Training in drive?

[Judy]

Drive= “the dog’s desire to perform certain behavior.” Can be instinctual.. can be learned.

She also talks about "Arousal". Arousal =“an excited mental state.”

So the example of the dog asleep changing into the highly alert retriever would not be a change in drive, but a change in arousal state. Judys OTT flatcoat would not suffer from an excess of drive, but an excess of arousal.. it would be right at the end of the arousal curve, where it would be unable to concentrate and perform. .
.

I disagree! You can shape a gundog's desire to perform but what SP and others are saying is you can't make a dog which has no drive perform as well as a dog which has built in desire. If you could you would be able to take a show Spaniel and win Field a trials with it, that's unlikely to happen isn't it? Regardless of how you wind it up before trying to teach an exercise. The dog will do the job, maybe, but wouldn't have the drive to do it as well as even an averagely trained work bred dog. We use "drive" to mean the inherent desire to work well which to my mind means basically the same as the above definition.

And, surely arousal is part and parcel of drive? If the dog isn't aroused it lacks the drive to perform, if a dog is over aroused as some Flatcoats are, then its capabilities diminish too ( we agree on that bit then! )

I think the danger with all this theory is the compartmentalising of fragments of behaviour instead of seeing the whole dog. We try to label component parts but, just as cars, one bit won't work without the others.

The sign of a good trainer is knowing when to wind the dog up and when to calm it down, another thread there, maybe. A good gundog / bird dog should find the work its own reward, if it doesn't then it should be discarded from any kind of breeding program as a working dog without a great deal of working instinct is a waste of space.

So, as Wullie has just said KISS OMG I'm agreeing with the auld sod again! is it Christmas already?

[Luked]

You're doing a little more than that, because you are dismissing other terminology ("enthusiasm") and working from an underlying assumption that being "in drive" is a different cognitive state. I don't believe that this is so. I agree that we do see sharper response to commands we work on when the dog is excited, i.e. hunting, but given that a lot of gundog training is done on game -- i.e. when the dog is "in drive" -- I'm not sure what the implications are for training methods. As SP points out above, we sometimes have to calm the dog down to do any productive training.

SP's use of "drive" seems quite clear to me. It is the common usage in the gundog world: a dog is said to have drive when it shows a strong hunting instinct and desire to hunt long and hard under all conditions. This is mainly a function of breeding.

I am no more dismissing terminology than you are? SP used enthusiasm, you used excited I use the word drive, as that is the word used in the circles where the method was developed, adopted and utilised.

Surely if the outcome of the training is different and you see sharper responses, something is different. The dog is reacting differently hence something has changed.

The implications in my eyes is if you find that you get a faster reaction time and response when the dog is in the state when on game, would it not be good if you could get that same response and reaction time when you are not on game? In regard to to having to calm the dog to do productive training, surely a method that meant that the level of "the state" that the dog was in was in the hands of the trainer, would that not be a good thing? A bit like training a command and then proofing under more and more distraction. Training a command and then increasing the dogs speed of response due to increasing the level of it's excitement, Would you not see that as a good implication?

[Luked]

Hence gundog training is more about "shaping" the behaviours whilst in a "drive" state, rather than trying to artificially create a "drive state" to obtain the benefits?

You do not train a dog to hunt, you buy a dog that hunts and you train it to behave.

I.M.O. these two quotes are much the same thing but with different words used to describe that same thing.
Just about this entire thread has been a play on words, we are going around in circles when I think we actually know very well what each means. If someone wants to call it drive ,that's O.K. by me, if someone wants to call it inborn instincts or hunting instincts or enthusiasm that's fine by me too, I will know what they mean.
I am beginning to go dizzy reading this thread.....K.I.S.S. ......Keep It Simple Stupid ....works fine for me .

Wullie

They are the same wullie,

[Springfield Pointers]

Lesson learnt by me, keep my mouth firmly shut in future.

For the record, I don't think anyone is asking you to "keep your mouth shut in future" But with all due respect, you asked a question and it was answered (on a few occasions by more than one person), what you failed to appreciate or acknowledge was the answer.

I am no more dismissing terminology than you are? SP used enthusiasm, you used excited I use the word drive

Reference is wrong again. Your use of the word drive is incorrect!

The implications in my eyes is if you find that you get a faster reaction time and response when the dog is in the state when on game, would it not be good if you could get that same response and reaction time when you are not on game? In regard to to having to calm the dog to do productive training, surely a method that meant that the level of "the state" that the dog was in was in the hands of the trainer, would that not be a good thing?

Are we hypnotising dogs or what? Has the term "in drive" now become "the state" - My feeling is that you are complicating and extremely simple issue.

They are the same wullie

For goodness sake!! If you understand this (or claim to?) how is it that you are so confused about this issue. And no !! Drive and Excitement/Enthusiasm ARE NOT the same thing. If someone says he has a dog that "is very driven" to most people that will be a whole lot different to someone who says he has a dog that "is very excited"

[trekmoor]

I don't think you would win a dog show with a work bred springer or cocker no matter how much spit and polish you applied to them. I equally don't think you would win a field trial with a show bred dog no matter how much "drive" you attempted to train into the poor animal. I therefor do not think I would gain much at all by attempting to train dogs not born with enough drive already installed by their breeding. No matter how hard I tried or how good I was as a trainer the dog would still not have the amount of "drive" etc. that I needed and that the strongly work bred dogs were born with.

Wullie

[jeffD]

This thread wants renaming as The Teal Thread, its doing me head in just like madam does

[Luked]

So regardless of the theory, language or semantics do you believe that their methods work? Do you feel that their method might be applicable to training a gundog?

Method is specific. How you train the dog to sit, for example. "Methods," in a more general sense, are wrapped up in the folk theory. Again, I point to dominance theory. Some of the things we trained under dominance assumptions worked, likely because they simply provided a structure and routine for the dog. Others were useless or even harmful. But our method of training a dog to sit really didn't change much.

Generally, no, I don't see it as applicable. We train dogs to perform in a calm state so that they will have something to work from when we train them on game. At that point, this whole question becomes irrelevant. You work with the dog and when the dog errs, you correct the error. We train on pigeons here, and when the dog is steady to wing and shot, it gets the reward of retrieving the shot bird. Are we "training in drive?" Or are we just training the dog?

Well the mechanics of teaching the command was issuing the command then lifting a treat in an arc from in front of my pointers face over his head, until his bum hit the floor. Once i knew he knew the command, I used a toy to excite him, then lifted the toy straight up whilst stopping the toys movement that was exciting him, whilst issuing the command to sit, once his bottom hit the deck, he was given a verbal marker and the game resumed, which increased his response speed by many fold. That is about as specific an example of the method I have been discussing as I can give you. So in regard to changing the way I taught him to sit, no it did not change a great deal, what changed was the speed and intensity of his compliance.

"We train on pigeons here, and when the dog is steady to wing and shot, it gets the reward of retrieving the shot bird. Are we "training in drive?" Or are we just training the dog?" My question exactly!

[trekmoor]

This thread wants renaming as The Teal Thread, its doing me head in just like madam does

Yup !

Wullie

[carolwildbird]

I disagree! You can shape a gundog's desire to perform but what SP and others are saying is you can't make a dog which has no drive perform as well as a dog which has built in desire. If you could you would be able to take a show Spaniel and win Field a trials with it, that's unlikely to happen isn't it? Regardless of how you wind it up before trying to teach an exercise. The dog will do the job, maybe, but wouldn't have the drive to do it as well as even an averagely trained work bred dog. We use "drive" to mean the inherent desire to work well which to my mind means basically the same as the above definition.

And, surely arousal is part and parcel of drive? If the dog isn't aroused it lacks the drive to perform, if a dog is over aroused as some Flatcoats are, then its capabilities diminish too ( we agree on that bit then! )

I think the danger with all this theory is the compartmentalising of fragments of behaviour instead of seeing the whole dog. We try to label component parts but, just as cars, one bit won't work without the others.

The sign of a good trainer is knowing when to wind the dog up and when to calm it down, another thread there, maybe. A good gundog / bird dog should find the work its own reward, if it doesn't then it should be discarded from any kind of breeding program as a working dog without a great deal of working instinct is a waste of space.

So, as Wullie has just said KISS OMG I'm agreeing with the auld sod again! is it Christmas already?

Actually, I agree with "wat you rote".. not sure what the disagreement is (if it was with what I wrote)... If drive is "the dogs desire to perform a behaviour" then clearly some dogs have more innate drive than others.. why multitudes of people in different sports try and select a pup with the innate drive to do what they want. I do believe you can build drive for things the dog isn't that interested in (eg building a desire to tug) to some extent, but much easier to choose one with a high drive to start with.

As for arousal.... well thats what you are describing with "winding it up and winding it down". Managing arousal. And I think what the Op was writing about originally was compounding drive and arousal. Consciously using methods to manage arousal is I believe key to optimum performance.

Maybe you very experienced trainers don't need to discuss all this because you know how to do it without trying to explain the underlying ideas. For us lesser mortals, personally I find the whole idea of drive and arousal very interesting. So thanks Luked for bringing it up.

[Judy]

CWB I think the word should be confusing not compounding!

The implications in my eyes is if you find that you get a faster reaction time and response when the dog is in the state when on game, would it not be good if you could get that same response and reaction time when you are not on game? In regard to to having to calm the dog to do productive training, surely a method that meant that the level of "the state" that the dog was in was in the hands of the trainer, would that not be a good thing? A bit like training a command and then proofing under more and more distraction. Training a command and then increasing the dogs speed of response due to increasing the level of it's excitement, Would you not see that as a good implication?

In my humble a dog which is sharp in training on dummies may not be at all sharp in the presence of game.

The level of the state is in the hands of the trainer, I think you may be confusing the act of arousing the dog with rewarding the dog with tug or whatever? If the dog works harder to get the reward (normal behaviour, normal, unscientific methods of training!) then does that make it in the drive state? Isn't this common sense training? Its simply easier to train a gundog which already has the desire to work because you are simply shaping what it already wants to do but to do it within your parameters. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear so why try and make a dog something it isn't?