Aidan3

Just "interesting"?? But, but... behavioural ecology! That stuff is for nerds and geeks. I took statistics instead :cool:

Yes! I thought the same thing, I want his library I could have taken animal behaviour as a minor but it was all about biology, native fauna and evolution. Interesting, but not what I was looking for.

http://vet.osu.edu/assets/pdf/hospital/behavior/trainingArticle.pdf "A 30-item survey of previous interventions was included in a behavioral questionnaire distributed to all dog owners making appointments at a referral behavior service over a 1- year period. For each intervention applied, owners were asked to indicate whether there was a positive, negative, or lack of effect on the dog’s behavior, and whether aggressive behavior was seen in association with the method used."

http://www.azs.no/artikler/art_training_methods.pdf "We distributed a questionnaire to 364 dog owners in order to examine the relative effectiveness of different training methods and their effects upon a pet dog's behavior"

The comments are worth a read too.

http://companionanimalsolutions.com/blogs/modern-animal-behavior-a-lot-has-changed-in-the-last-few-decades/

This fallout is sales talking for the positive trainers to give reason why their methods is better. Originally the motivational training getting popular because the dog has more spark in the trial and getting better points from the judge is how it starting then anti correctioning mob got hold of it and sell it for no corrections kind and gentle training. It had nothing to do with no corrections and kind and gentle to begin, its for scoring higher points in obedience routine on the trial. Joe Fallout is not sales talk. It was a term coined by psychologist, Murray Sidman, following on from observations made by just about every behavioural scientist since people started studying behaviour using empirical methods. It would be extreme for a dog to be ruined for life, but fallout is real and occurs readily. Whether it is a problem or not depends on the outcome. Skilled use of corrections is unlikely to cause a problem worth worrying about. Unwanted fallout is things like avoidance of things other than what we wanted the dog to avoid, over-generalisation of the sort of response that the dog thinks will cause a correction, negative emotionality in response to environmental cues, reduced focus, over-excitability, an increase in unwanted behaviour when discriminating stimuli aren't present (e.g dog barks less at the door after punishment, but more in the yard), and at the extreme end, handler avoidance and redirected aggression.

There is no theory without results. That's how theories are made, by repeatedly getting results that either support or do not support a hypothesis based on the theory. Yes, I understand what you are saying. Again, this is an example where the dog is getting reinforcement for doing something other than the behaviour that you cued. You must prevent, correct or train beyond that or the dog will just learn to chase cats. Choice is something we study a lot, it's very useful to understand how animals make choices. Choice comes down to reinforcer strength and reinforcement history. This applies to positive or negative reinforcement. A weak reinforcer (to use your example, food) can cause choice over a stronger reinforcer (to use your example, cat) if the reinforcement history is strong enough. By applying the correction you reinforce the recall, it's a strong reinforcer than the cat. Alternatively, you can build a better reinforcement history with the food. Or you can find a better positive reinforcer. Or you can reduce the value of the cat. Training in drive seeks to get the best of both worlds, strong reinforcer + strong reinforcement history. If there is a problem in training with +R that I see more than anything, it is poor reinforcement histories. To some extent, yes. I've found my high-drive GSD quite difficult to train not to chase wallabies though. My retriever was much easier, although, over time (he's nearly 11) he developed a reinforcement history for chasing wallabies too. His recall is still outstanding, but it is no longer "purely positive".

No, not an opinion at all. Reinforcement has a clear definition, if the reward doesn't increase or maintain the behaviour it is not a reinforcer. That is a fact, not my opinion. If your dog wouldn't do what you asked if you didn't use a correction, then you didn't increase or maintain the behaviour with the reward. Whether the dog wags his tail or not doesn't have any bearing. Tell me, Joe, what do you think the definition of force is? We always have a "choice", having a choice does not mean we were not forced. Indeed, so I take it you don't use corrections with high drive dogs at all because it's so easy to reinforce them to make the choice to come in any distraction?

Hhhhmmm ... So, because the hot stove top burnt my hand when I touched it, the stove is forcing me to not touch it? I wouldn't have thought of it in terms of being "forced" not to touch it. I'd just as soon not though. In philosophy there is a question, if someone holds a gun to your head and tells you to do something, do you have a choice whether to do it or not? Of course you do... you always have a choice.

Avoidance learning is where the dog learns to do what you want in order to avoid a correction. Ultimately you want the dog to do what you have asked, when you ask, not when you correct him for not doing it in the first place. Does that make sense? I dont using the corrections for forcing a dog to do something. What I do is apply aversive for disobeying and give him a choice, come to me for praise and reward or choose not to come and get a correction so the dog make the choice I think you are confused about what "forcing a dog to do something" means. If you apply an aversive if the dog doesn't do what you want, you are forcing the dog. If you don't have to use the aversive any more, that is avoidance learning. The reward may or may not mean anything at all. In fact, if you leave out the correction and the dog doesn't make the choice to come to you, the reward was meaningless no matter how much the dog lapped it up. You need to find something that is actually a reinforcer, and not just something your dog will enjoy but not enough to choose it without coercion.

So here is a situation where doing something other than what you have asked is likely to be reinforced. Avoidance learning is where the dog learns to do what you want in order to avoid a correction. Ultimately you want the dog to do what you have asked, when you ask, not when you correct him for not doing it in the first place. Does that make sense?

I agree with this with dogs of the right trait for this type of training, but is not reliable on every dog where consequence works better on some traits and cant training every dog best from one training method doesnt work, it depends on the individual dog character what is best working. If a dog having good focus from food and toy drive, this dogs you can training without consequence easy, but dogs with low drive and tunnel vision on the bad behaviour is easier to train from consequence in the training also. Drive is born in the dog, you can build drive to a point but you cant put drive in a dog for handler focus for all distractions when the dog has low drive on the genetics and the training must be suiting the type of dog. Joe Note that I didn't apply a blanket statement regarding consequences or otherwise. I stated that we can build very reliable behaviours without anything more than reinforcement, response prevention and extinction; I did not say that we could do that for every behaviour that we want from every dog. But I'll play along - if you have the most stubborn, hard-headed dog in existence, what benefit does a correction for failure to comply offer if the dog is just sitting there like a stunned mullet? How would you know if he was being "stubborn" vs "unmotivated" vs "confused"? (I'm not saying you can't know, I'm asking how you might satisfy yourself that this is the case) If you choose to ignore the failure to respond appropriately, wait a second, ask again then reward the correct response - are you in a better or worse position than if you had chosen to "correct" the dog instead?

Dogs have a long history in genetic research, some of it very "interesting" - http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/05/25/how-nazi-scientsts-tried-to-create-an-army-of-talking-dogs/

Um nope not really clearer, but I will go back and read it again, it's been a long day Basically, unless whatever the dog is doing is being reinforced, instead of what you asked him to do(or it puts him in immediate danger), there is not a lot of justification for providing a consequence for non-compliance. If he's just sitting there like a stunned mullet, there is no reason to provide a consequence. Failing to give a reinforcer is not a consequence, it's a "do nothing". There is a school of thought that says we should provide a consequence for disobedience no matter what. I would argue that unless the dog clearly understands that he can avoid the consequence by complying with the cue, then there is no justification for this approach. Given that it's highly likely that the only reason the dog did nothing in response to your cue was that he didn't understand what he had to do, or hadn't been reinforced often enough for it, I would not want to further complicate things by adding extraneous consequences that may only serve to confuse the dog. We can build extremely reliable behaviours without anything more than reinforcement, extinction and response-prevention. See http://www.dolforums.com.au/topic/221011-weave-proofing/ for an example.

I suppose it depends a bit on what you would call a consequence? In a more technical sense, a consequence is something that is effected contingent upon a response. In other words, a response produces a consequence - something is added or taken from the environment when the behaviour happens; e.g owner calls dog, dog continues to check pee-mail, owner pulls dog in on long line. Extinction is a failure to provide a reinforcing consequence. When you are free-shaping you don't provide a consequence for the wrong response, you just fail to provide a reinforcer. The wrong response is under extinction, and correct responses are reinforced. So what is "non-compliance"? It is always "some other response". If that "other response" is reinforced, we have a problem. If it's not, there is really no need for a consequence. I hear some people talk about punishing disobedience. Disobedience isn't a response, so it can't be punished. A dog wouldn't understand the concept. You can teach them to avoid punishment (by responding appropriately to your cue), and it would be clearer if that was the way it was talked about, I think.

One growl for a cat sniffing around the food bowl when my old boy was a puppy, that was about it apart from the odd groan if the same cat is snuggling too much. My GSD tried to kill our other cat when she was a young pup. For the 9 years since then they have been almost inseparable.

I agree, that sort of thing is really distasteful. Having been on the other end when my wife was a passenger in a head-on collision, I can fully understand claims for fair compensation though. Because the driver of the other vehicle had either had a stroke or had died prior to the accident, he was not deemed to be negligent, and therefore the MAIB would not accept liability for compensation (only critical medical care and some rehabilitation). We settled out of court for less than even the immediate financial cost from loss of income, let alone any future care she may require. My dogs are on my home-owners insurance. Every dog owner should speak to their insurance company or agent about this. It's easy for even a small dog to injure someone.

Just stay away from those parks. Regardless of whether you have the right to sue or not, that won't protect you or your dog.

Which is pretty much all of them (with some exceptions). It would be hard to say they weren't getting enough exercise (although I wouldn't rule that out as a possible factor in the captive wolf problem). All the documentaries I've ever seen on wolves and coyotes have left me with a different understanding (and just confirmed it with a couple of google searches). A wolf pack typically only has one breeding pair, but can have up to 15 + adult individuals both male and female. The alpha pair breed, the rest help raise the young, they are typically related anyway. I know in lions the males leave (or are kicked out) upon reaching sexual maturity, as do elephants (although of course no males stay with the herd at all so it's a bit different), but it's a different story for wolves. I have read that young animals may leave to find a mate and start a pack of their own, but that this is not the norm. I always thought that was why dogs fit in so well with a family so long as they are not occupying an alpha position. Whilst I don't doubt you have read accounts of packs that take this structure and seen documentaries that make this assumption, data from scientists in the field over a very long period of time tells a different story. Wolves do all sorts of things but the norm in the grey wolf is to disperse at sexual maturity or at some time shortly after. This piece is a good summary: http://lazacode.com/animal/the-gray-wolf-canis-lupus-part-5-dispersion Drilling down a bit further on the topic, and going to a higher source, the abstract and introduction of this peer-reviewed and published paper goes into some detail: http://www.mnforsustain.org/wolf_mech_dominance_alpha_status.htm This is a good example of why we need to be careful to consider the credibility of our sources. There are all sorts of accounts of wolf behaviour, or worse - dog behaviour - based on erroneous reporting or perpetuation of myths about wolves. If you get told something often enough you start to believe it, and then you are subject to confirmation bias - you start to see supporting evidence and are blinded to evidence that does not support your beliefs. I don't think there is a field that suffers more from this than dog training, except perhaps health.

I think it's pretty clear that the sister is trying to deflect blame onto a voiceless animal. I guess we'll never know the full extent of the puppy's involvement, if indeed he was involved.

Apologies if this has been posted elsewhere, it seems to be doing the rounds at the moment - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V24s_nj-EOI&feature=player_embedded The video demonstrates fantastic stimulus control.

Yeah I've heard/read about Flyball and also discovered there's no club in WA, booooo! Not to worry, apart from flyball Perth seems to be where it's all at in terms of dog sports. If he is a ball nut (and he is almost certainly part retriever) then retrieving might be his thing. Disc dog would be another good one.

Which is pretty much all of them (with some exceptions). It would be hard to say they weren't getting enough exercise (although I wouldn't rule that out as a possible factor in the captive wolf problem). Conversely, if we wish to use African Painted Dogs as our analogy (an idea I think has some merit), its the females that leave. Sibling sisters will leave together to start a new pack. Strong, independent women in the animal world? Which post-feminist animal behaviour text-books have you been reading? I keep telling you, don't read anything published after 1965!

Why is there what looks like a catch-pole noose on that ridiculously cute baby puppy? Probably some silly protocol. As if that baby "scalped" anyone.