Nickheref wrote: ↑Thu Dec 12, 2019 4:27 pm
But for how long do you accept it is a mistake that the dog self rectifies and when do you decide it is a habit that the dog has adopted?
On this side, you may never "accept" it, you may have it forced down your throat like a big dollop of castor oil every time you work the dog. It becomes what you can or can't live with so long as the dog shall live. I've got one of those - a "hesitant" Lab when the retrieving scenario in our training is too complex for her to "digest." Thus what we call "bugging" and/or "no-go's." She is now nine years old and in spite of her (and my) malfunctions, I continue to train her for the sake of training but not field trials. On the plus side, she is about an eyelash shy of FTCh+ capability performance wise if not mentally sound, and happens to be the best pure retriever - in making her retrieves works of art - that I've ever had. Plus, she's a cute - albeit lovingly infuriating - little thing with the best water entry on the planet when she does opt to go (as here, @all of 12 weeks)
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But again, cf. our "training culture," it's a lifelong nag (for me) that I could never train her out of her apprehension and uncertainties, and moreover, living with the guilt if you will that I probably trained them into her...
MG
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I think you’re getting hold of the wrong end of the stick here and confusing training, or the lack of it, with exploratory learning. Some trainers see the latter as a handicap in their search for perfection. They want to control everything and see initiative as thwarting their efforts. That’s how we’ve ended up with handlers that find the bird for the dog on a retrieve or see ground treatment as being more important than wind treatment and train a spaniel to hunt to their demands regardless of wind direction. They want to micro management everything. Dogs learn the best way to find birds, shot or unshot, through making mistakes and learning from them. As for running in, chasing and pulling you may get the odd mistake where the dog self corrects or stops on command but I’d say that was generally a training issue. But there’s no doubt in my mind that dogs will learn to work to a gun through experience (exploratory learning) if regularly shot over, and with careful management can learn a lot more through on the job training than through any amount of dummy or artificial work. I train like that all the time.
Naj wrote: ↑Thu Dec 12, 2019 9:52 pm
I think you’re getting hold of the wrong end of the stick here and confusing training, or the lack of it, with exploratory learning. Some trainers see the latter as a handicap in their search for perfection. They want to control everything and see initiative as thwarting their efforts. That’s how we’ve ended up with handlers that find the bird for the dog on a retrieve or see ground treatment as being more important than wind treatment and train a spaniel to hunt to their demands regardless of wind direction. They want to micro management everything. Dogs learn the best way to find birds, shot or unshot, through making mistakes and learning from them. As for running in, chasing and pulling you may get the odd mistake where the dog self corrects or stops on command but I’d say that was generally a training issue. But there’s no doubt in my mind that dogs will learn to work to a gun through experience (exploratory learning) if regularly shot over, and with careful management can learn a lot more through on the job training than through any amount of dummy or artificial work. I train like that all the time.
Naj
I'd agree wholeheartedly with this - however one decides to train. Great post.
Judy wrote: ↑Fri Dec 13, 2019 9:50 am
Its a privilege to be able to train "on the job" the vast majority of us cannot.
But you do but in a different context to me. I’d imagine that you’d gently introduce a young dog into the shooting field by taking it picking up and carefully selecting what work it was allowed to do so you maintained control and the dog maintained its composure. How you stand on that largely depends upon your experience and whether you consider that shooting over a dog spoils it or enhances its education.
Judy wrote: ↑Fri Dec 13, 2019 9:50 am
Its a privilege to be able to train "on the job" the vast majority of us cannot.
Unless training is the job, Judy - still, it's a privileged few with access to the right ground and, more accurately stated on our side, the right water.
I don't disagree with Naj on shooting over a dog afield and "exploratory learning" as valuable for *hunting,* but no dice on fowling with a dog and their "making mistakes and learning from them" on the water.
Marking falls on land for a yearling retriever gets more leeway as the distances for thrown cold game are extended - and also enables an opportunity for the youngster to start a hunting pattern on where it marked or perhaps mismarked a downed bird, and using that crucial sense of smell as well, but that ain't a mistake, per se, by the dog, it's more "I'm learning to hunt a recovery pattern; let's see if I can do better with the next marking opportunity."
