Has dog training actually improved. - Page 14

Hired Dog,
I always trained and titled my dogs as a hobby and a challenge and I enjoy it.  I think more people don't do sport with their dogs or anything else is because it is work.  Getting up at 5 or 6 AM 3 or 4 days a week to track, going to a field and doing obedience 4 or 5 days a week in the rain, snow and cold is work.  Getting up and training with a club to do bite work is.....work.  It takes commitment, dedication and a dog that has the ability to do the sport.  My example of working for a paycheck and not just accolades or awards was in reference to praise and reward for the dog working correctly.  But you are correct, many people do not see the benefit to getting out and training their dog since there is no financial reward.  

I personally believe that most people just lack the interest in working with their dogs, lack the ability, dedication or the work ethic to be successful at any sport.  Even if their dog had the ability which is often questionable.  It is far easier to only "protection train" your dog and do nothing else.  Well, actually the easiest is just to come on forums and discuss training but not actually do it yourself.  

Of course you are right about what you said Slamdunk, I agree with most of it. I have  competed in the "sport: of bodybuilding for a long time. I no longer compete, but, I get up at 4Am daily to get to the gym before work and I live that lifestyle to a T, daily, for over 30 years now, close to 35. I know what hard work and dedication and passion for something is.
I know what hard work is, I have gotten up and worked dogs early, I have done it after work late, I love training, its a way to relax and showcase my dog's abilities as well as my own.
I dont know what it costs up there, but, friends tell me that the local Sch club here is $50 every time you show up...4x$50 a week...a lot of money...and again, in the end, you are correct, if you have no REAL need for a dog to track, you wont invest the time and money to train it. 
If I were to invest that kind of time and money, I would want to see some rewards for it, financial ones. I dont know about people coming into forums and discussing training or whatever, I dont take that sort of thing very seriously, but, I do understand your point and I thank you for your post.

Prager,or Hans,
I would normally not respond to comments such as the ones you made,but just to be clear.
My message was addressed to workingdogz, to not waste his time trying to prove something to you .
And by the way,I have been called much worse by much better people than yourself.
Since you pass judgment on me without knowing me,I'll just say that I started in Schutzhund in the 80's as a hobby and I was a police dog handler in the 90's and 2000's until I retired.I then tried my hand at French Ring for fun.
So you are right , I haven't ''trained 1000's of dogs'' but I can tell a good dog from a not so good dog,and I can tell between a dog with good nerves and a dog that has weak nerves and goes into avoidance.
This will be the last post I will address on this subject so don't feel obliged to answer.

Mike Di Rago

OK Mike. Please understand that I  have passed judgment on you based on your comments about me.  Now you corrected me. You are not anonymous coward.    But please do understand that I just do not like someone call me broker in a demeaning way. We can talk about dogs and training ,  but it gets me that when people lose their arguments they feel that they need to attack the person who is making a valid or not valid point in  such argument. It is a culture of this forum. It is amazing to me that people need to attack a person with an opposing argument and not have civilized discussion instead. And no,  if you attack me I am not going to let it stand. Look at some posts above. .....The general consensus is that only sport trainers are good and know what they are doing and rest are not ......Or if you do not train for sport you do not know waht you are talking about and need to shut up(!!). Or that people who trained dogs for protection and not for sport are by default  lazy and so on. I do  both and learn a lot from both all the time.    That is why I do it. No, I do not compete much but I do now and then for fun and learning experience. when i train sport then my main interest is the training methods of sport and how they apply to practical training. I do not care much for  precision for points, I like effectives of a  thinking dog. That is what I am trying to get . GSD is working dog and  its final purpose is work and not sport. Sport even so in some aspects is helpful is also a major detriment. My main  point  of my effort is to produce through my breeding and training safe, reliable, working dogs. Also  I love to train  civil dogs. When I train a dog then I do not want the COP to worry if on first real bite situation  the dog will bite. I love my dogs to work. I am not more rewarded then when I get phone call from a handler that my dog tracked for 5 hr ( with  rest brakes) and got  his man.I am elated and honored to be part of the deal like that as a trainer. I like when my dog gets track with 26 track and bite apprehensions in about 3-4 years. I do not care if during the tracking he goes from foot print to footprint  that  type  precision is annoying to me and to get up in 4 O'clock to teach such precision tracking is self serving and useless to me when I train real life tracking.   Am I  or anybody who does this for that reason lazy? I do not think so. I do other things. I was training S&R when snow with rain  was falling horizontally in middle of the night. I am working with LE to train dogs for LE type  tracking for apprehension and teach building searches in middle of the night.  I do train narcotics detection on a side of a busy street in hot night.   I do not like dog to precision  look into  the handler's eyes  during patrol heal like it does in SchH. I like him to look around and be aware and on and on. What sport gives to me is the proper motivations and timing. But the exercises are deviated  too much away from practicality to point gaining exercise. I am not knocking sport completely, there is a lot of good in it.  I am just saying that sport is not the only measure of the things in training. 
Yes training methods evolved in their ability to use  basic psychological principals and the top trainers can get more from a dog in precision. But what about relationship between many such top  handlers and their dogs? These top trained dogs are often kept in kennels and taken out only for training. That is more rule then exception.  Top trainers are not the representatives of the "dog"  society to measure by themj  the advancements of training in genetal.  For that you need to look at general population. Yes tops are getting great performance from dogs but what about general public? After all this topic is asking about improvement of   dog training in general and not about tops.  And yes I'll bring it up again e collars  while they could be asset in dog training by few they are often at best a crutch instead.
Also training is these days more schematic and not build on understanding and relationship and often not on love of the dog.  The are : Day #1 then- lesson #1, day#2- lesson #2 ....If the dog fails lesson #x at day #x get rid of dog A and lets get dog B instead. Blame the dog. 
Dog in top sport is often just a tool and nothing more.   How many dogs are dumped because training method does not work on specific dog and trainer is not aware of different approach  or willing to modify it and learn to understand his dog and what is going on when things do not go well. Blame the dog is common complaint from real trainers when they see others blaming  a dog or  its lack of this of that. That was not so in olden days. At least not where I came from. How many times I have seen that if the method does not work   lets try to use an e collar attitude, instead of  going back to basic?   Yes methods have improved, but training did not and the topic is not about methods but about training. 
Those, in my opinion, are 2 different things. 
Prager Hans

GSDAdmin: Oh, I thought you were, my bad. You do have a lot to say in regards to what is right and what is wrong so I guess I considered you maybe not a master but someone with a lot of knowledge, again, my bad.


To use words used a few posts back, "I am from the show-me state....show me what you got or have done, than just talk about the criticality of "sport titles" in every other sentence that is uttered" !  This is directed at workingdogz - not to browbeat him, but to see what he has been talking about, ad nauseum.

Prager......and I do sport and love training with sport people, but what Prager wrote is also very true!

Yes, very well said, Hans.  I have taken my share of stick from people
on  here who claim that if one does not train in Sports (ie competitively,
where results can be assessed) or in Bitework / Personal Protection,
then one's views on the GSD breed are absolutely valueless. 

No matter how many GSDs have been through one's hands, how many
hours you have spent with those dogs in other pursuits, how many sick
ones you have nursed, how many years spent with dogs of all ages ...

Obviously I cannot know the subtleties of the relationship between me
and a dog involved in training it for SchH or whatever -  but does that really
mean I have zero knowledge of the breed, its health and history, its variations
in temperament, the things others are aiming to achieve when THEY train
for sports etc, or the understanding between me and any given dog when I
train it to Track or just do basic obedience exercises ?    I don't think so,
and so I do resent being told I have no 'right' to enter any discussions.  After
47 years around GSDs I don't really consider myself that 'amateur'.  We can
ALL learn new things as we go through this life;  the jokers who insist one
knows nothing unless one has done things THEIR  way, may well in fact
have more to learn about some aspects of the breed themselves. 

Hans,
I read your post and gather that you have trained LE dogs to track for 5 hrs to an apprehension?  You are talking about a dog that has 26 track and apprehensions over a 3 - 4 year period, did you train that dog over that time period or just sell the dog to a PD where the handler and dept. trained it?  You talk about the number of dogs that you have trained to track for Police Dept's, that is a subject that I am very very interested in.  I love tracking, especially hard surface real world trailing / tracking.  Why don't you start a thread about that and we can discuss training, methods and techniques for that? 

The whole discussion of sport training seems to be an issue for you, yet you say training has improved in one regard but say only methods have improved and training has not improved ??? I'm confused, getting back to the OP, has your training improved over the past 40 years?  I hope the answer is yes! 

Let's not discuss sport dogs but LE and MWD's, has training improved for them in regards to technology, methods, and techniques in your opinion.  I ask this since it appears that is important to you.   I know the things I see our SEAL team guys doing with their dogs could never have been done 20 or 30 years ago.  Yes, their training has improved just ask their dog trainers who have 25 years or more experience training LE dogs.  Has some of the advancements in training those dogs come from SPORT trainers, you can bet on it.  I know which Sport trainers, LE trainers and others they bring in for seminars and training. 

I would say as a trainer you need to be able to look at how things are done in a venue and adopt them to your needs.  I can give a few examples, the sport of agility is excellent for teaching dogs to jump, land and go over obstacles in a fast, precise directed fashion.  Do I feel agility trainers are betting at teaching certain things than LE trainers, yes I do.  Have I gone to agility classes to learn their techniques, yes I have.  I do not compete in agility so why go there and train?  Why, because they have things to offer and techniques that I can "borrow or steal" to make my dog better.  I also train with SAR people on a regular basis.  The tracking / trailing I do is different than he trailing they do, so where is the benefit to me as a LE K-9 Handler.  Well, I learned how to refine my scent discrimination tracking form them.   I learned to push my dog harder, longer and farther on long tracks.  Since tracking is primarily what they do, they are really into tracking and usually cutting edge.  I absolutely have taken techniques from them and adopted them to fit our LE training.  From SchH control work in aggression is awesome, that directly correlates to Police work.    

Using the analogy of race cars that was mentioned earlier in the thread, yes drivers are better today because technology and the training of drivers is better today.  There is a greater understanding of handling cars at higher rates of speed then were imaginable 50, 60 or 70 years ago.  Since most "pet owners" are normal people and will never drive a race car how do these improvements in technology benefit them?  Well, much of the research of safety in crashes, better engines, better braking, better suspensions and steering is developed or tested through the SPORT of racing.  These advancements then get transferred to our passenger cars.  Similar to the advancements in dog training. 

aakay,
I will say that workingdogz is a very knowledgeable dog person and you could learn a lot from him.  He rarely mentions his own dogs but has been successful in his training and has actually left his yard to train, compete and work them.  Unlike many others that talk ad nauseam about their own dogs but offer little third party verification of their results.

Hind mutter, I see as much or more bashing of sport dogs and people who train in dog sport by those that do little or nothing with their dogs.  I have no issue with people that own dogs as pets as my dogs are also pets.  But I find it annoying that some will constantly knock things they obviously have
no clue about.  

As far as the dog tracking 5 hr (K9 Johnny)   I sold the dog and was very much involved in his training.  Jim, yes I train dogs. Get it through your head. You are not the only one who  train dogs for LE. I am sure you are very good at what you do but there are others too. Also there are more then one way to skin a cat. Different opinions then yours  
do  not reflect badly on you, or mean that you are doing it wrong. So stop sniping at me  or others personally just because I/ we have different opinion. . Talk training.  K9 Johnny  ( in front of ther car)dog from me which I sold and helped train. The handler is Jason Cotton Gwinnette co SO Ga.And he said feel free to call him. 
And me training with PD building searches. I have 100ts of other pics. 

 You say that you are confused by my statement  that methods are improved and training not?  Then let me explain further. Think of methods like tools in a shop. If  someone buy top of the line tools does it make him necessarily  better mechanic? No! Off course not! I can give a surgeon a laser scalpel but that does not mean that he is better diagnostician or doctor in general or that he is more skilled with laser  then surgeon with  metal scalpel and deliver better surgery results.   I can give you top  of the line Ferrari  but that does not necessarily make you  a  great driver or just because Ferrari exists that all  drives in the country are better drivers. Or I ask is mediocre driver better driver then driver of car from 30 years ago because he drives most recent model of Ferrari? No, I do not necessarily think so. And  because the topic is about training in general, I am talking in  general and  about general public and not about tops. 
As far as sport goes I talked about this topic with some trainers in Czech and they agree that sport generates zombie machines who perform well on grass but in public are what I call social idiots. I get dogs here like that  from Europe all the time. I then have to take them and teach them all social skills, which involves anything and everything  outside the flat grassy sport ring. 
Yes top trainers are getting great results but I have seen similar results in past.  I am talking about philosophy of keeping dogs and work with them. Now the training is more robotic and back then the training was more about making the dog to improvise in situations which do not go by book.  That is since most real sceanrios do not go by the book. 
I know why we have conflict in the opinions . People here, and many are good to great trainers, are doing great training in present, thus they think that they must be better then trainers in past.  And I say not necessarily so. 

Prager Hans