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Any other positive trainers of working lines?

20K views 240 replies 30 participants last post by  glowingtoadfly 
#1 ·
If you work with clicker training/ positive only methods, what have your experiences been with this type of dog? How do you handle discipline? What role does exercise play in discipline and how often and how do you exercise your dogs? Where do you train?
 
#4 ·
I am all for clicker training and have trained many like this for the last 15 years successfully. My only experiences with WLs are my own WD and DDog, the new pup. I have come to realize that just clicker training doesn't cut it. Especially DDog accepting being handled. Sometimes I just do it and reward him for cooperating (as if he had a choice :) ) as I am getting nowhere with clickering in some departments. DDog is in fact the first dog in all these years that I cannot easily manipulate with the clicker as I could will all other dogs I have worked with. I see the prong in his future, and would never have thought in a million years that I would ever say this. WD was more compliant but once in a while I grabbed him too after he grabbed me as a pup.
I am curious too to hear others on this topic.
 
#9 ·
:rofl:


As a psychology major, I smile when people know the correct terminology. I've always gotten a chuckle out of "positive only" being incorrectly said for positive reinforcement only.

Anywho. The topic... I don't have a working line, but I think it depends on the dog for this (isn't that always the answer?). I always tell people I teach with positive reinforcement only but I proof with positive punishment. I don't correct my dog unless she knows what I'm asking and has already learned something via marker training.
 
#11 ·
Oooh I wasn't making a comment at you or anything, I was just more saying that the terminology is pretty confusing because unless people actually look it up, it's usually assumed that "positive" is about the feeling etc rather than adding stimulus to a situation. I just smile because I remember so many classes of kids raising their hand and being confused by this, thats all!! :D


and what specifically are you trying to 'discipline"?
 
#13 · (Edited)
We did mostly positive training with our working line puppy, and if we get another puppy I believe I would do even better with positive training because I know now with experience how and what to work on with a puppy. I started using the prong a few weeks ago for dog- dog reactivity(more like excitement), but this is after many months of counter conditioning work. I love how ours is at home, he is very obedient, eager to please. Yes I do NILIF. I don't particularly think about dominance, only about the behavior that needs correcting. They all have their personalities. And they learn pretty quickly if you teach them what you would like them to do instead of the behavior that is unacceptable to you. Eg : instead of jumping on counters, settle. sit for petting instead of bumping into my legs, etc.

Oh ofcourse, I did (and still do) use verbal correctors like "NO!" and "uh uh". At home he is pretty much calm and well behaved.
 
#14 ·
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I have a W/L - S/L. His working lines have seemed to dominate his personality. He is also a nipper mouther. I was instructed by our trainer to grab his collar and control him that way when he gets in one of his modes. He's still much a puppy. The collar seems to work good but the trick I read on this site about "sitting on the dog" works great.
 
#15 ·
I don't have a WL dog. I have an insane GSD mix that I got from the pound. I train force-free, which is to say that I do not use physical punishment, pain, or fear to get compliance from my dogs. I do use both positive and negative punishment, strictly defined, but I try to do as little of that as possible and it's pretty much always in the form of verbal no-reward markers, resets/time outs, and body blocks.

I train with people who have dogs ranging from ultrasoft Shelties and poodles to working-line Mals and GSDs. It is possible to train all of these dogs very successfully with force-free techniques; I watch people doing it weekly. And it's possible to fail, too, although I tend not to see much of that anymore since by the time people get to the classes I'm in, they're already pretty far along.

How you do it is beyond the scope of a post on an Internet message board (and besides that I have enough actual work to do tonight that I don't have time to write a 2000-word treatise on the subject), but yes, it certainly is within the realm of human possibility.

My feeling is that if you're new to training, then you have complete freedom as to what skills you want to develop and how dedicated you want to be in learning those techniques. You can do whatever you want and you can get as good as you want to be.

Once you have invested significant time, money, and energy into mastering a particular set of techniques, then it becomes much more difficult to unlearn old habits and give up old beliefs to change over to a new set of techniques. But if you're coming at this new, and looking to build a skill set from the ground up, then figure out what you want to do and how you want to do it, and you can find a way to get there.
 
#16 ·
From my experience...some discipline is necessary if you're going to excel at a high level when competing...especially in AKC obedience events. I trained my dog with positive methods, but I will correct him for not doing things that I know he knows. His obedience is very good and he knows enough commands now that I can verbally fix any kind of mis-positioning and then reward when he's in the correct position.

Where in Wisconsin are you? Where do you train? Just from my observations...I have competed against a lot of people that train in the area at the new "positive only" training places. Their dogs just don't have the same level of accuracy that mine does, and so I tend to get more points and have higher placements because my dog has been corrected from bad behaviors. I've seen dogs do a lot of things in the ring, that IMO are very difficult to solve without a correction...mostly stemming from the fact that a treat isn't available, and the dog knows it, so it doesn't perform the exercise as well as it would if that treat was there. But that might also be because they haven't weaned the dogs away from treats and just go into the trials too quickly.
 
#19 ·
I've seen dogs do a lot of things in the ring, that IMO are very difficult to solve without a correction...mostly stemming from the fact that a treat isn't available, and the dog knows it, so it doesn't perform the exercise as well as it would if that treat was there. But that might also be because they haven't weaned the dogs away from treats and just go into the trials too quickly.
Yes, this is a pretty common issue. It stems from insufficient ring prep -- the dogs haven't been specifically taught to deal with the scant reinforcement allowed in the ring and the long periods of silence from their handlers.

It's just a proofing issue. You don't need to rely on physical punishment to correct the problem but you do need to have correct foundational training and lots of ring prep, which is lacking in many R+ schools mostly because some regions don't have that many advanced trainers using those techniques yet. In regions that have more experienced force-free instructors, you tend not to see that issue pop up as often, because the teams have been prepped to handle it.
 
#18 ·
I am in Milwaukee, and we just signed them each up for a class at the humane society. We tried the local GSD club but for various reasons having to do with class size, methods, her ability to focus in such a busy atmosphere we pulled her out and just worked with a behaviorist for awhile and trained at home.
 
#22 ·
I just read a book called Plenty in Life is Free, by Kathy Sdao. She trains other animals besides dogs, like dolphins and walruses. Her basic point is that you don't train an animal that is larger than you by using NILIF, so why train dogs that way? Interesting read, and gave me food for thought.
 
#26 ·
We use " oops" as a no reward marker. I do grab her collar and use a firm no when she mouths, and sometimes if she is super amped, I sing to her to calm her down and then she rolls over on her side and relaxes. Sometimes physically hauling her into a time out room gets her too excited.
 
#28 ·
I train using force-free methods as well. My good friend breeds Aussies and does conformation, rally, and herding with them (and has many titles) and is force-free, too. I think like someone said earlier that it really depends on the dog. With my current GSD, I learned very quickly that any physical corrections riled him up even further. I quickly discontinued use of the prong for this reason. I know the prong can work miracles on some dogs, but it really made most of our issues worse.

When he went through the puppy stage and was nipping greatly, I remember that so many people suggested yelping or grabbing the snout and giving a tight squeeze. Yelping made him hyperactive and the biting got worse. Grabbing his snout and squeezing riled him up to the point where he went ballistic. I worked extensively with a private trainer, and the biggest thing that helped curbed inappropriate nipping (aside from redirection) was a physical time-out. He had to be given time alone to a. let those adrenaline levels reduce and b. realize that when he acted that way, his favorite thing (me!) went away.

Anyway, my point is is that different dogs respond differently to different training. Mine responds very well to marker training, body blocks, time-outs, and flat out being ignored (worse punishment for him--ever. Me not paying attention to him is akin to the ninth circle of ****! ;) )
 
#30 ·
So then her title should have been "NILF, but don't be so **** grumpy about it" or something like that :)

Saying most things in life are free, and hinting at marine animals, but then neglecting that they'd starve to death if they didn't work for you is a bit disingenuous.
 
#34 ·
Not "most" but "plenty."

It's not a bad book but it's pretty thin and I don't think there's anything in it that would be new to you. It's been a year or two since I read it, but iirc it's mostly just about remembering to be flexible and appreciative and allowing dogs to be dogs sometimes. Which is a good message, and a necessary corrective sometimes (at least for me!), but I remember getting to the end and thinking I kind of wanted my ten dollars back.
 
#33 ·
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