mnp13 wrote:No no no... don't get me wrong. I know 100% that Asja is not your dog and you do not make the decisions about/for her training. I was just curious why the decision was made to go to compulsion instead of staying with primarily motivational when she was doing so well with it.
I did not mean to come off like you made the decision.
Here's what you don't get. Just b/c someone uses compulsion DOES NOT mean they don't use primarily motivational. We both do. Most of our training sessions with ALL of our dogs are primarily positive reinforcement: food, toys, and bites. We don't sit there hammering our dogs on pinch collars. If that's what you think, then you're mistaken. In fact, most of Nisha's obedience over the last week has been positive reinforcement only. Tonight, in 8 minutes of OB with her, I corrected her 2 times. Yet she had 3 hot dogs. I'm not sure how that's ANYTHING but primarily motivational. Same thing goes for Cy's OB sessions...same thing even goes for Jue and Asja.
You can use compulsion without making it your primary tool. For every correction I give, my dogs get 10 times more reward.
Take Ricardo for example. Do you think Jerry used primarily compulsion simply because he believes in using compulsion for training? Well, he didn't. If he had, he would've ended up in the hospital. See, before Ricardo came to the US, he put 4 handlers in the hospital.
Being a good trainer means you're able to find a balance between motivation and compulsion, and being able to use all the ALL the tools, clicker included, at your disposal to get the best possible obedience.