Shock Collars

[Kitana]

When I said incompetent, it wasn't an insult, it was a constatation that someone using a shock collar to stop the dog from doing behavior X or Y does not have the competences needed to train it without using punition. Therefore, this person is incompetent, he lacks competence. He lacks informations about how to train really reliable recall without a shock collar. It's not an insult, it's not about experience, it's about knowledge.

We humans ask a lot of our dogs but we are not patient with them. Dogs are very poor to generalize things, if they learned to come when called in the house, for their mind it is not the same thing as coming when called in the garden, or in the field. Just like if you train a hawk to come to the fist in its mews, and then directly take the hawk to a large falconry meet do not expect this hawk to come when called. It seems so obvious for the falconer that the hawk has to be proofed in many environments, so I ask the question why not proofing the dogs the same way?

[cjinx]

Because hawks and dogs are not the same, hawks cannot learn by punishment your relationship in strictly food, dogs will get the message if you Scold them. Even though it should only be implied in the most dire circumstances.

[m4tt]

and, dont forget guys, shock collars do not work on all dogs, they do make some mean, EVEN IF USED PROPERLY!

that, and quickly, Cjinx, beware the training of with treats, or your dog will give you the finger when you dont have one and you need them to come!! a dog will be just as happy with you putting on a goofy smile, and making them the center of the universe for a few seconds!

[Hawk]

Also, many e-collars have a setting that beeps when you zap them, so after the first 5-ish zaps all you have to do is beep them, and they will drop what they're doing and come right over to you.

[cjinx]

Hey sparky I always do make her the center of attention along with treats of course treats only come once in a while like in the beginning of a exercise.

[Kitana]

m4tt said:

beware the training of with treats, or your dog will give you the finger when you dont have one and you need them to come!!

It's a very common error made by people who do not know how to use treats properly with dogs (and even with birds of prey, yes...!). When used as a bribe (the term lure is used in animal training terminology to describe any use of food as bribe), treats quickly become a pain in the a** and the dog (and the bird...) quickly learn to take a look at what kind of bribe is offered and then decide if the bribe is worthy enough to come back or no. I'm sure you have all already seen a hawk sitting on a telephone pole, not coming down for a tidbit on the glove, but coming for a whole chick, or a garnished lure. The same happens with dogs.

To efficiently train with food, you have to very quickly stop using food. Food is used extensively only at the beginning of the training. An excellent «food-trainer» is one that use very tiny amounts of food in training. Conditionning an animal to come back is not bribing it with food. It is creating a kind of casino-like effect with the food (and other kinds of rewards, such as play, petting etc), very rarely there is lot of food, some time not many, and most of the time none at all. But the animal is like a gambler, it becomes enthralled with the game and wants to see if this time is the good one... It's the most efficient training technic known to science nowadays.

When trained with punishment, the animals including humans learn to do the tiniest effort possible that will spare it from being punished. If he wants more results, the trainer has to escalate punishment to obtain quicker, better results, and has to surf on the thin line between results and fear that cause either withdrawal or agression in the animal. When training with rewards, you can obtain the fastest results if you decide to increase your criterions so only the fastest responses are rewarded, and then you go with aleatory reinforcement, creating the casino-effect.

[Kitana]

cjinx said:

Because hawks and dogs are not the same, hawks cannot learn by punishment your relationship in strictly food, dogs will get the message if you Scold them.

Hawks can learn from punishment as well as dogs and any living species. Give an electric shock to a hawk when it goes on a particular perch in the mews and soon it won't go there anymore. The only reason why punishment is not used extensively with birds of prey is simple. When training with punition, the goal is to make the animal connect the punition to the behavior it was doing, so the behavior stop being expressed. However, a brain receiving a punition is in emergency mode, and it makes thousand of different connections with the punishment: the persons and animals in presence, the environment, the sounds, the odors. A raped woman can develop a phobia of back alleys, blue trash containers, rainy weather, friday nights, if they were present when she was raped. Animals are the same. Dogs and horses cope better with that than birds for one reason: they don't have wings, and are not totally afraid of humans in their deep selves. Punishing a bird could result in the bird associating the falconer to the punition and then, not wanting to come back. But think well: punishing a dog DO result in a dog that doesn't come back... for a while!

[raptrlvr]

I ask again, how many hunting dogs have you trained with your methods? The bottom line is that my dogs do come back and I no longer have to "shock" them. My ecollar has a beeper on it and if they don't make the turn when I beep them, the next thing they will get is the "shock". The shock is so mild you can hold the collar in your hand and feel a very slight vibration when it is activated. Without the collar, the dogs don't even consider turning until about 700 yards and by then they are out of voice command and usually out of sight. These are English Pointers that are big runners. This is my personel training experience with my dogs. Can you tell me what you are writing to this group is your personal experince or just something you have read from someone else. I must be incompetent.

[Master Yarak]

Good thread if not a bit heated. Shock collars certainly have a place and are just one more tool in the trainers arsenal. We correctly used they can produce the desired results.

Now, that said I try my best to avoid any negative re-enforcement with any animal. As has been stated too much can can go wrong and it can be misinterpreted.
I also think intermittent reward is the way to go. I wish I knew about it 12 years ago. I don't get the "Casino" effect
I would like. I have begun to use it but old habits die hard.

One more thing I would like to say. Its rare that I speak out on someone's behalf. So take note (or not)! I have found Kitana's knowledge to be reliable and accurate based on my application of it and personal experience.
I will also say English is not her first language. The internet is a tough place to make yourself fully understood. That is true for those that know only English first and especially true for those that don't.

Once more you get exactly what you pay for.
Yarak

[raptrlvr]

No one questioned her "knowledge". I questioned her personal experience with that knowledge. She hasn't even applied this technic sucessfully to any bird of prey and she won't answer how many hunting dogs she has trained with it. Yet those of us who have been around for many years are incompetant. It reminds me of all the parents that use this type of postive reenforcement with thier kids. Thats exactly why the kids are so disrespectful today. Come back and tell us all the facts when you have sucessfully applied this technic. Somehow over all these years, my birds have managed to take a good share of game and in most ceses lived a decent life in captivity. I have had a couple birds die, one goshawk, one falcon from Asper and another falcon was shot by hunters when I was flying her. Maybe if I wouldn't have been so incompetant, they would still be alive.

[Kitana]

raptrlvr said:

I questioned her personal experience with that knowledge. She hasn't even applied this technic sucessfully to any bird of prey and she won't answer how many hunting dogs she has trained with it.

It's funny to see that when you come up with a different training technic, in whatever animal training field be it horse dog whales or birds, there is always skeptical people that flame on with personnal attacks. And most of these attacks are about experience, as if experience was everything. I ask them, were you born knowing how to train your horse/dog/bird/whale or did you learned?

If you ask, I have never trained a hunting dog. But I have trained many other dogs, plenty, dogs that you would have failed with a shock collar or any punitive technic. Some of these dogs would have killed you if you shock or choke them. Have you ever trained a Chow Chow or an Afghan Hound? These are waaaaaay more difficult to train than any pointers! Try teaching a Saluki to come back, they are bigger runners than any pointer and are renowned for their reluctance to training.

It's not about experience. Bob Bailey is now 84 or 86 years old, he is the most experienced trainer in the whole world, and yet very new green trainers still amaze him with the results they obtain. When you start learning something, there is 3 phases:
1) you start to learn, you know nothing and are eager to learn
2) you learned something and now you know everyting
3) and finally, you realize, after learning a lot, that finally you really know nothing....
The more you learn, the more you realize your knowledge is very limited and learning possibilities are endless... So you don't need to push me down to elevate yourself, because it doesn't work. You have excellent results with the technic you use and it's wonderful, but it does not mean that this technic does not have very big fallouts. It's not you that I attack raptorlvr, not at all, as I said before I admire you for what you achieved and I still do. It's the shock collars.

[Kitana]

yarak2 said:

I also think intermittent reward is the way to go. I wish I knew about it 12 years ago. I don't get the "Casino" effect
I would like. I have begun to use it but old habits die hard.

Thanks Yarak. And yes, we learn everyday, it's the beauty of life. Having the mind opened enough to rethink about what you considered a good technic and put it under a new light is great, whatever conclusion you draw after. It's hard to put yourself in question, especially when you come to the conclusion that you could have fare better if you had known better, but its worth it. The day I will stop wanting to learn, the day I will react to "new" concepts with agressivity, I might as well sit down on a rocking chair and let me die.

[raptrlvr]

If you look around the rocking chairs might be on sale. Once again you bring up Bob Bailey as if he were god. If and when YOU are sucessful, come back and tell us all about it. Don't stand on the soapbox and preach that with which you do not know other than reading about it.
You already have a half way trained Harris Hawk, so, you might be able to get something out of him. The ecollars are fine and will get far more done in a shorter amount of time than your technic. The good news is that the ecollar does keep my dogs from getting hit by cars while you are scrapping up your dog with a shovel when he doesn't listen.

[Falcon Boy]

This thread isnt really going anywhere, so thread locked