When should you lie to your Border Collie?

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You say tomayto, I say tomahto. You see there's always that "as long as." One person's "abuse" is another's "just sensible." Some people think that shock collars are always abusive. I don't agree, but that's me.

 

The person who sees shock collars as irredeemably abusive will often feel that it is their bounden duty to try to put a stop the the use of all shock collars because it's a moral obligation. So it does affect them personally - at least they think it does.

 

Some people think smacking a dog is always wrong. Some people think yelling at a dog is always wrong. Some think saying "no" is always wrong. Where do you draw the line? Many folk are willing to live and let live, but many others will feel morally obligated to get others to espouse their views.

 

If I see someone call their dog that has gotten into the garbage, and then smack the dog when it comes, I usually feel an obligation to state my view that it is not only mean, but poor training. Is it hurting me? No. Is it any of my business? Probably not. But that's how I'm put together.

 

If I see someone training with a choke chain, or a shock collar, I keep my views to myself. (Mostly because I've seen both tools used to good purpose.) But that's how I'm put together too.

 

People who are rabidly against gay marriage often feel that way because of religious convictions. Thus, it does affect them - or at least, they feel that they are doing a moral wrong by not vocally opposing gay marriage. The same sort of thinking makes people say that others are crazy (or stupid, or deluded) for holding certain notions about dog training.

 

Whatcha gonna do?

[Maja]

Off-balance flanks:

Presence of the reward - continuous. The dog is at 3 o'clock or 9 o clock. The instinct tells the dog to go to 12:00, the handler, at 6:00, asks nicely for the dog to come to 6 o'clock.

 

If we assume the dog does not give a hoot about the handler then what we have is this: the handler cannot "take the sheep away" - whether the dog goes on balance or off-balance the reward is there staring it in the face. The handler can't teleport him/herself to block the dog from going on balance, can't yell at the dog to come, and even of he/she does, so who cares? All one can do is ask the dog nicely to come to the handler off balance on the flank. In my opinion, if the dog does not care about the handler's wishes, you can't teach off balance flanks. It we look at it as "the dog does what is pays" - here the dog wins either way, thus why cause oneself a discomfort of going off-balance? Because over there is the handler about whom the dog cares.

 

Derek has the method creating a path for the dog with a nice voice or a harsh voice. Again, it would not work if the dog does not care about the handler. The harsh voice does not take away the sheep, the nice voice does not provide them. They are there. (The voice would be just like the noise in th background when Bonnie had her indoor duck presentation - it was bothersome, being at a high level and it drowned my commands, so she calmly went on moving the ducks on her own from place to place, while the microphone blared.)

 

I am not saying there aren't other elements there at play - there are, and they are very important. But the dog's biddability at a sufficient level is the necessary ingredient for the cooperation to take place at all, it is the coubnter-point for the instinct. Together they make a sheep dog.

 

When I was starting to train Bonnie many of my peers told me she was blowing me off. Later, when she began to shape into a sheep dog, I asked on a forum who thought their dog works also for them, and not just for the sheep.

 

I was the only one who thought so, and I have been intrigued since and I still don't know the answer (though I have had some thoughts on it) - why so many people oppose the idea.

[Donald McCaig]

Dear Doggers,

 

I’m afraid my tentative, muddy thinking has stirred up tired controversies and hasn't been helpful. Let me try to get at things differently.

 

I believe that my Border Collies experience “lying”, “respect” and “fairness” – among other moral qualities often reserved for homo sapiens sapiens. Border Collies are quick to forgive and extremely, sometimes annoyingly, optimistic. With experience they become wise which means, at least, that they can fashion appropriate responses for circumstances they’ve never faced nor been trained for.

 

They understand “preventative war” but not “revenge”. They are capable of first level abstractions and can learn to value money but not how to convert currencies.

 

I believe they read the topological gestalt better than I and rarely, if ever, err about the household’s emotional temperature. They are more apt than I to spot something novel or out of place.

 

Their associative skills are so good, they jump to conclusions which are very hard to unjump.

 

They will become mannerly, whatever the training method or no explicit method, if the trainer has consistent expectations and patience.

 

 

 

 

 

Donald McCaig

[Maja]

Yes, we strayed off the main topic, but it was so interesting it was too hard to resist.

 

I fully agree with Mr. McCaig's observations. I now have a dog that is difficult for me to train. She - at a year and a half - is where Bonnie was at 10 months. But my belief is that at 4 years Darinka will be way past Bonnie at 4 years. In the meantime, we are trying to forge a good way to communicate, because this seems to be the main glitch in her training. Some of the problems I have solved. One of them was this:

 

It is often done that a handler makes the dog lie down, goes to the dog pets it and goes back to work. And one of these times the handler makes the dog lie down, clips the leash on and ends their work. Sometimes one may clip on the leash and unclip it and go back to work, or even walk away and send the dog back. So basically the dog learns that the handler's approach or walking away from the sheep is not the end of the world. Easy. After all I've done it before with other dogs just fine. Right

 

Wrong.

 

At first, it all went well, good lie down, everything fine. Then, very quickly, as soon as I conceived the idea that I should finish, the lie down was gone. Just gone. And even if I managed to get her to lie down, she would run away from my approach.

 

Then I went to a clinic, where one of the things I was told was "she is an honest dog".

 

Ok, so we went back home. So thinking hard about her honesty, I decided that when I mean for her to lie down, and for me to go over and pet her, I do that. And when I mean to take her away from the sheep, I say "that'll do" and I take her away from the sheep.

 

As crazy as this sounds (considering her previous behavior) - it worked. Of course the pull towards the sheep is very strong, but she honestly tries hard to come to me and to follow me out. Sometimes she decides to bring the sheep with her. Most often she battles with herself and comes with me.

 

(I did something similarly strange with Bonnie, who pulled on the leash when going to the sheep. Instead of struggling with her trying to choke herself, I decided I would go the whole 150yds to the training area with the sheep (it was closed in of course) without a leash, and she will stay with me on my say so. She did.)

[Eileen Stein]

I guess I have to own up that I have not understood what the topic is from the beginning. But I have nevertheless gotten two significant benefits from the thread: (1) reading Maja's excellent posts, and (2) having a tentative conclusion I've had for awhile transformed into a firm conclusion -- namely, that trying to fit sheepdog training into the rubrics and terminology of behaviorism is a major obstacle to understanding or accurately describing what is actually occurring in the training of sheepdogs. It leads to failures of communication that are frustrating to most participants in any discussion -- both those who know a lot about sheepdog training and those who know little or nothing about it. And as for those actually trying to learn to train a sheepdog -- well, it's hard enough to form an accurate picture of what's happening in the training process without feeling the need to make what you're seeing fit into operant conditioning quadrants.

 

It's just more complex than that. It just is.

 

 

ETA: Well, I see that Maja, unlike me, does understand what the main topic is. Very, very interesting example.

[Maralynn]

I realize that I was overly simplistic in an earlier post. Once again, the perils of posting from a phone.

 

So I'll expound a little. I think that stockwork has a natural factor that helps the world make sense and bring out the suppressed qualities of a border collie that has some previous baggage. I've had two dogs now that came to me after they had learned to self entertain. The natural biddability had been suppressed rather than nurtured and brought out.

 

With Kipp I started with a 20 m/o dog who was drivey as all get out but had never worked with a person and had channeled that drive through herding cats and working reindeer through a fence. He was a dog that deep down *wanted* to please but he had self rewarded/not had a person to work with for so long that it had pretty well overridden.

 

In situations like that, I believe that work with the stock would have began for him as the primary rewarding activity and I would have built a relationship and developed his biddability - as well as the other aspects of a good stockdog - through the work. He wanted to work, work was naturally rewarding, work only happens through me and my rules, leading to bringing out the suppressed working *with* me is intrinsically rewarding. And yes, by the time it had progress to a less controlled environment then a desire to please me would have been very much in play.

 

Anyway, not sure if that all makes sense but that is my clarification to my rambling thoughts.

[Maja]

Eileen,

That was a very nice thing to say. Thank you .