Can Someone Please Explain To Me All The Training Methods!

[Bubitty]

Hi Folks

I have been reading all the threads arguing about training methods etc and it has COMPLETELY confuddled me!!!!!

What is really “Positive” training and what is deemed “Negative”?

I have been reading all your arguments in the threads but tbh I have no idea what half the posts are about because most of the stuff is just “WHOOSH” over my head!

Does it matter what technique you use? I used food rewards for training and sometimes I ask my dogs not to do stuff if I don’t want them to do it.

Say this morning Bubby managed to climb up a tree! I went up to him and said “Bubby you get down right now Mister!” and he climbed down again, no big deal.

Is that negative cuz I asked him to come down the tree?

Is all this hard core stuff for ppl who do really complicated dog tricks and sports or do normal ppl use it too?

[Vickie]

:rolleyes: don't worry Bub...many of us are confused by these threads...they often go round & round in circles & I can only hope that some of these people make more sense to their own dogs than they do to me.

If what you are doing is working, then keep doing it. If it's not working, then ask for advice.

I train agility & herding & my dogs are generally well behaved. I don't do anything too complicated with them. Generally for sport training, I heavily reward behaviours I want & don't reward behaviours I don't want. If I use correction, it is for a behaviour that is totally unacceptable. I am not cruel, I am consistent & I don't hold a grudge about it.

[Staranais]

If what you're doing is working, and your dog is happy, and you are happy... keep doing it!

I personally really enjoy threads like that, I love talking to other trainers, seeing what they're doing, and what they think of what I'm doing, but it's not at all necessary to understand all the different methods out there or the wacky trainer terminology to have a well trained dog.

:rolleyes:

[AusDog]

Hi Folks

I have been reading all the threads arguing about training methods etc and it has COMPLETELY confuddled me!!!!!

What is really “Positive” training and what is deemed “Negative”?

I have been reading all your arguments in the threads but tbh I have no idea what half the posts are about because most of the stuff is just “WHOOSH” over my head!

Does it matter what technique you use? I used food rewards for training and sometimes I ask my dogs not to do stuff if I don’t want them to do it.

Say this morning Bubby managed to climb up a tree! I went up to him and said “Bubby you get down right now Mister!” and he climbed down again, no big deal.

Is that negative cuz I asked him to come down the tree?

Is all this hard core stuff for ppl who do really complicated dog tricks and sports or do normal ppl use it too?

Whatever works for you

Never get caught up with the argument that one training method is better than another... All have their place. Whatever works for you and your dog.

Bubby you get down right now Mister! <- All depends on your body language, voice inflection and projected energy... But my guess, you gave him a positive to come down, not a negative for climbing up

[Bubitty]

I like reading the arguments and would just like to understand the terminology and theories more!

Sometimes I think I get something and then they throw in something about quadrants and pluses and minuses and then I lose track and have no idea what I was reading!

I got given a book on how to manage a multi dog household when I got my pup and the ideas in the book were really good and easy to understand. Say for example the lady in the book tells the reader to teach their dogs that being pushy will not get you food first but that by being polite you get plenty of food and goodies.

So I go off and do this and it works! But when I read all of these threads, it intrigues me the idea about what is a positive way to teach and what is negative way to teach.

[corvus]

Does it matter? Well, that's the debatable bit!

I think that the methods you choose for training your dog tends to evolve over time. I will be most alarmed if I ever STOP refining what I'm doing and trying out new things. I would say if you're not real interested in it, stick with what you're doing.

If you are interested, it's all based around operant conditioning, which is the way that all animals learn. In its most basic sense, animals will work to get good things to happen to them and work to avoid bad things happening to them. Positive training focuses on training with rewards. I don't think there is "negative" training as such, but traditional methods typically lean on physical punishments, which, by definition, are unpleasant to dogs.

Whether something is rewarding or punishing to your OWN dog depends on that dog. A punishment is generally something that will result in a decrease of the behaviour immediately before the punishment was administered, and rewards are something that result in an increase of the behaviour immediately before the reward.

The tricky thing is timing. Whether you are rewarding or punishing, you have to do it as instantaneously as you can. It's best to do it AS the dog is doing something you want to encourage or discourage.

[Bubitty]

Thanks for the great summary Corvus!

Now if you can summarise that quadrant thingy for me!!!! I am really curious about it!!!!

[luvsdogs]

Positive training is rewarding the dog for doing something you like with a food reward or game etc. Ignore the things you don't like. Dolphins, bears, tigers etc are trained this way. If a dog is punished with a collar check they often shut down or refuse to do the particular thing because they are frightened to do the wrong thing again for fear of another collar check.

[huski]

If a dog is punished with a collar check they often shut down or refuse to do the particular thing because they are frightened to do the wrong thing again for fear of another collar check.

Hmm, that's certainly not been my experience

[AusDog]

Positive training is rewarding the dog for doing something you like with a food reward or game etc. Ignore the things you don't like. Dolphins, bears, tigers etc are trained this way. If a dog is punished with a collar check they often shut down or refuse to do the particular thing because they are frightened to do the wrong thing again for fear of another collar check.

Hmmm.. I agree.. If your dog training causes a dog to "shut down" no mater what methods you are using, you are using them incorrectly.

Dolphins, bears, tigers, etc are all trained in cages and sterile environments, they don't live in a family home..not a very good argument on why a particular method should work on dogs in my opnion.

Edited October 7, 2009 by AusDog

[Staranais]

Thanks for the great summary Corvus!

Now if you can summarise that quadrant thingy for me!!!! I am really curious about it!!!!

It's just a way of thinking about/talking about the "consequences" you give a dog when you're training them.

If you add something to the situation, you call it positive. If you take something away from the situation, you call it negative.

If the consequence makes the dog more likely to do the behaviour in question again, it's reinforcement. If the consequences makes it less likely that the dog repeats the behaviour, it's punishment.

So if your dog loves food, then if she sits and you give her food, she'll probably be more likely to sit in the future. Hence you've positively reinforced the sitting behaviour (added something to the situation that makes it more likely she'll sit again).

If your dog doesn't like being alone, and she chases the cat, and you immediately stick her in time out, and she chases the cat less often in future to avoid being put in time out, then you've negatively punished the behaviour of cat chasing. If you were to squirt her with a water pistol instead (assuming she doesn't like being squirted and will work to avoid it), then you've positively punished the behaviour of chasing the cat.

It's hard to understand, since many people also mean "positive" in the sense of being nice, or being kind, and use "negative" in the sense of being mean, so discussions can get a bit confusing at times. And confusingly, if someone says they're a "positive trainer" then that usually means that they only use positive punishment and negative reinforcement when training (or at least, they try to use these more often than the other two quadrants). It doesn't mean that they like using positive punishment!

Personally, I think the terminology can be sometimes useful when discussing things with other trainers, but I'm not sure how much use it is when actually training a dog. Dogs don't think in quadrants, IMO. They just think in terms of things being nice or nasty to dogs. Whether you punish a dog by taking away something she really wants, or by doing something to her she doesn't like, I'm not sure is a useful distinction most of the time. If it works well, without stressing the dog more than it has to be stressed, then IMO it works, no matter what "quadrant" it fits into. I've met some great amateur trainers who know nothing about quadrants or operant conditioning, but are still pretty amazing at handling and working their dogs.

JMO, as always.

[Keshwar]

This book explains it all really well.

http://www.amazon.com/Excel-Erated-Learnin...mp;sr=1-1-spell

[Bubitty]

Thank you so much Staranais! That’s very clear and easy to understand! Hehehe I did think that “positive” was being all nice and cheerful about things and “negative” is anything that constitutes “being mean”!!! I have learned a lot from your post!!!!!

[Aidan]

Dolphins, bears, tigers, etc are all trained in cages and sterile environments, they don't live in a family home..not a very good argument on why a particular method should work on dogs in my opnion.

You might be interested to hear that the Brelands and Baileys were training a wide range of species in open environments using +R; e.g dolphins in the open ocean, cats in urban environments.

[Aidan]

Now if you can summarise that quadrant thingy for me!!!! I am really curious about it!!!!

http://ezinearticles.com/?Secrets-of-Dog-T...g&id=201252

[Nekhbet]

basically

positive punishment - the application of a punisher

negative punishment - the removal of the reward

positive reward - application of the reward on compliance (often mistakenly called 'positive training)

negative reward - removal of a punisher on compliance (eg stim the dog with an e-collar until it looks at you then stop)

so all that 'purely positive' training actually relies on negative punishment and positive reinforcement. The terms positive and negative are more 'application or removal' then good/bad.

You do what works for your dog. No one training method can work for ALL dogs, that is fact. Different training methods still rely on the 4 basics above, they simply select which they use, if at all, when, how and with what.

http://animals.howstuffworks.com/pets/dog-...g.htm/printable

this is a basic overview.

[Staranais]

Dolphins, bears, tigers, etc are all trained in cages and sterile environments, they don't live in a family home..not a very good argument on why a particular method should work on dogs in my opnion.

You might be interested to hear that the Brelands and Baileys were training a wide range of species in open environments using +R; e.g dolphins in the open ocean, cats in urban environments.

But as I recall they were also the ones that couldn't train a raccoon to pick up a coin and put it straight in a piggy bank, since their training methodology had no way of countering the racoon's instinctive drive to self reward by "washing" the coins first.

[Erny]

Dolphins, bears, tigers, etc are all trained in cages and sterile environments, they don't live in a family home..not a very good argument on why a particular method should work on dogs in my opnion.

You might be interested to hear that the Brelands and Baileys were training a wide range of species in open environments using +R; e.g dolphins in the open ocean, cats in urban environments.

When I went to Sea World some time back, the person explaining to the crowds how they train the dolphins mentioned that there are some days the dolphins just don't want to co-operate and instead would deep dive.

That's not a problem for the dolphins as they are limited to their watery world anyway. So one of them didn't jump up through the hoop ..... big deal.

Dogs are far more interactive in our human civilised world and it is necessary for them to perform and respond to commands regardless of whatever else they would want or prefer to be doing at that moment. We often can't just shrug it off with an "oh well".

What do the Brelands and Baileys do when the species they are training decide they aren't 'into it' at the time or moment?

I agree with AusDog that using these other animals and their training regime is not a good comparison.

Edited October 7, 2009 by Erny

[m-j]

[Dogs are far more interactive in our human civilised world and it is necessary for them to perform and respond to commands regardless of whatever else they would want or prefer to be doing at that moment. We often can't just shrug it off with an "oh well".

The same can be said for dogs. If not the dogs and people that enter into comps don't pass everytime so they too have to say oh well better luck next time, and I'm talking about very experienced triallers that would be considered to be a balanced trainers, who do get passes and a some have trained/trialled many many dogs for decades.

cheers

M-J

Edited October 7, 2009 by m-j

[Aidan]

Dolphins, bears, tigers, etc are all trained in cages and sterile environments, they don't live in a family home..not a very good argument on why a particular method should work on dogs in my opnion.

You might be interested to hear that the Brelands and Baileys were training a wide range of species in open environments using +R; e.g dolphins in the open ocean, cats in urban environments.

But as I recall they were also the ones that couldn't train a raccoon to pick up a coin and put it straight in a piggy bank, since their training methodology had no way of countering the racoon's instinctive drive to self reward by "washing" the coins first.

That's right, in 1961 the Brelands wrote the classic paper "The Misbehavior of Organisms" which described instinctive drift and discussed the limitations of Operant Conditioning (at that time).

To see that as a failure of their training methodology overall rather than an observation of a phenomena that had not been accounted for in the theory of Operant Conditioning in it's formative years is to miss the point somewhat. But no, they were not able to extinguish the coin "washing" behavior. Has any balanced trainer successfully attempted to do it since?

I don't think it would be fair to suggest that they were not highly successful animal trainers, in both controlled and uncontrolled environments, able to teach extraordinarily complex behaviour chains with a large array of distractions, and overcoming a number of self-reinforcing behaviours in the animals along the way.