I understand where you’re coming from too.

I think the thing that makes the most sense to me is how Kevin described what I call the “chase me with hidden pops” game, which is a counter-conditioning exercise, to make the dog feel that hard pops on the collar are actually a good thing.

Basically he says that if you’ve got the dog’s drive revved up, and he’s chasing you full-bore, and you give him a good, hard pop on the collar he’ll do one of two things: either he’ll lose focus (his ears will go back, his shoulders get lower, he’ll look away, etc.), or it’ll make him even more driven to catch up with you; he’ll be more energized.

So if you’re doing the “chase me with hidden pops” and it DOESN’T make the dog more interested in chasing you, it DOESN’T keep him in the game, you’ve either popped him too hard, or you haven’t built his drive or arousal to a high enough level.

The thing about pain is that it’s kind of relative. I don’t want this to sound like the old dominance thing of “A little pain is good for the dog! How else is he gonna learn?” What I’m saying is that at a certain level of arousal something that would ordinarily be experienced as pain can actually be quite bracing, even pleasurable. Whether it’s Madonna telling the world she likes getting spanked during sex, or a lineman for the Chicago Bears saying he loves getting his first hard hit of the game, that he doesn’t feel truly alive until someone from the other team tries to hit him as hard as they can, etc., there’s a truth there. On a certain level pain and pleasure are interchangeable, or can be.

The other part of it is that you’re right. You want to leave physical corrections as a last resort. They should only be used as the third step of the training process, which the way I see it goes like this:

STEP 1: Here’s a game called “sit.”
STEP 2: Here are the rules of the game.
STEP 3: The rules always apply.

(Sit is a bad example because it’s not really critical that the rules should always apply the way it is with coming when called, instantly, no matter what else is going on.)

In the 1st step everything is positive. In the 2nd, if the dog doesn’t sit perfectly (the way he would at an obedience trial, sitting directly in front of you with his head up, etc.), you simply don’t reward him until he does it properly. In the 3rd step, the dog has to sit despite all kinds of distractions going on around him. The idea in using corrections there isn’t to punish him for NOT sitting because he saw a squirrel, or wants to sniff another dog; it’s to “shock” the dog’s system so as to redirect his energy and focus back onto you.

(And like I said, this isn’t critical with the sit the way it is with the recall.)

But you’re right. If you can get there without corrections, you should go for it.

I can’t wait to read Neil’s explanation of this.

LCK

Ben – I totally understand where you’re coming from, man. Hopefully my upcoming article on how shocks are implemented in NDT will help you figure out whether it will ever be useful for you.

Annette – Glad you found a useful article – keep coming by

Charmayne – Thanks for the link back. I look forward to hearing more about how your psychology skills come to bear on dog training – especially because NDT can be rather unconventional at times.