Simultaneous verbal and physical cue confuses ?

[Judy]

Sit/Stay... There's one that gets used often...

Along with a hand signal! If I say sit I mean my dogs to sit until I move and then come with me without further instruction, if I add stay it means don't move your arras off that spot until I say so regardless of whether the Earth spins or not. Its just what I was taught Gawd knows how many years ago.

[Judy]

Not sure about not giving the hand signal and verbal command together but I do pause after stopping a dog to let it get it's brain into gear and concentrate on what I am about to tell it rather than rushing it, I also don't like repeated "back back back", if the dog understands back (or out in my case ) one time ought to be enough and the rest is superfluous noise as it should be on it's way back/out by the time the second and third are being given. I know it is a personal thing but is it done to try and keep the dog on a straight line and give it confidence that it is doing the right thing?

I sometimes repeat the "back" if a young dog starts to slow down, just to give it confidence thats its still doing the right thing or if an older dog has mis-marked and I need it to get out further. It can be difficult over-riding an experienced dog's desire to hunt where it thinks there is a bird rather than where I know it is e.g. over the brow of a hill, hence the insistence.

[Naj]

our knowledge, and observational skills, have moved on.

Naj

Only until the next load of theories and gurus arrive on the scene . Why do we insist on making simple animals like dogs so complicated ?

Wullie

Of course, that's the nature of knowledge. Or where would you want our current doggy knowledge to stop? That would make for an interesting discussion. And it's the simple assumptions that we've made in the past that are complicating the issue. Dogs haven't changed and their nature is no more or less complicated or simple than it ever was, it's our understanding of them that has changed & is now challenging established preconceptions.

Naj

[Nickheref]

I dare say he felt he had empathy - don't we all like to think we have - and he had a stirring turn of phrase & I wouldn't take that away from him, but if he was so empathetic he wouldn't have needed a chapter on 'crime & punishment'! Respect is a bit of a one sided coin. And, at the time, we were all so sold on being the pack leader that we failed to observe the dogs in our own kennels. Once we did it was glaringly obvious that dominance theory based on the old wolf model just wasn't credible, and that was before it was found to be based on false observation. And I totally disagree with you on your last point. I do think that far from being redundant, modern training methods are totally based upon observation, unlike the old traditional thinking which was very prescriptive rather than innovative and based upon a false premise. Punishment does work but we shouldn't still be justifying it in the name of dominance & by putting the blame on the dog, we should be taking responsibility for it ourselves. It was a great book in its day & I loved reading it but he was a man of his time & our knowledge, and observational skills, have moved on.

Naj

Interesting thoughts Naj, as ever. I never met Wilson Stephens but I read it when it first came out and I thought it was much more interesting than the "How to Train A Gundog" type books of the same era. I began understanding why things had happened with my first dog and it definitely led me along a route of trying to understand how to try and work out why a dog was or wasn't doing something. Just about the same time I met the man who became my mentor who sent a few problem dogs to me to work with that had been referred to him (he was an amateur but about as professional as an amateur can get,at the time I thought it was because he couldn't be bothered as on the whole they were easy fixes but later realised that he was giving me more experience in a few of years than most owners get in a lifetime and he knew and understood that). Most of them were sensitive dogs who needed bringing out of themselves and it taught me that a dog works best out of love for it's handler and it needs to understand what you want. Put the two together and on the whole it is pretty straight forward, then you start looking for dogs with real ability and the fun starts.

[Naj]

Whoa!! Don't go throwing in working just for love, we're still struggling with the concept of working for treats!

I didn't know Wilson Stephens but he was a regular on the trials scene when I first became interested in gundogs. He was also a racing pigeon enthusiast and wrote a similarly interesting book on that topic. He also wrote in The Field, I think, and was always an entertaining writer.

Naj

[Nickheref]

I had never really used treats until I started teaching with my wifes cat to do tricks! Now he does do things for treats!, as a result I may just try it with my next pup but nearly always found that a "good lad/lass" and a scratch behind the ear had been enough. I did use treats with a bitch who had real issues with retrieving right to hand (she was very sensitive and I always suspected someone had smacked her for grabbing something in the house when a small puppy- not mine before she came to me) but really saw it as making her happier to be running straight in and touching my hands rather than her getting a reward for retrieving. It worked but my view was that as lots of others hadn't needed treats to get to the same point she was the "poor relation" in terms of temperament and wouldn't breed from her. No need to make life harder in the next generation than it already is.

[crackerd]

Methinks if you lot ever get shed of that semaphore thingy y'all do with blinds, it'll be the beginning of the end of your great Shakespearean legacy...

And about this silent cast business that turns them (of yor'n) into a block of salt, what's up with that? Probably 90% of our casts after the send-out on "Back!" are silent - and you wouldn't really want to depend on a dog hearing a verbal cast command 400 yards out, either, what-what...

MG

[munstyman]

Sit/Stay... There's one that gets used often...

Along with a hand signal! If I say sit I mean my dogs to sit until I move and then come with me without further instruction, if I add stay it means don't move your arras off that spot until I say so regardless of whether the Earth spins or not. Its just what I was taught Gawd knows how many years ago.

This one post gives credence to the title of the thread, as Judy has introduced a verbal command to sit with a visual cue of a `step forward' as release, and then IMV has had to introduce a second command `stay' to hold the dog on sit and ignore the visual release cue when moving away.
Dogs will by their nature pick up body language cues from us whether intentional ( trained ) or unintentional ( association ). Often I think its not the dog that gets confused but the handler that does not recognise what cue the dog is acting on. Taking Judy's example I would guess that many would use a `heel' or similar cue to release the dog from sit when wanting to move off with the dogs. On occasions we would forget, but as the dog acted on the visual cue of stepping forward, they moved off with us. As it is convenient at the time, we do not correct it, and it becomes the norm....until it happens when we don't want it....and then what do you do.....add the `stay' or repeat `sit' usually in a firmer tone
One thing I `try' to do when training my young dogs is discipline myself into using the same cue especially on the sit/stop and release on each occasion especially when these are still in the learning phase out in the field* e.g. a whistle stop gets a whistle release, and a visual hand signal stop gets a visual hand signal release.
* In the very early puppy stage all cues are given together, and linked with association.
Once the dog is confident ( or getting too confident )I will then start mixing things up, this is where I think that its not always us that train the dogs but that sometimes they have trained me, just as they try to pre-empt the next command I'm trying to predict their pre-emption cue

[munstyman]

Methinks if you lot ever get shed of that semaphore thingy y'all do with blinds, it'll be the beginning of the end of your great Shakespearean legacy...

And about this silent cast business that turns them (of yor'n) into a block of salt, what's up with that? Probably 90% of our casts after the send-out on "Back!" are silent - and you wouldn't really want to depend on a dog hearing a verbal cast command 400 yards out, either, what-what...

MG

I agree in that one `back' should be sufficient in a trained dog MG, but I have to go along with Judy, in that if I see the dog slow down ( waver in confidence ) when on its outrun in `training' I will give it another `gee-up' back to add some assurance to it. ( Yes the purists might say if its not confident, you've pushed it too far too fast , and I would agree, but in defence I would argue that if you aren't pushing the dog close to its limit, you might never get the full potential from that dog )
That said I have seen occasions when someone's dog has become too reliant on a continuous stream of back commands , so I think the handlers should always remember that it is an aid in training not a crutch in life

[Judy]

Horses for courses, MG, what would an American Trials dog do when a wounded woodcock is in a release pen with a six+ feet high fence? Could the handler send the dog 50 yards down the outside of the fence, stop it at a pop hole, sent it through, recall inside the pen, stop, send left then ask the dog to hunt the fall and find the runner? Or would ya have to walk 200 yards up hill to get through the gate before you could send your dog? Semaphore saves miles of walking on the average English shoot. Only one "back" an' all! But I wonder how many times we've all heard what's become known locally as the magic grouse; "goback, goback, goback"