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I've been lurking for about 6 months (since we got Angus), so I think this is my first post. And I think it'll be a doozy.
A brief introduction - I, a 29 y/o professional-to-be, and my girlfriend (common law spouse...whatever you want to call it), got our first puppy on the Thanksgiving weekend last year (that's Canadian T/G, so October) when he was 9 weeks old. Angus is a purebred Chocolate Labrador Retriever from excellent stock and a reputable breeder. He is a field / American lab and is very handsome. He is just over 8 months old now.
We did a lot of research when we got him about all sorts of basic housetraining and general puppy development. We also went to puppy/basic obedience classes starting from about 4 - 6 months. The trainer, a wonderful woman named Pam Murray - her company is Canine Spirit (www.caninespirit.com) who uses a holistic and positive reward based training method - was great, but we came away without any real concrete information to work with and a very stubborn but smart dog. This meant that what we learned in class kind of fell aside as we were trying to do it all from memory and intuition (her methods were quite instinctive - and I don't necessarily understand dogs well enough to know everything to put them into place properly).
Two months later, we were getting frustrated and decided to call the infamous Bark Busters, as a friend had had a very good experience with them. I wish that I could say the same.
The trainer arrived and went through the standard "all dogs are like this" routine with the whole pack animal thing that we all know so well. Fine, tell me something new. She then went on to talk about their methods being non-violent and that hands are only for praise and that the dog has to submit in order to see you as the leader of the pack and so on. All relatively valid points (although I'm not so sure about the last one - I'm not sure that conscious and clear submission is necessary to accept leadership from someone else).
The methods, as have been discussed in other threads, are based around using "the word" - "BAH" - as "no", in essence. Whenever the dog is doing something wrong, you "distract" him by saying BAH and then praise him for not doing it (i.e. counter surfing - one of our biggest problems). To have BAH gain effectiveness, they encourage using their "training pillows" to start, where you throw the little bag of chains at the dog's feet to make a loud noise and say BAH at the same time so that they associate the BAH with the "distraction." It is supposed to distract him so that he listens to you and "submits" and we are supposed to look for signs of submission through lip licking, turning his head to the side, etc (the same kind of stuff someone performing an alpha rollover looks for). After the distraction, you're supposed to pile on the praise for NOT doing whatever it was that you're distracting him from.
Right away, this bothers me. To me, the bag of chains is NOT a distraction, but something to generate fear and prevent "bad" behaviour. BAH is then associated with a fear response and so, my instinct tells me, the dog is then "fearful" of the word BAH and will thus not do what he's about to do in an effort to avoid the associated noise from the bag of chains. I might be humanizing or over analyzing, but that's my instinct. It simply changes the violence from physical to psychological.
My mind, however, was put at ease when she threw the training pillow, stamped her foot, and shouted BAH. Angus' response? Pick up the pillow, run away with it, and start chewing on it. He is, after all, genetically a hunting dog (his father is a master hunter). I'm pretty sure that a bit of noise isn't going to be enough to scare him into submitting. She was a bit shocked and tried to step it up a notch or two a few different ways. For example, she then tried "machine gunning" the BAH (saying it several times over and throwing multiple bags at his feet) and also tried making it louder by using a leash to "throw" the bag onto the floor. When that didn't work (he would just grab the bags and run away with his fancy new toy), she decided to kick up another notch by using raw chains thrown at his feet. This still didn't phase him or bring about any type of submission. Next step (and this is where it got to be WAY too much for me) - put him in the bathroom and whenever he tries to come out, throw the raw chain (meaning not the training pillow, but an actual chain) into a stainless steel bowl so that it's very loud and shout BAH. The trainer wasn't handling it well - "I've never seen a dog resist the raw chains before" - "I've never had a puppy so resilient" - etc. She just couldn't believe how much he resisted submitting to the ever so fearful BAH.
Further, she was getting pretty worked up herself - she was practically panting and was all red in the face. You could tell she was maybe a bit embarrassed by how well it wasn't working and that she probably didn't enjoy this process much either. It was "hard work" for her.
Eventually, after about 5 - 10 minutes of this (which seemed like an eternity), he submitted sufficiently for her (he sat down, looked away, had his ears down, licked his lips, etc) as he was trying to figure out what it was that he was supposed to do. The only reason that I didn't jump in and physically eject her from the apartment at this point was that he didn't show any signs of fear, per se. He wasn't cowering, his tail wasn't down, he wasn't jumping or shying away to speak of, and he didn't show any other signs that I'd normally associate with a fear response from him.
At that point, we progressed to a few other things where we were "setting him up" so that we would "win" various challenges - mostly surrounding "stealing." He likes to grab socks, hats, gloves, etc and run away with them. Pretty normal stuff. So we'd set him up to grab something and "BAH" him and use a regular training pillow. It was working reasonably well. But he's too smart. We'd put a sock in front of him and wait for him to move towards it and then BAH him to stop him. After a couple of times of that, he'd just sit there and either look at us or the sock, wondering what it was that we wanted from him. She (the trainer) was thrilled with the progress. Then, after we would stop paying attention to him, the little jerk would grab the sock and run away. :lol-sign: Oh man, he's awesome.
It went on to how he reacts to the door and then again, the training pillows weren't working, so she moved onto the spray bottle (with water) that accompanied the BAH. Obviously it's not hurting him, but I don't really see it as a positive method of learning, either.
Anyway, after a bit of that, he was tired and went to sleep and she said she'll come back next Sunday (this just happened this past Saturday).
The more I think about it, though, the less I want her to come back. I don't think that this is the most effective training method for my dog. I don't think that inciting his most primitive and instinctive fear response (nothing quite like cornering him in a bathroom with loud noises) is the way to have him respect and trust me. He might respect and fear me, but I don't think he'll respect and trust me. Why would he? There's no incentive. The whole methodology is based around negative reinforcement followed by praise for doing the right thing. It seems to be the reverse of what actually makes sense. Reward him for positive behaviour and distract him if he strays from that. It just FEELS wrong.
At the same time, I need something concrete that I can work from. I need paper and principles and methodology physically demonstrated to me (like they provide) that I can then refer to so that I can put it into practice consistently. That was the one drawback from his earlier training. Also, I felt like the other training was just eliciting appropriate behaviour so that he would get the reward. When the reward was not forthcoming, he'd just go back to being a poophead. It's a bit of a dilemma. He's an intelligent dog and he's definitely stubborn and strong willed. He will probably require some very diligent and experienced training to really turn into the dog that I want (I'm hoping for a dog that is very well behaved and looks to me for everything - an off-leash wonder dog, basically).
The biggest problem? My gf wants to see it through with Bark Busters. She felt like it was working and that he was listening, but mostly, she's just happy to have that concrete training plan.
In my mind, what good is a concrete training plan if you don't agree with the philosophy behind it? I think she thinks that I'm too much of a softy in this regard, but I didn't like the methods. In short, we're at odds. We haven't yet paid the $450 fee (yes, $450 :yikes
and I don't think I want to. I'll happily pay the trainer for her three hours of time for Saturday and mentally boot her in the butt on the way out the door. GF wants her to come back on Sunday though.
If ANYONE read this - thanks. If not, it was at least cathartic to write it out. If it's a bit disjointed, it's because it's interrupted by work.
opcorn:
A brief introduction - I, a 29 y/o professional-to-be, and my girlfriend (common law spouse...whatever you want to call it), got our first puppy on the Thanksgiving weekend last year (that's Canadian T/G, so October) when he was 9 weeks old. Angus is a purebred Chocolate Labrador Retriever from excellent stock and a reputable breeder. He is a field / American lab and is very handsome. He is just over 8 months old now.
We did a lot of research when we got him about all sorts of basic housetraining and general puppy development. We also went to puppy/basic obedience classes starting from about 4 - 6 months. The trainer, a wonderful woman named Pam Murray - her company is Canine Spirit (www.caninespirit.com) who uses a holistic and positive reward based training method - was great, but we came away without any real concrete information to work with and a very stubborn but smart dog. This meant that what we learned in class kind of fell aside as we were trying to do it all from memory and intuition (her methods were quite instinctive - and I don't necessarily understand dogs well enough to know everything to put them into place properly).
Two months later, we were getting frustrated and decided to call the infamous Bark Busters, as a friend had had a very good experience with them. I wish that I could say the same.
The trainer arrived and went through the standard "all dogs are like this" routine with the whole pack animal thing that we all know so well. Fine, tell me something new. She then went on to talk about their methods being non-violent and that hands are only for praise and that the dog has to submit in order to see you as the leader of the pack and so on. All relatively valid points (although I'm not so sure about the last one - I'm not sure that conscious and clear submission is necessary to accept leadership from someone else).
The methods, as have been discussed in other threads, are based around using "the word" - "BAH" - as "no", in essence. Whenever the dog is doing something wrong, you "distract" him by saying BAH and then praise him for not doing it (i.e. counter surfing - one of our biggest problems). To have BAH gain effectiveness, they encourage using their "training pillows" to start, where you throw the little bag of chains at the dog's feet to make a loud noise and say BAH at the same time so that they associate the BAH with the "distraction." It is supposed to distract him so that he listens to you and "submits" and we are supposed to look for signs of submission through lip licking, turning his head to the side, etc (the same kind of stuff someone performing an alpha rollover looks for). After the distraction, you're supposed to pile on the praise for NOT doing whatever it was that you're distracting him from.
Right away, this bothers me. To me, the bag of chains is NOT a distraction, but something to generate fear and prevent "bad" behaviour. BAH is then associated with a fear response and so, my instinct tells me, the dog is then "fearful" of the word BAH and will thus not do what he's about to do in an effort to avoid the associated noise from the bag of chains. I might be humanizing or over analyzing, but that's my instinct. It simply changes the violence from physical to psychological.
My mind, however, was put at ease when she threw the training pillow, stamped her foot, and shouted BAH. Angus' response? Pick up the pillow, run away with it, and start chewing on it. He is, after all, genetically a hunting dog (his father is a master hunter). I'm pretty sure that a bit of noise isn't going to be enough to scare him into submitting. She was a bit shocked and tried to step it up a notch or two a few different ways. For example, she then tried "machine gunning" the BAH (saying it several times over and throwing multiple bags at his feet) and also tried making it louder by using a leash to "throw" the bag onto the floor. When that didn't work (he would just grab the bags and run away with his fancy new toy), she decided to kick up another notch by using raw chains thrown at his feet. This still didn't phase him or bring about any type of submission. Next step (and this is where it got to be WAY too much for me) - put him in the bathroom and whenever he tries to come out, throw the raw chain (meaning not the training pillow, but an actual chain) into a stainless steel bowl so that it's very loud and shout BAH. The trainer wasn't handling it well - "I've never seen a dog resist the raw chains before" - "I've never had a puppy so resilient" - etc. She just couldn't believe how much he resisted submitting to the ever so fearful BAH.
Further, she was getting pretty worked up herself - she was practically panting and was all red in the face. You could tell she was maybe a bit embarrassed by how well it wasn't working and that she probably didn't enjoy this process much either. It was "hard work" for her.Eventually, after about 5 - 10 minutes of this (which seemed like an eternity), he submitted sufficiently for her (he sat down, looked away, had his ears down, licked his lips, etc) as he was trying to figure out what it was that he was supposed to do. The only reason that I didn't jump in and physically eject her from the apartment at this point was that he didn't show any signs of fear, per se. He wasn't cowering, his tail wasn't down, he wasn't jumping or shying away to speak of, and he didn't show any other signs that I'd normally associate with a fear response from him.
At that point, we progressed to a few other things where we were "setting him up" so that we would "win" various challenges - mostly surrounding "stealing." He likes to grab socks, hats, gloves, etc and run away with them. Pretty normal stuff. So we'd set him up to grab something and "BAH" him and use a regular training pillow. It was working reasonably well. But he's too smart. We'd put a sock in front of him and wait for him to move towards it and then BAH him to stop him. After a couple of times of that, he'd just sit there and either look at us or the sock, wondering what it was that we wanted from him. She (the trainer) was thrilled with the progress. Then, after we would stop paying attention to him, the little jerk would grab the sock and run away. :lol-sign: Oh man, he's awesome.
It went on to how he reacts to the door and then again, the training pillows weren't working, so she moved onto the spray bottle (with water) that accompanied the BAH. Obviously it's not hurting him, but I don't really see it as a positive method of learning, either.
Anyway, after a bit of that, he was tired and went to sleep and she said she'll come back next Sunday (this just happened this past Saturday).
The more I think about it, though, the less I want her to come back. I don't think that this is the most effective training method for my dog. I don't think that inciting his most primitive and instinctive fear response (nothing quite like cornering him in a bathroom with loud noises) is the way to have him respect and trust me. He might respect and fear me, but I don't think he'll respect and trust me. Why would he? There's no incentive. The whole methodology is based around negative reinforcement followed by praise for doing the right thing. It seems to be the reverse of what actually makes sense. Reward him for positive behaviour and distract him if he strays from that. It just FEELS wrong.
At the same time, I need something concrete that I can work from. I need paper and principles and methodology physically demonstrated to me (like they provide) that I can then refer to so that I can put it into practice consistently. That was the one drawback from his earlier training. Also, I felt like the other training was just eliciting appropriate behaviour so that he would get the reward. When the reward was not forthcoming, he'd just go back to being a poophead. It's a bit of a dilemma. He's an intelligent dog and he's definitely stubborn and strong willed. He will probably require some very diligent and experienced training to really turn into the dog that I want (I'm hoping for a dog that is very well behaved and looks to me for everything - an off-leash wonder dog, basically).
The biggest problem? My gf wants to see it through with Bark Busters. She felt like it was working and that he was listening, but mostly, she's just happy to have that concrete training plan.
In my mind, what good is a concrete training plan if you don't agree with the philosophy behind it? I think she thinks that I'm too much of a softy in this regard, but I didn't like the methods. In short, we're at odds. We haven't yet paid the $450 fee (yes, $450 :yikes
and I don't think I want to. I'll happily pay the trainer for her three hours of time for Saturday and mentally boot her in the butt on the way out the door. GF wants her to come back on Sunday though.If ANYONE read this - thanks. If not, it was at least cathartic to write it out. If it's a bit disjointed, it's because it's interrupted by work.
opcorn:
