Training Out An Unwanted Behavior

[hankdog]

I was trying to arrange my random bits of training knowledge in my head. Whilst walking the norty beast today it struck me that he has learned some quite complex things really easily but others are always going to be a work in progress. ( I was having a what was I thinking moment.)

So training the Tubster to do some fun things with a box, adorable tricks and urban agility has been easy. Initially with a clicker but we just use a marker word nowadays.

Training unwanted behaviour out is just so hard. For me it's dog aggression but I'm thinking of all those trouble behaviors, nuisance barking, leash pulling, couch chewing and I'm sure there's many other dog sins that give people grief and land dogs in the pound.

Many positive training methods rely on encouraging a slight bit of the good behavior and shaping the dog to offer more of such behavior. What if there's no good behavior to shape? What if there's no positive reward that can compete with the joy of ripping the stuffing out the couch. What if your dog knows he has to beat the bejeebbees out of every dog he sees because he understands better than you based on his previous experience that dogs are dangerous? If he needs to bark every time a bird chirps how do you shape not barking?

I would love to hear about other dog "sinners" and what you have tried and found successful or not. What insights did you get along the way?

[huski]

Simply put: dogs generally learn new behaviors easily with rewards. Once a behavior has become habitual, ingrained and self rewarding it can be more challenging to fix this purely with R+.

[Salukifan]

I was trying to arrange my random bits of training knowledge in my head. Whilst walking the norty beast today it struck me that he has learned some quite complex things really easily but others are always going to be a work in progress. ( I was having a what was I thinking moment.)

So training the Tubster to do some fun things with a box, adorable tricks and urban agility has been easy. Initially with a clicker but we just use a marker word nowadays.

Training unwanted behaviour out is just so hard. For me it's dog aggression but I'm thinking of all those trouble behaviors, nuisance barking, leash pulling, couch chewing and I'm sure there's many other dog sins that give people grief and land dogs in the pound.

Many positive training methods rely on encouraging a slight bit of the good behavior and shaping the dog to offer more of such behavior. What if there's no good behavior to shape? What if there's no positive reward that can compete with the joy of ripping the stuffing out the couch. What if your dog knows he has to beat the bejeebbees out of every dog he sees because he understands better than you based on his previous experience that dogs are dangerous? If he needs to bark every time a bird chirps how do you shape not barking?

I would love to hear about other dog "sinners" and what you have tried and found successful or not. What insights did you get along the way?

The simple answer to decreasing the incidence of an unwanted behaviour is to make it unrewarding or unpleasant. Here is where the appropriate use of aversives can be the fastest way. People may disagree about what is an appropriate use of negative reinforcement but you will NOT get on top of a highly self rewarding undesired behaviour without one.

Even Ian Dunbar endorses the use of electric collars for stock chasing dogs because frankly there is NOTHING you can do is terms of "no reward" or subsitution of behaviour that will deter this behaviour once ingrained.

If it happens when you aren't present, you ain't going to have a chance of stopping it. Enter managing the dog better.

Edited March 24, 2014 by Haredown Whippets

[RazorBlade]

Following this thread with great interest.

[Weasels]

Have you googled differential reinforcement of an incompatible behaviour? Also "why cigarettes are more addictive than heroin dog training" brings up an article about how frequent small rewards can trump infrequent big ones.

Not saying it isn't a PITA though!

[teekay]

Following this thread with great interest.

Yep, me too.

You are so right Hankdog, the training out, is so so so much more difficult that the training in. I guess counter conditioning is a R+ way to approach some problems, such as Luka's reactivity, but there is only so far you can go with that. If a dog gets too close no amount of yummy treats, toys or anything will get him back to focus on me. I suppose that is where the aversives have to come in?

[Salukifan]

Have you googled differential reinforcement of an incompatible behaviour? Also "why cigarettes are more addictive than heroin dog training" brings up an article about how frequent small rewards can trump infrequent big ones.

Not saying it isn't a PITA though!

Tell that to a dog chasing animals. Not only are you dealing with a hardwired instinctive behaviour, from a neurological perspective, the dog may not even be able to hear you - the brain shuts down some areas to focus on the hunt.

Some of the solutions I hear for these behaviours are frankly, ridiculous. One good example - training a dog to bark on cue is somehow the cure for unwanted barking. My dogs sit on cue. That certainly doesn't mean they don't sit at other times.

Edited March 24, 2014 by Haredown Whippets

[Weasels]

My dogs lived next to sheep for 10 months behind the world's crappiest fences without issue. And they do not lack interest in sheep. So it sometimes works which is why I suggested HD can look into it as an option if she wants to.

Edit - I think the idea behind "woof and shush" is to give you a chance to teach the "shush" at low arousal. But if you're around your dogs a lot you can generally find opportunities to teach the "shush" without teaching the "woof"

Edited March 25, 2014 by Weasels

[Salukifan]

My dogs lived next to sheep for 10 months behind the world's crappiest fences without issue. And they do not lack interest in sheep. So it sometimes works which is why I suggested HD can look into it as an option if she wants to.

So how did you stop them from actually chasing the sheep once they started?

Or did you do the extremely sensible thing which was never allow the situation to happen in the first place. That's management not training and IMO the best method of dealing with many of these behaviours. I can recall my dogs off stationary kangaroos - but fleeing ones? Forget it.

So I recall my dogs before that happens. That's management, not training.

The best cure for dealing with unwanted behaviours is never to allow the dog to develop them. Pulling on lead is the best example I can think of - totally preventable with good management and training. More trainable than most for fixing. But fence jumping, stock chasing, barking.. much much harder.

[Weasels]

By that stage they never chased the sheep without cue because we'd spent 2 years teaching the rules for approaching a flock, and that unless that cue is given the sheep are not available, but the ball IS available. Management was a huge part of that in the beginning but not once it was trained and proofed. Our older dog will frequently duck into the sheep paddock to retrieve a ball then come straight back. Again it wasn't a quick process but it's a thing that works on some dogs.

[Salukifan]

By that stage they never chased the sheep without cue because we'd spent 2 years teaching the rules for approaching a flock, and that unless that cue is given the sheep are not available, but the ball IS available. Management was a huge part of that in the beginning but not once it was trained and proofed. Our older dog will frequently duck into the sheep paddock to retrieve a ball then come straight back. Again it wasn't a quick process but it's a thing that works on some dogs.

So dealing with the OP's question, you never trained out an unwanted behaviour. Rather, you trained in the one you wanted. Best possible approach but not what the OPs question is asking.

How would you have dealt with an experienced sheep chaser?

[teekay]

I've been Googling all morning now, thanks Hankdog :D

Found this article which, although not exactly about training out, it does make you think about what you may be accidentally training in and how crucial timing can be. There are lots of other articles linked on the page that look very interesting too but, if I want to get any work done today, I will have to step away from the computer now :D

http://eileenanddogs.com/2012/12/18/classical-conditioning-positive-response-to-barking/

This particular bit made me think

The timing is that the treat has to come after the event. That sounds easy, but in the real world it can get tricky. If you are conditioning your dog to some visual event, say the appearance of a silent scary monster, if you see it first and start scrabbling for the food, your dog’s experience can be seriously messed up. To her the food starts coming, then the scary monster appears, instead of the other way around. Food predicts monster. If you do that enough times your dog could end up getting worried whenever you reach for a treat and still be scared of the monster.

I am always scanning the environment for people/dogs/cats I wonder if I am getting ready to treat Luka too early and accidentally doing the above. I will be more careful in future.

[persephone]

By that stage they never chased the sheep without cue because we'd spent 2 years teaching the rules for approaching a flock, and that unless that cue is given the sheep are not available, but the ball IS available. Management was a huge part of that in the beginning but not once it was trained and proofed. Our older dog will frequently duck into the sheep paddock to retrieve a ball then come straight back. Again it wasn't a quick process but it's a thing that works on some dogs.

So dealing with the OP's question, you never trained out an unwanted behaviour. Rather, you trained in the one you wanted. Best possible approach but not what the OPs question is asking.

How would you have dealt with an experienced sheep chaser?

yes. Good planning!

[raineth]

My dogs lived next to sheep for 10 months behind the world's crappiest fences without issue. And they do not lack interest in sheep. So it sometimes works which is why I suggested HD can look into it as an option if she wants to.

Edit - I think the idea behind "woof and shush" is to give you a chance to teach the "shush" at low arousal. But if you're around your dogs a lot you can generally find opportunities to teach the "shush" without teaching the "woof"

I thought that it was also meant to be that they came to expect earning a reward for barking. Then you stop rewarding the barking and the behaviour may extinguish in the absence of the reinforcement that they expect.

[Weasels]

They got some chasing in in the early days before we moved next to the sheep, especially Weez. I used management, interruption and DRI, the incompatible in this case being chasing a ball.

[The Spotted Devil]

I was trying to arrange my random bits of training knowledge in my head. Whilst walking the norty beast today it struck me that he has learned some quite complex things really easily but others are always going to be a work in progress. ( I was having a what was I thinking moment.)

So training the Tubster to do some fun things with a box, adorable tricks and urban agility has been easy. Initially with a clicker but we just use a marker word nowadays.

Training unwanted behaviour out is just so hard. For me it's dog aggression but I'm thinking of all those trouble behaviors, nuisance barking, leash pulling, couch chewing and I'm sure there's many other dog sins that give people grief and land dogs in the pound.

Many positive training methods rely on encouraging a slight bit of the good behavior and shaping the dog to offer more of such behavior. What if there's no good behavior to shape? What if there's no positive reward that can compete with the joy of ripping the stuffing out the couch. What if your dog knows he has to beat the bejeebbees out of every dog he sees because he understands better than you based on his previous experience that dogs are dangerous? If he needs to bark every time a bird chirps how do you shape not barking?

I would love to hear about other dog "sinners" and what you have tried and found successful or not. What insights did you get along the way?

There's a great saying about dog training being simple but not easy.

Rather than stopping the unwanted behaviour I find it easier to use a combination of management with teaching a non-compatible behaviour.

Whether you train a new, incompatible behaviour or try to extinguish an existing one the problem is that humans can be terribly inconsistent! In the re-training process every time the dog performs the undesirable, but self-rewarding, behaviour it ends up being a prime example of intermittent reinforcement and further entrenches the behaviour. For example, owners work on loose leash walking in class and then let the dog pull them towards the car - the behaviour is context based and not generalised. This is the biggest battle I find.

One of the main things I focus on with my own dogs is to take the reward I offer. So, for example, Zig has to tug in the face of food. Em has to accept food in the face of game (the first time, she literally spat the food out). I can ask her to retrieve a dummy in the face of game. I have recalled Zig off a couple of bolting kangaroos. Management still comes into play, especially with Em who has such a strong desire to hunt, quarter and flush game.

Counter conditioning can be handy for fearful and highly aroused dogs but you have to work under the dog's threshold so they can actually learn.

[DobieMum]

Sometimes training is just hard work and a lot of time put in. I had a cat chaser and she used to get psycho over a cat, bouncing round, barking ect. I started by bringing her into the house (inside cat) on a lead and tied her to the chair I was sitting on and read a book ignoring her. She went nuts trying to get that cat for 3 hours and then fell asleep exhausted. I did this for months, with the time that she carried on for getting shorter, until eventually she was quiet after 5 mins and layed down. I then started treating her for her quiet and now after a year 1/2 I can have the two in a room together and while I'm there not worry about them.

It is doable, but you have to have the time and patience.

[hankdog]

Yep the treat timing is so important. First thing my present trainer picked me up on, I would reach for a treat before I gave any cue.

In an ideal world only one thing happens and the dog pays attention to only that and links the reward to that. Reality is that each real life situation has many different things going on. I postulate that dogs of Jakes ilk who are on permanent alert have a strong tendency to one trial learning. If he gets that wrong then you're in big trouble. Like the time I thought I would reward him for calmly looking at a group of people waiting at the bus stop. He was minorly reactive to groups of people. What I actually taught him was that bus stops were now to be feared as they unpredictably came with groups of people. Took two weeks to get over that one. He had previously been happy to relax and lie down in the bus stop.

It's interesting watching the barking video, she is able to condition a reward expectation in the puppy but not able to stop her barking dog. And I so wish we could buy spray cheese in this country.

Edited March 25, 2014 by hankdog

[BC Crazy]

Sometimes training is just hard work and a lot of time put in. I had a cat chaser and she used to get psycho over a cat, bouncing round, barking ect. I started by bringing her into the house (inside cat) on a lead and tied her to the chair I was sitting on and read a book ignoring her. She went nuts trying to get that cat for 3 hours and then fell asleep exhausted. I did this for months, with the time that she carried on for getting shorter, until eventually she was quiet after 5 mins and layed down. I then started treating her for her quiet and now after a year 1/2 I can have the two in a room together and while I'm there not worry about them.

It is doable, but you have to have the time and patience.

I applaud you for your patience & perseverance DobieMum Both mine are cat chaser's & it does cause kaos when we are out walking if I don't see the cat first & make an immediate U turn.

Very interesting thread you have started Hankdog. I am going to read the previous posts & following with keen interest :)

Edited March 25, 2014 by BC Crazy

[huski]

I think it's important to remember that when it comes to training most people need to see results in a reasonable amount of time otherwise they become discouraged or may give up on the dog. What is a reasonable amount of time for one person can differ to the next. I've spoken to some people who are very adamant they only ever want to use what they consider to be 'positive only' methods and some of these people are happy to plug away trying to change the dog's behaviour for years. Sometimes the dog never really improves or only shows marginal improvement and they continue doing the same thing essentially forever without any real result. However, other people may need to see change happen faster. Sometimes it is because the dogs behaviour is extremely dangerous or prevents it from having much quality of life, sometimes it makes the owner miserable to live with the dog. It may not be that the behaviour can't be fixed without using aversives but it may not be able to be fixed in a reasonable amount of time using other methods.

Edited March 25, 2014 by huski