In reply:
Please don't ask me to give up on what I know works, that won't happen. At least not until I find a better way for me and my little girl.
I am not asking you to stop using the methods you are using, though I urge you to seek out positive reinforcement trainers and see how powerful they can be in getting results. I am asking that you not recommend these methods as an easy fix because there are serious adverse effects possible and basenjis have been known to resort to aggressive escalation when punishment based methods are used. It is one the reason why basenjis have a reputation for being "untrainable".
I'm sorry that you do not approve. I'm also sorry that the method is being blamed for the bad training when it is the trainer who was at fault. When you see something not working, continuing to use it and expecting different results is a sure sign you are not paying attention to the animal. The same is true of the bad examples of clicker training that I've seen. It wasn't the method that was bad, it was the application.
I've learned to apply a lot of my horse training to training my dog and I'm a huge fan of pressure and release. In many ways this is a lot like the clicker/reward training in that something positive happens every time the animal does something right. When I want to train my horse to give his head softly, I begin by pulling down on the lead. I do not pull harder when the horse does not respond immediately, I only continue to maintain the pressure. Not a hard pressure but a constant one. Eventually, the horse will submit, and the instant that it does, all pressure on the lead is released. Thus begins the horses understanding that when it feels pressure all it has to do is submit to the pressure and all the pressure goes away. If you increase the pressure as you are doing it, what you are really telling your horse, or your dog, is that you are a mean and tyrannical person who is not likely trustworthy.
With this said, I would also like to say again that I am not a trainer. I do listen to good advice when it is given though and look forward to all the positive advice I can get.
I am sorry if any of my previous comments were misunderstood and somehow came across as a critisizm of the clicker training methods. I did not mean them as such. I do not believe that I have the skills or the knowledge to train well with that method but by no means do I think that it is a bad method for those that do know or have the time and the intelligence to understand it and learn it. I do not wish to put down anothers way of training, even if it is not for me, at least at this time, and I wish I could convince you of the same about corrective training. You may never agree but I see the corrective training that I use as a positive training method. Please don't be offended by this. I am only here to learn what I can, and I learn much more from more positive comments than from negative critisizm.
In many ways this is a lot like the clicker/reward training in that something positive happens every time the animal does something right.
Not true, when the animal does something right then something NEGATIVE CEASES that is not the same as something positive happening.
When I want to train my horse to give his head softly, I begin by pulling down on the lead. I do not pull harder when the horse does not respond immediately, I only continue to maintain the pressure. Not a hard pressure but a constant one. Eventually, the horse will submit, and the instant that it does, all pressure on the lead is released.
And when this is applied to dogs on a choke chain and when the dog does not submit, and some won't, the dog passes out from lack of oxygen. These are the "correctly" administered outcomes of these techniques. This is how these techniques have been used for years and they are dependent on the animal submitting. When the animal does not submit there are outcomes such as "choking out" and escalation of aggression.
In addition to working with my own dogs, I have put in many hours at my local shelter and worked with hundreds of dogs. I have seen the effectiveness of positive reinforcement training as well as the long term effects of punishment based training. I have seen far too many of the adverse effects of punishment based training to support it.
Lvoss, I am sorry that I have been unable to convince you of my sincerety in trying to learn more and in my own care and concern for my own dogs. I have done my best to try to inform you and be as cautious and curtious as I know how to be but it seems that you do not have any openness about you and are unwilling to not ridicule and insult. I tried to add only that there were additional options to clicker training, not to say anything bad about your way. I see no further need to try and explain myself to you as your mind has apparently been made up that I am a bad owner and that is that. I would like to end this discussion now before you make it even more personal than you already have. You have succeeded in silencing my input in your forum, you win. I hope that it is okay with you that I should still view and learn what I can from this forum. I did not come here to be accused or insulted, I came here to learn what I could but I do not see how one can learn anything positive when I only see negativity. I am sorry that my comments were apparently offensive to you, they were certainly not intended as such, I will try to remember not to make comments that you can read in the near future.
I have not ridiculed nor was it my intent to insult. I have cited my own personal experience and the recommendations of a professional organization. I stated that based on my own experiences with these methods that I cannot support them.
When I got my first Basenji 19 years ago, I trained using methods that were considered the "best" at that time. Basically you put a choke chain on the dog and jerked it until it did something right then you said "good dog" and maybe gave a treat. I trained Keiko all of the basic obedience commands and she (usually) obeyed. She was a very unhappy worker though. It got to the point where she would run off every time she saw the choke chain because she had negative associations with it.
Time passed and I learned about a "new" form of training called clicker training. I decided to give it a try and I noticed an amazing difference in the whole attitude of the dog being trained. (I am a breeder and have had many, many Basenjis since the first one.) Instead of becoming sullen and depressed at being trained the dogs now got highly excited and would work continuously while never getting bored. Amazing!
Below is a video of my most recent litter being trained. They were 12 weeks old at the time and I taught them to sit in a matter of minutes without ever putting a collar on them or touching them. They learned fast, retained the info, and worked happily. I couldn't have asked for better results.
skookum9-
Interesting you mention horse training in relation to training your basenji. Here's an article that also compares the two in relation to leash training for dogs.
http://www.shirleychong.com/keepers/LLW/index.html
At least read through Step 1.
Agilebasenji, thank you for this positive training input, this is the sort of thing that I joined this forum for. I knew that there would be lots of people out there that would be willing to share their great ideas with the rest of us. While this is somewhat different than what I do, it is similar and along the same principals. Minus the clicker and the treat. (I am not opposed to the use of the clicker but I don't use it). I prefer to give my dogs the reward of verbal and physical praise for doing a good job over the use of treats but that is just me. The idea of making the horses mouth soft is exactly what I do but I do it faster and more reliably by starting with good sound ground work, but it is very similar.
I also appreciate the videos that have been shared here. I had some trouble early on with my basenji until I got a better feel for what I was doing. Raising my basenji has helped me to better raise my granddaughter, and very much so the other way around also. I intentionally chose to not teach my dog to sit because I had heard that you shouldn't teach that to a hunting dog so I instead taught her to lay down. I tried the reward system when I first got her as this was suggested by her breeder, but it didn't work well for me at all. I then found the video put out by Don Sullivan, who calls himself the "Dogfather", and everything got better immediately. She went from causing my to pull my hair out to suddenly being a dream dog. I will likely never do any of the agility training with her but I used to dream of turning her into a search and rescue dog. I don't really have the time to make that happen yet but maybe someday I can make that dream come true. Although I would probably prefer to have some professional help at that time.
Thanks to all who have tried to help this feeble old man.
you're welcome skookum9.
The clicker is a marker (aka secondary reinforcer). This is something important that took me a while to fully grasp. The clicker (and somepeople use a verbal like "YES"; i've used both, but for reasons I won't get into here, the clicker is scientifically superior) means nothing to the dog, at least initially. You pair it with a treat (or reward) so that the dog understands that the click always means a treat is coming. So, click/treat, click/treat, click/treat. When the dog starts reorienting to you as soon as he hears the click, you know there is an association between the click/treat in the dog's brain. Then you can start shaping behaviors. Soon the dog figures out that he has to do something to earn that click/treat and you shape that behavior. It's sort of like that Hot/Cold children's game. But what you end up with is a dog willing and excited to offer behaviors. There is a difference in the dog's attitude when he's been trained with the clicker. If I have my clicker and treat bag, Zest will start interacting with anything new in the environment. It's fun to watch.
Now, I don't always use a food treat, but I find using food treats work well with basenjis. With the malinois, well, she'd rather have a ball than food, so I can, and usually, use a ball with her. You can use a pet, play session, toys, tug, or anything the dog finds rewarding, you're never limited to food. Something interesting about Zest is that she LOVES to do spins, so sometimes as a reward I'll ask her to spin (she does Go Right or Go Left). Everyonce in a while I'll spot an unflushed bunny in my agility field, so I'll call her, she comes, I flush the bunny and she gets to chase it. MUCH fun in her mind, better than meatballs.
Interesting that you say people have said not to teach a hunting dog to sit. Many conformation (yes, we do that too) have said that because you want the dog to stand in the ring. But I taught all my dogs "SIT", and if I'm doing conformation, I teach "Stand" too. Not so hard. I don't know why hunting dogs shouldn't sit.
There is a guy in Georgia (USA) training a basenji to be an explosives detection dog. He's had some health problems of late, but I believe he's on the mend. He has used his 2 (3?) other basenjis to hunt. He started a discussion group called Basenji Native Trait Preservation Project. You can find it on Yahoo groups and join if you're interested. It's pretty quiet right now, but there's lots of good stuff in the archieves. Sounds like this may be right up your alley.
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/BNTPP/
that link should be his group
Thank you again, Agilebasenji. You are very kind and helpful and I appreciate it.
When I first got my girl I was given some information on clicker training and a book about some woman who trained dolphins using it. All of the information sounded great and the idea was awesome. The problem wasn't with the information, it was with me. I think my brain works well in some areas but absolutely not at all in others. I tried to use some of the stuff that I had read about but it just didn't work for me. I don't think it was the system that was failed, it was me who wasn't able to come up with ways to make it all work successfully. I think had I the opportunity to work with someone who was knowledgeable for a while I might have gotten the hang of it, at least maybe a little. Unfortunately, I knew of no one and I just never did get the hang of it on my own.
I found myself very fond of the "Perfect Dog" system by Don Sullivan and the way it worked made more sense to me. By that I do not mean that I found it to be a more sensible way, I mean only that I understood how it worked better than I understood the clicker thing. Also, having a video that gave some great training examples, real world examples, that I could watch and follow really gave me a lot of help. I really wish I had been able to find a training video with clicker training in it, perhaps I would have had more success that way. I did find a few little clips on youtube but they mostly didn't appear all that impressive nor were they very helpful, and they were almost always about agility or something that I wasn't interested in doing. Not that I don't find those excersizes amazing because I do, it's just that it isn't what I am wanting to train on at this time. You or someone like you should make a video that instructs simple people like me on how to train a dog in everyday, real world scenarios. The absolute best one would be how to train for perfect off leash behavior. And by that I mean that you can get them to come back when called and train them not to make a mad dash escape through an open door. I think I've got both of those two things sorted out with my girl now but with two near losses from her earlier days I'm just too chicken to risk trying it.
I no longer remember the reason that was given about why a hunting dog shouldn't sit, and perhaps it was for the show dog purpose and I have simply gotten my wires crossed about it. When I first got my girl I was encouraged by the breeder to show her and I gave it a try but it just didn't seem my cup of tea. The people for the most part were nice enough but it seemed like it had to become a way of life if you wanted to accomplish anything from it and my life was just too busy for that. Also, the training of the dogs wasn't in any direction that I wanted to follow either because what I really wanted was just a wonderful companion. Fortunately, that is what I got.
I've read quite a bit about the canaan dogs being used for explosives detection and always thought that it would come just as natural to the basenji's. In fact, the dogs are similar in many ways, from what I've read anyway. I almost went with a canaan instead of a basenji but I chose otherwise. I really do think that a basenji would make a good search and rescue dog and someday I would love to find out.
Right after I got Molly I looked into a site where someone was leading a group about hunting with basenji's because the breeder had followed it a bit and suggested I look into it. It turned out to be a little different than I had hoped for. The people doing it just accepted the fact that their dogs would consume a good portion of what they shot and the only thing they were expecting to get back from the dog was a severely mangled body. This wasn't for me. I believe that all life has value and when I take the life of an animal I do not want to disrespect the sacrifice it made for me by being wasteful. I even so much as give a prayer of thanks before I butcher my chickens. I can understand that a basenji puppy won't quite have things figured out and that there will initially be some waste but to simply accept that this is the way the dog is wired and still continue to hunt this way I found disrespectful of the birds and rabbits they were hunting. To each their own and I won't impose my own beliefs upon them but it just wasn't something I wanted to join. Perhaps this group will be different. Or perhaps that other group has changed the way they do things. Either way, thank you for the information and I will certainly look into it.
I know I should probably find a more appropriate thread but since you've been so helpful I've got to ask you, do you know anything about feeding raw diet to your basenji? You are welcome to answer in a more appropriate thread, I just didn't know where to ask about it. From what I've read it is supposed to be the best diet for a dog but I'm a little afraid of the risk of my girl not knowing the difference between chicken, eggs and rabbits that I feed out to her and the ones that are free ranging around my and my neighbor's place.
Thanks again for being so helpful and for being so understanding about my lack of knowledge.
quick note-
I don't feed raw; i feed a grain free commercial dog food (there are now quite a few on the market) and have been very happy. I do feed some cooked muttloaf (http://www.maryshouse.us/Recipes.htm) with the evening meal.
