Excellent article by Suzanne Clothier:
http://www.flyingdogpress.com/retrieve.html

--
Leah Roberts, Family Dog Trainer
It's A Dog's World
http://hometown.aol.com/dfrntdrums/m...age/index.html
Get Healthy, Build Your Immune System, Lose Weight
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Leah Roberts wrote in
:

Excellent article by Suzanne Clothier:
http://www.flyingdogpress.com/retrieve.html


Let's say, instead, an interesting article by Suzanne Clothier. I enjoy
her books, and own several, but in this case, I think she's emotional
and greatly overextends her reach.

She posits a false argument and dismisses the entire training tool with
it.

100% reliability. Isn't that an easy goal to shoot down?

Let's look at the real reasons (hunting retriever) people choose to use
the forced retrieve as a teaching tool.

If I'm out hunting ducks, my dog is along as a companion and a working
dog. I count on her to work with me to make the hunt a success. It's
my job not to set her up to do something impossible (I don't ask my dog
to break through ice, although many can). It's her job to do her *job*
and get the birds.

It's especially critical because I do not wish to waste game or leave an
injured duck to die horribly: My hunting partner and I *must*, as a
team, pick up all the birds. My part of the job is to drop them out of
the sky, and ensure that we pick up every last one. Her job is to go
get them. Every time. In fact, she has to get ones she didn't see
fall, and she has to ignore easy retrieves in order to go get that
cripple who's trying to escape, if I tell her to.

It's not a game. It's a job. The field trial/test games that evolve
from that are testing hunting dogs to see how well they work: so the
expectation of disciplined retrieving remains.

"Fetch" is not optional. She has to do it. She has to. It's her job.

Until a dog is six months old, we build up the play retrieve, and teach
the dog that hanging out with the handler and playing with birds and
running in the grass is a bunch of fun. At about six months, we start
the trained retrieve process, which means explaining to the dog that
there's fun to be had, as long as they learn that "fetch" means "fetch."

I cannot sit a young dog down over a cup of coffee and explain, in
words, how things have to go. Wouldn't that be nice if we could? I
have to use actions, inducements, and consequences to show her what the
job is and teach her the standard of work.

We tune and refine the play retrieve and teach the dog (teach) that
there are consequences if the dog chooses not to pick up the requested
object, hold it, carry it, and bring it to heel until asked to drop it.

When I'm out on a training day, I can almost immediately spot the dogs
who have not been through a trained retrieve. They do the work if they
feel like it. Often, they don't. Dogs with a trained retrieve have
learned the rules of the game and are ready to work with the handler as
a member of the team. Stormy and I work in harmony. I do my work, she
does hers.

It is not a tool for every dog. I used a motivational retrieve on
Teena, my ESS, because it was clear from the start that she was a little
unhinged, and that this was not a training approach that would work with
her. Teena and I never did any field work, so it wasn't that important
to me, and - I must say - none of the many motivational approaches we
tried got her up to an Obedience ring performance standard. So she was
retired to the couch. (until she bit my kid, but that's another story.)

Check with Susan Fraser: she has been working on motivational ways to
train field dogs, and she may have chosen to skip the force fetch on her
young dogs. If there are successful, wholly-motivationally-trained
hunting dog teams out there, she'll know about them.

On a more philosophical note, I think that some of our writers have gone
overboard with "dogs as soul-mates." I think it's awfully easy to get
sentimental about these wonderful creatures, but we're losing sight of
the partnership aspect of things. Most of the bratty dogs I know are
owned by people who think that looking at them crosswise is cruelty.
For that matter, the same goes for bratty kids and their parents.

I've known plenty of dogs who, given an inch, take the mile. I don't
have problems placing boundaries and consequences around my relationship
with kids or dogs, and I think those boundaries and consequences are
essential to balance in the relationship. Consequences are not
necessarily cruel - and they need to exist.

Perhaps there's a degree of human evolution that is leaving me behind:
perhaps this dog sleeping on my feet is truly hard-done-by. Perhaps I
should meditate and do yoga with her: but in my world, she's a dog, I'm
a person, we love each other, and we have a job to do.
--
Kate
and Storm the FCR

On 20 Feb 2005 16:56:31 GMT, KWBrown
wrote:

Leah Roberts wrote in
:

Excellent article by Suzanne Clothier:
http://www.flyingdogpress.com/retrieve.html


Excellent post by Kate:

Let's say, instead, an interesting article by Suzanne Clothier. I enjoy
her books, and own several, but in this case, I think she's emotional
and greatly overextends her reach.

She posits a false argument and dismisses the entire training tool with
it.

100% reliability. Isn't that an easy goal to shoot down?

Let's look at the real reasons (hunting retriever) people choose to use
the forced retrieve as a teaching tool.

If I'm out hunting ducks, my dog is along as a companion and a working
dog. I count on her to work with me to make the hunt a success. It's
my job not to set her up to do something impossible (I don't ask my dog
to break through ice, although many can). It's her job to do her *job*
and get the birds.

It's especially critical because I do not wish to waste game or leave an
injured duck to die horribly: My hunting partner and I *must*, as a
team, pick up all the birds. My part of the job is to drop them out of
the sky, and ensure that we pick up every last one. Her job is to go
get them. Every time. In fact, she has to get ones she didn't see
fall, and she has to ignore easy retrieves in order to go get that
cripple who's trying to escape, if I tell her to.

It's not a game. It's a job. The field trial/test games that evolve
from that are testing hunting dogs to see how well they work: so the
expectation of disciplined retrieving remains.

"Fetch" is not optional. She has to do it. She has to. It's her job.

Until a dog is six months old, we build up the play retrieve, and teach
the dog that hanging out with the handler and playing with birds and
running in the grass is a bunch of fun. At about six months, we start
the trained retrieve process, which means explaining to the dog that
there's fun to be had, as long as they learn that "fetch" means "fetch."

I cannot sit a young dog down over a cup of coffee and explain, in
words, how things have to go. Wouldn't that be nice if we could? I
have to use actions, inducements, and consequences to show her what the
job is and teach her the standard of work.

We tune and refine the play retrieve and teach the dog (teach) that
there are consequences if the dog chooses not to pick up the requested
object, hold it, carry it, and bring it to heel until asked to drop it.

When I'm out on a training day, I can almost immediately spot the dogs
who have not been through a trained retrieve. They do the work if they
feel like it. Often, they don't. Dogs with a trained retrieve have
learned the rules of the game and are ready to work with the handler as
a member of the team. Stormy and I work in harmony. I do my work, she
does hers.

It is not a tool for every dog. I used a motivational retrieve on
Teena, my ESS, because it was clear from the start that she was a little
unhinged, and that this was not a training approach that would work with
her. Teena and I never did any field work, so it wasn't that important
to me, and - I must say - none of the many motivational approaches we
tried got her up to an Obedience ring performance standard. So she was
retired to the couch. (until she bit my kid, but that's another story.)

Check with Susan Fraser: she has been working on motivational ways to
train field dogs, and she may have chosen to skip the force fetch on her
young dogs. If there are successful, wholly-motivationally-trained
hunting dog teams out there, she'll know about them.

On a more philosophical note, I think that some of our writers have gone
overboard with "dogs as soul-mates." I think it's awfully easy to get
sentimental about these wonderful creatures, but we're losing sight of
the partnership aspect of things. Most of the bratty dogs I know are
owned by people who think that looking at them crosswise is cruelty.
For that matter, the same goes for bratty kids and their parents.

I've known plenty of dogs who, given an inch, take the mile. I don't
have problems placing boundaries and consequences around my relationship
with kids or dogs, and I think those boundaries and consequences are
essential to balance in the relationship. Consequences are not
necessarily cruel - and they need to exist.

Perhaps there's a degree of human evolution that is leaving me behind:
perhaps this dog sleeping on my feet is truly hard-done-by. Perhaps I
should meditate and do yoga with her: but in my world, she's a dog, I'm
a person, we love each other, and we have a job to do.

Mustang Sally

Excellent article by Suzanne Clothier:
http://www.flyingdogpress.com/retrieve.html

I have previously written a "rebuttal" to this very article. Here is a
link to it.
http://mypeoplepc.com/members/chinch...news/id11.html


Kate says:
Check with Susan Fraser: She has been working on motivational
ways to train field dogs, and she may have chosen to skip the force
fetch on her young dogs. If there are successful, wholly-
motivationally-trained hunting dog teams out there, she'll know
about
them.

In reality, I don't think there's such a thing as training without
negative consequences. Very similar to the concept of stress. I don't
think removing "stress" from a dog's (or person's) life is at all
possible or even desirable. Lack of stress equals death - literally. It
is "stress" that kicks in all the feedback mechanisms that create
homeostasis.

I do know of a few Senior Hunter retrievers who have been _mostly
motivationally trained. And a SH can hunt fairly well - as long as most
of the birds fall within about 75 yards, one or two at a time only, the
dog sees them fall and can be sent to get them right away. The falls
the dog doesn't see or must wait to retrieve or in volleys in excess of
2 at a time need to land outside the perimeter of the seen falls and be
picked up last (iow, can't be crippled or float away). The dog probably
can't be cast out of sight or past or through obstacles or stopped in
lunging water or angled away from a shoreline or sent directly out into
big open water . Etc, etc.

I think that some of our writers have gone overboard with "dogs as
soul-mates." I think it's awfully easy to get sentimental about
these
wonderful creatures, but we're losing sight of the partnership aspect
of
things.

As is often the way in social change, the pendulum tends to swing to
the opposite extreme before the old way of thinking and doing things
begins to shift in the needed direction, ie suffragettes, prohibition,
black panthers, even PITA etc. And I feel this is certainly true with
the "pure positive" school of "training" dogs. I _do believe there
needed to be a paradigm shift in the way people treated pets - hell,
when I was a kid my own familiy pet ran the streets and had unwanted
litters and was hit by a car, was trained with whips, and when we took
her somehwere, we put her in the trunk and slammed the lid!

Let's be honest - retriever trainers in the past *have* been rather
brutal in the process of "force fetching". And based on this history,
many people still have a knee jerk reaction to the whole concept. The
idea of "pinching an ear" is dismissed 'a priori' as cruel and
inhumane.

BUT the good news is that I believe the pendulum is beginning to return
to more sane and neutral viewpoints. Witness an article I wrote that
was recently *published* in, of all places, The CLICKER Journal, in
which I not only mention, but actually *describe* how to force fetch
AND ear pinch!! I didn't receive any hate mail, and if the editor did,
she didn't tell me nor consider it necessary to retract or rebut or
even mention it in the next issue.

In my 20+ years around field trials I have seen some things being done
in the name of "training" that I can not condone or justify for any
reason. But although I have seen some things that truly turn my
stomach, I also understand that it is not necessary to throw the baby
out with the bathwater.

And to be fair, Suzanne in this article is talking about an
obedience-ring retrieve. Gris-Gris has been taught a controlled
retrieve, but since it's so far been _only for obedience and
fun-and-games, I've not ear pinched her. Before I seriosly put her in
challenging field situations, though, I will.

At the risk of taking her argument out of context (I'll assume you've
read the article we're discussing!) Suzzanne says:
"what's so darn important about having a dog pick up a piece of oddly
shaped wood or plastic that we threw away in the first place? If my
truck fails at the wrong moment, it can be deadly - literally. If my
dog fails to retrieve a dumbbell, no one is hurt."

True. But Shammie has had a rigourous force fetch, including ear pinch,
precisely *because* failure on her part to retrieve in the field CAN be
deadly. Quoting myself -
"In a field situation, a dog who decides he would prefer not to fetch
_this time might be risking life or limb. Out in the fields where there
are cows, barbed wire fences, roads, people with guns, GATORS, etc. a
dog does not have the privelige of choosing when to comply and when not
to. Fetch is mandatory, and that's one of the main things the pinch
teaches."

Does this make her 100% reliable? I hope not, as I highly prize the
fact that she is a thinking, reasoning performer in the field. Sham
once totally blew me off in a hunt and took off out of sight. In a
panic, I floundered out in the mud to where I could see her, only to
witness her running down a crippled mallard obviously winged by some
other hunter. She delivered it to me, and then smartly turned before I
asked and went back out and got the dead bird I had originally sent her
for.

Anyway, I've seen this article by Suzanne before. And in fairness, the
target audience probably DOES need to re-think about whether their
methods are justifiable or even necessary, and some of them probably
should modify their approach to be more motivational and less
compulsive.

But I would sure like to see Suzanne up to her keester in mud watching
Sham NOT being 100% reliable as argument FOR her forced retrieve
training.

Susan Fraser, SheBop, Shammie and Gris-Gris

"KWBrown" wrote in message
. 4...
On a more philosophical note, I think that some of our writers have gone
overboard with "dogs as soul-mates." I think it's awfully easy to get
sentimental about these wonderful creatures, but we're losing sight of the
partnership aspect of things. Most of the bratty dogs I know are
owned by people who think that looking at them crosswise is cruelty.
For that matter, the same goes for bratty kids and their parents.

Excellent statement, IMHO. And, I agree completely.





Perhaps there's a degree of human evolution that is leaving me behind:
perhaps this dog sleeping on my feet is truly hard-done-by. Perhaps I
should meditate and do yoga with her: but in my world, she's a dog, I'm a
person, we love each other, and we have a job to do.

Great post, Kate.
Shelly & The Boys (One of whom is still learning beginning stages of
the dumbell for Obedience purposes...actually, both are, but Coda--the
natural retriever--is catching on MUCH quicker than Bodhi)