Don Sullivans Secret to Training the perfect dog
If you ask me anything that guarantees a totally well behaved dog in 5 minutes is crazy but I'm still curios about it. 
ren m |
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| Is this the weighted collar? |
| I went online to read about this, especially the collar. It took me awhile to find anything about the collar. The "frequently asked questions" link didn't work for me......lead to an infomercial sales page. Getting back to the collar......it appears to work under the same principle as a prong collar but with different style "pressure" pieces than a prong collar. I found one sentence on the website that stated the collar worked to correct & train the dog the same way a mother dog does. Well, that means applying pressure & sometimes nipping them when they need corrected for doing something not suitable. One thing I am sure the collar can't do is within seconds of the correction, give the dog a loving nudge & kiss the way a mother dog will. It does say it is NOT an electric shock collar. So my assumption would be that this video is a sales pitch aimed at those people who really don't want to spend 6-8 weeks going to a basic obedience class one night a week for an hour & then working with their dog 10-15 minutes a couple times a day, everyday, inbetween classes. The distraction of working & training a dog in a classroom setting with other dogs as distractions is essential in setting in the idea that the dog must ALWAYS listen to you over the distractions. Having trained dogs for years in both conformation & obedience I can tell you that there is no "1 size fits all" solution among dogs & even among the same breed. The owner is still going to have to commit to consistant positive training on a regular basis with his dog & also come up with real distractions to proof the dog. I find in real life that most people do have good intentions in this area but many do not follow thru to get the results expected. |
| Nothing makes a dog behave (totally) in five minutes. Apply enough force (electric or otherwise, and though they won't say so outright, since they're talking about levels I would guess electric pulse) and you can certainly suppress certain behaviors - sometimes permanently. Sometimes you merely redirect the emotions that cause the behavior, other times you can cause the dog to shut down all together, resulting in the absense of any behavior being mistaken for good behavior. Certainly that is often easier on the owner.
Just reading through his philosophy of training you can see it's another Kohler derivate. (Google Kohler and dog training) Lots of dominance theory, disdain for anyone who trains using more balanced methods, blah blah blah. I see this kind of thing springing up again and there's definitely a market for it because it appeals to those who don't want to have to make the effort to actually learn how to train a dog in a way that makes sense to the dog as opposed to what makes sense to us (force). This one seems to employ working off of a dog's play drive a bit if they have any. That's a step in the right direction at least. The over-reliance on corrections can work pretty well on certain dogs - a combination of very high drive and physically rather oblivious to pain, say a fieldbred lab or golden. It's a gamble with an OES. I'm embarrassed to admit I started my first OES out using Kohler because I didn't know anything better existed. I didn't feel comfortable with what I was told to do, so I came close to quitting obedience training after she got her CD, and just focusing on agility, which uses more advanced training methods (this makes sense because you can't force a dog to do agility the way you can force them to do many of the obedience exercises) Through agility I met a more enlightentened obedience trainer and happily kissed Kohler goodbye. His disciples live on and the most noteworthy thing about them is how much time they spend defending their methodology and and philosophy, usually with disparaging remarks aimed at "cookie trainers" and refering to the use of rewards in training as bribery. If you read something like that, you know it's some kind of Kohler derivate at work. I was just thinking about it last night as I was stewarding at a run-thru. There was the most gorgeous young boxer I had ever seen with his Novice A handler. His run thru was very pretty, but something seemed off. He was stressed throughout. I complimented his owner after his run and asked him where he trained. He told me and I said nothing - it was with the person I had started out. I didn't know she was still teaching. My heart damn near broke because though he'll probably get through novice just fine, this dog, who so clearly wants to do nothing more than please, will crash after due to a lack of confidence. It already shows. He bolted from the ring on the offlead and he was next to Sybil on the stays and whining and panting throughout. There's nothing I can do, people have to learn these things for themselves. Anyway, that's neither here nor there for a pet person who just wants a well behaved dog. Can these methods work? Sure they can up to a point. And with a really tough dog there may be no unfortunate side effects. It's probably faster (though five minutes, no, I don't think so) and definitely easier than other training methods to get some of the basics, mostly those aimed at surpressing bad behavior like lunging and jumping and pulling on the lead and such. However, at the risk of inducing serious stress in some dogs. They do, however, make the excellent point that most pet people these days treat their dogs like little furry humans and set no boundaries for them, which makes the dog tune them out at best and is too often a recipe for failure (like the ten month old foster sleeping at my feet). So I guess any training is better than no training if the life of the dog is at risk. Still, you can accomplish all of this without gadgets and simply by being consistent and working with the dog on a regular basis. That's what creates a relationship. Not jerking or zapping the dog for every little infraction, real or perceived. But that requires really learning about dogs and acquiring a finesse that takes time and effort, which is why the "quick" and dirty methods will always hold a certain appeal. Training a dog takes time and effort no matter what the method. There are no quick fixes. Kristine |
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