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

[S L Johnson]

Hello:

I use treats when teaching Eva to find new places or when learning a new 
task.  She knows that she must not grab anything off the ground or from 
anyone else.  She will not grab treats out of my hand but will wait for me 
to say she can have it.  I've used treats with all my dogs for the past 
forty years and have not noticed any serious scavenging problems.  If one of 
them did scavenge, a firm quick correction usually solved the problem.  It 
didn't take them long to learn that grabbing things would get them into 
trouble.  I only had one dog who was an impossible scavenger.  She  would 
stop in traffic to grab stuff.  That little brat of a yellow lab had a 
career change four months after we left class.  I refuse to work a dog who 
will put my life in danger just because she wants to scavenge or be 
distracted.  I think a lot of behaviors begin when the dogs are young 
puppies.  That goes back to the puppy raiser thinking the puppy is cute and 
not correcting for these bad behaviors.  I would not let my dog carry 
anything while working.  They could become distracted and put you in danger 
if they happened to drop it  and stopped to pick it up again in the middle 
of the street.  Also, I think it would look very unprofessional for a 
properly working guide dog.

Sandra and Eva
-----Original Message----- 
From: Daryl Marie via nagdu
Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2015 5:02 AM
To: NAGDU Mailing List,the National Association of Guide Dog Users
Cc: Daryl Marie
Subject: Re: [nagdu] What's up with all the scavenging anyhow?

Viviana,

My dog does (have a mild scavenging problem, but it was much much more 
severe when we first got home.  If she is stressed, she tends to revert back 
to it, but the severity is NOTHING like it was.
We never used treats during training, either during the formal guide dog 
training or in my in-home placement, with one exception; I did use treats if 
she did perform a task she had struggled with for days/weeks.  I don't think 
that occasional treat made her a scavenger...

Daryl


----- Original Message ----- From: Vivianna via nagdu <nagdu at nfbnet.org> To: 
NAGDU Mailing List, the National Association of Guide Dog Users 
<nagdu at nfbnet.org> Cc: Vivianna <irishana at gmail.com> Sent: Tue, 30 Jun 2015 
23:50:30 -0600 (MDT) Subject: [nagdu] What's up with all the scavenging 
anyhow?  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 itâ?Ts ok to treat the 
dog for good behavior and then they wonder why heâ?Ts so focused on food. i 
have even had 3 labs and, they didnâ?Tt want to carry things around. for a 
pet, yeah, maybe itâ?Ts 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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