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“Rover, sit. Sit. SIT. SitSitSit!!!” (The Giveaway)

Mar 30th, 2011 by

In this post, the third in a series about Dr. Ian Dunbar’s new seminar, Science-Based Dog Training (with Feeling), we’ll begin our foray into some of the issues that are giving positive trainers something to bark about. (See the end of this post for links to previous posts in this series.)

Today’s topic: Repeating cues.

“Do not repeat a cue. I repeat. Do not repeat a cue.” That was the dog training catechism I was taught.

When someone else would ask puppy Sadie to sit over and over, barely taking a breath between iterations, as did the receptionist at the puppy daycare I took her to once a week for a few hours, I’d silently blow my Kong. Not that I reprimanded the nice woman. I didn’t. But, I did calmly ask her to please say the cue once only and give Sadie a chance to respond.

So, imagine how my ears perked up when Dr. Dunbar said repeating cues is not a problem. Well, actually, he said more than that, and I would be misleading you if I were to leave it at no hay problema.

Dr. Dunbar talked about repeating cues in context of the 3 Stages of Lure-Reward Training.

Briefly, in Stage 1 we teach our dog verbal cues for behaviors and actions so that we may instruct the dog what to do. Dr. Dunbar refers to this as teaching our dogs ESL.

At Stage 2 we focus on motivating our dogs to really want to do what we ask them to do by, among other things, incorporating life rewards such as playing with their doggy pal.

In Stage 3 we insist that our dogs comply with our verbal cues. You know, sit means sit, as in put your butt, and only your butt, on the ground immediately.

I think it’s important to say at this juncture that Dr. Dunbar isn’t of the mind that Rover must comply immediately to every cue ever uttered without exception. In fact, he employs a DogCon system that communicates to Rover the level of urgency and performance pizazz being requested ranging from: “It would be nice if you would sit, or whatever,” to “‘Sit’ now as if your life depended on it!” I won’t go into it here, but you can read about DogCon at Dog Star Daily by searching “DogCon.”

Okay, so what do we do if Rover doesn’t sit when cued, and we want to teach him to comply without question? This is where repeating cues comes into play, when, and only when, the conditions of Stages 1 & 2 have been met. Rover knows beyond a shadow of a doubt what sit means and is 90% reliable in performing the behavior on cue, and he is highly motivated to sit under most circumstances…..except, well, today, say, at puppy class where he’s found a empty treat jar to investigate.

Enter repeating the cue. Here’s how it might go:

  • Seated in your chair, quietly say, “Rover, sit.”
  • Rover, who is about 4 feet away, continues sniffing the jar.
  • Stand up and say, “Rover. Sit. Sit.” Then give the hand signal for sit.
  • Rover doesn’t sit. He doesn’t even hear you. He’s absorbed in pushing the jar, that he just knocked over, around the floor.
  • Take 1 step towards Rover, and say “Rover. Sit. Sit!,” Give the hand signal for sit once. Then, twice.
  • Rover looks at you as if to say, “You want something?”
  • Don’t take another step. Stand where you are. Say, “R-o-v-e-r. S-i-t!” Followed by your hand signal.
  • Rover sits!
  • “Thank you.”
  • Then say, “Rover, come,” and back up a few steps so Rover moves toward you.
  • “Sit.”
  • Rover sits in front of you.
  • “Good dog. Go play.”

Let’s see. The first sit took 6 verbal cues, 4 hand signals, standing up, and taking 1 step towards Rover before he complied. Finally, he sat after one verbal cue. That’s the point. Requiring compliance after one verbal cue before releasing Rover to play.

Repeat the exercise after Rover has been playing for short time. With each successive trial he should be ‘sitting’ while farther and farther away from you, and after fewer and fewer verbal and hand cues, until he is responding to one verbal cue at a distance.

Dr. Dunbar calls this procedure Repetitive reinstruction until compliance (RRC). The aim? “I want an owner who can give a casual verbal cue from a distance and the dog sits. Then, ‘go play’. The person gives no intention signals. She or he is just sitting casually still and tells the dog to sit.”

I decided to take RRC for a test drive with Sadie’s BFF, Romeo. He meets the necessary criteria. He knows very well the verbal cue, sit, and he’s typically well motivated to comply.

Mr. R. was eviscerating a purple gorilla about 4 feet from me in our living room.

  • “Romeo, sit,” I said nonchalantly.
  • Romeo lifted his head to look at me with the ape dangling limply from his mouth.
  • “R-o-m-e-o. SIT.” I said with quiet insistence.
  • Romeo didn’t budge.
  • I stood up. “Sit.” I gave the hand signal for sit.
  • Romeo sat!
  • “Romeo. Here. Sit“
  • Mr. R. dropped the toy and sat down in front of me. I told him, “Go play.”

A minute or so later I again cued Romeo to sit. He was about 8 feet from me this time and exuberantly shaking the now gutted purple gorilla. He sat instantly.

“Learning theorists say this (RRC) won’t work or shouldn’t work,” Dr. Dunbar said. “All I know is that when we do this routine we will end up with a dog who will sit at a distance on a single cue no matter what the dog is doing.”

I’m not sure why RRC seems to work either. One thing, though, as I understand it, RRC is not the same as repeating a single cue in rapid succession so that sit morphs into sitsitsitsit. There’s a brief pause (a second, maybe) between cues, both verbal and physical,

To be honest, even though I subscribe to the one cue doctrine, I occasionally do repeat cues either because I think I need to, as in Sadie, wait….wait, even though she hasn’t budged, or because she doesn’t comply as fast I would like. If the behavior I’m cuing seems to be falling apart I get out the clicker and shape it up.

Most dog guardians (That’s what we’re called in Boulder. Really. Dog owners are referred to as guardians in municipal law. This affectation does not, however, translate into Boulder being particularly dog friendly. It’s not. Don’t get me started.) in my experience aren’t into the finer points of dog training. They do what comes naturally and that includes repeating cues. Yes, I know. Sometimes to distraction. But, I think that’s in part what Dr. Dunbar is trying to address with RCC. He seems to have found a path of least resistance. People apparently can repeat cues and ultimately get compliance when saying the cue once.

What do you think? How does this work?

THE GIVEAWAY!

At the close of the Denver seminar there were a few remaining DVD’s on the sales table in the back of the room. Dr. Dunbar didn’t want to lug them home and asked me to give them away. How cool is that?

The DVD’s:

You’ll receive a set of 3 DVD’s:

  1. Training Dogs with Dunbar: Fun training for you and your dog
  2. Training the Companion Dog: Adapted from the ‘Dogs with Dunbar’ television program
  3. Every Picture Tells a Story: An educational Aid for Children to explore the language of dogs

How do I enter to win the DVD’s?

Leave a comment to this post by 11:59 pm MDT April 4, 2011 and you will be entered into the giveaway.

A winner will be selected by a random number generator.

I will notify the winner by email and ask for their address. The winner will have 24 hours to reply. If they do not reply within 24 hours, I will notify the second person on the list created by the random number generator, and so on.

Due to shipping logistics, only residents of the Unites States and Canada will be entered in the giveaway.

PREVIOUS POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

Dr. Dunbar’s Lure-Reward Training Revival

Dog Training Seminar in a Kong

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Posted in Dog Training, Giveaway, Ian Dunbar, Seminar review | 110 Comments »

Let’s Call Kicking a Dog What It Is: Abuse

Mar 21st, 2011 by

Denial. Denial. Denial. People who don’t see abuse and torture when they are looking right at it are in denial. Denial is a very dangerous state of mind, it allows for all sorts of atrocities to go unchecked.

I thought about this when I read the always-on-top-of-current-dog-news Mary Haight’s new post: “Cesar, Abuse Is Not a Training Tool.” She includes a video to back up her argument. It’s a must read.

UPDATE (3/26/11): The video Mary Haight linked to has been taken down. However, you can find an extensive list of both articles and videos at Leah Roberts’ excellent site, Dog Willing.

Mary asks: “How can so many people, including professionals, watch him abuse, and yes, torture dogs, and think it’s okay?” This is a really important question that we need to deconstruct.

I took a crack at it the Bonfire of the Insanities: Dumbinance Strikes Again, a post that I wrote 16 months ago. It’s all about denial. You can read below.

It’s deja vu all over again. That’s what occurs to me lately when I reflect on the abusive treatment of dogs in the name of training.

In my previous life I founded Denver Safehouse for Battered Women and taught classes on violence against women at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Rapists don’t think they rape. They’re just have sex with a woman who really wants it anyway. Men who beat their wives aren’t committing felony assault, they’re just showing her who’s boss.

The perpetrators were not the only ones in denial. Our entire culture colluded with them.

Rape was just another name for sex, it wasn’t assault. Some scholars argued that rape was impossible. Not so many years ago in Colorado it was legal for a man to rape his wife because within marriage the law assumed that marriage was just another way of saying sex-on-demand.

Beating up one’s wife was an acceptable way for a man to manage his unruly woman. Police turned a blind eye to women beaten within a inch of their lives. I know this to be true because I was on the front lines at the beginning of the so-called battered women’s movement. Every place we turned to for help—police, social services, mental health—turned us away or gave the woman bad advice, namely, some version of “It’s for your own good.”

With both rape and battering people assumed “she was asking for it” and that it was “good for her.” As for the the man, well, he was just asserting his rightful superior role. And the few who said, well maybe he hit her a little too hard, quickly qualified their statement with “It wasn’t that bad. It didn’t really hurt. I mean he didn’t break any bones.” Sound familiar?

I know from that experience that changing the perceptions of a culture entrenched in denial is like trying to right a monster vessel adrift at sea. It’s slow going, but it can be done. And, it’s still a work-in-progress.

I am not equating rape and battering with kicking a dog. Actually, I just said that because I don’t want to offend people who might take offense at that analogy. In my heart of hearts, though, I see the abuse and torture of dogs in the name of training or behavior modification as criminal acts against sentient beings, and frankly I think those who commit those acts should be treated as criminals by the law.

We can be begin our rehabilitation by asking ourselves, those of us who see nothing wrong with kicking dogs for their own good: What would you lose if you saw CM kicking a dog as abuse, as the deliberate infliction of pain? What would change for you? How do you feel about that?

Bonfires of the Insanities: Duminance Strikes Again (Redux)

Dominance theory, or dumbinance theory as I prefer to call it, reared its howling head again, this time as a prescription for child rearing—“Becoming the Alpha Dog in Your Own Home.” (As of today, the most popular article in the NYT.) Meet Cesar Millan, the new no-nonsense nanny. Here. In the New York Times. Again. (In case you missed the last exercise in fawning over Millan by the national paper of record, go here.)

To mark this dubious occasion I decided to get out ye ol’ bellows and stir up some embers of thought ignited by thisbonfire of the insanities.

Insanity? You betcha. It’s downright crazy to look at one thing and see another, or not to see anything at all. Take dog poop. Poop is poop. Not chocolate puddin’. If you think poop is puddin’, you are in denial.  And, I don’t mean you’re cruising in a river in Egypt.

My aim here is to clear the smoke from our eyes so we can see what’s what, and stop convincing ourselves that that stuff we’re eatin’ is puddin’ and not poop. It’s poop!

Let’s begin with this quote from the Times article exhorting you to be the alpha dog in your own home, Cesar-style. It’s attributed to Allison Pearson, author of the novel “I Don’t Know How She Does It” about the pressures of contemporary motherhood. She said, “Unlike modern parents…dog trainers don’t think discipline equals being mean.”

Ah. Come again? Cesar Millan doesn’t dish out mean “discipline”? Is there more than one Cesar Millan? Did I miss something? I don’t think so. I’ll make a bold statement here. I am not crazy. Cesar ain’t dishing out puddin’.

Just to be fair, if Pearson was referring to the likes of Ian Dunbar or Karen Pryor or Pat Miller or Trish King, to name just a handful of excellent dog trainers who don’t think discipline equals being mean, I’m with her. They rely on thescience of behavior and research that shows, time and again, that putting your energy into positively reinforcing your dog for doing the behaviors that you like rather going on a search and destroy mission for the behaviors that you don’t like, not only gives you a well-mannered dog, or child for that matter, but a relationship based on trust, not fear.

But, given that the Times article was about Cesar Millan, presumably, that’s who Pearson was talking about. (Or, the author of the article, by leaving the reader to make her own inference, makes it appear Pearson was referring to Millan. Allison, who were you talking about?)

Am I saying that Cesar’s style of discipline is mean? In a word, yes. In fact, it’s beyond mean. It’s sometimes cruel and abusive. When Cesar forces a fearful dog-aggressive dog to confront his fear by bringing the dog face-to-face with another dog and then strangles the dog with a choke collar for struggling to get away, or for aggressing, that’smean. When Cesar drags a Saint Bernard who is fearful of stairs up a flight of stairs by the neck to get him over his fear of stairs, that’s mean. When he wraps a shock collar on a dog’s neck and shocks it to make it stop chasing the cat as the owner looks on, visibly shaken, that’s mean.

Do I think Millan thinks he’s being mean? No, I don’t. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t.

I think Cesar Millan is in denial about what he’s doing to dogs in the name of “discipline”. And, his placid demeanor enhances the delusion. Think about it. If he yelled in anger as he kicked, slapped, pushed, and choked dogs, we’d be appalled. We’d call the SPCA. We’d boycott National Geographic Channel and it’s advertisers.

Let me be clear. Millan does deserve credit for not flying into a rage when he disciplines a dog. For that he is a decent role model. Indeed, the first rule of dog training is Do not rage at your dog. If you are frustrated, or angry just stop interacting with your dog until you calm down. (Take note. This is good advice to follow with your child or your spouse or your friends.)

But unfortunately Millan’s self-styled calm-assertive veneer polishes the illusion that his discipline does good, not harm. Choking a dog into submission while remaining bucolic makes it appear as if the medicine is going down like, well, puddin’. Presumably if Millan is placid and not acting out of anger then he’s not hurting the dog either.

So when his disciples repeat and repeat, as if in a trance, Cesar says anything that works is okay as along as you don’t harm the dog, they’re in denial too. And when the National Geographic Channel and the New York Times further aids and abets this lunacy, we are entering the realm of collective consensual denial of harm.

But, hey, so what?

Here’s what. Denial scrambles reality. Denial allows us to do harm without recognizing our actions as harmful. Denial invites us to rationalize harm away.

Take blame the victim, for example, as in “he’s a red zone dog.” Cesar’s methods are all that will work. (Not true).

Or, minimization as in it’s not so bad. That’s a good one. I wonder if Bella, the American Bull Dog, would agree that it wasn’t so bad when Millan activated the electric collar he put on her to teach her not to guard her food. (For an excellent deconstruction of this episode of the Dog Whisperer go here.)

Denial also provides us with cover for not doing the right thing, for not taking a stand against harm.

We have a choice. We can clear the smoke from our eyes, point out poop when we see it and haul it away. Or, we can keep on chowin’ down the puddin’ around the bonfire of the insanities. What are you going to do?

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Posted in Dancing Dog Blog, Dominance, Dumbinance, Mary Haight, Uncategorized | 28 Comments »

Dog Training Seminar in a Kong

Mar 20th, 2011 by

In this post, the second in a series, I want to share two things with you. One, what I heard as the essence of Dr. Dunbar’s message during his seminar, Science-Based Dog Training (with Feeling). And, two, ten tasty treats to savor.

In subsequent posts I’ll write about topics that are stirring spirited conversation among reward-based trainers.

I was hoping to have posted about the seminar last week. You know, strike while the iron of my memory of the workshop is still hot.

But alas, all hell is breaking loose in Boulder these days over dog-related issues.

Yet again, there’s a push to, well, push dogs off of hiking trails. Every few years or so the pro-dog community girds its loins for battle and rallies its forces to keep the Boulder’s powers-that-be from severely restricting dogs on urban open space and corralling them onto few and fewer, heavily trafficked trails.

I won’t bother you with the particulars of this struggle. Let it suffice to say that I spent the better part of last week carefully crafting my 2-minute speech to Boulder City Council for a hearing devoted entirely to this issue, and that was the culminating event of 18 months of fierce fighting that pitted anti-dog conservationists against recreational users of urban open space, of which I am one of many. It’s been nasty and emotionally draining. Fortunately the meeting didn’t last long–by Boulder standards, anyway. It started at 6:00 PM and concluded just a little before 1:00 AM Wednesday morning. If you’re interested, this guest editorial in the local newspaper says it all.

The point is I took a detour from writing about Science-Based Dog Training (with Feeling), and now I’m getting back on track.

For an overview of the seminar you can read Dr. Dunbar’s posts on Dog Star Daily here and here. You can also watch his vlogs about the ideas in the seminar here, here, and here. Basically, each of the three days of the seminar covers a topic: Puppyhood, Learning Theory Redux, and Lure-Reward Training.

Seminar in a Kong

If I had to distill Science-Based Dog Training (with Feeling) into concentrated bits of premium kibble easily stuffed into a Kong this is what I would say:

Given that:

  1. People are impatient and want results fast.
  2. People quit if they don’t get the immediate results.
  3. People naturally tend to look for “what’s wrong” and punish that, rather than notice “what’s going well” and reward that.
  4. Most of the millions of dogs surrendered to shelters and rescues are adolescents with “behavior problems,” many condemned to death.

Then:

  • We need to teach people to train their dogs in a way that’s “easy, efficient, enjoyable, expedient, and efficacious,” meaning “without negative side-effects,” thereby increasing the likelihood that dogs happily will live out their lives with their first and forever families. This includes teaching people ways to “punish,” since as noted above they’re going to do it anyway, that are non-aversive and effective. (More on this in a future post.)

Thus:

  • Science-Based Dog Training (with Feeling) — from puppyhood through adolescence and beyond.

Give people what they want so dogs get what they need.  That’s the seminar in a Kong.

Ten Tasty Treats

As I mentioned in my previous post about the seminar, I took notes the entire time Dr. Dunbar lectured. Still, I’m sure I missed a lot. He talks fast when he’s on a roll. And, he rocks and rolls most of the time!

Each night after that day’s session was over, I reviewed my notes and highlighted thoughts that captured my attention. Sometimes they were things I already knew, but appreciated being reminded of. Others were novel, to me, anyway.

Here they are. Ten tasty treats selected more or less at random:

  1. If you move a dog through an environment too quickly, that’s too much stimulation. Over stimulation can cause the dog to become reactive. Stop at least every 25 yards and let the dog get used to her surroundings.
  2. We take good behavior for granted and pay attention to what we don’t like. That’s why dogs (and people) go bad.
  3. With handling and gentling we can help our puppies grow into adults that have so much buffering around them they can handle obnoxious people in their eventual environments.
  4. Biting. Chewing. Separation anxiety. House soiling. These are the big 4. They are predictable and preventable.
  5. The day you stop socializing your dog he starts getting worse. We (Ian and Kelly) just started re-socailizing  our 12-14 yr old dog around other dogs using classical conditioning. We don’t want him to develop the geriatric grumpies.
  6. Lack of neonatal handling is the most inhumane thing you can do to a dog. They are far more likely to grow up being fearful of people.
  7. Think about it. What are 10 things a dog can’t do while she’s chewing on a stuffed Kong?
  8. Cue the dog to sit before everything. Then, sit becomes a secondary reinforcer.
  9. Protect your dog with preventative classical conditioning. For example, anytime there is a thunder storm, even if the puppy or dog apparently is not afraid of thunder, follow the thunder with a yummy treat.
  10. Reward training is accurate and very powerful. The classical conditioning fallout is that your dog loves you.

Next post: “Luring is the fastest and easiest way to get behaviors?”

Oops. The next post is: “Repeating cues until the dog offers the behavior, ‘sit’, for example, is an effective way to teach the dog to ultimately respond to the cue when it is said only once.”

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Posted in Seminar review | 10 Comments »

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