Creating a Shadow

[ZizouJR]

I agree with MM, it infers a lot but says little of practical use. And thinking on pack theory has moved on. Dogs have little to do with lions, wolves or wild dogs and what we once thought of the workings of their pack systems has been found to be wrong. The nearest we can find to domestic dogs are feral and village dogs and they've had quite a bit of study now which debunks former thinking on alpha leaders and dominance. Taking advantage of a young pups vulnerability and desire to maintain contact with the handler in order to develop a strong bond and working relationship with the handler is now a common practice around the world and quite a few of us on here already work with this to create a dog that naturally becomes a 'follower' of the handlers actions rather than a bog off dog or one that is constantly required to be under strict command in order to contain it. But always interested in hearing more if you want to elaborate and provide a bit more detail.

Naj

In the text I posted in the beginning, it sounds alot like it's all dominance and the dog gotta do as they say and so on. Also the text they have written themselves is a bit misleading I think, it's not much dominance going on at their place. They have one rule for all their dogs, and thats is. "You come when I call you." Which they almost never do, because it's no need, so all their dogs are running around happy all day when outside, doing what ever they want.

Heres a few vids of some of their dogs during their daily life. To me they look really happy and trustfull:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkiHmxEEvYM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQvl5dWtEr0

[ZizouJR]

Just take a look at these 2 clips. The first one shows a Golden that have only done a few retrieves in his life.
The second one is showing some training before the swedish championship in 2013.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gHWpi-cI3g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnBz-_s5C9M&t=312s

That dog on the first video has not only done a few retreieves befor, it is highly trained and has done this many many times.

I liked the spaniels though, but would be more interested to see how he got there i.e. the training

I will see if I can find some videos of interest.

[trekmoor]

[quote=munstyman

A natural leadership is not something special really.

Well that just let all the air out of what ego I have left I think those that have it tend not to notice, but those that don't seek them out ( or maybe a book or philosophy )

[end quote]

I think "natural leadership" is something rather special. I used to take training classes for the gundog breeds and it was often quite easy to tell which of the handlers would do well , not only with the dog they had with them but with most of their future dogs too. That sort of person needed only to be shown or told once or twice "how to train a gundog to do x-y-z " and they would take it on from there themselves .....or even improve on it with ideas of their own that I could learn from.

Most of the people in the classes I took were not like that , they needed guidance every step of the way and they needed repetitious "work" done on them .

For myself, I took it so much for granted that dogs would follow my lead, would want to do what I taught them, would want to be "with me" that when the very occasional pup came along that did not fit neatly into that mould, I was taken by surprise and had to think much harder about how to train it. My present lab pup is one of those "occasional" dogs, she has a strong independent streak in her and that makes me have to actually think about what I am doing when I train her........usually I am an "instinctive" trainer and by that I mean my instincts and not the dogs. I have always found it pretty easy to train dogs.
Dogs are simple creatures and if you train "simply" all is usually well.

Oddly enough it is quite often the highly intelligent people who have the most difficulty when training dogs. I think they tend to overthink the dog and how it should be trained. They are maybe too clever for the dog's basically simple nature ? They theorize far too much.

Wullie

[Naj]

In the text I posted in the beginning, it sounds alot like it's all dominance and the dog gotta do as they say and so on. Also the text they have written themselves is a bit misleading I think, it's not much dominance going on at their place. They have one rule for all their dogs, and thats is. "You come when I call you." Which they almost never do, because it's no need, so all their dogs are running around happy all day when outside, doing what ever they want.

Heres a few vids of some of their dogs during their daily life. To me they look really happy and trustfull:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkiHmxEEvYM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQvl5dWtEr0
[/quote]

I'm all for relaxed management and do no really formal training these days. You say that they still use corrections andcrewards so it would be interesting to see their philosophy on training techniques and whether they differ to those commonly in use.

Naj

[trekmoor]

T.B.H. it all sounds much like what most of us already do ? I think they have re-invented the wheel and called it Creating a Shadow.

Wullie

[ZizouJR]

In the text I posted in the beginning, it sounds alot like it's all dominance and the dog gotta do as they say and so on. Also the text they have written themselves is a bit misleading I think, it's not much dominance going on at their place. They have one rule for all their dogs, and thats is. "You come when I call you." Which they almost never do, because it's no need, so all their dogs are running around happy all day when outside, doing what ever they want.

Heres a few vids of some of their dogs during their daily life. To me they look really happy and trustfull:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkiHmxEEvYM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQvl5dWtEr0

I'm all for relaxed management and do no really formal training these days. You say that they still use corrections andcrewards so it would be interesting to see their philosophy on training techniques and whether they differ to those commonly in use.

Naj
[/quote]

In the text I posted in the beginning, it sounds alot like it's all dominance and the dog gotta do as they say and so on. Also the text they have written themselves is a bit misleading I think, it's not much dominance going on at their place. They have one rule for all their dogs, and thats is. "You come when I call you." Which they almost never do, because it's no need, so all their dogs are running around happy all day when outside, doing what ever they want.

Heres a few vids of some of their dogs during their daily life. To me they look really happy and trustfull:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkiHmxEEvYM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQvl5dWtEr0

I'm all for relaxed management and do no really formal training these days. You say that they still use corrections andcrewards so it would be interesting to see their philosophy on training techniques and whether they differ to those commonly in use.

Naj
[/quote]

Their training methods are very traditional. Nothing special there I guess. One thing though, is that Bengt uses alot of body language and "attitude" and the corrections used are more of the body language kind and not tugs on the lead, harsh voice and scruffing, like alot of the more traditional based trainers use.
Take a look at this video(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P72pQkF3igM&t=115s).
This is a video of him training steadiness and retrieving with one of his bitches. To bad the voiceover is in swedish, because he explains very well what his doing and why his doing it.
He also is very calm when he works with the dogs and will normally wait with the praise until the dogs gets into a more relaxed state of mind.
The idea is that when a spaniel has flushed a rabbit(as an example), he will wait for the dog to calm down before he praise instead of praising the dog as soon as he drops, because at that moment the dog is in a very excited and stressful state of mind.
I think it is many similarities to David Lisset.
I dont really know much about how Gunilla train her retrievers, but I would guess her methods are something between the traditional and the more modern ones, but no treat training.

I can also add that Bengt started his spaniel career in the 60's, so he was using a very dominant training style "back in the days"(is my understanding), but it has changed and now his all in on this "learn it right from the beginning thing", which probably is a very good strategy when you got access to game right outside your house together with a nice little rabbit pen.

[Naj]

i seem to remember reading that there has been some research done on how long it takes for arousal levels to drop and somebody wrote that they'd cured an inveterate chaser by making it wait for 7 minutes, I think, after the flush or shot. Something like that. Think it was an HPR.

Naj

[trekmoor]

Doing that does work Naj. About 12 years back a friend asked me if I'd like him to shoot for me while I worked my young, never shot over before, GSP "Buck." He was quite an excitable sort of dog and he loved retrieving . When he pointed and then produced a pheasant I sat him on the whistle , waited a few seconds and then left him at the sit while I walked out to the bird and "claimed" it as "mine."
I simply lifted it then put it down again before walking back to the dog.

Then I sat on a fallen tree, lit a cigar and smoked it for 5 -10 minutes before sending Buck for the bird. He never forgot that lesson and was steady to future birds. My friend's comment was something like, "I'm not going shooting with you again, I'd only get about two birds all day !"

If I possibly can, I do not always allow dogs to "complete the sequence" of find the bird, flush it, retrieve it because dogs have a habit of forgetting about the steadiness to fall of game if they are allowed to complete the sequence too often. I deliberately break that sequence by claiming the bird as "mine" or by sending another dog for the bird the hunting dog has found and flushed.

Wullie