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I would like to comment with an example.

this discussion reminds me of a training session I followed with a Border Collie that was perfectly trained outside of the round pen. 

once the dog got inside the pen, he revealed to be a gripper and a bad one. the poor sheep was covered in blood and trying to reason with the dog in these circumstances does not work very well. also you have nothing to offer to the dog that would be more valuable than what he wants (the sheep). you have to correct the dog and strongly if necessary. so in this case for example I believe positive reinforcement will not work, and if I am wrong I would be interest to learn and have a demonstration of a positive training approach.

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I'll be the first to agree (and argues, as I have many time to the rescue folks I volunteer with) that there's no perfectly R+ way to train a working sheepdog. My first working dog was one of those dogs with a dirty grip; there were sheep to consider as well as the dog in this situation.

However, the OP of this thread isn't talking about an issue encountered while training his dog on livestock, so I don't really see how taking the rabbit hole down the tangent of dogs gripping sheep is relevant . . .

 

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15 minutes ago, GentleLake said:

I'll be the first to agree (and argues, as I have many time to the rescue folks I volunteer with) that there's no perfectly R+ way to train a working sheepdog. My first working dog was one of those dogs with a dirty grip; there were sheep to consider as well as the dog in this situation.

However, the OP of this thread isn't talking about an issue encountered while training his dog on livestock, so I don't really see how taking the rabbit hole down the tangent of dogs gripping sheep is relevant . . .

 

to me a dog that put his/her mouth on me and hurt me is as unacceptable as a dog that grip a sheep badly. my dog will get a correction for hurting me.

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I'm not arguing that the dog in the OP may not need a correction, or that given the circumstances I wouldn't correct that dog in that situation.

But the thread has strayed beyond the OP's specific situation, and even for this situation I'd be trying to retrain with as much positivity as possible and the least punishment necessary. Beginning by avoiding the triggers and then training alternate behaviors using positive reinforcement could go a long way towards bringing the dog's behavior to acceptable levels without damaging the relationship between them.

It's not exactly like a working situation where the reward of getting back to the sheep is immediate and is so reinforcing that it overshadows the correction. In this case, once the correction's given any other interaction between the dog and owner is likely to cease. The dog still needs to learn appropriate responses to the stimuli and that void would best be replaced by a positive approach to learning more acceptable behaviors.

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