PBS "Nature" program on Dogs
I just now watched the PBS television episode from the series "Nature" that started this Belgian list discussion. For those who didn't see the program, it shows two problem dogs who go into training with experts in the work their breeds were originally bred to do. Both dogs showed strong instinct for work and had failed definitively in non-work homes.
The Bearded Collie had had a lot of contact with sheep without proper training, and had a strong habit of gripping them. He could easily have been put down or legally shot by a farmer for his behavior. I think they said once he was 3 years old and another time that he was 2 1/2. I did not catch whether the original plan with him included the possibility of placement with another trialing or working home after training. The trainer shown working with him appeared highly skilled and very in tune with the dog.
People on BELG-L questioned her yelling at the dog, but I would want to see more of the whole process before forming judgement on that. We never saw him grip a sheep after he came to her, but perhaps off camera he did abuse sheep at times. We also have no way of knowing from the peephole into the training process we got on the program just what proportion of her work with the dog involved that degree of yelling.
You could see that the dog was eager to earn her praise: she wasn't using treats, toys or games. She used effective praise and lavish, affectionate touch. I very much agree with her emphasis on developing a dog's composure. I also found it interesting, in light of what I'm seeing in my assistance dog, that she felt the ball play was detrimental to his herding work, in part because it encouraged gripping. As I understand it, herding dogs "hunt," but stop short of closing in for a kill. Her thinking was that the ball play was taking him too far into the sequence and encouraging a "kill," or at least excessive roughness with livestock. The program showed him grabbing at a toy and shaking it hard while carrying it.
She took him to a test before she thought he could perform it successfully--evidenced by her description of how nervous she was. Perhaps this was the only opportunity she had to check his progress with strange livestock at a strange location, in which case I would be likely to do the same thing. Sometimes you just need to jump off a cliff to find out if your gliding practice is going to pay off.
But if other opportunities were available to her, it would have made more sense to take him along more slowly. He did show progress at that event by not gripping the stock (at least not on camera), but since it was in front of God and everybody--including people whose opinion of her ability she valued--and he didn't get the job done, it would be very hard for any handler to feel good about it.
I wondered as I watched her train the dog by creating a tight bond with him and handling him very minutely whether she would ever be able to turn him over to another handler and have that training be stable. I wondered if he would always be high risk for getting too rough with livestock and maybe even someday killing, unless he remained in her hands. Perhaps she decided that was the case, thinking as an expert trainer. Or perhaps she just got too attached to give him up. I think they said she has 22 dogs. I wonder if he will get the attention from her that he clearly craves. Or maybe that's why he craves it so much and is willing to work so hard for it--because it's not a constant in his daily life.
The Bloodhound story thrilled me. My tracking dog was noise-sensitive, too, and knowing that, I was able to bolster him when he shied from a sound and get him quickly back to work. He was as work-oriented as that Bloodhound. I also got to spend a training night with some police K9 handlers and see that their handling on scent work was indeed as depicted in the story. They love working a good dog, and they can cope with imperfections. Heck, any good dog handler can, because there are no perfect dogs (or humans).
He was training that dog for someone else, but he gave her his heart. He did not have her as long as it took to train the Beardie, so that must have helped a bit with having to give her up. The Beardie was a bit shy with strangers, but the Bloodhound was a love-everybody girl.
The herding trainer emphasized subordinance with the dog in training, but I noticed she didn't ask that of her trained Border Collie. I can relate to that. After the initial several months of training with my last two dogs I felt the dog was truly my partner and I even changed the call name to a nickname of the name I trained with.
The Bloodhound trainer did not emphasize making the dog subordinate to him. Some people think the scenting dog "takes charge," but I don't see it that way. I see it as a similar partnership to how I work therapy dogs and assistance dogs, but not everyone works the way I do. And a whole lot of dogs cannot accept responsibility in the ways a Belgian can. Those dogs need to take a more subordinate role, because rather than pleasing the handler, they'd take advantage of greater responsibility to please themselves in unsafe ways. I believe that some of the mindset that makes a dog capable of herding work also gives me the rapport I want with my Tervs and makes them capable of developing the sense of responsibility I so value in a dog.
No livestock are at risk in scent work on leash, so there's seldom any occasion that correction could achieve any benefit. Bloodhounds can stay on leash, which means the training doesn't have to take voice control to anything like the level of a dog herding livestock off-leash. I'm sure there are some who use electronic collars in herding, though it doesn't seem to be common. I'd a whole lot rather see someone yell threateningly at a dog than use "electronic stimulation" (people who use those collars object to the word "shock").
A long line can't be all that useful in herding because so much of the time the sheep will be between you and the dog, even when you're close enough for a line to reach. I saw her use it on the program once, very briefly, probably a set-up so she could get in a correction. That leads me to believe he probably did grab livestock at some point during training. I believe they showed the long line some for recall training, too.
The herding trainer did use the voice of someone who'd lost her temper with the dog at times, but my impression was that it worked because the dog craved her approval and praise, not because the dog was afraid she would follow up with physical punishment. To me this is a critical difference. But again, we only saw the peek into the process that the camera gave us, a few minutes out of months of work. So there's a lot we do not know.
Part of this discussion has been whether herding ability is preserved in breeding that never proves that ability by training the dogs and demonstrating they can learn and perform the work. Someone said we don't really need dogs for that job anymore. By that argument you could say we don't need hunting dogs, either, but I believe we do need both. And I believe the instincts will be lost if the work to prove the breeding stock is not put in. The deep divisions between working and show dogs in breeds such as the Labrador should be enough to demonstrate that.
That's not to say that it's wrong to breed Belgians for the other jobs many of them do so well. We just did a book on DogRead about genetic selection and what makes for the healthiest purebred dogs who can still meet other breed criteria. One key is periodically breeding back to bloodlines closer to the foundation of the breed, such as dogs from the country of origin. Another is breeding to dogs with phenotypes you want who are not close to your dog's bloodlines. Terv breeders do a lot of both. From what I can see, it's working.
From the point of view of preserving herding ability in the breed, it doesn't take everyone breeding for that. It takes some breeding for it. Do we want to see more Belgian therapy dogs and assistance dogs? It doesn't take all breeders breeding for that, only some. Tervs are demonstrating that a dog can be a good conformation show dog and a working dog, too. Another book that we're doing on DogRead in April deals with some research about that.
It helps that the Belgian breed standards fit a functional, agile dog with stamina. The ones capable of chilling out when not working have the most stamina for work. They also have the best chance of avoiding gastric torsion. This ability is trained, but impossible to train if the genetics for it are not there. Like herding!
For me the Bloodhound's story had a happy ending. The Bearded Collie's story, not so much. But who's to say the Bloodhound won't get shot by a suspect or a stray bullet during a search, while the Beardie lives a long and satisfying life before dying in his sleep at the handler's feet some quiet evening.
The Bearded Collie had had a lot of contact with sheep without proper training, and had a strong habit of gripping them. He could easily have been put down or legally shot by a farmer for his behavior. I think they said once he was 3 years old and another time that he was 2 1/2. I did not catch whether the original plan with him included the possibility of placement with another trialing or working home after training. The trainer shown working with him appeared highly skilled and very in tune with the dog.
People on BELG-L questioned her yelling at the dog, but I would want to see more of the whole process before forming judgement on that. We never saw him grip a sheep after he came to her, but perhaps off camera he did abuse sheep at times. We also have no way of knowing from the peephole into the training process we got on the program just what proportion of her work with the dog involved that degree of yelling.
You could see that the dog was eager to earn her praise: she wasn't using treats, toys or games. She used effective praise and lavish, affectionate touch. I very much agree with her emphasis on developing a dog's composure. I also found it interesting, in light of what I'm seeing in my assistance dog, that she felt the ball play was detrimental to his herding work, in part because it encouraged gripping. As I understand it, herding dogs "hunt," but stop short of closing in for a kill. Her thinking was that the ball play was taking him too far into the sequence and encouraging a "kill," or at least excessive roughness with livestock. The program showed him grabbing at a toy and shaking it hard while carrying it.
She took him to a test before she thought he could perform it successfully--evidenced by her description of how nervous she was. Perhaps this was the only opportunity she had to check his progress with strange livestock at a strange location, in which case I would be likely to do the same thing. Sometimes you just need to jump off a cliff to find out if your gliding practice is going to pay off.
But if other opportunities were available to her, it would have made more sense to take him along more slowly. He did show progress at that event by not gripping the stock (at least not on camera), but since it was in front of God and everybody--including people whose opinion of her ability she valued--and he didn't get the job done, it would be very hard for any handler to feel good about it.
I wondered as I watched her train the dog by creating a tight bond with him and handling him very minutely whether she would ever be able to turn him over to another handler and have that training be stable. I wondered if he would always be high risk for getting too rough with livestock and maybe even someday killing, unless he remained in her hands. Perhaps she decided that was the case, thinking as an expert trainer. Or perhaps she just got too attached to give him up. I think they said she has 22 dogs. I wonder if he will get the attention from her that he clearly craves. Or maybe that's why he craves it so much and is willing to work so hard for it--because it's not a constant in his daily life.
The Bloodhound story thrilled me. My tracking dog was noise-sensitive, too, and knowing that, I was able to bolster him when he shied from a sound and get him quickly back to work. He was as work-oriented as that Bloodhound. I also got to spend a training night with some police K9 handlers and see that their handling on scent work was indeed as depicted in the story. They love working a good dog, and they can cope with imperfections. Heck, any good dog handler can, because there are no perfect dogs (or humans).
He was training that dog for someone else, but he gave her his heart. He did not have her as long as it took to train the Beardie, so that must have helped a bit with having to give her up. The Beardie was a bit shy with strangers, but the Bloodhound was a love-everybody girl.
The herding trainer emphasized subordinance with the dog in training, but I noticed she didn't ask that of her trained Border Collie. I can relate to that. After the initial several months of training with my last two dogs I felt the dog was truly my partner and I even changed the call name to a nickname of the name I trained with.
The Bloodhound trainer did not emphasize making the dog subordinate to him. Some people think the scenting dog "takes charge," but I don't see it that way. I see it as a similar partnership to how I work therapy dogs and assistance dogs, but not everyone works the way I do. And a whole lot of dogs cannot accept responsibility in the ways a Belgian can. Those dogs need to take a more subordinate role, because rather than pleasing the handler, they'd take advantage of greater responsibility to please themselves in unsafe ways. I believe that some of the mindset that makes a dog capable of herding work also gives me the rapport I want with my Tervs and makes them capable of developing the sense of responsibility I so value in a dog.
No livestock are at risk in scent work on leash, so there's seldom any occasion that correction could achieve any benefit. Bloodhounds can stay on leash, which means the training doesn't have to take voice control to anything like the level of a dog herding livestock off-leash. I'm sure there are some who use electronic collars in herding, though it doesn't seem to be common. I'd a whole lot rather see someone yell threateningly at a dog than use "electronic stimulation" (people who use those collars object to the word "shock").
A long line can't be all that useful in herding because so much of the time the sheep will be between you and the dog, even when you're close enough for a line to reach. I saw her use it on the program once, very briefly, probably a set-up so she could get in a correction. That leads me to believe he probably did grab livestock at some point during training. I believe they showed the long line some for recall training, too.
The herding trainer did use the voice of someone who'd lost her temper with the dog at times, but my impression was that it worked because the dog craved her approval and praise, not because the dog was afraid she would follow up with physical punishment. To me this is a critical difference. But again, we only saw the peek into the process that the camera gave us, a few minutes out of months of work. So there's a lot we do not know.
Part of this discussion has been whether herding ability is preserved in breeding that never proves that ability by training the dogs and demonstrating they can learn and perform the work. Someone said we don't really need dogs for that job anymore. By that argument you could say we don't need hunting dogs, either, but I believe we do need both. And I believe the instincts will be lost if the work to prove the breeding stock is not put in. The deep divisions between working and show dogs in breeds such as the Labrador should be enough to demonstrate that.
That's not to say that it's wrong to breed Belgians for the other jobs many of them do so well. We just did a book on DogRead about genetic selection and what makes for the healthiest purebred dogs who can still meet other breed criteria. One key is periodically breeding back to bloodlines closer to the foundation of the breed, such as dogs from the country of origin. Another is breeding to dogs with phenotypes you want who are not close to your dog's bloodlines. Terv breeders do a lot of both. From what I can see, it's working.
From the point of view of preserving herding ability in the breed, it doesn't take everyone breeding for that. It takes some breeding for it. Do we want to see more Belgian therapy dogs and assistance dogs? It doesn't take all breeders breeding for that, only some. Tervs are demonstrating that a dog can be a good conformation show dog and a working dog, too. Another book that we're doing on DogRead in April deals with some research about that.
It helps that the Belgian breed standards fit a functional, agile dog with stamina. The ones capable of chilling out when not working have the most stamina for work. They also have the best chance of avoiding gastric torsion. This ability is trained, but impossible to train if the genetics for it are not there. Like herding!
For me the Bloodhound's story had a happy ending. The Bearded Collie's story, not so much. But who's to say the Bloodhound won't get shot by a suspect or a stray bullet during a search, while the Beardie lives a long and satisfying life before dying in his sleep at the handler's feet some quiet evening.
posted by Kathy Diamond Davis | 3:33 AM
<< Home