Southend dog training

[SarahSissions]

Just seen this comment on another post “I was about to say the same. I don't know why people don't agree with their methods. They don't do anything cruel.”

On the home page of their website they have a picture of a dog wearing a prong collar, and often write posts advocating their use. Just because someone has a lot of Instagram followers doesn’t make them reputable, it makes me so angry that people don’t do a bit of digging and research into people they recommend.

The thing is, you can do everything properly and train your dogs but none of that means your dogs won't become reactive or that they won't have high prey drives and chase.

I would never advocate the use of aversive training but it's also not as simple as "just train your dog".

It isn't aversive training though - it is balanced training.
I'm absolutely astounded by some of the comments on this thread. Saying that having a healthy dog PTS is not the worst outcome for a dog. It literally is! Any vet who euthanises a healthy dog before all options have been explored is a disgrace.
If there was scientific agreement (that study quoted earlier involved 92 dogs - the background, medical history etc is not explored. Publishing something in a journal does not make it fact) then there would be one approach.
Using entirely positive based training did nothing for my reactive lurcher especially after he had been attacked by another dog. SDT have made no money from me - I used free content and I wouldn't hesitate recommending their methods for fear based reactivity. I have spent hundreds of pounds on Absolute Dogs and Zach George and it might work for you but it didn't for us.
If you look at any 'bad' or 'beyond help' dog and there is no underlying medical issue, you will always find a lazy, incompetent or downright terrible owner.

If Absolute Dogs and Zak George did not work for you then you were not doing it right.

Absolute Dogs relies on your being the most exiciting thing in the entire world ever. You can't get this by half heartedly tossing bits of kibble at your dog for a few days.

Zak's technique requires time and consistency.

I promise you all dogs learn the same. They all have the same cognitive functions. They value different things so some things need to be adjusted for individual dogs eg the kind of rewards used or the level of trainer engagement but all dogs will respond to reward based training. As will all dolphins, all cats, all children, all adults etc. It is not magic. It is a science which has been studied and proven for decades with all kinds of mammels. Even fish respond to reward based training so if you cannot get a dog to respond to it I promise you the issue is not with the dog.

E collars for not hurt if used correctly

I'm sorry @Frequency you might not agree with SED trainers but many people do.

I have seen someone spend a lot of money trying to stop a dog from chasing deer/ hares and nothing working apart from dog never being allowed off lead but living very rural that seemed unfair

A few sessions with a gun dog trainer and a e collar used correctly and the dog now shows no interest in chasing wild life

James Penrith shows a good example

I think once you start getting into problem behaviours there's no substitute for in person training. It's so easy to miss subtle cues which mean all your efforts might be misdirected.

Absolute dog type games didn't work for us, my pup got so hyped up she totally lost control. Luckily we were doing these games as part of an in person course so the trainer could advise on alternatives, but all still positive based.

It's not that I disagree with SDT, per se. It's that their methods are not the most scientfically proven.

I tend to fall on the side of science in almost every argument. Behavioural Science has been a big thing since before Skinner and his rats. Every single study into the use of E collars and prong collars vs reward based training has proven that reward based training is more effective. Out of hundreds of studies completed and research papers written not a single one managed to find any evidence that e collars are more effective in any circumstances with any species.

No-one is saying E collars do not work. They do. They have unwanted side effects such as increased stress and in extreme cases they can actually illict aggression.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/S15327604JAWS0304_6

I don't understand why anyone would want to take that risk when reward based training has been proven time and time again over a span of decades to be more effective than aversive training.

Leaving aside E collars and physical pain in training studies (all of them) prove that reward based training is more effective long term than punishment based training.

I follow South End Dog Trainer, mainly because I stumbled across him and he uses the same training techniques as I’ve used for years on foster dogs and I watch to see if there is any techniques I may have missed. I foster dogs that have been rehomed multiple times due to behavioural issues that trainers failed to rectify and because of this were on shelter kill lists. Anyone who says that a dog being put to sleep is better than using his methods is mad.

None of the dogs I used those techniques on has been put down, they have all now been permanently placed and I often get updates on their safe, fulfilled lives as loved members of a family.

I’ve put five friends onto him (as I know personally his methods work as they are same methods I learnt when sent on a foster training course in the 90’s), who were all about to surrender their dogs, all had tried multiple trainers who had all failed and had recommended putting their dogs to sleep. All those I’ve recommended have had a complete turn around on their dogs, and are keeping them. Even my friend abroad who trained with him via one one one video calls has had a complete transformation in her dog.

I also have noticed over the past 5 years dog owners have become awful, buying breeds that are unsuitable for their lifestyle and experience or buying cross breeds with unpredictable health issues/energy levels/temperament for fashion, and aren’t doing basic training, recall, heel, lead training, etc, so the park now is a nightmare for dog walkers with well trained dogs (or nervous dogs in training). SEDT does a lot of educational work which I really agree with, educating owners about the basic tenets of dog buying/owning/training.
I also ride horses and the lack of control of dogs by their owners recently has made riding extremely dangerous due to out of control dogs in public spaces like parks and bridleways.

If you have to shout out ‘he/she is friendly’ you are a shit dog owner.

Absolute dog type games didn't work for us, my pup got so hyped up she totally lost control.

My rottie mix is the same to be fair but this style of training has it's uses. My dog thinks every living being is a new best friend waiting to be made. A stranger 3 miles down the beach was far more exciting than my stinky garlic sausage. This is amplified when the strangers have dogs or toddlers (toddlers are just amazing, even better than other dogs, because you don't have jump up to say hello properly). Luckily he had a longline on so never made it 3 miles down the beach.

Absolute Dog games are great for resolving issues like that and bringing the dog's focus back to you but not so great when you're looking to train a solid stay or calm-settle.

He's still visibly overjoyed when he spies a toddler but I can get his focus back on me using play and excitement.

We still use a lead if there is a high chance of seeing toddlers though, just in case. Can you imagine minding your own business with your three year old and then looking up to spot a 6 stone rottweiller bounding towards you like the duracell bunny on crack? I love dogs and even I would die of fear.

Your opinion on PTS is your opinion. Just because you can't train an aggressive dog does not mean that others can't. I'm not sure what level of training you've done. A friend of mine has taken many aggressive dogs and reactive dogs and rehabilitated them. The owners if they had not found him would have taken the advice of bad trainers and PTS. He does not use forceful methods and yes it takes time. One of his dogs is beautiful she was ready to be PTS. Its not necessarily the dogs fault. If I had a pound for every person who claims to be a dog training or behaviourist 🙄. There's a lot of videos floating about now of so called aggressive dogs that were advised by trainers to be put to sleep and videos of these dogs trained and rehabilitated. Anyone who calls themselves a trainer and advises a healthy dog to be PTS due to aggression should not be calling themselves a trainer.

Absolute dogs are the king of a solid stay and calm settle. Their boundary training and calm protocol is fool proof so really surprised you say that Frequency

@Sitdowncupoftea I never claimed to be a trainer or a behaviourist. I just said I've worked with aggressive dogs 🤷🏻‍♀️

I've only ever used "There's Game For That" and "Are you Sexier Than a toddler Squirell" to be honest and like a PP my dog got super, super hyped when doing the Squirrel course. Teaching him anything other than how to more effectively maul me with love would have been a nightmare when he was in that mind-set. Worked great on the toddlers though.

He's normally very food orientated so I use clicker trainer for basic obedience with food (adding in toys or a good game of tug once we have a solid base for the behaviour and are up to distraction proofing it)

In fairness to Absolute Dogs my dog is ultra high energy to start with. Imagine if Marley from Marley and Me accidentally ingested amphetimines. That's my dog.

Indoctro thank you for posting that video.

To me is the main reason I would never use a shock collar.

1. The pointer dog before the shock collar as the author of the video says is not bothered by the discomfort caused by being on a slip lead and is gasping for breath. Soooo the e collar has to cause more discomfort to have an effect so it has to hurt.
2. Look at the body language of the dog after the shock collar. Lip licking tail down, low body frame. That is a stressed anxious dog around sheep.
3. They say the dog has had 3 seconds of its life on a shock collar but the effect is lasing much longer hence the terrified dog who will not even approach or look at the sheep .
4. I am aware that the outcome is the dog to stay away from the sheep but that dog is still on a long line and just terrifed from being near the sheep.
5. might as well have it on a harness increase the distance between the sheep and train.

Give me any labrador and I can change the chase instinct without using a shock collar!

So look at their boundary game training and calm protocol and presence does not mean access.

You will see a very calm dog very quickly. (or you could just shout at him and jerk him into position and stand over him until he shuts down!)

Using boundary games I can pop my dog onto a boundary in a field full of sheep and he will not move - (thinking of above video) Collies will sit on a boundary when a game of football is taking place near by and not chase the ball or sit on their boundary when one of them is doing an agility run and they are waiting for their go.

If I am taking a puppy class my 10 month old very sociable lab puppy will sit on their bounday during the class, demonstrate some training and then pop back onto their boudary and happily stay there whilst the other dogs are moving around and if he can do it any dog can!

Takes time but is easy to do and you get results quickly

Then if your not a trainer or qualified behaviourist qualified but say PTS then why did you say you were Your quote :"I'm a dog walker and have qualifications in dog behaviour - I've worked with quite a few aggressive dogs over the years, though I no longer work with them now."

Then if your not a trainer or qualified behaviourist qualified but say PTS then why did you say you were Your quote :"I'm a dog walker and have qualifications in dog behaviour - I've worked with quite a few aggressive dogs over the years, though I no longer work with them now."

You may want to re-read what you posted then 🤷🏻‍♀️

Nowhere did I say I was a trainer or a behaviourist - that's your assumption. I'm a dog walker and I've studied dog behaviour but I'm not a qualified behaviourist and never claimed to be.

I've worked with aggressive dogs (as a walker, not as any kind of trainer) but no longer accept them as it no longer fits my business model.

We've got a pretty solid stay and wait now. Boundary control is meh. He stays away from the fence and knows that fighting through the fence with next doors Pug is a NO, no matter how annoying the Pug is being.

Settle is a work in progress. He knows what it means. We've now got an acceptable level of overall calm in the house. He's still an absolute nutjob but I find his current energy levels in the house to be acceptable and it's my house. Other people would probably not enjoy having him as a pet. I like his energy and goofiness. He will respond to settle when there is only me and him and I need to take a Zoom call without him suddenly launching himself at my head and demanding love.

When we have guests he will settle on command but only for a minute unless it is being constantly reinforced. If there's a toddler in the house forget it. He wears a harness with a handle on the back, I tend to keep that on him when we have visting toddlers and small people. We don't really have enough small people in our family to work on this as much as I would like.

Presence does not mean access sounds fun though and like it could be helpful to us. I will look into that one.

I commited the ultimate doggy faux pas when we got him and rescued a dog for the kids. They swore black and blue they would train him. I bought them all the books, I gave them all my coursework and recorded sesssions from when I did my degree, I showed them all the videos. I was working 2 fulltime jobs so could not be physically involved with his training but I was available to offer advice and guidance.

He's now 12 months old and makes Marley look calm but I love him and I did train the things that were important to me. He's well socialised, he walks well on a lead, his recall is awesome and he's comfortable having people and other animals near his food and high value treats and he doesn't barge into rooms he's not allowed in.

I'm not working as much now so we're doing bits of training together to focus on getting him to greet people without steam rolling into them like a furry wrecking ball full of teeth and slobber and to stop digging up the garden and planting veg. He has habit of stealing potatos and burying them in the garden (I like the digging, he likes the digging. It uses energy, he has fun and it can be used to tire him by hiding treats and getting him to use his nose etc but the digging needs to be contained to the digging pit and not the entire garden).

My comments were specifically about the "make yourself the most exciting thing ever games". I think for a lot of dogs they're probably very effective but they won't work for every dog. But that's not saying that force free training is no good or absolute dogs are no good just that some dogs will respond better to certain types of game than others. And that's where having a in person trainer is helpful.

My pup was actually super chilled around the house, settle training wasn't an issue, but recall games just totally over stimulated her.

The make youself more exciting games were the ones that over stimulated my dog. I mean they worked, they achieved what I wanted, I was the most exciting thing in the entire history of exciting things - take a step back toddlers who are just begging to be licked all over! but his basic manners are lacking so by becoming the most exciting thing in the history of exciting things I made myself a target for his special kind of enthusiastic love getting him to sit or respond to any command when he was that state would have been impossible. I didn't even try because I knew it would be setting him up to fail so I just accepted his love until we were a workable distance away from the toddler.

I've just had a flick through Absolute Dogs "There's a Game for That" and there are games which aim to bring your dog down from a high level of arousal. They seem like they'd work for us I might give them a try on our next training session.

I bought the book for the kids and only flicked through it to check the techniques were reward based.

He's brilliant dog to train as he's so excited by everything getting his initial interest and focus is easy peasy but his overall level of excitement does mean that training sessions can sometimes descend into zoomies if you're not careful not overarouse him. This is what the kids struggled with, hence them giving up after having taught him to sit.

It is also very important to remember that management and training go hand in hand.

Have your dog in environments where they can manage until a behaviour is the default and then up the proofing and add in distractions or lessen the distance from the trigger.

Most people miss out the proofing say my dog can do xyz and then take them to a highly stimulating enviroment and wonder why they cant.

If I had a pound for every time a client said to me "but he does it at home".....

@Frequency
No-one is saying E collars do not work. They do. They have unwanted side effects such as increased stress and in extreme cases they can actually illict aggression.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/S15327604JAWS0304_6
That study isn't about e-collars being used for contingent punishment. It's about electric containment systems. It also, iirc, used a vey small convenience sample - I haven't the time just now to go and reread it.

All I am saying is that e-collar training, when done well, does not distress the dog. Sure, if you're an utter arsehole you can get a collar with a really strong maximum pulse and weld your dog to the floor. Equally, if you're an utter arsehole, you can use your feet to kick your dog into submission. If you're a more normal sort of person, you can use an e-collar as I have seen one being used, to correct major recall and chase issues (after well over a year of other remedial training hadn't resolved the problems). The dog is not stressed, nor afraid of the collar. He is enjoying more freedom now than he has ever done, and he's still being rewarded whenever he comes back. I'm sure you'll tell me that the same result could have been achieved with force-free training, but all I know is that, for this dog, force-free hadn't worked.

Sure, anecdata. But the science isn't settled yet. I've listened to a force-free trainer explain what makes so much of the science on both sides so poor (lack of control groups etc).

I have yet to understand how it is that people can believe that an e-collar MUST hurt to be effective when they know that a whistle or a shout (or even a gentle tap on the shoulder to attract the dog's attention) works WITHOUT hurting.

<sigh>

It's like trying to educate milk. You keep saying that E collars do not cause pain when it's been explained to you multiple times that they must cause pain or they would not work.

A PP deconstructed a video of a dog wearing an E Collar and pointed out all the physical signs that showed the was under stress. It worked yes, but reward based training would also have worked without the stress. It really, really would. If you cannot get results using reward based training you are doing it wrong and need to book a session with a trainer so that you can be trained.

You keep saying that science is not in agreement. This is bullshit. Science has been very much in agreement that reward based training works since Skinner and his rats. I challenged you to find one study, just one, citing that punishment or E collars are more effective than reward based training and you opted to use anecdata instead. Is this because, despite your insistance that "science is not in agreement" you were not able to find one single scientific study to support your theory?

Reward based training is used sucessfully across all species of animals. When was the last time you saw a dolphin at Sea World wearing an E collar? The only reason dog training veered away from reward based training when the rest of the behavioural scientists were shouting its praises is because some idiot in the 1930s observed a bunch of captive, non related wolves and got confused about whether or not they were dogs. His research was debunked by a man named Dabid Mech some years later.

I have yet to understand how it is that people can believe that an e-collar MUST hurt to be effective when they know that a whistle or a shout (or even a gentle tap on the shoulder to attract the dog's attention) works WITHOUT hurting.
So this is where you do need to look at evidence and science to understand how the ecollar works

Ok fact dogs learn by four ways.

Positive punishment
Positive reinforcement
Negative punishment
Negative reinforcement

That is undisputed. Science trainers time all shows this is now animals learn.

So ecollars has to fall into one of those categories or else it is just working by magic.

Positive punishment is adding punishment when a behaviour is performed eg shocking a dog when they chase sheep. They get a shock when they run after sheep they no longer run after sheep. The shock has to hurt as it is adding the punishment (eg the positive bit = add)

Negative punishment is taking away something from your dog.eg they pull on the lead so you stop walking and they can not go forward. They are barking at a toy you remove the toy.

Positive reinforcement is giving a pleasant reinforcer when the behaviour is performed so dog does not chase sheep they get sausage. Everytime a dog sits it gets a reinforcer. Everytime the dog looks at you instead of the sheep it gets a reinforcer

Negative reinforcement is removing the adversive when the dog does something eg gundog trainers squeeze a dogs ear to get them to release the dummy (cant believe that they still do this!)

Where you are getting confused with comparing a whistle or a shout with an ecollar is that the whistle is just the cue. You whistle dog hears whistle and gets treat. So wherever the dog is hears whistle and returns. The dog has learnt whistle means reinforcer. If the whistle was proofed enough it may be enough to prevent chase. However in a prey driven dog this is not always enough.

The ecollar adds (positive) something unpleasant (punishment) and the pain stops the dog running off after the sheep as they are fearful they will get the pain.