APDT News Release.The unregistered Association of Proven Dog Trainers condemns the widespread use of delivering up treats to dogs for the claimed purpose of training dogs, which cause behavioural problems requring the services of the quick fix quack, or behaviourist as quacks are more commonly known.
Their potential for accidental or absent minded misuse is high, stimulating dangerous dog misbehaviour patterns by means of the positive reinforcement of existing bad and dangerous habits and causing new bad habits.
They could easily cause considerable chronic behaviour problems including aggression, e.g the dog shows aggression to another dog, you try to distract it with a treat and so it will become aggressive in order to get a treat, frightening strangers by running up to them begging for something the stranger might be eating, catastrophic unreliable recall if something more interesting attracts it or failure to carry out an emergency down, resulting in road accidents or being hit by a bicycle, skaters or surfboarders in the park, causing unnecessary pain and distress to the humans involved as well as the dog, if it survives, and making owners liable for a fine for having a dangerous dog out of control.
A dog experiencing a pleasant treat out of the blue as a reward for the cessation of barking and other unwanted behaviours will associate the barking with being rewarded by a treat for barking. Once it stops barking and is given the treat it will associate the treat with the barking the dog was focusing on at the time, it will then start barking again for more treats, owners will have a noise abatement order placed on them and the dog goes into rescue with owners being fined up to £5000 first offence, £500 per day for every offence after, for life, a criminal record and maybe an ASBO.
The unregistered Association of Proven Dog Trainers condemns charging money and exploiting pet dog owners by telling them they can get a reliable recall with a treat. Pet dog owners can go to the local park and learn how to do this by watching people feeding ducks and squirrels, as free information to learn the same as follows:
Go to the park with some bread and dog whistle, wait until you see some ducks near you, blow the dog whistle and throw the bread towards the dicks at the same time, they will come and eat the bread, hold some more out in front of you get them to come close, just prior to releasing the piece of bread to one of the ducks blow the dog whistle softly and let it have the bread, you can use a clicker as well as or as an option to the whistle if you want to.
Repeat this for three successive days and the ducks will come to you to get the bread when you blow the whistle or click the cicker, at Xmas grab the censored and have it for Xmas dinner. You can do the same with squirrels, birds in the garden and mice in the house, no need for expensive one to one ‘behaviourist’ visits costing around £100 per visit or training classes or training classes which teach you the same thing.
What pet owners must remember is that the mice are not coming to you they are coming ‘to the food’ the same applies to your dog which is why it will not reliably recall to ‘you’ except when nothing else interests it.
When treats are used correctly or incorrectly, the dog will associate other things which were around at the time it gets the treat, things such as children. This will make it bark at children because children were present when it was given the treat when its barking stopped and it will frighten or bite them, it could bark at a stranger to get a treat who then kicks it as a result, at a sheep if a sheep was close when it was given a treat for stopping barking at them and then gets shot. If it does not get shot then the dog owner is breaking the 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act and the dog will be put to sleep.
In inexperienced or experienced hands treats may take many years of repetitions of administrations of the treat before the rewarding of bad behaviour is finally associated with the unwanted behaviour. It then takes several seconds before the dog learns he has taught the owner to habitually give him treats after any bad behaviour, only then will he stop barking and start another unwanted behaviour to get a treat, he has then learned that any bad behaviour gets him a treat, he has effectively been trained to misbehave by being rewarded for misbehaviour.
Not only is this inhumane because he will get fat, suffer veterinary problems and die young, but it can set up a series of intolerable behaviours which can cause associated behaviour problems in future, his owners get fed up and he is put into rescue.
Unsophisticated methods of rewarding dogs when bad behaviour ceases, such as destroying the furniture, stopping the destruction and then getting a treat reinforces the bad behaviour with a high probability it will recur, the dog associates the two actions of (1) chewing furniture (2) then stopping and getting a treat, so it will chew furniture to get a treat. Unsophisticated methods such as giving treats are not necessary in order to train them to behave appropriately, treats are useful for feeding ducks in the park as novelty way of getting them to come, especially for Xmas dinner.
Such methods are often used as a quick fix by the inexperienced, the inept and charlatans calling themselves behaviourists. Humane, stress free methods which rely on a sound understanding of the dog's mind are more effective for training or bringing about a lasting cure for behaviour problems.
If the dog learns fast because of quality, humane and stress free methods for the dog, free from the risk of side effects and which improves rather than spoils the relationship between dog and owner. In the long run, will result in a happy, confident dog and satisfied owner and offer the dog the freedom within safety it must have.
Only in a handful of cases, where all else has been tried and failed, and when the condition is potentially life-threatening, can the use of treats which cause life threatening out of control behaviour and which account for more dogs in rescues than ever before, for reasons such as “Owner cannot cope with dog”, ever be justified, and, only then, in the hands of an experienced trainer who is capable of accurate timing.
Owners of problem pets need to be made aware that the unwanted behaviour can be altered with understanding and advice and that a 'quick fix' approach – ‘give it a treat’ - methods of reward can do more harm than good.
Denis Carthy APDT [ Association of Proven Dog Trainers.]
DwenCailey©02004.
For an alternative view go to the following link for even more twaddle than the above.
http://www.takingthelead.co.uk/5/shock_collars.htm
