Obediance - What is it and how is it used?

[Thornapple]

I chose this subject because I notice many questions that dance around this subject in these forums, but it is little understood and even less practiced properly by many.

I came to a point recently of recognizing a basic and fundamental truth a few of you more accomplished dog trainers clearly understand. For it is not the dog that is the cause of the training problem! It might surprise many reading this that there are few dogs that can not be a good and accomplished gun dog by an accomplished trainer (even the non traditional hunting dogs can be trained to be good field gun dogs if trained properly from the beginning).

So if obedience is not established at the very beginning and all else becomes a struggle when does it start, what is obedience, what does one look for, when is it applied, and how do you start to build on it? I ask this because I notice in these forums a tendency to jump ahead of the basics before these skills are solidly established. If that is the case what are the basics? What is obedience and how does one train for it is so fundamental?
Thornapple

[Hattrick]

Its starts day one when the puppy comes home.

[RayGubernat]

To me there is obedience which is willing compliance and then there is obedience which is forced obedience.

A bird dog has to know come and it has to know whoa. When you give the command to come the dog has to stop what it is doing ...instantly... and turn and burn back to you. When yo holler whoa///the dog has to stop...dead in its tracks and not move so much as a toenail until released.

How you get there with the dog makes ALL the difference in the world as to what kind of dog you ultimately end up with.

RayG

[ezzy333]

Obedience starts the day the pup comes home and never stops. I do not agree that it is the base that you build on with a pointing dog. It may be with a retriever. But a completely obedient dog is pretty much a robot and that is not what I want. I want to see independence combined with a level of obedience but not to the extent it takes away with the free spirit of the dog.

The word means the dog does as it is told and I tell my dogs very little when we are in the field. So it could still qualify for being obedient as long as we let the dog go without us saying anything. But if you are going to tell it where and how then you have taken way to much from the dog.

Much of obedience needs to come later than sooner.

Ezzy

[Francois P vd Walt]

Obedience?

This is a statement and applies to people at many levels, at the end it is between you and your dog. If he does what you want when you want how you want, remembering every handler him or hetself has their own level of obedience within.

Dogs will always push the boundry it will be up to the handler how much will be allowed or not, it is not fair to compare a animal with a brain as big as a golfball to a human. Altough the animal has much more to offer to a human, like sanity, unconditional love, loyalty etc.

In short obedience is a place were you are happy with what you achieved with your dog!

Remember to have fun!

[whoadog]

Obedience starts the day the pup comes home and never stops. I do not agree that it is the base that you build on with a pointing dog. Ezzy

Agree with the first sentence. Not sure what you mean in the second. Could you please expand a bit?

[Thornapple]

ezzy333 wrote:
"Obedience starts the day the pup comes home and never stops. I do not agree that it is the base that you build on with a pointing dog."
Ezzy,
I agree with Whoadog. How does one start with Obediance the day it comes home and then not build on it?
A problem with the word "Obediance" and the reason why I wanted to addres this, is not is not well understood by most dog owners, whether they are hunters or not. For too many it is a negative word, versus a positive training condition.
Some consider it a negative means of training. There is good reason for many to believe this. Too many professional dog trainers from my experience need to get dogs trained quickly. Time is money and the more effort and time required to get a dog trained is money out of their pocket. As a result I along with others have experienced techniques that are not only inapporpriate, but can shut a dog down. Fortunately there are more professional trainers that use obediance as a positive training tool that they build on, and acheive a happy willing dog that achieves the resluts their owners seek.
I still would like those that read this think about what obediance means to them. What are your experiences, both positive and bad? All of us have experienced them, and it would help a lot of younger or new dog owners learn from you what you have witnessed, or consider appropriate or not.
Thornapple

[4dabirds]

My idea of obedience is a dog that does what you want because the dog is self motivated to do it. In the post on clicker training I described a method of positive reinforcement for a dog that offers wanted behaviors for reward. When a dog is self motivated there is no chance of the dog being a robot. The dog is bold and confident because it is a willing party to the training regimen. It is when the dog is compelled to perform by force that its spirit is taken away.

[birddogger]

ezzy333 wrote:
"Obedience starts the day the pup comes home and never stops. I do not agree that it is the base that you build on with a pointing dog."
Ezzy,
I agree with Whoadog. How does one start with Obediance the day it comes home and then not build on it?
A problem with the word "Obediance" and the reason why I wanted to addres this, is not is not well understood by most dog owners, whether they are hunters or not. For too many it is a negative word, versus a positive training condition.
Some consider it a negative means of training. There is good reason for many to believe this. Too many professional dog trainers from my experience need to get dogs trained quickly. Time is money and the more effort and time required to get a dog trained is money out of their pocket. As a result I along with others have experienced techniques that are not only inapporpriate, but can shut a dog down. Fortunately there are more professional trainers that use obediance as a positive training tool that they build on, and acheive a happy willing dog that achieves the resluts their owners seek.
I still would like those that read this think about what obediance means to them. What are your experiences, both positive and bad? All of us have experienced them, and it would help a lot of younger or new dog owners learn from you what you have witnessed, or consider appropriate or not.
Thornapple

Positive training is benefical and should be as big a part of training as possible but there is also going to be a need for the negative in order to have a well trained dog. There are times when an appropriate punishment is needed instead of a simple correction. Same with children.

Charlie

[Thornapple]

To, Fordabirds
"My idea of obedience is a dog that does what you want because the dog is self-motivated to do it"
and Charlie,

........., and the rest you might read this column

After arriving at a point 62 years after gunning over mostly excellent dogs I finally decided to hunt over and train a “finished” upland field dog. All dogs were adequate but not “finished” as I knew they could and should have been. Not the dogs fault, but mine! So I set out to understand how to train at least one finished dog before my creeping age took its final toll.

As I approached this task I knew having coached kids in sports for 50 years and raising a couple of athletes myself what it is like to share opinions on how to motivate and train. Like coaching I knew seeking advice on upland dog training would be met with the same widely varied opinion on what works, or does not. Each belief unconditional and absolute, just like coaching. A task not bereft of opinion. Just look at these forums, it is filled with more opinion that brands of cereal at your grocery store. What I learned is that there is no path to success that is absolute, no task that is without its detractors or its adherents.

Having arrived as a freshman in college after a tour in Vietnam I had all the answers. I had witnessed more than any kid at 18 should or ever have to witness. So I knew what works, what doesn’t and how to achieve it. I found, I did not know a blessed thing! In the process of maturing in college I spoke to the likes of Bud Wilkerson, Wood Hayes, Bear Bryant, and Bo Schembechler on what works, what motivates, what gets an athlete to perform at an adequate then the highest level. At one time I had aspirations of being like them, until I realized these were very special men and what it took.

As Woody Hayes said, “Obedience is the result not the cause of what gets you there. Each of us has our different styles of training. No one has the answer, and each style in turn must be modified for each single athlete. For as far as I know Betty Crocker has not created a common recipe for all (trainers) coaches. There is one ingredient that all good coaches whether it is tennis, baseball, or football have in common. It is instilling discipline in what we want to achieve in our selves first and then transmitting that to the athlete. For it is teaching what discipline means that achieves obedience. However you want to define Obedience is totally irrelevant.” Before any of you provide an opinion on Coach Hayes; he was a decent, extraordinarily loyal, demanding, and someone each and every one of you would learn a great deal from on how to train your dogs

Interestingly when I spoke to Coaches Wilkerson and Schembechler and relayed Coach Hayes statement, they both laughed and said, “That is why he wins!” (I cleaned up the responses to fit the forum guidelines.)

So whether you are using a clicker, force fetch, a barrel, a whoa table, a place board, an e-collar, pigeons or chucker it is not obedience you are training for, it is discipline that allows both you and your dog to achieve obedience. As the very intimidating Coach Bryant said when he finally agreed to meet with me, “Define it any D___N way you wish! It is the result you want in each individual athlete, not anything or for anyone else!” I highlighted these two for a reason!

So my question remains, how do you train get the results you want!

Thornapple

[Sharon]

[ezzy333]

Thornapple, you have spent a lot of time and ink telling us what the question is, telling us that we all have different answers, that we all think our way is the only way, that our answers won't be right, and then you ask what our answers are. Why? What possiblr difference does it make how as long as we end up where we were going? Seems you are just posting long posts that have no correct answer and if there was an answer what would it tell anyone?

I think when you are riding a donkey in the desert and the donkey dies, you should get off of your dead "bleep" and walk. And if you tell the donkey to walk with you it probably will disobey and where does that leave us? Back where we started maybe?

Ezzy

[Chukar12]

Obedience and discipline and especially self-discipline are not necessarily synonymous. I may ask for obedience for a dog that is living in a human world, i.e. do not eat off the table, don't jump on the car door, leave underwear where you find them, etc... The manner and expediency that you expect this obedience in may be in correlation to the finished hunting product you get later. A puppy that is taught to come very early and expected to comply with that command with consistency and alacrity will look like it later in its dependency on humans for things that are inherently dog...i.e. aggressively seeking game with its nose. Just note the loopy, loopy hunting dog of the control freak.

Basic obedience for a house dog is not the ideal training for a hunting dog. I do acknowledge that some people especially those with limited room have little choice but to get compliance and get it quick, but if a puppy is given time to mature into itself and the obedience is applied at the dog's rate of consumption rather than the human's rate of necessity or desire it is a better finished product. Therefore, I avoid situations where there is danger or cause for fussing over a puppy, either by controlling where I choose to be or controlling what the dog gets to do ( some type of restraint). I can train pups to do a lot of "cute" and charming things, but what do I remove in doing so?

By all means, crate train, housebreak, etc...but come, whoa, sit, stay ... many of us are too quick on the trigger there.

[Thornapple]

Ezzy,
Yes I do ask a lot of questions, some people might find that offensive, but that is the way I and many folks learn. And no, I do not question others motives or techniques, far from it. By asking questions I and others also learn, because the answer might offer something different that I might use, or not. In business, law, or the political arena, all of which I am somehat familar, I ask a lot of questions. That is the way I and others get to understand motives, whether dog related or not. That is how folks of different and opposing views see benefit, the understand what is missing for them, that is how they grow by constantly asking questions. In our case it is simply what might work better, who has the best tip or technique. Ezzy you are not alone, graduate students of mine at are first also put off with few answers as that is the easy way, the hard part is questioning that challenges them. A truth that I have become to believe is that there is no one proven method or best answer irrespective of what it is or even training a dog. This is more true by the way the longer you have been doing it and the older you get. It evolves and changes as we learn from each other. I realize this might not be expedient or obviously comfortable for some, but that is what I have found works best, at least for me.
All my best, Thornapple

[ezzy333]

I to have spent a career asking questions but I am careful not to put limits of any kind on the answers. Much like I like to train dogs and that is to let them figure out what works for them. The less I say the less disobedient behavior will happen. Like I said before obedience is nothing more than following orders. A great performance is the dog doing what it was bred to do it with a minimum of instructions or limitations. When something comes up that we need to change then we will work on that and if I have to put limitations im place then we will work on obedience to that insure the performance is what we want. And with experience and training the new standard will become the norm and we are back to watching and guiding while the dog decides where and how and since there are no restrictions he is being obedient while being independent. But this sequence will continue for the life of the dog as I try to not get into situations that require obedience.

Ezzy

[Thornapple]

ezzy,
I understand clearly where you are coming from and what you are saying. In fact I agree with you on all points, except one that I have found difficult to deal with training dogs. Not that I disagee with your points, but I have found the approach you take (and many take) does not always fit the standard mold of training, at least in my case. This is what I am attempting to draw out of those that may have experienced what I call the "stubborn" versus the "well bred" dog as an example. Well bred is a term used a lot, but the older I get the more I am not sure I know what it means. However we can save this for another discussion!

I used to believe certain breeds of hunting dogs more stubborn or difficult to train, therefor needed more obediance. I too am an adherent of the duck tape method of dog training; the less said the better. However in all the years of working with various breeds of dogs I have owned, and like kids that I keep referencing, each temperment is different not the breed! And to my point I have found one technique (or obediance) does not fit all. That is what I tried to explain in that long drawn out (long winded? I laughed at the horse being beaten!! ) discussion above. A good example are two dogs I have now; one very difficult and headstrong, the other eager to learn and willing to please. Both the same breed and both too darn smart. I finally got the stubborn dog to perform at a high level, but it required what I call creative obediance. In other words I needed to instill an understanding of what was expected without shutting the dog down. But this dog required a tremendous amount of time, commitment and encouragement as well as discipline! So my point is attempting to understand what others have found succesful. As each of us train differently and each of us have different temperment dogs. After 71 years I am just begining to learn!