training questions

[debbiej]

I have a couple of questions please. Hilda is doing really well with basic obedience and she is developing good recall. (off lead, in the desert, no one else around for miles.) She is a polite walker too. but when we see a person walking or on a bike she has started behaving badly, lunging and barking. I don't understand, she is very friendly with people she meets and very good in every other situation with people walking and biking in parks and such. When she starts to act like this, I correct, and scold and make her sit, but she still pays too much attention to the person. These are not people I know, or would go up and introduce ourselves to, but I hate it that they look so afraid of her. Is this a good thing to use the prong collar for? she usually is easily corrected with it, but when I correct her for this lunging behavior with the prong, she seems more aggressive toward the person. like the pinch makes her mad at them. Is it because she doesn't often get a harsh correction with the prong?

Class starts on monday, and the instructor is not crazy about prong collars, but she said bring both if I want to. Hilda is very good in class, and I don't think I need the prong, but I prefer it because I find it easier to correct with. it stays in place and just a short pop-almost a flick of the wrist--is all it takes.

Is it a bad idea to switch around collars for training?

she is doing MUCH better with outs. she has always dropped whatever she has nabbed for a treat. Now we make her sit and down for the treat, after she drops her prize.

[Mick Trainer]

she is developing good recall. (off lead, in the desert, no one else around for miles.) Debbie in even a very small amount of cases if she learns that she does not HAVE to recall 100% of the time then the recall will become unrelaible. Put her back on lead until the recall is extremely good.

Is this a good thing to use the prong collar for? Yes it can be but the correction does have to be firm enough to alter her behavior straight away and she must be aware what she is altering her behavior too.

she usually is easily corrected with it, but when I correct her for this lunging behavior with the prong, she seems more aggressive toward the person. like the pinch makes her mad at them. Is it because she doesn't often get a harsh correction with the prong? This is not likely due to the fact that she is does notget many harsh corrections with a prong but more likely that the correction given is not hard enough AND the dog must know the compusion came from us, AND that she is not truly familiar with how she is to escape the compulsion.

If you do a search here you will find loads of information on prong collars and one arguement used against them (and e-collars for that matter and even compulsion as a whole) is that they can make a dog showing aggressive behavior worse. The theory behind this is quite simple, in that a dog showing aggression is perceiving threat and by adding stress that we are making the situation worse. Now in basic theory this makes sence and in practice it often appears to be true but in recent times many holes and large question markes have been placed over this theory. It is true that if under duress mild stress is added that a dogs aggression levels to a specific stimulus can be made worse. Judi in a recent post spoke about "nagging" of a dog by a handler on a collar by someone not truly correcting the dog but by giving small corrections that weren't truly placing the dog into avoidance regarding the behavior nor creating enough negative stimulus to truly show that this behavior does not gain a poor outcome they were not truly altering the dogs behavior in one direction only. By doing this we can indeed add small levels of stress that that will highten aggression levels. In service dogs circles this is aften refered to ass building a dogs aggression through frustration or "loading".

However there are ways to avoid doing this still using a prong collar etc. And they are 1) the dog must know how to escape the compulsion. Anytime we use compulsion at even reasonably high levels we must make sure the dog must be able to make the assocaition to the behavior that we trying to alter and know what it CAN do instead to avoid the compulsion coming next time. 2) The compulsion must be high enough that the dog alters it's behavior straight away. Now when a dog is showing aggressive behavior it is feeling threatened and by this the dog has instantly hightened its adrenal levsl to enable it to handle higher levels of both physical pain and mental stress. At this time the dog's biology is preparing it for physical combat and thus raises it's threshold to pain and to outside stimulus that it percieves as not as important to it's survival as what it is currently facing. Thus the correction must be firm enough at this time to break through this. This is why trainers say that it is better to stop the behavior as soon as possible rather than wait for the worst of the behavior to be present. In this case that would be as soon as the dog alters it's body language. 3) The dog must know that the compulsion comes from you. Now many people will argue that the dog shouldn't know that the compulsion comes from you and should associate to the behavior. There is some merit to this but not practical in this case. But in short the reason I find this point to be important is that applied stress research as shown us that a dog can only truly concentrate on one stressful thing at one time and that it will place it's focus onto the MOST stressful object and in this case that must be YOU. Once again if you do a search here on aggression you will find loads of info regarding it but in realism the whole reason aggression exists and it shown by a dog is to "relieve stress". The dog perceives threat and uses aggression to move that threat away. Thus it is trying to relieve it's stress. However if the stress created by you is higher than the stress created by the object then the dog turns it's attention to you and it quickly learns that it's aggression not only does not reduce it's dtress level but that it actually makes it worse. So how to you make sure the dog knows the stress comes from you? Simply you must mark the behavior. By makring I mean giving the dog a firm verbal "ART" or "NO" at the time when the dogs behavior is altered.

Now in short you of course must be able to praise and reward as the dog also alters it's behavior as a positive and the sooner that you catch the dog starting to show such behavior the lower it's adrenal levels and the lower levels of compulsion are required to alter it's behavior which all would agree is a positive step.

I hope that this helps and I am sure that there will be a few question.

Mick.

[damp]

Thank you Mick for explaining this… your post deserves a “sticky”!

One of the first thing I learned from my mentor long time ago was: Whether you correct or praise a dog, you must see a reaction… if not, you haven’t done your job well!

[debbiej]

Mick, thank you so much for the indepth answer and the help. I think I will arrange for some friends to walk out on the road and that way we can work on correcting and rewarding. she is a quick learner, there just aren't enough people out in our neighborhood to make it a common occurance. Is that why she is fine when we go in the car to where people, dogs and bikes are?

I really must put a quick stop to her doing this!!

[debbiej]

We just got back and I have had time to read and re-read your answer Mick. So- first, I should be making sure I have her attention and is under good control before she sees the bike or person, and keep her under control when she sees them. second, I make sure she understands she isn't allowed to stop heeling, break her sit or put on a nasty dog act. better to correct for lack of attention to me than for barking and lunging. but if she gets excited about a person or bike, and lunges, barking at them, I better give a correction that she won't choose to ignore.

what happens is this: I tell her heel, and she does, but when she sees someone, she becomes very alert, and I start to lose her attention, thereby the control of her behavior. as the person passes, or comes closer, she lunges. So I want to correct for the behavior when she first starts paying attention to the approaching person instead of me. maybe even before she goes off, cause I know what she is thinking of?

I live in an area where all the houses are back from the road, and there are a lot of bushes and I think to her it looks like the people just of pop out of them. DH is going to go for a bike ride while we are walking. I'm sure she would recognize him walking, but probably not on a bike...

[Mick Trainer]

So- first, I should be making sure I have her attention and is under good control before she sees the bike or person, and keep her under control when she sees them. second, I make sure she understands she isn't allowed to stop heeling, break her sit or put on a nasty dog act. Correct.

better to correct for lack of attention to me than for barking and lunging. Once again spot on.

but if she gets excited about a person or bike, and lunges, barking at them, I better give a correction that she won't choose to ignore. Once again this is correct and must be enough to break through the perception of threat she feels from the bike etc.

she becomes very alert, and I start to lose her attention, And this is when you about turn right as fast as you physically can and give her a correction just hard enough to get her back in line. The change of direction is very important as it will teach her that she cannot take her attention off you becasue you are no longer predictable (in that you no longer walk in a dead straight line and can turn at any time) and missing a turn is a problem. This will also never allow her to get into true drive and thus what you need to do to alter her behavior is lower.

Setting up scenarios that you can control is very much worthwhile.

Mick.

[debbiej]

whew it's hot out....
we did the setup. what I did wrong was not change direction. I tried to keep her attention while hubby rode by. also, when after several passes, and correction for lunging, she begain to try to get on the other side of me from the bike instead of go at it.

we ended by him stopping to greet, so she would know bike was friendly, and she was a bit un-nerved by him on the bike. then I rode it home slowly, he walked her and she didn't mind trotting beside it.

[cryjay]

One thing I have done with my dogs which has been very successful for me anyhow was to make them sit upon any approaching person. I do use a prong collar on Cain and even in the sit and praise mode I have had to use it to correct him once for trying to bark at someone that walked by. He has never done it since. I want my dogs to be perceived as wonderful canine citizens and that not everyone walking down the street is something to be barked at, so I have always tried to make it positive and besides I do make them sit most the time anyhow just because there is not room for one lady, 2 kids and 3 rottweilers to share the sidewalk with someone else passing by so in another way I have done this to be polite as well. You need to correct on the first signs of the behaviour.

Mick, as always, I enjoyed your posts! Thanks for sharing all of your knowledge

Crystal