Thresholds In Training……
A threshold in respect to training dogs is the point at which an animal can still think and perform a behavior reliably with short latency, speed and precision. Lots of things effect thresholds and your dog’s ability to respond reliably to learned cues. Things like being outdoors, other dogs, noise, traffic, cars, wildlife, food distractions, people passing by, bicycles, loud noises, etc all effect a dogs threshold for being able to block out the distractions and perform the learned behavior reliably. Not paying attention to your dog’s thresholds for distractions might be a problem in getting reliability from a dog that understands the cue in a quiet environment and then goes to a busy one. Or a threshold violation might totally trump a dog’s ability to think and respond to his owner in an acceptable way in a particular environment.
When a dog is within it’s comfort zone and is able to think and respond to his handler we call this being sub threshold. This means that the dog can easily respond to a known command, respond to it’s name, and pay attention to it’s handler. When a dog is over threshold it means that the environment is too much for the dog to ignore and be able to think and process information given by his handler. What this means for most dogs is that they can not learn anything because they are way over stimulated and overwhelmed by the environment.
Thresholds are important to consider in all training but especially when training reactive or shy dogs . For these dogs their fears combined with a busy environment will push them over the edge until they are frantically reacting and no longer thinking. You can not teach a stressed dog anything. The part of the brain that can process information and learning has to be present in order for training to be effective and if a dog is reacting continuously to things in the environment and can’t calm down enough to think, no real learning will take place.
This is both good and bad news. The old thinking of not comforting a dog when they are frightened for fear of reinforcing their fear is not scientifically valid. You cannot reinforce an emotion, you can change an emotion by pairing a behavior with reinforcement but you can not make an emotion worse or better by paying attention to it. If your dog is frightened by all means comfort it, if your dog is angry, aggressive and reactive lead him to safety, take the pressure off make the scary thing go away. This will build your dog’s confidence in your ability to help him when he needs it. You will show him by your stepping in and removing him from situations which he has no skills to handle that he can rely on you to help him when he needs it.
So what about the Dog Whisperer and what he says about being the leader and forcing your dog to just get on with it and deal with it ? Well, for those of you with scared or aggressive dogs has it worked ? Most of the private training I’ve done is for reactive or shy dogs whose owners are at wits end to help their dogs overcome their fear and aggression. In the hundreds of people I have counseled I can tell you first hand the report…it doesn’t work. If it worked I’d be out of a job :).
Sure with some dogs that aren’t that reactive or shy they get over it for the moment and the behavior their owner didn’t like is supressed. This means they no longer tell anyone how they feel anymore, but I can tell you from experience that they don’t feel any more confident, any less scared and given the right circumstances will fall back on their own ways and in some cases be far worse.
Don’t be fooled by those who claim to have a permanent solution to a problem that doesn’t require a lot of effort on your part. All training takes time and the only thing that works to permanently change behavior is a solid training program based on the science of how dogs learn with a way to measure results and track progress so that we can make sure the behavior is moving in a desirable direction and not just covered up !
Considering your dog’s threshold is vitally important to this success. Without planning for this your training program will fall apart and you will not make progress with real measurable change. For those who say they’ve tried training but it hasn’t worked this is the problem, the threshold not the method. If you change the threshold and train the dog where he can still think over time the threshold will expand and the dog will be able to handle more distractions, more noise, and more stress.
Hope this helps you get your training back on track !!!
Happy Training !
A threshold in respect to training dogs is the point at which an animal can still think and perform a behavior reliably with short latency, speed and precision. Lots of things effect thresholds and your dog’s ability to respond reliably to learned cues. Things like being outdoors, other dogs, noise, traffic, cars, wildlife, food distractions, people passing by, bicycles, loud noises, etc all effect a dogs threshold for being able to block out the distractions and perform the learned behavior reliably. Not paying attention to your dog’s thresholds for distractions might be a problem in getting reliability from a dog that understands the cue in a quiet environment and then goes to a busy one. Or a threshold violation might totally trump a dog’s ability to think and respond to his owner in an acceptable way in a particular environment.
When a dog is within it’s comfort zone and is able to think and respond to his handler we call this being sub threshold. This means that the dog can easily respond to a known command, respond to it’s name, and pay attention to it’s handler. When a dog is over threshold it means that the environment is too much for the dog to ignore and be able to think and process information given by his handler. What this means for most dogs is that they can not learn anything because they are way over stimulated and overwhelmed by the environment.
Thresholds are important to consider in all training but especially when training reactive or shy dogs . For these dogs their fears combined with a busy environment will push them over the edge until they are frantically reacting and no longer thinking. You can not teach a stressed dog anything. The part of the brain that can process information and learning has to be present in order for training to be effective and if a dog is reacting continuously to things in the environment and can’t calm down enough to think, no real learning will take place. This is both good and bad news. The old thinking of not comforting a dog when they are frightened for fear of reinforcing their fear is not scientifically valid. You cannot reinforce an emotion, you can change an emotion by pairing a behavior with reinforcement but you can not make an emotion worse or better by paying attention to it. If your dog is frightened by all means comfort it, if your dog is angry, aggressive and reactive lead him to safety, take the pressure off make the scary thing go away. This will build your dog’s confidence in your ability to help him when he needs it. You will show him by your stepping in and removing him from situations which he has no skills to handle that he can rely on you to help him when he needs it.
So what about the Dog Whisperer and what he says about being the leader and forcing your dog to just get on with it and deal with it ? Well, for those of you with scared or aggressive dogs has it worked ? Most of the private training I’ve done is for reactive or shy dogs whose owners are at wits end to help their dogs overcome their fear and aggression. In the hundreds of people I have counseled I can tell you first hand the report…it doesn’t work. If it worked I’d be out of a job J. Sure with some dogs that aren’t that reactive or shy they get over it for the moment and the behavior their owner didn’t like is supressed. This means they no longer tell anyone how they feel anymore, but I can tell you from experience that they don’t feel any more confident, any less scared and given the right circumstances will fall back on their own ways and in some cases be far worse. Don’t be fooled by those who claim to have a permanent solution to a problem that doesn’t require a lot of effort on your part. All training takes time and the only thing that works to permanently change behavior is a solid training program based on the science of how dogs learn with a way to measure results and track progress so that we can make sure the behavior is moving in a desirable direction and not just covered up ! Considering your dog’s threshold is vitally important to this success. Without planning for this your training program will fall apart and you will not make progress with real measurable change. For those who say they’ve tried training but it hasn’t worked this is the problem, the threshold not the method. If you change the threshold and train the dog where he can still think over time the threshold will expand and the dog will be able to handle more distractions, more noise, and more stress.
Hope this helps you get your training back on track !!!
A threshold in respect to training dogs is the point at which an animal can still think and perform a behavior reliably with short latency, speed and precision. Lots of things effect thresholds and your dog’s ability to respond reliably to learned cues. Things like being outdoors, other dogs, noise, traffic, cars, wildlife, food distractions, people passing by, bicycles, loud noises, etc all effect a dogs threshold for being able to block out the distractions and perform the learned behavior reliably. Not paying attention to your dog’s thresholds for distractions might be a problem in getting reliability from a dog that understands the cue in a quiet environment and then goes to a busy one. Or a threshold violation might totally trump a dog’s ability to think and respond to his owner in an acceptable way in a particular environment.
When a dog is within it’s comfort zone and is able to think and respond to his handler we call this being sub threshold. This means that the dog can easily respond to a known command, respond to it’s name, and pay attention to it’s handler. When a dog is over threshold it means that the environment is too much for the dog to ignore and be able to think and process information given by his handler. What this means for most dogs is that they can not learn anything because they are way over stimulated and overwhelmed by the environment.
Thresholds are important to consider in all training but especially when training reactive or shy dogs . For these dogs their fears combined with a busy environment will push them over the edge until they are frantically reacting and no longer thinking. You can not teach a stressed dog anything. The part of the brain that can process information and learning has to be present in order for training to be effective and if a dog is reacting continuously to things in the environment and can’t calm down enough to think, no real learning will take place.
This is both good and bad news. The old thinking of not comforting a dog when they are frightened for fear of reinforcing their fear is not scientifically valid. You cannot reinforce an emotion, you can change an emotion by pairing a behavior with reinforcement but you can not make an emotion worse or better by paying attention to it. If your dog is frightened by all means comfort it, if your dog is angry, aggressive and reactive lead him to safety, take the pressure off make the scary thing go away. This will build your dog’s confidence in your ability to help him when he needs it. You will show him by your stepping in and removing him from situations which he has no skills to handle that he can rely on you to help him when he needs it.
So what about the Dog Whisperer and what he says about being the leader and forcing your dog to just get on with it and deal with it ? Well, for those of you with scared or aggressive dogs has it worked ? Most of the private training I’ve done is for reactive or shy dogs whose owners are at wits end to help their dogs overcome their fear and aggression. In the hundreds of people I have counseled I can tell you first hand the report…it doesn’t work. If it worked I’d be out of a job :).
Sure with some dogs that aren’t that reactive or shy they get over it for the moment and the behavior their owner didn’t like is supressed. This means they no longer tell anyone how they feel anymore, but I can tell you from experience that they don’t feel any more confident, any less scared and given the right circumstances will fall back on their own ways and in some cases be far worse.
Don’t be fooled by those who claim to have a permanent solution to a problem that doesn’t require a lot of effort on your part. All training takes time and the only thing that works to permanently change behavior is a solid training program based on the science of how dogs learn with a way to measure results and track progress so that we can make sure the behavior is moving in a desirable direction and not just covered up !
Considering your dog’s threshold is vitally important to this success. Without planning for this your training program will fall apart and you will not make progress with real measurable change. For those who say they’ve tried training but it hasn’t worked this is the problem, the threshold not the method. If you change the threshold and train the dog where he can still think over time the threshold will expand and the dog will be able to handle more distractions, more noise, and more stress.
Hope this helps you get your training back on track !!!
Happy Training !
A threshold in respect to training dogs is the point at which an animal can still think and perform a behavior reliably with short latency, speed and precision. Lots of things effect thresholds and your dog’s ability to respond reliably to learned cues. Things like being outdoors, other dogs, noise, traffic, cars, wildlife, food distractions, people passing by, bicycles, loud noises, etc all effect a dogs threshold for being able to block out the distractions and perform the learned behavior reliably. Not paying attention to your dog’s thresholds for distractions might be a problem in getting reliability from a dog that understands the cue in a quiet environment and then goes to a busy one. Or a threshold violation might totally trump a dog’s ability to think and respond to his owner in an acceptable way in a particular environment.
When a dog is within it’s comfort zone and is able to think and respond to his handler we call this being sub threshold. This means that the dog can easily respond to a known command, respond to it’s name, and pay attention to it’s handler. When a dog is over threshold it means that the environment is too much for the dog to ignore and be able to think and process information given by his handler. What this means for most dogs is that they can not learn anything because they are way over stimulated and overwhelmed by the environment.
Thresholds are important to consider in all training but especially when training reactive or shy dogs . For these dogs their fears combined with a busy environment will push them over the edge until they are frantically reacting and no longer thinking. You can not teach a stressed dog anything. The part of the brain that can process information and learning has to be present in order for training to be effective and if a dog is reacting continuously to things in the environment and can’t calm down enough to think, no real learning will take place. This is both good and bad news. The old thinking of not comforting a dog when they are frightened for fear of reinforcing their fear is not scientifically valid. You cannot reinforce an emotion, you can change an emotion by pairing a behavior with reinforcement but you can not make an emotion worse or better by paying attention to it. If your dog is frightened by all means comfort it, if your dog is angry, aggressive and reactive lead him to safety, take the pressure off make the scary thing go away. This will build your dog’s confidence in your ability to help him when he needs it. You will show him by your stepping in and removing him from situations which he has no skills to handle that he can rely on you to help him when he needs it.
So what about the Dog Whisperer and what he says about being the leader and forcing your dog to just get on with it and deal with it ? Well, for those of you with scared or aggressive dogs has it worked ? Most of the private training I’ve done is for reactive or shy dogs whose owners are at wits end to help their dogs overcome their fear and aggression. In the hundreds of people I have counseled I can tell you first hand the report…it doesn’t work. If it worked I’d be out of a job J. Sure with some dogs that aren’t that reactive or shy they get over it for the moment and the behavior their owner didn’t like is supressed. This means they no longer tell anyone how they feel anymore, but I can tell you from experience that they don’t feel any more confident, any less scared and given the right circumstances will fall back on their own ways and in some cases be far worse. Don’t be fooled by those who claim to have a permanent solution to a problem that doesn’t require a lot of effort on your part. All training takes time and the only thing that works to permanently change behavior is a solid training program based on the science of how dogs learn with a way to measure results and track progress so that we can make sure the behavior is moving in a desirable direction and not just covered up ! Considering your dog’s threshold is vitally important to this success. Without planning for this your training program will fall apart and you will not make progress with real measurable change. For those who say they’ve tried training but it hasn’t worked this is the problem, the threshold not the method. If you change the threshold and train the dog where he can still think over time the threshold will expand and the dog will be able to handle more distractions, more noise, and more stress.
Hope this helps you get your training back on track !!!
