I am the old dog. LOL I’ve been teaching my dogs things for a long time but one thing I’ve always been unsure about is clicker training. I think the idea that I needed a device of some kind in order to train a dog to do something turned me off. However, I’m beginning to change my mind.

I’ve been doing research for some articles about dog training and I’ve been learning a lot. I’ve been learning the difference between traditional dog training, which is what people were doing when I was younger; positive reinforcement, which is what I learned from psychology classes in colleges; and canine “ethology” — what people call “dog whispering” now. And, of course, there are mixed approaches using elements of these different kinds of training. So, I finally have some ways to sort out the kinds of training I see applied to dogs.

I have to say, as far as dog whispering is concerned, I couldn’t find much valid information about it online. I found a lot of references to Cesar Millan, and I found a number of half-baked articles that claimed to explain the theory. But, based on real-world experience, if I tried to follow what these articles told me to do, I would get mauled by a dog. I found things that tried to interpret canine body language for me and tell me what it meant when an angry dog was barking at me and how I should (not) react. Apparently I should not scream and run away as this will only make the dog chase and try to kill me. (Gee whiz! Where are they finding these awful dogs?) I also found a lot of articles criticizing dog whispering. I’ll skip those and just say that I can see why people do say that it may not be a training method as much as it’s a way of analyzing behavior.

Ethology itself is a respected field and includes the study of humans, but perhaps it’s been somewhat hijacked at the moment by all of the people who are claiming that you can handle dogs as though they’re a pack of wolves and you (the owner) are the “alpha” wolf. Apparently a lot of dogs just aren’t getting that concept. I still think my own dogs would look at me as though I’d lost my mind if I shook one of them by the scruff of the neck or tried to do an “alpha roll.” These may be things that a wolf does in a pack or a mother does to a pup, but are those circumstances really similar to what goes on in your home on a daily basis? I have trouble imagining that they are unless you live on the set of Dances With Wolves. I think many owners are worsening their relationships with their dogs and creating bad behavior by trying these “alpha” relationships. Maybe that’s why Mr. Millan’s program carries the warning, “Don’t try this at home.”

More on “traditional” dog training and positive reinforcement a little later. For now I just want to say that I’m getting kind of psyched about what I’ve learned so far. I’ve learned that my dog “management” techniques have been working great for 20 years but that, with Pearl, I may actually need to do some real training — and that it may be fun.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 3rd, 2007 at 9:34 am and is filed under Dog Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.