NEW THREAD PG 7

[Winstalgia]

Well, thank you for all your help, then!

The late response is alright.

[spectacular.]

I'd like to be added as a
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Username: spectacular.
Species: Dogs

I work mostly with K-9's. In fact, all I work with are dogs. Haha.

My personal opinion I think it depends on the problem if it's something like aggression (directed towards people.) I prefer *punishment* Now I'm not going to hit my dogs or anything, when I speak punishment I mean ignoring the dog. Possibly a pinch on the side in order to snap them out of that mindset, it pushes their attention on me instead of whatever they are being aggressive towards. When my sisters APBT boxer mix begins acting aggressive on walks, a take my fingers give her a quick pinch between her hip and rib cage and she gives me her full attention. I mostly train older dogs, well older than one and a half. My six-year-old Lab, golden mix I have fully trained myself, right now we are working on off leash work including sit, stay, come when called, lay down. All of these she knows and has mastered by we are now removing the leash and working fully off leash. Another dog I'm working with is a 12 week old Akita, Chow, Lab Mix. She is extremely stubborn. She has no idea how to walk on a leash, is kinda aggressive although is getting past that. I am also working with the Boxer, APBT mix on starting to get her conditioned, she is beginning work like weight pulling and other dog sports.

[chase.]

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Username: sniper,
Species: specialise in dogs, know a little on cats.

'do you use more punishment or more redirection when faced with "bad" behavior?'

In my opinion It would depend on the issue, and how severe it is, though almost ten times out of ten redirection would be the best way in my opinion.

I always do redirection where possible, for example if it is dog aggression you are dealing with, or something similar it could make the situation much worse. Your dog could become fearful towards not only dogs, but people aswell causing it to bite when it feels threatened. Focusing on redirection would increase the chances of the situation becoming more positive, and the dog stopping the aggression. Picture yourself as the dog, your angry at something, what would you do if someone started yelling at you, maybe hit you slightly and put you in a cage? Then think about what you'd do if someone sat with/near you, and redirected your behaviour or focus on training where you'd get rewards? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying dogs are exactly like us but they can be similar in some behavioural ways. In my opinion, it'd be much better to redirect the issue.

Another scenario (not so much 'bad behaviour'), and one I've seen only one or two times (thankfully) is that it isn't the dog. I do agility with my rough collie Logan, and when training I've seen other people tell there dogs off, yell at them and just make hem feel bad and anxious in general, and this isn't if they've done something bad. If their dog has for example, let's say missed the first contact on the walkover, they'll tell the dog off when they haven't necessarily done anything bad. When you do that, in the dogs eyes your telling them off for going onto the walk over, and therefore they can become fearful of it and not do it. If my collie missed it, I'd allow him to finish it, praise him for the second contact and just go back again. If he missed every time it after a couple more tries I'd take a step back and take it more slowly, praising him for doing the right thing instead of telling him off for a mistake.

If anyone wants to hear more points on why I think redirection feel free to pm me <3

[caf.]

sorry for being unable to check on this topic, i was at a horse show. both accepted and will be added to the list shortly!
excellent discussion on this topic, i love hearing different viewpoints from varying trainers.
i would agree that 'punishment' is often wrongly defined as being very harsh when often negative reinforcement tends to be harsher when the concept of escalating pressure is utilized. i do tend to utilize punishment (a sharp yell and maybe a poke in the side) with my horse when the behavior becomes dangerous to his health, mainly to establish a negative association with the behavior so that he's unlikely to perform it again. since dangerous behavior in equines is most commonly associated with fear, i heavily reward any calm or 'acceptable' behavior in addition to the punishment for the dangerous behavior so that a clear boundary is established for how he can express his fear to me. generally, he is allowed to pace around, throw his head, snort, small behaviors like that; i much prefer an animal that can express its feelings through slightly undesirable behavior so that i might address the issue at hand over a totally shut down animal that expresses none of its emotions whatsoever. it's just that things rapidly become unsafe when you have a half-ton animal literally running you over or attempting to escape a tie and potentially run into a freeway or cause a stampede, yes? even in these cases if there's any chance for me to redirect i often choose that over punishing just to prevent making the situation potentially worse.
i definitely agree that punishment often escalates fear in the case of a fearful animal and redirection often reduces this urge. in the case of my horse rearing, bucking, spooking, etc it ultimately depends on the situation; either i continue to work him past the scary situation until he settles and then praise him heavily, or i work away from the situation until he settles and call it a day if he doesn't seem ready to conquer that fear. i never want him to develop negative associations with riding or jumping. for example, if he's getting bad transitions from the trot to canter (throwing his head up over the bit, racing into the transition, picking up the wrong lead, etc), instead of yanking him back to the trot and preventing him from cantering during a bad transition (giving him a bad association with the transition), i let himcsnter a few strides and then draw him back and continue working it until he gets a good transition, then reward him heavily for the good one.

[spectacular.]

I will agree with the redirection, I often go to redirection first and if that does not work then something more "drastic". I will agree that the word punishment often holds harsh connotations. I can only speak from my experience as all the dogs I have worked with are very hardheaded so often times redirection does not fully connect with them. I agree with you sniper that redirection should always be attempted first as punishment can lead to fear in dogs. That's why you should always research before trying new methods. The people who don't do research often leads to aggressive a fearful dogs many times leading to problems later in their life.

I would like to propose a new question. How do you help animals overcome their fear of past instances?

My female lab mix is severely aggressive towards men who wear hats. This I believe stems from her past abuse but I'm not sure. It's only strangers. Men whom she knows does not phase her, like my brother or my father if they wear hats. But when we take her out to the store any man in a hat she will become very possessive of me and will bark and snarl at them until they move away from us. It has phased off with her old age she will be turning six this November. But now with my sisters, Akita mix has become possisive of myself and her children. I don't want to have to deal with this as she gets older so is there any way I can prevent the possessive behavior. I have no experience with puppies, only with older dogs.

[caf.]

counter-conditioning, definitely. it so works with fearful animals and helps to eliminate fear. basically, your goal is to use classical conditioning to create a positive association with the fear-inducing object.
to use an example, my horse hates having his face blown on. i don't know why, i assume it's just not a pleasant sensation for him. he pins his ears, throws up his head, and may attempt to lunge and bite if you blow on him. so with counter-conditioning, essentially i might blow on his face then immediately feed him a treat, then continue this pattern a few times a day every time i go to ride until he stops getting fussy about being blown on and maybe even starts to look forward to it. all he recognizes is that something he found unpleasant happened and then he got a treat, so the unpleasant thing might not be so bad after all. of course, you have to be fast - you can't wait for him to react and then treat, otherwise you do risk accidentally rewarding a behavior. perhaps have a friend that your dog doesn't know wear a hat and offer your dog treats, at first by placing them on the ground and later by hand? you could even just sit near your dog anytime a person with a hat is near and feed treats at first, then move on to interacting with such a person.
another approach you could take is just simple positive reinforcement. using the blowing example i used earlier, i might follow these steps:
1. reward anytime the horse doesn't bite.
2. reward anytime the horse doesn't lunge.
3. reward anytime the horse doesn't throw his head.
4. reward anytime the horse doesn't pin his ears.
5. reward anytime the horse approaches me after having his face blown on.
in this instance, you'd want to move to the next step when you're consistently getting the desired result from the previous. the reason i'd hesitate with this approach is you are not truly creating a positive association with the unpleasant stimulus, but rather training the animal to react in an appropriate fashion. ultimately, different trainers will approach such an issue in different ways.
please feel free to let me know if anything i'm saying doesn't make sense! horses are very fearful creatures by nature, so i've classically conditioned a lot of things from water to flapping objects and had multiple successes in getting a fearful animal to conquer something they dislike. you just want to give heavy rewards for even the smallest step towards handling it in a calm and collected manner, and not expect too much too fast in any instance.

[Winstalgia]

I'm skimming through the post when I can, still here. (I have been on mobile lately so its hard for me to keep up)

[rebellious819]

I can't get the code to work because I'm on an iPhone but I'm going to try and type it

I'd like to be added as a member!
Username- rebellious819
Species- horse (colt to be exact)

I have been riding horses since I was young, 11 years to be exact, and I got my first horse around this time last year (he is 10 months old right now) I don't keep him at my house I keep him at the location I take lessons, but the lady who owns it was very disorganized and had too many horses and had to move him onto one of her other locations where I didn't have any room to work on round penning or leading away from the other horses in the field who got in the way of all of our training sessions. He is also the first horse I have trained since birth and the owner told me she would teach me but got preoccupied and never helped. Our barn was on a property owned by a family and they decided they no longer wanted to rent us (when I say us I mean the barn community, my family did not own it but my best friends family did) and we had to move my horse to my dads house (he lives on a private horse farm in an apartment) I no longer have a traingjng mentor but I FINALLY have the proper facilities to train. The problem is with all the craziness going on my little colt, Rebel, has pretty much forgotten everything he knows and is very timid and scared, he's still pretty small but I want him to be handleable before he is too big! He's very sweet but unpredictable and I'm not sure where to start.

[caf.]

welcome welcome! always good to have another equine-friendly face!
i've never extensively worked with a horse that young (though i've had a few foals and feral horses under my care in the past), but my advice would be definitely to start with halter training. get him used to leading, tying, etc.. maybe work on picking up his feet and getting used to having his mouth and face handled too so that you don't have troubles with the vet and farrier later on. establish boundaries, too; rearing and rubbing up on you is cute when he's a baby but it gets scary fast when they grow up.
when they're this young, you really can't do much; most all you can do is basic socializing and handling for at least several months to come. you could maybe teach him baby tricks if he's particularly smart, smiling and nodding his head and the like. really, your main goal should just be for him to have positive experiences with people and being handled. he sounds like a cutie!

[rebellious819]

He is very cute, he is halter broken completely, and leading is fine when he wants to listen but as soon as he wants to go somewhere else he does. I agree with redirection especially for a young horse. Animals don't always understand what they are being punished for until multiple times after they are punished, but if you are giving them an alternative option that allows them to use their energy in a way that isn't harmful to them or you they are going to be encouraged to start taking that path in the long run. The end goal is for them to know the way they are behaving isn't an option. Punishing them does not show them the right thing to do only the wrong, and even so, they are always doing multiple things at once. While a horse may be bucking he also may be doing something else at the same time and they wouldn't necessarily know which behavior is the bad one. The way I redirect my foal when he is pulling on the lead line is applying more pressure downwards and towards me with his head gradually, yanking just makes the horse and trainer frustrated, the pressure reminds him I am there and to pay attention to me