When did either starving, beating or choking... - Page 9

Here's an example.. right now im working on the back transport. my dogs will either forge or justleave and take the bit. if the helper is standing still i can heel backwards,forwards, side to side, and he is perfect. but when the helper moves, you can see the change, he starts breathing heavy, his head goes down and he starts to stalk the helper, and will eventually leave and bite the sleeve. So here is what im doing, we heel w/ the helper standing still (he is correst possition) when the helper moves and he gets out of position, he recieves a harsh correction w/ the prong. and we start over he is now to the point where he stays correct. sometimes when he is incorrect, i let him correct himself and other times i will correct him. I can see him thinking about what is correct and putting forth an honest effort. there are times when i see he is not being correct, nor does he care about being correct. this is met w. a harsh correction. in about april when he fully understand the exercise we force him to be correct. i will heel, then stop as the helper turns around and make attraction and defense w/the whip. I give the sit command, and we continue heeling, if he is correct he gets rewarded if he is not correct he will recieve a harsh correction w/ the prong. so here is what ive done, i taught the exersice, let him figure out what is correct. reward correct behaviour and punish dis-obedience. (there is a difference between disobedience and confusion. sometimes i will give him a slight correction before he gets to far, other times i will let him git way out of position and give a harch correction, and sometimes ill let him correct himself and reward that behaviour. if someone where to showup to training and only say the harsh corrections, they's say im too hard on the dog. and most likely get upset and leave rather than ask why...?, what brought you to this point. and lastly, he guy i started training schutzhund w/ used to say. I will reward by dog twice as much as i beat him, but im gonna beat the hell out of him. (no before you get you panties in a bunch) what he was saying is, there is no room for dis-obedience and it will be met w/ an iron fist. but when the dog is correct, there is twice as much praise and play as there was correction.

Personally, my dogs have always took the hard pinch correction in the back transport and forged anyway. (Especially off leash in a trial!) I found that obedience (correct heeling position) for the oportunity to bite the helper works for me and my methods of training. This of course, makes it's own problems, mainly with too much handler control and sometimes too much focus on the handler, so the dog has to learn that sometimes the helper will take off and you'd better be watching him! It's always easy to turn the dog back into the helper, not always easy to get the focus on you. Remember you and the dog are a team, not head butting each other out there. wscott; back to your thread, it works for you and sounds like you have taught the exercise to the dog. It is a very accepted way to train the back transport in Schutzhund and many people do it. I can also see exactly why you are using the harsh corrections and have done that myself when I was first learning. That does not negate the fact that someone who shows up and only sees the harsh correction part, still has a valid point. The agility world would never tolerate that correction behavior. Because we are training bite work, does that make it okay for us to be harsh in our training methods? Us bite work people think our dogs are bigger and tougher and meaner than for instance "agility dogs" , but do the ends justify the means? I'm still not sure.

Walter, just a quick question. How would you rate this dog on it's basic obedience without an agitator present?

Starve a cold, feed a fever. (German celery)

on the ob field, its excellent. but he is working for the tug. if a helper is around and passive, its good. we can heel all around the helper, I can do down in motion, fronts and finishes and stands. he will work very well for the bite. but when the helper is moving, all bets are off. he is no loner concerned w. pleasing me, too get the bite. the main problem has been getting him to calm down enough to show him what I want. the things he understands he does very well. if he gets in a posistion where he is confused,then drive takes over. if his drive says bite, then he bites.

I am just amazed at the extremes to which this has gone. Quite simply, abuse serves no purpose. Obviously, positive reinforcement is the way to go. I have heard no one dispute that this is the ideal. Two questions I always ask myself in dealing with a grown aggressive dog. #1 What are my motives? am I taking out my frustration on him? Am I angry ? Am I not willing to spend the time to work him through this with calm methods? Are my motives anything but in the best interest of the dog or family members? THEN THIS IS ABUSIVE REGARDLESS OF THE SEVERITY OF THE CORRECTION. It is about my attitude and motives. Not as much as what I do. The dog knows unfair corrections, and I would expect him to nail me or at least talk to me if I am being unfair. I will not expect a dog to take an unfair correction sitting down. That is actually what I hope for. Let him teach me about fairness. #2 Am I using the force necessary to put an end to the problem that may lead to the dogs death, or serious injury to others? Are my motives pure? Is my heart pure? Am I doing the correction for the love of the animal, because his behavior simply cannot be tolerated? If I can answer yes to these questions then I do not see abuse as the issue. I may see my neighbor run out and do something that I think is abusive to his dog until all the facts are in. If he grabs his dog and puts the fear of God in him, but as soon as it's over he spends time with him and lets him know that all is cool and we are still buds, then mission accomplished. There are many that have not had to deal with dogs that were out of control, going after wife when dad was not there. Nipped in the bud with tough corrections then reinforced with positives afterwards. It is not black and white. I spanked my children.Is that abuse? Again, I did it because I loved them and did not want to see them continue to do behaviors that would cause more serious problems down the road. Know what,? they have all come back years later and thanked me for loving them in HARSH ways. And buy the way, I am not talking about striving for higher scores. That means nothing. But the dogs life and repect do.

Very well said, olskoolgsds. But the problem that I see more and more is that the harshness is used to cut corners, save time and get higher scores. And all of that is seen as acceptable behavior by many many people in the sport world.

let me start by saying that we really can't determine what is harsh and isn't harsh, because it subjective between me and you, as well as what dog we are dealing w. next I must admit my motives are pionts. my goal is to make a world team. and to do so I need the most possible points. my dog will do a back transport. we can heel behind the helper until he attacks. but he forge, pay too much attention to me, get too far ahead, or just leave. this will cost me about 3 pionts, so until I fix it the best I can do is a 97 I'm a very competitve person and I want to be competitve,imo a 90 in any phase is not competitve. my last trial was the 06 awdf. I won't trial again until the north american. for me its no fun showing and scoring a 260 or 268. so my goal for my next trial is to here the search for the helper was excellent, hold and bark was excellent, on the escape bite he is fast to the sleeve and has a full grip, the out is excellent. the reattack is excellent, during the back transport he is a bit infront of you, he bitges full and outs correctly. he bothers the helper a bit during the side transport, still very good. the long bite Is excellent, reattack, is excellent, again he bothers the helper in the side transport, high very good. today we have a low excellent score of 96. anything else will be unacceptable. but that is me. for those who are not concerned about high scores at national events, there is no need to train to obtain maximum points. which means there is no need to correct (regarless of what level of correction you use) a dog as much.

//""let me start by saying that we really can't determine what is harsh and isn't harsh, because it subjective between me and you, as well as what dog we are dealing w. ""// I beg to differ. All you have to do is follow the guidelines that olskoolgsds has articulated. ""#1 What are my motives? am I taking out my frustration on him? Am I angry ? Am I not willing to spend the time to work him through this with calm methods? Are my motives anything but in the best interest of the dog or family members? THEN THIS IS ABUSIVE REGARDLESS OF THE SEVERITY OF THE CORRECTION. ""#2 Am I using the force necessary to put an end to the problem that may lead to the dogs death, or serious injury to others? Are my motives pure? Is my heart pure? Am I doing the correction for the love of the animal, because his behavior simply cannot be tolerated? If I can answer yes to these questions then I do not see abuse as the issue."" How can that not be clear to you? If you are engaging ( and I'm not saying you are, I don't know) in training a dog and you can't justify your corrections using the above definitions, but instead are yankin' and chokin' to get higher points, regardless of the above, then you're engaging in abuse. Pretty simple.

OldNewGuyMC, This guy wscott00 has said on this site before he abuse his dog, I feel there is nothing more he can say. James Nelson