Dana:
Quote:
Likewise, dogs living without restraint were unlikely to be trained with purely positive methods. These also depend pretty heavily on restraint and containment. Which is why the purely positive trainers emphasis supervision and keeping the trash put away. Without crates, leashes and fences, clicker training is fairly useless, except as a way to train tricks. It will do nothing to stop dumpster diving, counter surfing and chicken killing.
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I beg to differ, my dogs don't get into the trash, they don't counter surf (yes they could, my one dog can clear a 6 ft fence when he chooses to, so a counter or table would be a piece of cake for him) and my neighbors have all kinds of free range birds that are always at my farm. My dogs LOVE to take chase of those birds and would kill them in a heart beat if not trained and they do have very high prey drives that have been encouraged by hunting them to live quarry as Jrts were meant to do. Luckily for me, I have solid 'off's' on the dogs..........all trained with positive methods.
A couple of years ago, my dogs were out in the backyard, next thing I know the rest of the dogs are barking like crazy and I go to check, my stud dog is missing.
My neighbors Guinea Hens had been outside of the yard again, chasing each other (breeding season for them and they chase each other, screaming etc). Drives my stud dog nuts and he can't contain himself, over that 6 ft fence he goes in hot pursuit.
By the time I go out to the front, he is on the tail of one of the birds, ready to take it down, he grabs it, just as I called 'Bobbi Off!", it goes down and he turns to me on a dead run, right up onto the veranda. Bloody feathers hanging out of his mouth!! I told him he was a star, went around to the back, removed the feathers and THEN went into the house and gave him a reward, a piece of cheese if I remember right.
Countless times that I have had to 'off' a dog from chasing something, all of them, except my pup but then she is still in training (somewhat).
Btw, have you read about how clicker training was developed by Bailey? It's very interesting, it had nothing to do with dog training, nor training tricks but with Goverment Funded Defense work. They need results and they needed them quickly, of course as technology progressed they didn't need it anymore.