I didn't realize that compulsion training would be followed by food-and-reward training in the specialization phase.Reinier Geel said:Compulsion training vs. food and reward training.
How are they different apart from the blatantly obvious? This should be a required field of study, call it the methodology of dog training, or just call it the doctrine on dog training.
So when deciding on what type of dog you which to train, and for what purpose, also decide on the training method that you would like to use. Why am I playing this up its your time, and money, so dont be disappointed if you have a very good experience during training but somehow the outcome you desired stays elusive.
In general I have found that, people just sign up at any local club, and fall in with its training program: there motivation is mostly financial or follow by referral which is not a bad thing either, as success breeds referral. Therefore, it stands to reason that someone somewhere is doing something right. The question now, will he / or she be doing right by you.... In this regard, I say, and am of the opinion that every type of dog training, and doctrine, has its place and purpose, but you have to find the right type of training to get the desired results, the results you want, they are not going to appear out of the blue .
I am neither for nor against any type of training. I am just highlighting the principle around which these diverse training philosophy originated. On many boards, you see new comers that are disappointed in the outcome, but thrilled with the training provided.
For these people, people who want and contemplate having a serious working dog, the likes of a personal protection dogs, I would like to say this, in my opinion compulsion is the only way to do it right, and get it right doing it. ( I am referring to the Koehler method here)
Compulsion has at its core, the philosophy of military training, a process called flooding, - simply put, a generalisation of fear levels, or rather, threat levels, by introducing stress at the relevant importunate time. A battle principle, the dog is conditioned that all threat is equal to zero pain. Therefore, he no longer hesitates to go over to attack. Something that is hard to achieve with reward and food training, it lacks this required attribute.
Conflict creates anxiety in the dogs mind and so does the fight; we use compulsion to get the dog use to conflict originating in a fight, or in a threat situation, through training. So the aim is not to confuse the dog with bad stimulus during training, or to get the dogs hurt, it is always positive-positive; every training session ends this way with the dog winning.
The dogs motivation is queued here and heightened to engage on command; we understand that dogs are motivated by hunger, sex, thirst, attachment, need to claim territory and social status, and last but not the least fight, call it the dogs pyramid of needs, his Maslow pyramid if you may. Therefore, dogs with low trainability and pray drive can be trained with compulsion to act and behave aggressive in a controlled environment.
Even small dogs, like the Jack Russell, and Fox Terrier that can only stand one helping of food reward, so food wont cut it, as well as dogs with low reactivity to ball or pray drive like the Alaskan Malamute and Great Dane, they needs to be trained via other methods like compulsion training.
To understand compulsion training then is to understand the old ways, the Classical training doctrine . It can be les dramatic by virtue of inconsistent behaviour by the handler inconsistency in training is to blame for bad results. So with compulsion the underlying attribute to success is consistency and reputation, this is what makes or breaks it with this method. People have created the wrong perception about compulsion; it is not beating, or kicking or cruel and inhuman training in any way. We seldom make use of prong collars, tie outs or even the favourite; the electrical collars, its mainly all body and voice, that controls the dogs behaviour. With a choke chain and a lead.
Another factor is the handlers state of mind, we have found that if he or she is very emotional the dog tends to show more anxiety, so yes the right balance needs to be stricked here with a lot of understanding of dog / human interaction.
So in conclusion I think the same can be said of most types of training today because the components are relatively the same. No one I know can say they train in one pure aspect, I see a lot of mixing it up today. Yet, the question is which one will deliver the desired results.
To me, I firmly believe in starting off with, socialisation, imprinting and then compulsion on all dogs, and then rounding off with reward and food training when we specialise into nark, explosives and tracking, or whatever, to cement the foundation with a nice smoother finish. This recipe renders the best results with protection training dogs.
Lets have some views on this - :wink:
Can't offer views because I'm unqualified, but I appreciate the well-thought-out and -articulated piece.
