Dog Blogger
I think I am in love. Well, metaphorically. This blogger about dogs has not only keen insight and depth of experience and perspective, she writes beautifully and clearly about these things.
I've said or thought many versions of the following, but never so coherently, inclusively, or cohesivly. Please go check out the rest of her blog, if you like reading about dogs, dog training, dog breeding, and dog behavior:
Excerpt from Ruffly Speaking:
From Bonnie: What do you think of Victoria Stilwell’s It’s Me Or The Dog?
Well. That IS a question. Let me begin by saying that I am not 100% in love with any of the television trainers-I think Cesar is a freaking genius but I think he doesn’t realize how poorly most people are implementing what he does so well. His methods require exactly what he has-years of experience in watching dogs, body language, energy, communication, and pack behavior. He responds to the dog’s own language and signals much more than he responds to behavior. I think even he doesn’t realize exactly what he’s doing. If you are a typical dog owner with 99% of what the dog is doing a complete mystery to you, you can misapply his techniques and really hurt your dog.
Victoria does better at communicating techniques that are broader, shallower, more foolproof. Unfortunately, she often SUCKS at body language and she puts dogs into situations that are genuinely dangerous and then pez-dispenses cookies to distract them; the owners perceive this as success but the dog has not changed one bit. I once watched an episode where she had two dogs who were determined to kill each other in a room together, and was rewarding them “so they would associate the presence of the other dog with a reward.” I started screeching at the TV when I could clearly see that the dogs greatly and steadily desired the death of each other, and were quite cheerful about that (there is, as Terhune said, a gay cavalier inside each dog who fights), and from their point of view were getting cookies shoved down their throats in glorious recognition of their hatred. They were staring at each other with tails stiff and eyes fixed, eating cookies as fast as they could.
She is also SO COMPLETELY TOTALLY WRONG about prong collars and choke collars. Head halters are MUCH more likely to cause serious damage than the prong (which is actually the safest collar for the average owner to use) and head halters and ez-pull harnesses and so on don’t train. They just make certain movements physically impossible. The dog doesn’t say “Oh, my owner is telling me not to do that, and therefore I will not do it.” The dog instead is physically impeded. Saying those tools train is like saying that a wall trains dogs not to run away. As soon as the tool-as soon as the wall-is gone, the behavior is exactly the same. You can choose to use those tools, just like you choose to use a wall, but they should be a very temporary stop-gap with the goal of using real training signals as soon as possible.
I also think that neither of them does a good job of verbally describing exactly why they are doing what they’re doing, with fearful dogs in particular. Cesar does talk about stopping dogs from moving forward (decreasing drive) but doesn’t articulate exactly why his methods are working on fearful dogs. I know the shows are edited, so maybe they’re talking with the owners at length, but there’s a lot of “Do this” and very little “Do this because it works this way and has this result.” I think that many (most?) dog owners punish fear. I know I did. I knew you were supposed to stop the dog from, for example, growling, but I didn’t know how to distinguish the growl that means “please don’t; I’m afraid,” from the one that says “don’t, or I’ll have to punish you.” I didn’t know that you have to begin your shaping of the eventual result LONG before it gets to the point of the growl; by the time the growl comes you’ve already failed to a certain extent. If you watch Cesar, he never, ever uses an aversive or a correction on a fearful dog, but I’ve never heard him say “Never correct a fearful dog” in so many words. I think he should be saying it EVERY TIME.
If you want my advice on training, I’d say put away all the actual training books for a few months. Read Rugaas and Aloff’s books on body language and read everything you can get on dog behavior and pack techniques. Dunbar, Donaldson, Pryor are great at teaching about motivation. But if you only read them you will (I am convinced) only get part of the story. You should also read the Monks of New Skete and all the classic ones from trainers long since gone to their reward. Read Bones Would Rain From the Sky. Read Katz. Read books on border collies (not because you’d be teaching herding, but because the best herding training is all about shaping natural and joyful behaviors), and I would very highly recommend reading several books on Schutzhund. Even if you own a beagle or a maltese. Schutzhund researchers understand drive, and how handlers increase, decrease, mishandle, and screw up drive better than anyone else.
You need to read everyone because nobody has the whole story. The pure researchers who focus solely on motivation miss the boat because they are so careful to never attribute any behavior to anything but the self-interest of the animal. For a bonded dog-human pair, that’s like analyzing a marriage and ignoring anything that isn’t the result of self-interest. Dogs DO love, and they DO feel jealousy, and they DO object to inequity, and so on. The behaviorists who determine that no aversive signals can ever be given forget that dogs themselves communicate in aversives. The behaviorists who object to food rewards forget that candy tastes good, and so does liver. And if you want candy you do stuff, and dogs do the same thing.
If you read EVERYBODY, and watch your dog(s) for a long time, you’ll start to build an idea of what’s true. Then you’re ready to go back to actual trainers and throw out what you know is false and keep what you know is true. But above all else, the DOG MUST TEACH YOU. If you are doing anything without the dog “agreeing” with you-if the dog is showing confusion, anger, fear, anxiety, etc.-I don’t care how gold-certified the technique you’re using is; stop it. That’s why I think you must start with the body language books (and videos/dvds if you can get them); you have to know what your dog is communicating before you can continue with the training.From: http://rufflyspeaking.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/thursday-comments-roundup/
I've said or thought many versions of the following, but never so coherently, inclusively, or cohesivly. Please go check out the rest of her blog, if you like reading about dogs, dog training, dog breeding, and dog behavior:
Excerpt from Ruffly Speaking:
From Bonnie: What do you think of Victoria Stilwell’s It’s Me Or The Dog?
Well. That IS a question. Let me begin by saying that I am not 100% in love with any of the television trainers-I think Cesar is a freaking genius but I think he doesn’t realize how poorly most people are implementing what he does so well. His methods require exactly what he has-years of experience in watching dogs, body language, energy, communication, and pack behavior. He responds to the dog’s own language and signals much more than he responds to behavior. I think even he doesn’t realize exactly what he’s doing. If you are a typical dog owner with 99% of what the dog is doing a complete mystery to you, you can misapply his techniques and really hurt your dog.
Victoria does better at communicating techniques that are broader, shallower, more foolproof. Unfortunately, she often SUCKS at body language and she puts dogs into situations that are genuinely dangerous and then pez-dispenses cookies to distract them; the owners perceive this as success but the dog has not changed one bit. I once watched an episode where she had two dogs who were determined to kill each other in a room together, and was rewarding them “so they would associate the presence of the other dog with a reward.” I started screeching at the TV when I could clearly see that the dogs greatly and steadily desired the death of each other, and were quite cheerful about that (there is, as Terhune said, a gay cavalier inside each dog who fights), and from their point of view were getting cookies shoved down their throats in glorious recognition of their hatred. They were staring at each other with tails stiff and eyes fixed, eating cookies as fast as they could.
She is also SO COMPLETELY TOTALLY WRONG about prong collars and choke collars. Head halters are MUCH more likely to cause serious damage than the prong (which is actually the safest collar for the average owner to use) and head halters and ez-pull harnesses and so on don’t train. They just make certain movements physically impossible. The dog doesn’t say “Oh, my owner is telling me not to do that, and therefore I will not do it.” The dog instead is physically impeded. Saying those tools train is like saying that a wall trains dogs not to run away. As soon as the tool-as soon as the wall-is gone, the behavior is exactly the same. You can choose to use those tools, just like you choose to use a wall, but they should be a very temporary stop-gap with the goal of using real training signals as soon as possible.
I also think that neither of them does a good job of verbally describing exactly why they are doing what they’re doing, with fearful dogs in particular. Cesar does talk about stopping dogs from moving forward (decreasing drive) but doesn’t articulate exactly why his methods are working on fearful dogs. I know the shows are edited, so maybe they’re talking with the owners at length, but there’s a lot of “Do this” and very little “Do this because it works this way and has this result.” I think that many (most?) dog owners punish fear. I know I did. I knew you were supposed to stop the dog from, for example, growling, but I didn’t know how to distinguish the growl that means “please don’t; I’m afraid,” from the one that says “don’t, or I’ll have to punish you.” I didn’t know that you have to begin your shaping of the eventual result LONG before it gets to the point of the growl; by the time the growl comes you’ve already failed to a certain extent. If you watch Cesar, he never, ever uses an aversive or a correction on a fearful dog, but I’ve never heard him say “Never correct a fearful dog” in so many words. I think he should be saying it EVERY TIME.
If you want my advice on training, I’d say put away all the actual training books for a few months. Read Rugaas and Aloff’s books on body language and read everything you can get on dog behavior and pack techniques. Dunbar, Donaldson, Pryor are great at teaching about motivation. But if you only read them you will (I am convinced) only get part of the story. You should also read the Monks of New Skete and all the classic ones from trainers long since gone to their reward. Read Bones Would Rain From the Sky. Read Katz. Read books on border collies (not because you’d be teaching herding, but because the best herding training is all about shaping natural and joyful behaviors), and I would very highly recommend reading several books on Schutzhund. Even if you own a beagle or a maltese. Schutzhund researchers understand drive, and how handlers increase, decrease, mishandle, and screw up drive better than anyone else.
You need to read everyone because nobody has the whole story. The pure researchers who focus solely on motivation miss the boat because they are so careful to never attribute any behavior to anything but the self-interest of the animal. For a bonded dog-human pair, that’s like analyzing a marriage and ignoring anything that isn’t the result of self-interest. Dogs DO love, and they DO feel jealousy, and they DO object to inequity, and so on. The behaviorists who determine that no aversive signals can ever be given forget that dogs themselves communicate in aversives. The behaviorists who object to food rewards forget that candy tastes good, and so does liver. And if you want candy you do stuff, and dogs do the same thing.
If you read EVERYBODY, and watch your dog(s) for a long time, you’ll start to build an idea of what’s true. Then you’re ready to go back to actual trainers and throw out what you know is false and keep what you know is true. But above all else, the DOG MUST TEACH YOU. If you are doing anything without the dog “agreeing” with you-if the dog is showing confusion, anger, fear, anxiety, etc.-I don’t care how gold-certified the technique you’re using is; stop it. That’s why I think you must start with the body language books (and videos/dvds if you can get them); you have to know what your dog is communicating before you can continue with the training.From: http://rufflyspeaking.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/thursday-comments-roundup/