Gundog Training Forum

A woman can knock in a screw with the heel of her shoe, the two pieces of wood are still joined together, who needs tools?

Polmaise wrote:Naj!
20-30 years ago they were! ..they just didn't admit it!

I was referring to 'serious' trainers.

Naj wrote:

Polmaise wrote:Naj!
20-30 years ago they were! ..they just didn't admit it!

I was referring to 'serious' trainers.

So was I

Me toooooooooo

So...is it that nowadays the majority of trainers start off with a pup training using food, or praise, or other things to motivate the pup to do stuff, but then once the dog is older and behaviour starts to break down for whatever reason they believe the dog should now "know better" and use correction techniques to rectify behaviour, instead of going to the root cause of why the behaviour is breaking down and building it back up using motivational methods again?

Maybe the root cause is the fact that the dog has been bribed to perform , take away the bribe the behaviour breaks down I assume you know that the term operant conditioning stems from HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY then some bright spark applied it to animals , I prefer NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming )

I was just reading the recall thread that has resurfaced and this seems to prove my above hypothesis!

This is where "positive" training begins to totally split from other training methods; distraction training.

When the dog becomes distracted by something: game scent, poop!, other dogs, other people, etc... "traditional" trainers, raise their voices, tug the lead, run out to the dog to have a "word" etc... whereas "positive" training is all about slowly building up distraction, so that the dog doesn't actually find it distracting! and using all manner of motivators to keep the dogs focus on the handler rather than the distraction.

Wendy

Maybe the root cause is the fact that the dog has been bribed to perform , take away the bribe the behaviour breaks down

Absolutely, but bribing a behaviour is totally different from reinforcing it.

Wendy

[quote="Wendy and use correction techniques to rectify behaviour, instead of going to the root cause of why the behaviour is breaking down and building it back up using motivational methods again? [/quote]
Up to this point.It is going well
This last part is the 'myth' or mythconception
If the behaviour is breaking down,then the nurture has been inconsistent or the motivation not proofed for the individual dog.
Often ,when a task is asked far beyond the capability of the pupil.

I Blame Pavlov