[nagdu] What's up with all the scavenging anyhow?

[Vivianna]

Tami,
you discribe this training method in a good way; coersive.
for me, i don’t want to coerse or bribe my dog to guide me.  i want a dog that loves to guide, that gets a total charge from his work, that likes to look out for me, that likes to show me things.
if he needs coersion to do his job, he’s not the dog for me.
i have had a look on the GDB website and, they say that, the reason that they are using treat based training is because they feel it gives them a higher success rate for placement.  is this because, lots of folks are just not good dog handlers and must use a treat to convince the dog to work for them?  i fear this is so.
i know of a woman who sent her dog back to GDB because, the dog refused to work one day when she ran out of treats.  she was in large busy area.
i have never fed any of my dogs by hand.  if i wish to give them a treat, i put it in their bowl.
once, when i was taking my dog outside to relieve, i was with a friend and he saw some meat pieces where i relieved my dog.  because, he was not used to getting anything that was not in his bowl, he did not take it.  the next day, there were more pieces of meat outside my door.  again he refused.
the third day, another guide dog user, the only other one in the apartment complex, found dog treats spread all up and down the hallway on his floor.  his dog did not go for it either.
you can just bet those were poisoning attempts.
i know i am in the minority on this whole topic but, i will always take the dog that works for the love of it and for praise.  and, yes, i can do this without using big mean leash corrections all the time.

Vivianna

> On Jul 1, 2015, at 10:35 AM, Tami Jarvis via nagdu <nagdu at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Vivianna,
> 
> Dogs are scavengers. Some do better at resisting the urge to scavenge than others. Scavenging guides have been a problem before the schools started to moved away from coercive training methods.
> 
> I train my dogs with treats from the ground up, including food refusal and not scavenging. It works very well.
> 
> Tami
> 
> On 06/30/2015 10:50 PM, Vivianna via nagdu wrote:
>> ok, here goes a contraversial post.
>> i am reading a load of posts about folks having problems with their dogs grabbing things off the ground.  it seems that, this is the most common problem that folks seem to be having with the second being dog distractions.
>> do you think that, since many schools are using food to train the dogs that this problem has come up?  i have had several guides and have never had a dog try and carry things around.  i also never use food as a reward for my dog.
>> i am just so totally against feeding my dog treats in order to get her to guide me properly.
>> from what i read, dogs are grabbing things off the ground while actually guiding, while lying on a bus or train, in restaurants, in stores, while relieving, etc.
>> for me, and, this is just my own preference, i could not work with a dog that did this.  i can put up with some behaviors but, this is definitely not one of them.
>> folks seem to think that it’s ok to treat the dog for good behavior and then they wonder why he’s so focused on food.  i have even had 3 labs and, they didn’t want to carry things around.
>> for a pet, yeah, maybe it’s cute to see the dog carrying around toys in public, but, a guide dog?  this should be a professionally trained dog doing a professional job, looking out for the handler.
>> i think that, if the dogs were trained without the use of treats this would be way less common.
>> this is all only my opinion and things that i, personally could not handle.
>> i have probably offended some but, maybe, i may just caused some to think about the food-based training a bit.
>> 
>> Vivianna
>> 
>> 
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