When I’m obedience training a regular puppy/dog, I use a mix of positive reinforcements and correction . If I’m working with a dominantly aggressive dog, I do more correcting than I do positive reinforcement. A fear aggressive dog, on the other hand, is a whole different training method.

Most people that I know who train in Schutzhund do use a mostly positive reinforcement technique for obedience training during puppyhood ONLY. Once the dog is mature, corrections are introduced. During puppyhood, however, there are not really any corrections, because you want to encourage drive and confidence. For example, a biting puppy gets a redirect to a toy, not a correction. To me, early schutzhund training is very counter intuitive to general training. Most general trainers will tell you never to let a dog win tug-o-war, but if you’re training for Sch, you want your dog to develop his drive, bite, and self confidence, so you would allow him to win.

I should note that I only Sch train puppies that seem to have proper drive, as well as relative stability. If a puppy showed signs of true aggression, I wouldn’t even consider continuing training until it reached maturity and then only if any aggression issues were completely resolved.
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Animal Behavioral Specialist/ veterinary technician

1. Yes I do and yes you are right, yes it does help. I wonder if I was giving to my dog a treat for every little thing he did right he would behave so well…
2. I’m not so I can’t tell you, but they usually *ignore* (that’s what they call it) negative behaviour… Uh… Ignore?? How is that possible? When that dog mauls a kid will they still ignore it? How is the dog supposed to know he’s doing it wrong if they just *ignore* it? It’s just so silly.

And yes I agree very much with you… Hugs!
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Ahhh…yup.

And even if you are using aversive techniques, all those things can happen. The fact is that consequences happen AFTER the event, not before. So whether you are using punishment or desensitization, you could still be bleeding to death while you do it.

The key is to manage the behavior to prevent the bite and desensitize to triggers so the dog is not prompted to bite again. It is not ignoring a bite but it is dealing with the bite without causing pain or fear to the dog.

I know, I work with aggressive dogs, including West German and DDR GSD’s.

"I think if your dog is proven in basic obedience and then clicker training is something you are interested in – then yeah, you could do it at that point."

You do realize that there are teams out there with their OTCH who have done only clicker training from the start? Dogs that have never been subjected to an instant of positive punishment? You can start from anywhere and train to whatever behavior you desire without the use of force.

Of course, again, some trainers simply do not have the skills to do so and must rely on causing dogs pain and discomfort in order to obtain compliance. How sad.

"No dog is so hungry that it will obey commands for a treat when there are things it deems more interesting…a pile of steak vs your string cheese…be real! A tennis ball vs a "hold on wait I have a cookie in one of these bait bags wait for me to get it before you bolt into the road for the ball or perhaps I’ll scream down in hopes it startles you into compliance!"…."

And THAT was obviously written by someone with no idea of how clicker training works. Again, ignorance and lack of skillset is no excuse for hurting your dog.

Aphrodite, don’t be fooled by uneducated, ill-informed people. Look up Morten Egtvedt and Cecilie Koeste, look up Laura VanArendonk Baugh, look up Steve White.
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Bindi? You and I disagree a lot..but this time I feel I’m going to have to say this in a way that there’s no question as to how I feel about that response. It’s the dumbest thing I have ever heard on Yahoo Answers. I’ve sifted through a lot of **** but this one baked, and then took the cake, and wiped it’s hind parts with it. So he thinks we should desensitize a dog that bites from biting by becoming a Schutzhund sleeve? How incredibly stupid can 1 person be? Well…no need to ask that that person proved it. You can DIE from a dog bite…those jaws are meant to KILL…a punctured artery and you’ll be dead before the ambulance gets there…and since you don’t know where a dog will bite you you’re…Jesus please help me continue to be PC I find it difficult not to say a word starting with an "r". You’re….just not….intelligent at all…not even a little bit. Doing as described in your response is stupid (again trying not to call that person stupid…as hard as it is).

If this idiotic idea…involved a muzzle perhaps I’d hear it out…at least no damage can be done in a muzzle unless the dog bites you in your exposed face while you put it on. Which is no biggie…it’ll help "desensitize" him.

Anyway to cut to the nitty gritty positive punishment is a must if you want a fully trained anything (Shamu). But beyond that, getting bitten repeatedly like a r…idiot…isn’t solving your problems. I could’ve muzzled and used a dominant dog collar on the little psycho and resolved the issue too. Only I wouldn’t have permenant scars, become allergic/conditioned to antibiotics after having 2 dozen courses for my severe dog bites, or potentially bled to death while letting a shelter mutt consume my femoral artery. Again…this is the most r…stu…idioti…the least intelligent thing I’ve ever read anywhere.

Aphrodite, you do as much as you can with positive reinforcement. But when it comes to aggression and blowing obedience commands you need to add corrections. Anybody who says they have a trained dog with R+ only is a liar. No dog is so hungry that it will obey commands for a treat when there are things it deems more interesting…a pile of steak vs your string cheese…be real! A tennis ball vs a "hold on wait I have a cookie in one of these bait bags wait for me to get it before you bolt into the road for the ball or perhaps I’ll scream down in hopes it startles you into compliance!"….you’re doing good Aphro don’t let psychos from the "correct ‘em with the e-collar until you smell burnt fur" or the "just let him kill poodles until he’s desensitized with treats" extremists sway you from keeping YOUR training fun and interactive with rewards and positived based training methods nor tell you a dog who clearly NEEDS a correction doesn’t need one.

-edit- Kim P…most people with a brain (people who don’t think allowing a dog to bite them is training) would muzzle a dog who they think would bite them. Also people who’re not simple minded enough to believe that you can train a dog with JUST treats use tools such as nylon chokers and dominant dogs collars. If a dog is going ape trying to bite me, I’ll calmly lift it’s front feet off the ground. A dog with no air can’t fight. Sounds mean huh? It might be just a little mean…but I don’t get bit and the dog realizes I’m the god of air and perhaps biting me isn’t so smart, tada, I don’t get bit anymore.

But sure, being a walking Schutzhund Sleeve is more PC…you stick with that! I’d love to send some of these guys some hard Rotties or GSDs or Mals and not the French/Schutzhund rejects they’re used to working with. I remember somebody saying Schutzhund trainers use marker training/clickers…this is true, but ALL good ones also use corrections…there are 2 clubs I’m aware of who use 100% positive methods and have never gone past the Regionals and have a higher fail ratio than I’ve ever seen…from any club.

Also you point out West German and DDR dogs which again proves you’ve never seen a real GSD…west german = show lines and "sporting" lines…friendly dogs who operate out of 100% prey drive and don’t have an aggressive bone in their body. DDR dogs = strong nerved dogs with 0 drive…there are maybe 3 lines of pure DDR dogs who have enough drive to work, the rest have been mixed because people ended up getting kitty cats instead of working dogs so they use the DDR blood for bone and color qualities and NOT working ability. REAL working dogs come from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, The Netherlands, Belgium, some decent breeders in Croatia, Serbia, Finland…Germany’s GSD’s are so bad, some districts use more Malinois than GSDs nowadays….

Also I have used a clicker, I prefer to call it marker training because I use my voice and not the clicker (I find it cumbersome and annoying). Secondly what have the trainers you mentioned done? The trainers I model my training after are Nationals competitors/winners in their respective dog sports. Chico Stanford, Michael Ellis, Carlos Rojas, Randy Rhodes, Bernhard Flinks, Helmut Raiser (who’s a jerk but a good dog trainer, probably the best in the World)…OH and Ivan Balabonov…can’t leave him out. Who are your "awesome" trainers (because you said they are) compared to these people, who are at the razor’s edge of training dogs to tolerances so small you probably wouldn’t even notice them? Exactly…but keep up about the "It’s all in the skills!" they possess the same skills, probably better than the people you mention, but they understand a dog will not be reliable if it doesn’t fear recourse. The same is true for all living beings who’re intelligent enough to understand that certain behaviors can induce discomfort and possess the brain power to intelligently avoid that situation in the future (dogs fall into this category). Nice read though, it was cute!

- TJ you know what I mean!
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and I can only answer #1 – if you’re asking if I’m using the type of OB training that you were shown, that would be mostly yes…BUT I do use a little more animation w/ my dogs when training. sometimes they need more animation, sometimes they don’t..but that’s the beauty of knowing your dog and how to either praise or correct them in a split second.

I wish you continued success with Quattro – when are you going to join the rest of us SchH nut’s and join a club?!?!?
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Of course we’re going to try and sway people to our way of training, and that’s perfectly fine, but I think we can do it without all the name calling and acting like abrasive jerks.

Why did I delete my answer and change my name? Because it got old, after the response posted below I said the hell with it, I’m done with YA. Agree or not, what was said here is uncalled for (and a violation of TOS by the way).

But here is my original answer:
"He was then telling me (actually this is the second time I have heard someone talk about it this week) that some positive reinforcement trainers are now saying that when your dog is displaying aggression – the best thing to do is to ignore it or let the dogs figure it out themselves….sorry, what? lol That seems a little risky/dangerous to me. "

I’ve never heard that one before! Yikes, sounds like a bite waiting to happen. I guess that’s the "positive trainers" that go way overboard. For most [mostly] R+ trainers (speaking for myself here) I would NOT ignore my dogs aggression. It doesn’t get better by itself, that’s just a fact. So sure, if you want an aggressive dog, go ahead and let the dog "figure it out" for himself.

As the owner of a (hopefully formerly) aggressive dog, I have to address this.

First, we do NOT ignore aggression. We work to modify it.

We do, however, tend to ignore or negatively punish aggressive behaviors. We do NOT positively punish them (or correct them).

I feel very strongly about this. Plenty of people who know Ash have guessed that he was punished for displaying aggressive behaviors (ie growling, snapping, that sort of thing). The result? I pulled a dog from the shelter that did not know HOW to growl or snap or warn and went straight for the bite.

As to punishing the bite, well, it’s hard to appropriately punish while you are running for the sink to keep from bleeding all over the floor. It’s hard to appropriately punish a bite if that bite brings you to your knees in pain.

Yes, I ignored the bites, I worked to desensitize the triggers, I did a lot of classical conditioning, I worked very hard to identify triggers and make them tolerable.

So it sounds to me like your trainer had no clue what he was talking about. If you are going to critique something, it is best to understand it.

We were then talking about the 100% positive reinforcement debate – he said that yeah it may work for some dogs but dogs that tend to be more dominant like GSDs and Dobes etc. he doesn’t find it works for them.

A) There is no such thing as 100% positive einforcement.

B) I work with GSD’s and Dobes (and mals and turvs and akitas and boxers and ect ect). Clicker training does indeed work for them. Lack of skillset should not be the criteria for making that sort of judgement.

1. Anyone else use this form of Obedience training?

Been there, done that, bought the picture at the end of the ride. I left it all behind a few years ago and now I clicker train. BTW, if tyou are interested, there ARE people clicker training for schutzhund and competing.

2. Can anyone that is training in 100% positive reinforcement tell me if this is how their trainers train? Also, can you explain how not giving the dog a correction to show the dog boundaries or what is not a desired behaviour – how do you 100% proof your dog? (I’m not trying to ruffle feathers – I’m REALLY interested in knowing how people training in this method can guarantee that their training is proofed)

See A. No one does 100% positive training. It is a myth that aversion based trainers try to foist off on the gullible.

I am a clicker trainer. I use positive reinforcement, negative punishment and extinction with an event marker to train and proof new behaviors.

You proof your dog by gradually increasing criteria.

BTW, there is no way for anyone to guarantee their dog is 100% proofed. You can only look at the history of a behavior, you can’t know what future behavior will be till it occurs.
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Thanks Asher
http://www.dogster.com/forums/Behavior_and_Training/thread/667410

*I’ve decided to hang around. But now I can’t figure out how put those symbols on my name before. It looks naked without them. I had that name for years, lol

You go Quattro!
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Both my Rotts were Schutzhund trained and they are IMO the best trained dogs in the world<g>, they are also certified therapy dogs so that puts the rumor down that Shutzhund creates mean dogs. My Caucasian was trained with my own mixture of training he was extremely stubborn and I had to use treats at first just to get his attention, once I got attention then I could go forward with totally off lead training with him completely focused on me. However then came my beagle/basset that had many mistreatment issues and he has done the best just with positive reinforcement and firm but gentle corrections.

So my point is there is room for all forms of training and it completely depends on the dog and the level of intelligent of the owner, however no dog will ever succeed if they do not have some form of disipline, never by hitting. Just take your dog for a walk sometime, look at the other dogs and you can tell how they were trained if any.

BTW Congratulation to you and Quattro
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Especially in view of my email to you regarding the prong collar and use of.

I also believe that you really cannot use 100% positive reinforcement although it is becoming ever more popular to the point that it is getting ridiculous.

However — I would say that once you are able to say "good boy" you turn the tables and can start working more positively. The dog does an about turn and works to please you and once you can get a rottie in that frame of mind it is a whole lot easier ……….. however…… you’ve got to get there first.

Best of luck with this and keep us posted if you can.
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There is no such thing! It is a physical impossibility.
To begin with the "Operant Conditioning" definition for positive is to "add something", so a kick in the butt is positive. The Operant Conditioning definition for reinforcement is to "cause or enhance" a desired behavior. So if the kick in the butt causes or enhances a desired behavior, it is in fact "positive reinforcement". Not at all what people have in mind and think the term means.
When you are cookie training, and you do not give the the dog it’s cookie because of an improper response, you "subtracted something", so it is a "negative". Since you did this to "reduce or prevent" an unwanted behavior it is also "punishment". So withholding the cookie is "negative punishment".

So the question has never been if you should reinforce or punish, because it is imposable to train a dog without doing both. The question is what reinforcements and what punishments are appropriate for the individual dog in a given circumstance.

edit
The use of a clicker (marking a behavior) is ONLY one portion of a training program, — again — there is NO SUCH THING as a clicker only method to train a dog . It is what else you do that will determine if use of the clicker is sucessful or not.

To the dog there is no difference between positive or negative punishment. Both reduce or prevent an undesireable behavior. Both can be done properly or abusivly. The simple use of the word "NO" is positive punishment.

edit
quote: "there are 2 clubs I’m aware of who use 100% positive methods "

That’s BS — what do they do — GIVE THE DOG A COOKIE WHEN IT DOES IT WRONG?????? Do they click their clicker and say "nice doggy" when it screws up??????
If they don’t, they are not using 100% positive methods, they are using both **negative** methods and **punishment** in one form or another instead!!!

—- AGAIN—- IT IS IMPOSSIBLE

The US Navy Marine Mammal training program states it this way; "we emphasize positive reinforcement". The key word is emphasize, which recognizes that they also use the other three portions of Operant Conditioning as well. (and you can’t spank a whale)
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