What actually happened when you tried balanced training?

[jluponeage]

@lilith_eve Not a problem! You’ll probably find better answers too for what you’re asking over there

 

[biblereader1985]

@lilith_eve The answers you will receive on this sub will definitely skew a certain way (favoring use of nothing aversive, ever) because of the rules of the sub, so just keep that in mind. Some people will even tell you that saying “no” to your dog is aversive and therefore a punishment, but the problem with talking about “punishment” in dog training is that it’s a loaded word. In behavioral neuroscience, punishment is simply an aversive experience, not a targeted action with intention assigned to it. Life is basically a series of positive and negative experiences that we respond to accordingly in order to maximize the positive experiences and minimize the negative experiences. This is the process of reinforcement. All dog training methods use the process of reinforcement to produce behavioral conditioning. The goal is to manipulate your dog’s behavior to maximize the positive experience of the owner, YOU. Doing this often maximizes the positive experiences of the dog as well, so that’s great because your goals and your dog’s goals line up. You want your dog to be happy and they want you to be happy, win-win right? But of course, you can’t only provide your dog with positive experiences, because that’s impossible and striving to do so will result in only your own disappointment an extremely ill-adjusted pet.

It gets complicated when your dog has to interact with the real world, which is frequently confusing, scary, and aversive to an anxious dog. What’s even harder is when they have already learned a certain way of responding to these experiences that you want to change. It’s your job to teach your dog how to behave in a way that is counter to their natural impulse, but only you will ever understand why they need to do this. You can’t just explain the ways of the world to them, so you have to find other ways to communicate. Communication relies on trust and respect. Fundamentally, this is true for any relationship, but your relationship with your dog is inherently unbalanced for obvious reasons. You are not their parent, you are their leader. Your dog will never grow to be an independent being that can live on its own in the world. They need you to guide them. Whichever way is best to establish the trust and respect that are necessary to communicate with your dog effectively will depend on you. It takes trial and error. Do what feels right for you and your dog. You will forgive each other for the mistakes. Good luck!

 

[jamesharvey39571]

@biblereader1985 There is definitely a lot of misunderstanding out there about what "positive" means in training! I've found it helps to put yourself in the shoes of the dog (who is not a human!), and really try to understand what will address the underlying issue causing the unwanted behavior vs producing a short-term result you like but may have consequences down the road. R+ worked for my very large reactive dog because it conditioned and rewired his brain to have fundamentally different associations and reflexes with his triggers, rather than just suppressing his unwanted behavior.

In some cases, aversive tools might be required for management to keep everyone safe so that real training can be accomplished, but it's important not to confuse management with training, which will lead to lasting behavioral change. The latter takes more work, which might not maximize my positive experiences in the short term (who has time and energy for repetitive drills?), but is absolutely paying the dividends.

 

[biblereader1985]

@jamesharvey39571 Yes! It’s soo much easier to get quick results using aversive tools but that’s definitely just managing the problem in the moment. What works best long term is alleviating the underlying cause of the reactivity (oftentimes fear/anxiety). I hesitate to recommend only R+ for every dog though because I have seen this result in owners that teach their dog it’s okay to do whatever they want all the time, and that’s the opposite of what training is for. Some sense of agency is important because we want our dogs to trust us enough to listen to us, but letting the dog make all the judgment calls and trying to shield them from the natural consequences of their actions is a recipe for disaster.

 

[hesta]

@lilith_eve Depends on the dog. For some it works wonders, for others they’re too sensitive to corrections and an inexperienced trainer (or owner) won’t catch it and will make it worse. For my dog, it’s the difference between her being unable to walk outside in public or not. Train the dog in front of you. I have aggressive clients who were saved from euthanasia because of balanced training. R+ would NOT have worked for those dogs. FF trainer is the reason he was about to be euthanized. Trying to use only R+ is like playing “Hot and Cold” but the person only tells you when you’re cold. You may never figure out the “right” answer. For my dog, R+ is for learning a new behaviour or trick, and I can add R- or P+ only when I know she understands what I’m asking of her. For example, if she is in a heel and breaks the heel to go lunge and bark at a stranger, I’ll correct her for breaking the heel. I don’t correct my dog for having emotions. I help her cope with the emotion and give her tools to work through it (mostly with R+)

I also have a client who completely shuts down if your corrections aren’t well placed. Because the owner saw a very bad old school trainer, who taught them to just put on a prong collar and yank the dog as hard as possible when they did something wrong. I really hate these types of trainers. The type of aversive makes the difference, too. For some dogs, a prong is too much, so a light slip leash or martingale works better. For some, a simple “no” and tug on the leash is enough.

Many of those “balanced” trainers are people with little to no experience, and who rely too heavily on corrections for training. Punishment doesn’t work for every dog in every situation, and you should understand what you’re punishing exactly. It’s a lot easier to ruin a dog with punishment than with rewards, which is why I think R+ has become so popular. Too many people get frustrated and end up abusing their dogs on prong collars. You don’t even need a prong collar to correct your dog. Saying “no” in a firm voice is also P+ and works well for dogs who understand what it means.

There’s too many inexperienced dog trainers who think slapping a prong collar on any dog will fix their problems. Anyone who has taken the time to understand how dog training works, knows that isn’t true.

 

[lilith_eve]

@hesta Thanks for taking the time to write this all out

 

[faithfulandtrue]

@lilith_eve Use of collar pops to interrupt fixation has almost completely fixed my dog's reactivity to people and scooters (basis of his reactivity to these things was territorialism / aggression / herding behaviors).

Use of any aversive to train out his reactivity toward the two dogs in the neighborhood he's been bullied by (fear-based reactivity) exacerbated the issue and seemed to make him more anxious.

We didn't try balanced training until he was about 1.5 YO, and I believe the fact that we were R+ based and had already established a great relationship with him enabled balanced training to work super well for us in some areas. My perspective on balanced training now is:

• It's so dog-dependent. I can see how it would be awful for a timid, sensitive pup whose reactivity is fear-based. My dog is a "hard" working dog who's always been super confident and bossy.
• I would never try it on a puppy
• There are so many sketch balanced trainers out there. I knew I'd found a good one when he advocated for a LIMA approach to using aversives (e.g. he didn't recommend a prong or e-collar right off the bat, he recommended trying gentle collar pops on a flat collar when my pup was starting to fixate and adjusting the timing of the reward to after he'd passed a trigger calmly)

~6 months in, I'm back to walking my dog on a front-clip harness and his reactions are very, very rare. He now knows that "uh-uh," the cue we paired with collar pops, is his command to stop staring, come to my side, and wait for a treat.

TLDR; I'm so glad we tried balanced training on our pup and I also think it's critical to be extremely selective about which pups & which types of reactivity it's used for (which it sounds like you're doing).

 

[2304ld]

@lilith_eve I really appreciate you posting this. We have been training R+ for 6 months with my frustrated greeter. She’s on clonidine and fluoxetine and her reactivity on leash hasn’t changed at all. Loses her mind barking at any dog within 100 ft. Our trainer who is excellent has brought up the idea of an e-collar. I’m very hesitant about starting it but I think my trainer has a very good approach to it’s limited use. It’s good to hear from folks on this sub, that have already helped me so much, on how it negatively effected their dogs. It’s giving me good insight and more knowledge in approaching this decision.

 

[lilith_eve]

@2304ld For what it's worth, our dog's threshold was about 100 ft when we first got her too. After 3 months we put her on fluoxetine. The first low dose did nothing after a month. Second month we doubled her dose and saw some improvement, and then recently increased it to the maximum dose and saw even more benefits when paired with CC. In addition to meds, we have been doing 1x/week training sessions with a trainer involving R+ CC with their stooge dogs. At first she would bark/lunge even 150 ft away. Then we started recruiting other calm dogs using Rover and Borrow My Doggie and paying people to use their dog for short training sessions. After probably about 50+ R+ training sessions with different dogs, her threshold now is about 30-40 ft where she will start whining without barking or lunging. So, some improvement for sure, but not where we want to be yet! Keep at it and good luck!

 

[daphnelover]

@lilith_eve This post actually makes me really sad for this dog. It seems you are doing everything you think is right for this dog which I appreciate a lot. My concern here is that you’re turning the dog into a puddle and what I mean by that is you’re medicating when you should actually be teaching the right and wrong behavior. Medication will never fix this problem and it should never take 50 sessions to correct reactivity. This dog will continue for the rest of its life to be reactive until you actually address the core problems. I would drop the R+ training and find a balanced trainer in your area. This reactivity should be fixed in less than a handful of training sessions.

 

[lilith_eve]

@daphnelover Assuming you aren't trolling us, I'll bite. Please do say more. In this forum, six months or 50 exposure sessions is probably considered nothing in terms of time or training. I know people regularly talk about working on R+ for several years to help a dog get over their issues with other dogs. Furthermore, I take serious issue with your stance on medication (which have been shown clinically in actual scientific research trials) to help dogs reduce aggression and other types of behavioral problems. Clearly no one thinks these medications will cure the issue, but the goal is to help render behavioral training more effective.

Similarly, among humans with anxiety disorders such as social or generalized anxiety disorder, the combination of behavioral therapy + SSRI medication (same we use for dogs) is clinically proven to produce the best long-term outcomes. Same thing is true for PTSD in humans (arguably likely similar to what many dogs with fear-based reactivity have after being attacked on lead by another dog, which seems like a highly prevalent way dogs develop the condition in the first place).

Happy to provide you the direct links to scientific studies showing this if you'd like

 

[daphnelover]

@lilith_eve Several years for fixing reactivity is insanity. Medication will surpass the dog but it won’t teach the dog. Your dog will continue to be reactive through medication or not. You said render training more effective, that doesn’t make any sense…teach the dog the behavior in a low distraction environment and build into high level distractions. You are creating / already made the dog more stressed in these 50+ R+ because they don’t know what to do because they don’t understand what they need to be doing.

 

[jamesharvey39571]

@daphnelover I can understand how this might be confusing if you think that the medication is being used to "fix" the dog, which of course it does not. However, what it can do is help raise a dog's thresholds up to a place where training can productively occur. Perhaps some dogs will be medicated longer term, but for most this is a temporary way to give you and the dog some breathing room. And whoever told you reactivity can be "fixed in less than a handful of training sessions" is either a literal idiot or is lying to your face. Best wishes for you.

 

[daphnelover]

@jamesharvey39571 It’s not confusing at all actually. The medication is being used to suppress behaviors (fix the problem) or what you said is help with the threshold. Threshold training is very simple, low distraction teach basic commands and slowly build to higher distractions, for example you put your dog in a heel and they break it correction within a few slight corrections the dog will understand its role. What OP is doing is just making the dog even worse. OP’s dog is boiling with anxiety because they don’t know how to be act in these high distraction environments.

I’m not sure what idiot is telling you that this should take 50+ sessions and thousands of dollars to fix when it can be done pretty quickly and effective. I have helped about 70 ish dogs ranging across all different types and tempers, it doesn’t take nor should it take less than a handful of sessions with the right trainer. OP is getting fleeced.

 

[jamesharvey39571]

@daphnelover Not quite the same thing - the medication should not be "suppressing behaviors" per se, the way e.g. a shock collar would, but rather raising tolerances which is a different mechanism. I don't disagree that it sounds like the medication and training haven't been as effective as one might hope, but again, "pretty quickly and effective" - not for reactivity, no. Without seeing OP's dog in video, I wouldn't imagine an internet diagnosis of what it's doing would be terribly accurate either.

 

[hesta]

@daphnelover Not sure about a handful of sessions. Some dogs are just wired differently. My own dog, for example, is reactive (mostly towards humans). I’m literally a trainer (not FF either) and she works with me every single day, yet we still are not 100% with her reactivity. She can tolerate other people in her presence but still doesn’t like being pet, and definitely doesn’t like people being too close to her. She’s definitely the most difficult dog I’ve worked with in terms of reactivity and how much work goes into her vs the result.

Her littermates all have similar issues with strangers, so there’s definitely some genetic predisposition going on there.

What’s important when it comes to training your dog is to be open-minded. For simple, I started using a clicker with her recently and she’s responded very well to it!

 

[kateee71]

@lilith_eve Fear reactive dog, adopted at a year old, minimal to no socialization. Reactive on leash to dogs, timid around people but avoids people, no lashing out behavior to people. Worked with about 3-4 trainers total on 2 yrs and she’s work in progress but major improvement. First year and a half of the work was p+ or ff only. Long post with summary of our LIMA progress.

We’ve used force free exclusively (including doing cooperative care for nail clips, avoiding group classes , walks etc) for 9 months. Didn’t get anywhere (nails couldn’t be clipped, walks were a nightmare if we missed 6am - we did train not walking the dog in trainers recommendation and she got worse).

We then tried p+ (going to group trainings behind a visual barrier at first, the worked out way up to being comfortable in the class (including being able to do a rally course with multiple dogs on the floor). For nails, we go to a groomer. So not completely force free but the dog was taken care of (nails clipped), and she was able yo adjust to her environment, flipped out less since she learned to be around dogs and she would be safe. Walks were still a problem since when she reacted (lunging barking) i fell a couple of times (i don’t live in a place i can avoid dogs with change of direction). So I looked into tools. With martingale or a regular collar, she choked herself to the point of coughing (and she would lunge again), she tangles herself trying to get out of a harness (and i fall faster), head halter (usually recommended by r+) was extremely aversive to her despite desensitization (she accepted wearing it but was shut down during the walk and still lunged with it endangering her neck).

Finally found a trainer who trainer the dog i front of them rather than either only using treats or wanting to put an ecollar on day one. We started using the prong collar (i know, i know the bot will plug in here) with continued use of praise and treats. We still manage the environment (walk on less busy times, avoid triggers if we can. But we are woking more on controlled exposure and increasing her safety bubble and teaching her how to cope with stressors (let’s be real, whose life is without stress), instead of trying and failing to avoid triggers. E.g. she focuses on a dog, i say leave it, if she breaks focus she gets a treat and praise. If she doesn’t, she gets a correction (might be a voice correction or leash correction depending on her intensity), we then work on movement (i might do a circle to have her focus back on me or sniffing something on the ground, anything but the dog). She has been able to walk past dogs from other side of the street. Her reactions are much less dramatic and much shorter, and she recovers very quickly (instead of lunging and barking and choking herself long after the dog passes , now she may bark or half heartedly step into the collar and she turns around and keeps walking or sniffing 2 seconds later).

Our p+ work before we went up the LIMA ladder benefited our relationship and trust building a lot and we learned a lot of creative ways of managing the situation. However, there was a limit in progress we made with it.

Also a word of caution about trainers. IMO There are great and not so good trainers in p+ and balanced world. A bad p+ trainer may not get you far but will also won’t damage your relationship with the dog. A bad trainer using tools, can cause damage to your relationship with the dog. I avoid trainers who suggest methods (either end of the spectrum) or tools before even evaluating the dog or using prong or ecollar without proper conditioning , and without spending time to train you on timing , conditioning, rewarding etc.

 

[lilith_eve]

@kateee71 Thanks very much!

 

[cowboys73]

@lilith_eve You will see a lot of anecdotal stories of “normal” ppl (or people with zero animal behavior background) applying tools and saying it “worked”. You have no idea whether these people are accurately evaluating their dogs body language for shut down/stress indicators, etc.

I get being desperate and turning to tools, that’s how a lot of people get into using them. But there is absolutely ZERO scientific data in any animal behavior space (including humans) that says punishment is necessary for training. No, it’s not true “some dogs need it/don’t respond to R+”. Every dog is different and responds at a different rate to reconditioning an emotion that has been ingrained in them. Adding pain is a cheap, lazy alternative in the face of the vast array of R+ methods.

If you use a punishment based tool/training, you’re doing it for yourself—not your dog.

 

[bigsy]

@lilith_eve My personal experience with my dog is that it’s helped tremendously.

We did R+ training for 6 months and it just didn’t work. For background I have a GSP, he’s a rescue and he came with no obedience training to me at 1.5 years old.

Many GSP owners use balanced training so we decided to give it a shot. Switching to the prong collar was literally night and day. Our relationship has improved tremendously and he clearly understands now what’s expected of him.

We got an e-collar last week to reinforce his recall. It’s good but not great when a squirrel is around and we’re starting his advanced obedience training in a week.

What I will say, is every dog is different. My dog has made leaps and bounds with training that we simply could not accomplish with R+ but not every dog will react to balanced training positively.