Reassurance

[Judy]

Isn't this a classic chicken and egg situation? You may get a dog hunting freely but if it prefers retrieving then at some point it will start "pestering" for a retrieve. So, presumably you then have to start retrieving exercises separate from hunting again?

[bird]

Isn't this a classic chicken and egg situation? You may get a dog hunting freely but if it prefers retrieving then at some point it will start "pestering" for a retrieve. So, presumably you then have to start retrieving exercises separate from hunting again?

That's what happened to us. A chased ball that eventually became a retrieve rewarded the stop. Then Obi started watching me and stopped hunting so well so training had to change. As far as I can tell though (as this is my first hunting dog) you have to constantly assess and adjust what you use as rewards and how you generate the behaviour you want.

At the end of the day as we all know by now - birds train bird dogs

And game scent was the key to getting him going at which point stopping him became a LOT more challenging again but that was fine in the end too. Lots still to do but all good fun

[Naj]

The solution if you want to use rewards like chasing balls or retrieving while the dog is hunting is to educate it that pestering for a retrieve doesn't work as a viable strategy but committing to hunting does. It's a matter of balance. By the time a dog has reached the pestering stage the handler has missed the early signs and the unwanted behaviour is already well advanced.

Naj

[ips]

Wow. Insightful as ever from mr naj

[newf]

I agree with Naj : "It's a matter of balance". However, if it was me, I would have discontinued the ball toss after the 'stop' behavior was reliable. I would only return to it on occasion if the 'stop' was beginning to weaken.

[Naj]

Reliability is a product of the reinforcement/punishment history and repetition makes for fluency so when using reward based methods, in particular, you need to support and maintain the behaviour with regular rewards, which might be hunting, ball chases, edible rewards or retrieves. If you wait for a behaviour to start breaking down before thinking of maintenance then your going to end up with unreliable behaviours. The same can be said if you use aversives.

Naj

[newf]

Realize that Naj. I'm talking about discontinuing the ball toss as a regular reward so the dog doesn't become habituated to it and as a result looks toward the handler. Hunting as you say, among other things can be the real filler as the reward for stopping. Mild aversive after a point can help very well here, too. Balance is everything.