Training treats considered as detrimental

[Sue R]

I'm not saying that most of the ones I see don't have some BC in them because it's impossible to tell visually and there are so many of unknown parentage in rescue but obvious half and half mixes I am most likely to see in agility.

 

If you check out Hancock lurchers you will see the sorts of percentages you get in the breeding. Some people say they are good workers and they do seem to have a good reputation, some point to the fact that the breeders don't work their dogs. I note the frequency of merles. They don't say on their web site why that cross.

 

Long dogs (sighthound on both sides), bedlington/whippets, bull lurchers, bearded collie crosses are fairly common round here but any could have a dash of BC.

 

I did take the time to go to the website and, as you said, see percentages given (lots of Beardie/BC cross parentage along with the sighthound) and lots of color. "Collie cross greyhound Lurchers make excellent family companions especially suited to the outdoor lifestyle, combining the intelligence of the collie breed with the placid temperament of the greyhound. They can be trained to a very high standard including top class kennel club agility.They can be rough or smooth coated, with varying colours from spectacular blue and red merles to an array of solid colours.

 

So, can you maybe answer this for me because I have no experience with lurchers of any sort - how predictable is the "Border Collie intelligence with placid temperment" in this cross? Couldn't you get the sighthound independence with Border Collie activity level instead (including potential noise and movement sensitivity and reactions)? That would strike me as a rather difficult "family companion" for most situations.

[GentleLake]

 

 

So, can you maybe answer this for me because I have no experience with lurchers of any sort - how predictable is the "Border Collie intelligence with placid temperment" in this cross? Couldn't you get the sighthound independence with Border Collie activity level instead (including potential noise and movement sensitivity and reactions)? That would strike me as a rather difficult "family companion" for most situations.

 

I'm not mumdog, and I don't know what my lurcher's mix actually is, but that's exactly what I have in Tansy! She's not an easy dog by any means.

 

I think it's always a danger in making a cross that you can end up with the worst characteristics of both breeds.

 

I once fostered a Border Jack who was an absolute nightmare! Thanks doG she found a home with people who adore her, because if I'd had to have kept her another week, I probably would have killed her!

[Liz P]

Sue, many lurchers I have met are just that; Border Collie smart and active but much less obedient!

[Sue R]

So, it sems to me that producing and marketing this cross as "intelligent and placid good family pets" might be more marketing ploy than anything factual or predictable with any certainty.

[Liz P]

Yes, just like the doodles...

[Tea]

I sometimes use cheese doddles to lure my pup into her box.

 

 

[geonni banner]

How do you get the cheese to mate with a poodle? What kind of cheese? Is it hypoallergenic cheese?

[gcv-border]

How do you get the cheese to mate with a poodle? What kind of cheese? Is it hypoallergenic cheese?

LOL!

[Tea]

[urge to herd]

How do you get the cheese to mate with a poodle? What kind of cheese? Is it hypoallergenic cheese?

A couple glasses of red wine, the scent of sautéed garlic, and slow jazz in the back ground. Did you really not know?

 

Ruth and Agent Gibbs

[geonni banner]

I was raised by wolves... sorry. But at least they weren't AKC wolves.

[mum24dog]

 

I did take the time to go to the website and, as you said, see percentages given (lots of Beardie/BC cross parentage along with the sighthound) and lots of color. "Collie cross greyhound Lurchers make excellent family companions especially suited to the outdoor lifestyle, combining the intelligence of the collie breed with the placid temperament of the greyhound. They can be trained to a very high standard including top class kennel club agility.They can be rough or smooth coated, with varying colours from spectacular blue and red merles to an array of solid colours.

 

So, can you maybe answer this for me because I have no experience with lurchers of any sort - how predictable is the "Border Collie intelligence with placid temperment" in this cross? Couldn't you get the sighthound independence with Border Collie activity level instead (including potential noise and movement sensitivity and reactions)? That would strike me as a rather difficult "family companion" for most situations.

 

 

I missed that excuse; it doesn't surprise me.

 

People do say that you know what you are getting with a Hancock and with the volume they seem to be producing I guess it's possible to get some consistency.

 

It's never made any sense to me to try and create a good sight hound by crossing a chase and seize type with a chase only type but presumably there was once a good reason for those working their dogs. There are still some reputable and responsible lurchermen around according to those who know about such things.

 

Unfortunately lurchers here are often owned by the more disreputable elements of society - tried out and if they are no good dumped, hence the number in rescue. Even stolen in broad daylight.

 

I'd love another (any mix) but you need eyes in the back of your head to avoid trouble and I can't devote the watchfulness I'd need with having several dogs, each with their own quirks.

[sandysfarm]

well, I have collie and greyhound(s) here. The collie herds the hounds but she can't see above their knees and the hounds casually walk over top of her instead of following her directions. When she flies off the handle at them, they open their loooong jaws and place them over the collie's head to calm her down, which works. She finds them a consistent challenge to move around and they find her soft warm and fluffy to put their heads on. They never obey her and she never quits directing them. By me, a lurcher/bc just has to be a conflicted personality. lol

[G. Festerling]

My general idea on training is that there are so many different ways to train, you could not list them all. Many great ones and many miserable ones.

I have trained with treats, toys, praise and simple leash corrections. I have also found the absolute need to balance all of them. It has taken me a while to even understand the scope of possibilities when a treat driven dog is taught to put as much (or almost as much) effort into working for toys and vice versa. Still working on it! Treats and toys to me are not only rewards but also can help relieve stress. So to me, teaching a dog to balance, allows me to custom tailor every session with my dog to the individual training sessions and current tasks at hand. If I have a dog that only accepts one or the other, I am limited!

My puppy (off stock) has been approached almost exclusively under and operant program. Every new behavior that I try to teach or that she tries to teach me is grasped with amazing speed and enthusiasm. Well, I admit she is a bit faster getting it than me at times....! I however had to struggle to get my food driven pup to work with me on things she did not consider worth her time....like nosework for example. She required a toy to make that effort more interesting for her. Which was not 100% ok for me simply because I felt that she needed to learn to still work for lower value treats (in her case it was food over a toy for this particular subject). So we backed up and worked on learning to balance the drives and the understanding of the job at hand. The result is simply amazing.

The 75lbs German Shepherd that was rescued of the street, who is a juvenile male without any, and I mean, any manners....he will not be receiving his first initial training (as in walking on lead properly etc) with treats only. There will be options for him to offer behavior and there will be rewards if he will take them...but the boundries will be physical to help him along his way of finding his brain and to make him a bit less overwhelming for a potential adopter a bit more quickly.

So no, I do not find the use of treats detrimental. I do however find the exclusive and improper use of them limiting!

[Diana A]

Basic manners, I could see treats as being not necessary (although not necessarily detrimental if used correctly). For complex activities though, like agility, obedience, or tricks, it's hard to train effectively and efficiently without the use of treats. Agility especially, if you interviewed all of the top people in the sport, I wouldn't be at all surprised if 100% of them use treats to train their top-winning agility dogs. For stockwork, of course, absolutely not, no treats. You have to consider the dog and the activity being trained.

 

Stockwork - the work itself is a reward. Release of pressure is a reward. Seeing the sheep respond in a way that appeals to the dog's instincts (preventing escape, calming the stock, turning the stock, bringing stock to handler, etc) is a reward. It's an extremely powerful reward that causes the dog to put all his effort into figuring out how to keep working even if things get frustrating at times, handler gets upset and scary, etc.

 

Manners - usually related to NOT doing things (don't jump up, don't pull, don't steal food, etc).Recall, sit, stay, etc, are of course some important ones that involved doing something on command. All of these are relatively imprecise behaviors that can be reinforced with life rewards (have to sit and wait to go through the door, not allowed to move forward if pulling, etc) or backed up with aversives. You either have something the dog wants to gain so he learns to comply, or something the dog wants to avoid (leash jerk, etc) so again, he learns to comply.

 

Sport training you not only want a behavior, but you want a precise and often complex behavior offered in a variety of distracting and often highly exciting circumstances, and you want it reproducibly and reliably, and you want a certain attitude to go along with it (drive, enthusiasms, happiness, etc) so that it's done at top speed and with utmost confidence. Food and toys are both important. Toys bring out the drive and transfer value to what at first to the dog is a nonsensical human game. Food rewards the more static behaviors, where playing with a toy might counteract the behavior being taught (like stay, wait on a contact, etc).Placement of reward is a critical component in training agility behaviors, as much of the work is done away from the handler. You can't 'place' praise in a precise location. A treat provides a physical entity that can be placed/thrown, etc to the desired location for the desired effect.

 

If you want the dog to weave 12 poles with his back to you while you run diagonally across the ring, that reward better show up straight ahead of where he's going in the poles and not after he's run 30 feet across the ring towards you looking for a pat on the head. Otherwise I can guarantee he'll be pulling out of the poles every time you leave his side.

 

Also consider that while stock work has it's own incredibly strong inherent reward that is immediately satisfying to the dog's basic nature, agility does not, so you have to create that strong reward artificially. And while most dogs appreciate praise and a good petting, most of them won't work that hard to get those things, not when the learning situation gets stressful or potentially scary. Much of the early obstacle learning can be quite dull and even scary if not trained properly. The teeter moves when the dog walks on it, the tunnel is dark and feels funny underfoot, the collapsed chute can make a dog feel trapped, and weave poles are a lot of detailed physical movements that probably make no sense to a dog at all and have no inherent value in and of themselves. There are way more ways to do weave poles wrong than to do them right and it can get quite frustrating for the dog at times. They have to want to keep trying and really make an effort to figure out what is wanted, and it can even get to be mildly stressful at times. Once all the pieces come together and the dog starts sequencing, then it can get quite exciting and become rewarding by itself, but in the beginning, it's not the same thing at all and you need very high value rewards to keep the dog engaged in our silly game until they get far enough along to figure out how much fun it is.

 

I've had people come into beginner class with the attitude of 'my dog doesn't need treats'. They don't tend to get very far. I've also seen dogs come in that were scared of the other dogs and people, scared of equipment, and with the proper use of treats, they turn into incredibly enthusiastic workers who have to be peeled away from the equipment at the end of the session because they've grown to love it so much. Meanwhile their 'no treats' counterparts have dropped out of class weeks ago or are sluggishly going through the motions.

 

Bottom line for me, even if I could invent some non-treat way to train for sports, using food is easy and quick and makes it more fun for the dog, so why not? Why knock what works?

[geonni banner]

Bottom line for me, even if I could invent some non-treat way to train for sports, using food is easy and quick and makes it more fun for the dog, so why not? Why knock what works?

Not an agility trainer, but I do use the Koehler Method for obedience & manners.

 

Not interested in agility, but I am in a mannerly and well-trained dog.

 

I say about that - "it works, so why fix it?" - and I catch hell from the cookie-pushers.

[GentleLake]

I read the Koehler book years ago.

 

Some of his techniques for correcting problem behaviors are on a par with Cesar Millan's.

 

Thanks, but no thanks. I'm not into abusing my friends.

[Shetlander]

Maybe we "cookie pushers" also feel what we do works, so why fix it? Why does choosing different training methods create such division? We all love our dogs and want what is best for them, which includes them being mannerly and well-trained. As long as we don't mistreat our dogs, I think it is great that they get the training and attention they deserve, whatever the method.

[rushdoggie]

I read the Koehler book years ago.

 

Some of his techniques for correcting problem behaviors are on a par with Cesar Millan's.

 

Thanks, but no thanks. I'm not into abusing my friends.

 

You have to take Kohler in context though, consider what kind of dogs he was training and when he wrote those books. We know a lot more now than we did then.

 

When I started training dogs 20*cough*plus years ago, we used his basic methods and they worked OK for most dogs for most basic stuff.

 

I prefer the results I get with more +P methods, so thats what I do now, but I won't speak bad about ol' Bill.

[GentleLake]

Maybe you're not remembering his method for dealing with chewing . . . to duct tape the dog's mouth shut with some of the chewed material and leave the dog like that for hours.

 

Or for soiling in the house. To tie the dog at the site of the mess and beat it soundly for 20 minutes (OK, I don't remember exactly how many minutes but it wasn't one or 2 quick swats. It was to beat the dog repeatedly for an extended period of time, over and over again).

 

There's no context and no time where this is a humane way to deal with unwanted behaviors, in my not-so-humble opinion.

[Doghaven]

What I find interesting is how many "treat-trainers" are walking around with treat pouches on their belts and their 9 year old dog in tow. Usually their dog is looking for treats from anyone they happen to pass, and the dog ignores them unless the squeak "cookie".

 

The most common rationale I hear for the use of treats is that it's easier to mold behavior by using them. What people seem to disregard is how long it takes to decondition the dog from needing a treat to perform the behavior reliably. No matter how much you "randomize the treat reward, if you create a behavior using treats, your dog will always expect a treat for performing that behavior. That creates two negatives, imo, 1) a dependence on always having food, and 2) a WTF moment for the dog when he doesn't get the reward. I don't understand the "random" reward model in general. I want my dog to know every time that its done the right thing.

 

I also question the "it works" rationale. My training philosophy is based on an honest realationship with my dog. You can pay your child every time you want them to do something, and they probably will, but does that really work in the context of life? I see treating in the same light. It maybe "works" to solve an immediate issue, but does it create an honest and well rounded dog that can be trusted in any situation? Not in my experience.

[Laurelin]

Amazing post, Diana.

 

I use treats with my 9 year old dog. Why not? We're still learning new things all the time. I also like being able to reward really great responses. IE: I've been working on speeding up their recall so they're turning at the drop of a hat. I reward the fastest responses. They still listen with or without treats. In agility in particular you want to build the game itself as the reward. That takes time. My older dog (who was almost 100% treat trained though we sometimes used food toys for throwing rewards) will run agility and run and redo drill after drill. Happily and excitedly. With or without treats now. She just loves it. but it took treats to build that enthusiasm and also to string together all the obstacles.

 

Doghaven, what kind of training do you do? I am simply curious. I think Diana explains quite thoroughly some of the benefits of treat training in regards to dogsports.

 

All the arguments I hear against treat training are generally from people who have no need to really work on the kind of precision that sports people need. I don't think its BAD if all you want is a well behaved dog. Not at all. But I do think the idea of 'dog training' starts to change when you move beyond just a happy, well behaved pet. It's just more complicated and it becomes more obvious when your motivator isn't motivating enough or your reward placement isn't right (popping out of the weaves for example).

 

I am just skeptical that training without treats could get you the same results. Most sports dogs are trained with treats at least some of the time. Many a lot of the time (like my pap who has no natural interest in toys). Obviously you can fade them out as they're not allowed in the ring and people have dogs that perform enthusiastically in high distraction/stressful environments without the treats. I always want to see a praise only trainer try out agility and see what happens.

[Doghaven]

Doghaven, what kind of training do you do? I am simply curious. I think Diana explains quite thoroughly some of the benefits of treat training in regards to dogsports.

My own dogs are working sheepdogs. I train other people's dogs in just about any context there is; herding, agility, behavior issues, etc. The only time I have ever used treats is to get feral dogs close enough where I can get a loop on them or to lure them into a crate.

 

I understand that most people who are treaters can't understand how to operate without them, but it's certainly possible, and, imo, far more efficient and effective.

[Doghaven]

You can't 'place' praise in a precise location. A treat provides a physical entity that can be placed/thrown, etc to the desired location for the desired effect.

 

If you want the dog to weave 12 poles with his back to you while you run diagonally across the ring, that reward better show up straight ahead of where he's going in the poles and not after he's run 30 feet across the ring towards you looking for a pat on the head. Otherwise I can guarantee he'll be pulling out of the poles every time you leave his side.

 

 

I disagree with this completely. Praise can be placed anywhere you want it if you understand how it works; most people don't BTW. I wonder if the dog doesn't pull out of the poles more often because he smells the bag of treats running in the other direction.

[mum24dog]

So no, I do not find the use of treats detrimental. I do however find the exclusive and improper use of them limiting!

 

Well summed up.