In "Fetch and Carry" published in 1894 author B. Waters said:
"Much that is demanded of the dog in servitude (obedience) is contrary to his nature and inclination. He will work with endless enthusiasm and effort when in pursuit of prey. On the contrary, while he dearly likes man's companionship, he detests menial servitude. Only by making work accessory to the pursuit of game, and so blending the two that he cannot discern where either begins or ends, can his best effort be engaged..."
In the field training of retrievers the good dogs do not really need us to motivate them to retrieve. The field work has enough built in rewards for any dog that is worth training. The dog gets to run, jump, swim, retrieve and carry bumpers and birds. We really don't need to work at providing any other rewards.
However, in the yard (obedience) and in the training for blind retrieves for hunting and trial retrievers the work to reward ratio is such that we need to actively provide extra rewards.
Likewise, there is nothing intrinsically rewarding for a dog in finding drugs or a lost person or in the straight sits and fronts required of competition obedience training.
What's a trainer to do?
My next post will look at the problem of motivating performance and maintaining a good training attitude in field, obedience and working dogs.
Pat
Saturday, December 15, 2007
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1 comments:
Pat --
If someone has sold you the line that there's nothing intrinsically rewarding for a dog in finding a lost person, then --
1) You and I (And Miss Pip and Miss Rosie) need to spend some more time together, and;
2) Your informant needs to get him or herself a better class of dog for search work.
Think of it this way: If you were trying to train a whippet to do a retriever's job, you'd have to provide an awful lot of extrinsic rewards to get anything resembling retriever performance.
Sadly, some handlers do the same with SAR dogs. Sometimes that's a deep failure in the training method; more often it's ill-considered selection.
Believe me, there's nothing more intrinsically rewarding to one of my turbo-social English shepherds (or the two GSDs who came before them) than finding a missing stranger. (Of the motivations of our young GSD Sophia, aka Raindog, I'll not speak here ...)
The only reason we mark the find (and later the refind) with a reward is so that the dog learns when it's time to stop.
About drugs and bombs and such, I'm inclined to agree that one has to be clever about integrating the extrinsic reward system in such a way that the search becomes an exciting hunt.
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