photo by: NatalieMaynor
My friend Aimee, who blogs over at mymegaedog, does herding training with her German shepherd dog Shelby. She trains all her dogs using positive reinforcement.
Unfortunately, most herding trainers still use pretty aversive training methods, including lots of punishment and other tactics designed to scare, force, and intimidate the dogs. Even more unfortunate, as Aimee found out at a recent clicker training seminar, some positive trainers have a very negative opinion of herding and are quick to judge those who do herding, without inquiring into the person’s actual training methods.
Here’s a quote from one of her recent blog posts that I really liked:
Positive reinforcement trainers are always talking about how they’d like to get the herding crowd and the hunting crowd and the Schutzhund crowd believing that these high drive sports can be trained using positive reinforcement. Well, how are you going to convince them if you ostracize the people who are actually doing it? It’s true, I did manage to change a few minds after the seminar was over, and someone even asked for Carolyn’s information, interested in getting her Border Collies involved. But the knee jerk reaction needs to stop.
If the positive reinforcement trainers react that poorly to just the name of the sport and to a fellow clicker trainer, automatically making snap judgments, how can they expect to convince people who already use the brutal methods of training to change course? Certainly not by tearing them down. C’mon, you’re the positive reinforcement trainers, you know how it works. The only way we can make the lives of our dogs better is by building up the trainers and trialing the dogs.
You can read the whole post here: The Herding Training Bias. Aimee has quite a bit of information on her blog about how she uses clicker training and positive training methods to work with her herding dog Shelby.
I think it will be much easier to get new people interested in positive training and to continue to build a community of positive trainers if we support and encourage those who use (or are interested in using) positive training methods, rather than dividing up into “camps” and judging those who do things differently or participate in sports we don’t understand.
And even if someone is training with punishment or methods you don’t approve of, remember that it usually does little good to tell people that they are doing things completely wrong. Most people who use punishment or harsh methods do so because they were originally taught this way or because it’s worked for them in the past. Judging and criticizing certainly won’t make people open to new ideas and different ways of thinking about things.
This is an especially difficult situation if you are a newcomer dealing with people experienced in whatever particular species or area that you are training. In that case especially, the only option is to show them by doing it. That may be the best way in all situations that involve people who are resistant for whatever reason. If CT is better (and I think it definitely is), it will be obvious over time. It will take time; however, knowing that CT will be judged by your results can inspire you to do as well as you can.
Hi Ro,
Thanks for the comment on this post. I agree with you completely! Arguing or trying to convince someone usually gets a person nowhere. But results can speak very loudly and have a big impression. If people see a horse that impresses them, they are likely to ask how the horse was trained or what methods the trainer used.
Your comment also made me think of something else. Interestingly, some horse clicker trainers have run into a catch 22. Many traditional horse folks are skeptical about clicker training because they say it can’t be used to train high level show horses. But, many of the clicker folks aren’t interested in being part of the horse show world. However, clicker trainers can still train high level performance and great behavior, even if they don’t want to show. The trick then is figuring out how to show the world all the wonderful behaviors that can be trained with clicker training. Luckily, I think the internet is making this much easier! Just a few thoughts.
cheers,
Mary
I was thinking about a quote from Gandhi that applied, and found two:
“Be the change that you want to see.”
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
It’s a shame that this happens – though not surprising, as my knee-jerk reaction (in my head – I at least keep it to myself) when I hear that someone does herding has similar. ift hey are a clicker trainer, I think it’s disappointment, eg “oh no, I thought this person was a force-free trainer :(” I think that for me, this reaction comes from having people who are experienced clicker/positive trainers say that stock work is the one thing you really CAN’T use only R+ with. As someone who woukd LOVE to do herding, i’m thrilled when I find people who are doing this…and am learning not to make snap judgements. Apologies for any typos, writimg this on phone.
Hi Kate,
Thanks for the comment.
I think +R herding work is still very much in it’s infancy. But, I’m glad that people are trying to figure out how to do it!
I’ve asked Aimee if she wouldn’t mind writing a guest blog post for my blog about herding training, so I’m looking forward to seeing what she writes and learning more about using +R with herding.
cheers,
Mary