That's it - exactly. A dog that is under control is calm and relaxed - and able to calmly enjoy a super tasty treat if offered. A dog that is "on his toes", hovering and dancing, unable to eat, and completely focussed on the prospect of a retrieve (and able to follow cues that get him closer to it) is not the same thing at all.
Harley has never really taken treats when out of the house from when she was a few months old. We used to go out with treats, but no matter what training we are doing, she will rarely take treats. She is much more motivated by her ball - not it being thrown or hid.....just carrying it. When we get to our off lead place, she will sit, have her lead off and wait for me to release her. She will then hover or bounce for her ball. I drop it on the floor and she then carries it. If I have a ball in my hand, she will follow any instructions I give. I'm managed to walk 25 foot away from her today (she was in a sit, stay). She never moved a bit. When I called her to me, I threw her ball directly to her which she caught then carried until I gave the sign that more training was going to happen. If I try this with food she isn't interested. We saw an on lead dog come around a corner today and Harley was t close enough to get her lead on.......instead I blew the whistle to stop, called for her to sit and wait, held her ball so she could see it, then I walked in the opposite direction to the other dog and owner. (Dog was pulling to try and get to see Harley). Harley ignored all distractions, waited til I called her to me, then I threw the ball to her to carry for a bit. She has pushed my hand away with food in on several occasions. Harley isn't scared or too aroused to take food as she can carry out quite complex instructions and is relaxed (not hopping about/hovering). Some dogs just don't respond to food/treats when training.
I think you might be talking about a slightly different scenario, Naya - it sounds like you have a dog who has never learned to work for food outside perhaps? Pippa describes this in her cross over training with her dog Meg (myth 4 I used to amuse myself showing friends who used food, what happened when you gave a treat to my cocker Meg outdoors. She would very politely take the treat from my hand and then let it roll gently from her mouth on to the ground. She was not capable of swallowing food when there was hunting to be had. This, I proudly claimed, proved that she could not be trained using food. http://totallygundogs.com/6-myths-an...ndog-training/
I think Ternaya is right. Charlie had to be trained to take food outside but sometimes he just won't no matter what it is. He will sometimes take it and immediately drop it and he's not hopping around waiting for a retrieve either and he is under control on lead or mooching around when he mooches. I think some dogs are just not food orientated and it could be as simple as that. Hattie on the other hand is a total foody and would dance on one leg for a piece of kibble
I think it's important to remember how much context influences dogs. If dogs are unused to be rewarded with food outside for certain behaviours and are expecting one of their other rewards such as a ball or a retrieve they definitely refuse food. If you read the whole section from the article above: Hunting dogs can’t be trained using food This was one that I personally subscribed to. The idea that when a hard hunting dog is faced with the prospect of an opportunity to hunt, it isn’t capable of responding to food. I used to amuse myself showing friends who used food, what happened when you gave a treat to my cocker Meg outdoors. She would very politely take the treat from my hand and then let it roll gently from her mouth on to the ground. She was not capable of swallowing food when there was hunting to be had. This, I proudly claimed, proved that she could not be trained using food. But of course I had missed the point entirely. You don’t introduce a new concept (such as food as a reward) to a dog in a highly distracting environment where she is expecting opportunities to hunt or retrieve. Both of which are of much higher value than food to a working spaniel. You introduce new concepts in a low distraction environment first. Dogs need to learn how to work for food. And in any case, as explained above, food rewards are often not relevant in the field. At eleven years old, Meg now receives food rewards alongside my other dogs and happily eats them. Including for the retrieve and despite not having been clicker trained to retrieve. If I want to, I can feed her treats in the middle of a driven day with birds falling around her, and she not only takes the treat but swallows it. You can see that it was more habit and context that prevented the reward of behaviours by food. I see something similar in Riley with whom I did much less training with food in highly distracting environments plus there are certain places he only gets walked and not worked. When there's sniffing to be done that is so distracting that standard food just won't cut it and even special food will only get you tiny bursts of behaviour. Context and habit are forever playing merry hell with my expectations!!
The dog always decides what's rewarding but they may need careful introduction to some things in order to realise how valuable they may find it. That said if you have a reward that works and your dog is able to respond to cues then you don't have an over threshold dog. No cues, no reward acceptance then you might have a problem. This is particularly true when non-food rewards such as balls have become so high value that the dog is fixated on them to the exclusion of all else. The same would be true if the dog was fixated on a piece of cheese in my hand.
I do see that and we very carefully trained accepting rewards with hand feeding all Charlie's daily food rations indoors, into the yard and the garden but he is not as keen on a walk even if it's juicy chicken. He doesn't retrieve despite my clicker training a very good delivery of a dummy to hand, introducing different toys, building up the desire so what do you do in that situation? It's difficult isn't it? All well and dandy if you have a dog that is keen on food and toys/balls/whatever but bloomin' hard if they don't Anyway I'm not going to tie myself up in knots over this, Charlie is what he is and I see a lot worse.
This really isn't about how good or bad a dog is - the interesting thing (if you are interested in this kind of thing) is understanding how arousal impacts on your dog, and by understanding that use that knowledge to be more effective or get better results in training. I wonder if it would be helpful to do a quick recap of the original proposition and points made - for danger we all end up talking about different things. So, the suggestions so far were: The concept of a threshold is better thought of as a scale of arousal - at the top of the scale is a dog clearly unable to do anything, follow cues and so on. At the bottom of the scale is a dog so laid back it's horizontal and asleep. Most of us will train our dogs in a hopefully useful part of the scale where they are not asleep, but are not too over excited to learn (which may come way before the very top of the scale). One point put forward is that a refusal of food indicates that your dog may be progressing up that excitement scale to an unhelpful place. I'll make some additional suggestions: There are a range of other signs which your dog might show or you might notice are out of place. Panting, rapid heart rate, getting fixated on things, deterioration in ability to follow cues, noise (if your dog does that), snatching treats (when he would normally take them gently) and so on. I'd say the inability to eat is potentially the most useful indicator. But where the inability to eat comes on the scale no doubt varies from dog to dog. With my Charlie it is extremely high on the scale, and indeed I've seen him way over threshold and still able to eat (so it's a less useful indicator than for some other dogs). Then we had a couple of counter points: Some dogs are not interested in food. Well, ok. In which case I'd say if you had that dog in a quiet room and it refused a treat just because it is uninterested in food, then if you introduced a distraction into that quiet room and it still refused a treat the scenario would tell you nothing about the impact of the distraction on the dog. Some dogs are not interested in food outside. I suggested that was like Pippa's example of Meg, a dog that had not been trained to respond to food outside. If a dog does respond to food outside, and a distraction is introduced, and the dog then refuses to eat I'd say that does tell you something about the impact of the distraction on the dog.
My Pops is a very greedy dog and will do almost anything for a piece of cheese. When we are doing dummy training, I have some pieces of cheese in my pocket, and after a particularly good retrieve, or if she has sat quietly while another dog was sent for a retrieve for instance, she gets a piece. But if I try to give her a piece of cheese before the retrieve has been thrown, she will spit it out. But I don't think she is over the threshold; she is just very very intent on the job in hand. I love a nice glass of wine, and certainly enjoy one as a kind of reward at the end of hard day's work. But if you offered me a glass of wine at the start of the day, I wouldn't take it. Probably not, anyway... It's not what I'm used to, and I don't even like breakfast before about 11:00 - it would feel very wrong. As Barbara said several posts ago, it does depend on context as to what reward a dog will take, and at what time.
Just add, I am lucky where I live that I get to walk with many, many breeds of gun dog both working and pet, I don't see a single treat, ball dummy, whistle etc. apart from my friend that has a ball obsessed Springer They are however under control including the two Clumbers, in fact their owner is always on his phone and his dogs don't leave his side without a single instruction from him and I have witnessed this many times. Therefore I don't quite believe that a dog has to take food or retrieve in order to be 'under control' and neither do their owners. I understand perfectly well when my Charlie is over threshold and continuous training lessons this although very slowly On ocassions David can get Charlie to sit and watch Deer in the distance and I got him past a Pheasant that flew right infront of his face and kept him pretty well low on the threshold scale by rapidly changing direction. Not too bad considering what a hard hunter he is
I had a little epiphany earlier, on the other thing I talked about; how Shadow was what I would have called "over threshold", in that he was bouncing around like a loon, however was very fast to respond to cues. It occurred to me that this happened just before lunch and so part of his excitement, which led to him having a massive hooley with Willow, could have been caused by this, and his willingness to respond to cues was in anticipation of his lunch (which is by far his favourite part of the day). His excitement levels were such that I'm sure he would have been incapable of learning anything new. I've had a couple of sessions since having him where he has exhibited the same sort of excitement levels and I've found it very difficult to teach him new things because he has been really bouncy and thrown every behaviour under the sun at me, rather than focussing on a lure, for example. He would, however, attempt any existing behaviour with gusto. I am now putting two and two together and thinking that these instances could have been when he was more hungry than normal and was doing whatever he could think of to get the treat, whether it was counter-productive or not. I always have my full training sessions before meals because that's what fits best with my schedule. If he was very hungry (in well-fed Labrador terms), then that could very well be the cause of this. Yet another lightbulb moment... So, I guess he could be over-threshold in that he can't focus and learn, yet can still respond to well-known cues in anticipation of an (unseen, unsmelled, as yet unprepared) jackpot. Does that sound about right?
If we all agreed that a threshold isn't a bright line and a dog might refuse food below it, or accept food above it (if conditioned, as I believe my dog has been in part) would that move things on? So: A) Poppy is refusing food when she is looking at a dummy because that's what happens when she looks at a dummy - it just does. Or B) Poppy is too distracted by the dummy to eat the cheese. I'd go with B). And that's useful information for you - you could potentially get better results (not that your results aren't already amazing) if you worked to have Poppy more relaxed when she is waiting for a retrieve such that she could eat a bit of cheese.
I haven't experienced quite that - but Charlie can be in a state where he is clearly unable to learn new things or follow simple cues apart from those that get him closer (in his mind) to the object of his desire....a dummy, normally. In which case he is able to follow those cues.
I wouldn't extend the point to habit and context being an explanation for a dog that had been trained using food though.
Good point. It's not really a problem where dummies are concerned, but the stakes are higher when cold game or (gulp) live game and shot are in the picture. There she really is over the threshold, and I am going to have to do some serious work with it.
In a much more modest way (in that change "live game and shot" to "a dummy launcher" ) that happens to Charlie - when I see the signs he is getting too aroused, if the excitement ups again to the next level - game over, he's gone....
I see quite a few dogs that flick glances to hands or pockets in anticipation of food after certain behaviours. Riley sits at heel and has been heavily food rewarded for doing so. Now I want him to look in front for birds but he keeps looking at me for reward. This may not be what you mean by not extending the point but I think dogs look for the reward they habitually receive for certain behaviours until other rewards start to make a dent. A spaniel that's always rewarded for stopping with a retrieve or to hunt on won't be looking for food.....
I'm not quite sure that I see why that would be the case. I can see why a dog unused to working with food would refuse food completely in a certain environment. I could see why a dog with a very strong pattern - stop, get ball - might be unresponsive to anything else but that pattern. I can't quite see why, a dog that is relaxed, used to taking food in the environment, would suddenly refuse food. Unless it's not relaxed, and over excited by the prospect of the next activity (retrieve or hunt).
