Selfsufficientish.com

Whilst I'm still a beginner in the veg growing and home brew stakes, dog training and behaviour is my business so I may even be able to give some useful advice and give something back to the forum :-)

Cheers

Sally

rullfarm, my son and his family have a one year old male german shephard "max". sweet puppy, very smart and great with the kids. my question is this: max will listen to my son and to a lesser extent me. thats it !!!
the dog will not listen to his wife at all!! they have a gate that slides across the full lenght of their driveway that needs to be slid open in order for her to leave in the van for work, she tells the dog to "stay max stay max stay max stay max" you get the idea. he runs off anyway, he stays for my son who only says it twice in a strong voice my daughter-inlaw says it like she is talking to a child! very soft voice.I have raised doberhmans in the past and have always maintained that if you say something 6 times then the dog waits to hear it 6 times before it responds if at all. sooooooo my question is this, how do i train my daughter-inlaw????

how do i train my daughter-inlaw????

and can the same technique be used on any in-laws. Can wait to hear how it's done

I think this is brilliant, so when you are ready for the next question Rullfarm. I'm there!! pbf.

You guys crack me up

Dog training is simple, it just ain't easy. People training is the same. And as for 'can you train in-laws'? - oh yes you can! Using operant conditioning (a behavioural science) you can train just about anything with a brain stem (not sure if that includes me after a few home brews on a Friday night). All dog training is about providing consequences for behaviour. I am from the reward-based school so I want to provide good consequences for good behaviour. There are times when the consequence is not going to be good so in my case that is usually, the treat goes away, you've lost the chance to play with the ball, the door closes or you get a time-out in your crate. Dogs (and humans) repeat behaviour that is rewarded. If dear Max is ignoring daughter in law but obeying the son it is because he has learned the consequence of each action (ignoring the son means the world becomes a less pleasant place temporarily, ignoring daughter-in-law has no adverse consequence whatsoever!

So what to do about it (apart from sending them to me for training!)? Well, until both daughter in law and dog know that stay MEANS stay, there has to be an element of physical management so that Max can't do a runner. Everytime he gets to rehearse the behaviour, he is more likely to do it again. Then all parties need to embark on training that concentrates on the life skills this large dog needs, the first of which is self-control. I honestly spend more time teaching dogs to do nothing than I do any else because that is what most people want their dogs to do for more than 20 hours per day.

BTW, I speak to my dogs in a very soft voice and I've never had a problem. If you have to raise your voice to get compliance, you are intimidating the dog, not training it! (bit controversial, eh?)

rullfarm, thanks for the reply. when i said that the "daughter-inlaw" uses a "soft voice" what i really ment was a monotone voice,very little inflexion. were as my son uses a firm tone. I really agree with you about operant conditioning/behavior modifaction. I wrote my psychology paper on good old B.F.Skinner. maybe i should put my daughter-inlaw in a "skinner box" and see if i can train her that way if it works on her then hubby is next

Great - a psychologist! I spent three mad weeks in Arkansas training chickens under the guidance of one of Skinner's PhD students, Marian Breland. I'm also lecturing at Exeter Uni Psych dept on Monday on the same subject and taking some of my dogs in with me for the Masters students to learn on.

As for whether you can use the techniques (if not the box itself) to train people, of course you can! Read Karen Pryor's "Don't Shoot The Dog" (which isn't about dogs) and that explains how to use positive reinforcement in everyday life. I trained my mother not to moan at me so much when I phoned her. My husband does his ironing and also loads and unloads the dishwasher (don't let him know I trained this!).

Off to work now - the down side of being self-employed is having to work Saturdays

Oh Susie I can tell you how to do that!!!*

But I want to know more about training CHICKENS ! What for exactly, were they a circus act?


* You let them watch their favourite programmes be that football or in my case Formula One GP without moaning so long as they do the ironing whilst watching it!

Love the book 'Dont Shoot the Dog' and there are some "simple" instructions in it for training a chicken to dance! Amazing. I would love to train a chicken to dance, but think I need to concentrate on my doggies first!

However, after reading that book I managed to train my cat to 'sit' on command in 5 minutes!

You can get a cat to obey humans?