Charlie has just spent the afternoon fishing with someone who brought their working gun dog pup who is about 8 months old. Charlie has come home saying he can't believe how well behaved she is, saying all he had to do was say sit (in a very growly aggressive way) and she'd sit and wait until he released her etc. Charlie then said that the one time she went to move without being told to he said no (again very low and sharply) and then took a step toward her in a dominant and threatening way and she sat. Charlie thinks it is amazing how she is so good etc and so much better than murphy, and thinks we should be more strict with him. I kept pointing out that we train murphy positively and as he is not working we don't need him to be quite so perfect (if you see what I mean). I keep saying how this bloke is using negative techniques and how it is much better to use positive, but Charlie says "he's trained 3 dogs before and so he knows what he's doing". I'm a bit annoyed!
Re: Husband thinks we should be more strict... Sounds like a horrible man, I wouldn't want to be influenced by how he is treating his puppy.
Re: Husband thinks we should be more strict... Totally wrong , you want a dog to obey because it wants to and not because its afraid not to , poor pup
Re: Husband thinks we should be more strict... How awful, tell Charlie not to be impressed by this owner as he is very negative and his puppy lives in fear :'( Look at how well Murphy has turned out due to your positive methods and keep going as you are with your boy who is happy to do as you ask most of the time xx
Re: Husband thinks we should be more strict... Get him to read this thread and article and ask him how he wants his dog to feel..... http://www.thelabradorforum.com/index.php?topic=9622.msg139012#msg139012 Hang in there it's worth doing it the positive way
Re: Husband thinks we should be more strict... Training in a positive way takes more time, more effort, and more patience. I also thinks it takes more skill. I think for novices, it can be hard to stop dogs self rewarding so great results can sometimes be hard to come by and require a lot of work. But, when I see my dog wagging his tail the whole way through training ( even though he is not supposed to when he is sat on his placeboard ), and watch his eager, happy and far from perfect performance, free from any fear of trying new things or doing the wrong thing....well, I wouldn't give that up for all the perfect sit/stays in the world.
Re: Husband thinks we should be more strict... [quote author=JulieT link=topic=9657.msg139530#msg139530 date=1422212259] Training in a positive way takes more time, more effort, and more patience. I also thinks it takes more skill. I think for novices, it can be hard to stop dogs self rewarding so great results can sometimes be hard to come by and require a lot of work. But, when I see my dog wagging his tail the whole way through training ( even though he is not supposed to when he is sat on his placeboard ), and watch his eager, happy and far from perfect performance, free from any fear of trying new things or doing the wrong thing....well, I wouldn't give that up for all the perfect sit/stays in the world. [/quote] Seconded (and said so much better than I could)
Re: Husband thinks we should be more strict... That dog might've sat and stayed sitting but with apprehension. Not nice. Incredibly high standards of obedience can be achieved with positive training. Your husband should come to my dog club and check out the dogs who have achieved championship titles in Obedience, Agility, Flyball, Tracking, Rally-O, Dances With Dogs - all with positive training. Their work is joyful and impressive. You need positive training to achieve an expressive, motivated and enthusiastic performance. The precision comes with time and good training. The best thing your husband could do is do some reading or learning himself to find out how to become a more effective trainer, using positive methods.
Re: Husband thinks we should be more strict... Tbh he doesnt do any training at all, its me who goes to the puppy classes and takes Murphy to agility and reads everything on here and on the site. I think he just doesnt understand it all. But i hope iv not made him sound horrible! He adores m and m, i think he says these things without really thinking about them, because if i said fine take murphy to a trainer who uses these negative techniques I am positive he would feel uncomfortable and wouldnt be able to do any of them!
Re: Husband thinks we should be more strict... Don't worry we've all had to work it out just like your OH. I'm glad I found the Gundog Club and from there this forum and lovely group of people otherwise I might never have learnt the difference between the different approaches to training
Re: Husband thinks we should be more strict... No no, he doesn't sound at all horrible Sorry if I was a bit harsh in my reply When you see another dog that is behaving in a way you'd like your dog to it is tempting to think that you should do it the way they are doing. But, as you know, there are downsides. You just keep doing what you are doing, Frankie. You are doing a good job.
Re: Husband thinks we should be more strict... I had much the same problem with my husband, Frankie. He is in his 70's, he'd go down the pub and mix with all the old countrymen and they did use harsher methods in the past. I stuck to my guns (probably not the best analogy) and he seems quite pleased with the results. There have been times that I have been tempted, the air horns for jumping up etc, but I have a happy, stable dog unworried by loud sudden noises and I wouldn't want to risk messing with that.
Re: Husband thinks we should be more strict... First male response! I like to think my approach to training is balanced in that I am both kind and firm. I use the reward system but I am firm where necessary and like to think I have a happy, well trained dog who is an important member of my family. After all dog training is not rocket science and one does not need a PhD in dog pyschology to realise that ill-treating a dog (pulling ears/electric shocks) is both cruel and counter productive. I'll get my coat! Roger
Re: Husband thinks we should be more strict... I think it is important not to confuse positive with permissive. This is true, and there is plenty of evidence for it. But still many people do confuse the positive training approach with a permissive one. And although proofing without force or intimidation can take longer, there are many aspects of force free training which are faster, establishing new behaviours for example.
Re: Husband thinks we should be more strict... I think that, for experienced trainers, force free training might not be slower than traditional training. I think for novices, it's slower. One of the reasons is that the techniques take longer to learn but the other reason is novices make errors, and correcting mistakes using force free training does take longer. For example, it is much, much faster to stop a dog pulling on a lead, or chasing stuff, using punishment. My dog has rubbish impulse control, really rubbish - I should have done much more work on it when he was young. I went to a traditional trainer who told me we could have it sorted in no time if I would follow her methods which was to punish my dog (she was a very good trainer, with fantastic dogs and I believed her). Then I went to a force free trainer who told me I could expect to spend twice as long putting it right as the time the behaviour has persisted. I still decided force free was the way to go. But if I hadn't had a force free trainer that was up front with how long it was going to take, I'd have quit in frustration. The clicker retrieve is another example. For experienced trainers, it's the answer to all delivery problems. It is for novices too if a click and treat is all that's needed to put things right. For entrenched delivery problems, that requires you to do the clicker retrieve step by step perfectly, I've needed a lot of tuition and guidance, as have most of the class of ten people doing it at the same time. We were told it would take between 3 months and a year, and I'm on track for it taking about six months, I reckon. Even if force free training takes longer, it's still the best way to train. Even if I knew I'd get better performance using punishment, I still wouldn't use it. Even if my dog's sit/stays will never be fantastic, I've still got a better dog - happy, confident and free from fear - than if I trained another way.
Re: Husband thinks we should be more strict... [quote author=JulieT link=topic=9657.msg139675#msg139675 date=1422283142] Even if force free training takes longer, it's still the best way to train. Even if I knew I'd get better performance using punishment, I still wouldn't use it. Even if my dog's sit/stays will never be fantastic, I've still got a better dog - happy, confident and free from fear - than if I trained another way. [/quote] Totally,totally agree,I am all over the place at times,messing things up...the times I was told to get Dexter on a choke chain or slip lead when he couldn't even walk 3 steps to heel and that would 'fix' him.Having been shown by a Gundog trainer how to get a ' stubborn' dog to walk to heel on a slip lead I was almost physically sick...I just couldn't have treated Dexter that way....he's happy,buoyant and energetic. I'm miles off being as positive as I would like but I really try and doing the best I can helps him to trust me ,I hope ??? ....so when I say 'ah ah ' 'no' and the odd 'Oi' leaves my mouth...(I wish it didn't :-[) Dexter trusts me and just accepts them as a sign to pay closer attention ,rather than taking it to heart .....I could easily upset a more sensitive dog :'( ..... Frankie ....Chris and I had so many rucks when we first got Dexter....he knew nothing about dogs and I didn't know much more ,he used to come home with all kinds of golden nuggets of training advice .....but thankfully I'd found this wonderful site and it helped us not go over to the 'dark side'.....it's annoying though when you are plugging away doing your best and the non training person in the household decides to give you 'tips' and advice ...grrrrrrrrrh!x
Re: Husband thinks we should be more strict... [quote author=Dexter link=topic=9657.msg139714#msg139714 date=1422290950] .....it's annoying though when you are plugging away doing your best and the non training person in the household decides to give you 'tips' and advice ...grrrrrrrrrh!x [/quote] ... and when your puppy gets hold of an old banana skin on a walk and your partner keeps saying "leave it - leave it - leave it - leave it" in a gruff voice. I just called him over to me, put my hand on it and said, "leave it!" in a chirpy voice and he dropped it immediately. #smallvictories
Re: Husband thinks we should be more strict... Aaarrrggghhhh Charlie just spent the day with that bloke again, and he saw the way he was training his dog, and Charlie actually said 'I could never do that myself'. But then says how well trained she is. I said it doesn't make it right and then my sis and her boyfriend were saying "but that is the way proper gundog trainers train' and I said it's the old school way, and they were saying that everyone does it and it works blah blah blah. God they piss me off! And iv been in Yorkshire helping my step dad, and my sis said she would look after the dogs all day whilst Charlie my oh went fishing. And iv just got back and she's been moaning that Maisie has been having accidents (she's 10 weeks old!) and has been playing in the water bowl and getting water everywhere. And theyv all been saying that coz we don't do that "proper" gundog training we have bad behaved dogs! Murphy isn't bad behaved at all, the only thing he does that is rather he didn't is pull on the lead but his recall is amazing, he plays really well, he sits and stays when asked etc. he just gets excited sometims when he's around new people but then he's only 20 months! Grrr sorry for the rant!
Re: Husband thinks we should be more strict... There are several field trial champions now that are trained using positive reinforcement and many more competing. So you can tell your sister she's mistaken
