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.

If humans can train a whale to pee in a sample jar for a sample with positive training methods you can train a dog to do many things without introducing pain

I regularly train gluten detector dogs for coeliac owners. If I can train a labrador to sniff food on a plate and not eat it using positive methods again many things can be trained without pain

There is no need for pain in training if you have a brain. corny but true

If you can train a labrador to sniff food and not eat it you are a wizard 😂

Positive training can acheive this or we going to argue that this man might have used electricty or physical force to get his goldfish to do this?

As I said if a goldfish can be trained using rewards and your dog cannot, the issue is not with the dog.

Woo woo I'm a wizard!

Not really, just have a not very food motivated labrador. She's embarrassed more than one dog trainer by being used as a demo dog to show how to teach a drop or leave or similar. They pick the lab as they think they'll just be able to drop some treats in front of her and exchange the toy/ball or whatever. Nope! Ball is life.

I like him because he tells the owners what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear. IMO there are too many new dog owners who never thought it through and wanted the dog without the hassle and hard work of training one. I like his basic training, like putting dog on a lead when someone comes to the door. So obvious a way to control the dog but I’m sick of going to folks’ so homes where their dog bounds and barks all over me and the owner just stands there doing nothing but apologising that Fido is just excited, we’ve tried everything, he’s just being friendly. These people just aren’t consistent with their training and then wonder why their dogs are fruit loops.

There are plenty of force free trainers who teach the exact same lessons but without the need to advocate the use of prong collars and E collars.

A lot of what SDT teach is good but all of that is completely overshadowed by the fact that he advocates the use of pain and force in training. A novice trainer can't always pick the good advice from the bad. The above trainers only give good advice in their videos while still achieving the same results.

Absolute dogs: No jumping -

I would agree with you that Cruelty,pain and fear have no place in dog training with one exception: a confirmed stock-worrier when other training methods had failed. I don't subscribe to death before discomfort.

I entirely agree but would add to/ amend your one exception. I travel / live abroad for lengthy periods, and my dogs have always travelled with me. My family live in a area known for rattlesnakes. Young dogs are always trained to stay away, and the only way to achieve this consistently is to rightly make them fear snakes. It is not something I particularly like, but I would rather my dog was taught fear in that circumstance than ended up dead because he was too curious about something so dangerous to him.

But otherwise I also agree with many others here that making a dog fearful does not cure aggression, it fuels it.

To break my issue with SDT down a bit further way back there ^ I posted a video of SDT using a prong collar on a reactive dog. He didn't explain he was using a prong collar and that is why the training was working so there are 2 issues with this.

1. If someone is not educated enough to spot that a prong collar is in use and copy the video they are going to get way too close to the trigger way to quickly and overwhelm their dog. This may result in redirection i.e where the dog gets frustrated and turns it's fustration on the handler. At best it will lead to a stressed dog who reacts more to the triggers than it did previously.

2. They do notice he is using a prong collar and go ahead and buy one. He never gave any usage or fitting instructions in this video. Below is what happens when a prong collar is used incorrectly (and it is very easy to use a prong collar incorrectly). At best what will happen is the dog will learn the trigger causes pain and avoid it (which is what we want) but the dog is now fearful of the trigger which can cause future issues.

or the handler can follow Zak George. Not only do they get the same results but his training is transferrable. He teaches how to get the dogs focus on the handler when the dog is aroused a useful skill in many situations eg when a dog is greeting guests or attempting to counter surf or barking at the door.

You can also use Zak's training on toddlers and babies FYI although I'd maybe swap the kibble for some halved grapes or strawberries 😂The prinicple is the same no matter what kind of mammal you are "training" or shaping.

I "clicker trained" my youngest to get dressed for school without constant verbal prompts and nagging.

In the debate about punishment I am always reminded of the following article written by Bob Bailey.

I don't know to what degree I agree with it all, and as it is 20 years old, maybe his own opinions have altered since. But I always find it a throught provoking read.

www.clickersolutions.com/articles/2002/punishment.htm

Snake avoidance can and is often taught without pain.

Ken ramirez snake avoidance training

@Frequency
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.
Did you mean to be so patronising? I have been TOLD that e-collars must cause pain. I have seen them used with zero sign of any pain in the dog, nothing more than a slight movement of the head, as if a fly had landed on her ear. So you're all telling me one thing and I'm seeing something else.

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?
Oh, I'm not denying that reward-based training works, not at all. I use it on my own dogs all the time. It's always where I start.
But, if the science is correct and reward-based training ALONE is better and more effective than balanced training, why is it that the super-competitive blokes at the top of the protection sports tend to agree that, in their experience, balanced training is more effective and enduring when training a high-drive dog around competing reinforcers than force-free alone? Ditto the gun dog trainers. If the real world that I see and the current science are such odds, is it any wonder that I still have questions? Some of the science that I have seen looks at punishment vs reward, not at a balance, or consistently uses e-collars at their most brutal settings. Some of it doesn't check the effectiveness a month or a year down the line. The sample groups are not matched. Here is some scientific disagreement:
Discussion
It's not just me.

@OneFootInFrontOfAnother
Yes, the four quadrants.
Where you are getting confused with comparing a whistle or a shout with an ecollar is that the whistle is just the cue.
Okay, fair enough, though from what I have seen, a low stim on an e-collar can be conditioned as a cue, in the same way as you might condition a recall with a light tug on a longline as you whistle the dog in.

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.
Yes, it will hurt at a high enough level. But it starts at the level of a strange sensation, and for a lot of dogs that is usually enough. Do that thing, the odd feeling will start, stop it and the odd feeling goes away. Oh, okay, thinks the dog, I will stop doing that. And hey, look, I get rewarded for not doing it.

Ultimately, the choice of whether or not you use +P when training a dog comes down to your personal ethics. From my point of view, I want to minimise my dogs' stress but I also want them to have fulfilled lives. I also understand that stress in the right doses builds resilience, and with that, confidence. That's the reason that I persisted with an activity with one of my dogs, even when she showed a degree of stress the first 3 or 4 times I took her. My assessment was that once she was used to the venue, the noise, the other dogs, she'd have a blast and lo and behold, she did. It builds both her confidence and her focus.

A dog is not a goldfish. Training a dog to work in woodland with deer and squirrels and groundscent and sheep two hundred yards away is not the same as training a dolphin to perform when it lives in a very unstimulating environment, where the trainer with the bucket of fish is the most exciting thing that ever happens.

That article is a discussion around the research tecniques used in one study. A study that "concluded that “there is no evidence to indicate that E-collar training is necessary”". It is not a study proving that E collar use is more effective.

Yes, when working with live animals out in "the wild" there are variables that cannot be controlled and you have raised some valid points about the reliability of such research i.e small focus groups.

Where you argument breaks down is that every study regarding the efficacy of E collars in training concludes that reward based training is more effective. Now, unless you are arguing that all these studies used the same group of dogs and the same trainers, in the same environment then you cannot argue that the research is invalid due to specific issues with indvidual studies.

If it was the case that each and every study was flawed to the point that it was wholly unreliable and the results were a fluke then the results would be mixed rather than leaning overwhelmingly against the use of E collars or forceful training.

Okay, fair enough, though from what I have seen, a low stim on an e-collar can be conditioned as a cue, in the same way as you might condition a recall with a light tug on a longline as you whistle the dog in

You are confusing a vibration collar with an E collar. Vibration collars are used to cue behaviours in dogs with sight and/or hearing problems. My own deaf and partially sighted dog has been conditioned to know that a short vibration on the back of his neck means a treat is imminent so will return to me in order to recieve his treat.

Whilst training him I kept a very, very close eye on his body language for signs of stress or discomfort as some dogs react badly to vibration collars. If he'd been stressed I would have either knocked it down a level or stopped the training completely and opted to keep him on a longline instead.

SDT themselves agree themselves that vibration collars are not E collars and that E collars

www.facebook.com/southenddogtrainingandwalking/posts/vibration-collars-vs-e-collar-plus-dobermans-1st-ecollar-sessione-collars-shock-/2116115425161501/

E collars should never, ever be used to cue a behaviour. Anyone who thinks causing pain, no matter how mild the pain is is a way to cue a behaviour needs their animal removing immediately.

This is interesting as I recently joined SDT and I am a paid member. I stumbled across Adam on Instagram.

I've got a puppy and was struggling, despite always having had rescue dogs and other dogs I have massive puppy blues. I wanted to get some help and advice on starting things properly.

I like Adam and I agree with probably 70% of what he says. But was considering cancelling my membership for the following reasons:

• use of prong collars. There have been an increase in users posting on the Facebook group basically asking 'I want to use a prong collar how do I fit it'. And it seems like some members are going to the most severe tool for a quick fix.

• it's almost a bit evangelical in members response to Adam and the group. And I think then there is a danger of members actually thinking about their dogs training pragmatically.

However for a balanced view there are some good thing-

• breed advice is pretty good in terms of dog and owner suitability
• I agree with his use of muzzle. Having had a biter in the past it was the only sensible thing to do. I dread the think what would have happened with someone who wouldn't take that approach.

That quote was your quote so you need to re read it again
"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."
Maybe you should not be working with aggressive dogs if you are saying you have no qualification nor opinions on PTS.

Why? because it aligns with your belief? The comment is outdated, the general scientific consensus is that aversion dog training is "unnecessary" in any scenario.
If you use aversion training you are "choosing" a training method that hurts your dog.

if you want to use training methods that hurt your dog, thats on you. But ease up on giving the thumbs up on misinformation that its the only option. its not.

Maybe you should not be working with aggressive dogs if you are saying you have no qualification nor opinions on PTS.

There is a massive difference between working with aggressive dogs as a walker, and working with aggressive dogs to create and implement a behaviour modification plan.

One requires a briefing and oodles of common sense, the other requires qualifications.

Indeed, most owners of aggressive dogs go into it without qualifications, and unexpectedly find themselves with an aggressive dog (poor genetics, rescues, dogs with bad experiences, bad luck... I'm not blaming the owner in all cases). The responsible ones go on a crash course in dog training and behaviour, and end up being better dog owners for it (you'd be surprised how many qualified dog trainers got into it because they acquired a dog with issues).

I'm going to try and find the YouTube video, but there is a trainer who uses aversive methods ( including prongs), that stated that he uses these methods, because owners want a quick fix and don't want to be spending hundreds of pounds on dog training....🙄. He's a huge advocate of e collars and pretty vocal about it. Rubbishes PR training constantly. It's not STD , but one in Liverpool.

How did a prong collar stop sheep worrying? Or do you mean an e-collar?

Do you know, I have absolutely no clue if my dog would kill a sheep or not. Because when there's sheep, he's on the lead. He's never been loose with them.

It's never a simple choice between e collars or being shot.

And the day he's off-lead and there is an escaped sheep round the corner of the track, or you walk into a field where there were no sheep last week and do what you think is a thorough scan and let your dog off and too late realise that there were in fact sheep lying down in the grass in deep shade... Then what?

I have known both those scenarios happen. First one was to us. Our dogs are stock-trained with mild aversion and a lot of +R, and they ran on past the sheep pretty much ignoring it. The other one happened to someone I know, a sensible, caring and responsible dog owner. She spent a good 20 minutes chasing her dog up and down the field. It bit a lamb quite badly on the leg. The farmer turned up, luckily without a shotgun, as she managed to catch her dog. I think the lamb survived.

There are plenty of videos around of dogs chasing sheep who have yanked the lead from the owner's hand. There are stories of dogs who have run off after wildlife or escaped from the garden and somehow got in with sheep: all is takes is someone not closing the gate properly and the dog deciding to have an adventure.

Lead or not, you would be wise to stock-train your dog if you spend a decent amount of time in the countryside.

Aversive tools require timing to be near-perfect to be effective, and if you have near-perfect timing, you don’t need the aversive. It’s a bit of a redundant thing. Timing is all you need. Refocusing before your dog reaches threshold is more effective than using an aversive after they’ve already reacted. Can the prong collar be used to stop a reaction beforehand? Yes. Should it be? No. If you have the timing down for that, why would you choose the bad option?

@Jenzine if you have near-perfect timing, you don’t need the aversive
I think this is the idea with Predation Substitute Training: you distract the dog, and teach the dog to look to you, just as it clocks the prey species. But even the person who developed it accepts that it doesn't work for all dogs (I'm also not sure how it works for the very elusive species like muntjac and hare). I have very prey-driven dogs and their overall welfare (the liberty to run off-lead) matters more to me than their stress in the moment, so I've been prepared to use aversion to teach them to avoid sheep and not chase deer. I don't want them to see a sheep and look to me for guidance. I want them to think, 'Sheep, ah, I avoid those things...', so that if they've rounded a tight bend in the track and are briefly out of view, and encounter a sheep, the sheep is still safe.