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

Thu Jul 2 03:19:59 UTC 2015

I'm writing this post from the perspective of a dog trainer and kennel
assistant who regularly works with dogs that don't know me, and barely
have the opportunity to bond to me.
The quickest way to form a relationship with a dog is to provide him
with food. This teaches a dog that you are good. He can trust you,
rely on you for further resources, and he now understands that more
good things will come from you. This quickly persuades him to listen
to you, and motivates him to want to do the things that you want him
to do.
The issue with praise is that all dogs don't care about you all of the
time. There's someone across the room that has played with, petted,
rubbed, and fed them before, and that person is the light of that
dog's life. Or there's females in heat 2 rows over who are far more
interesting than you will ever be with your silly high-pitched voice
and "good-boys!" There's a hundred dogs before who peed in this 1
spot, and that smell is the center of the universe. There's dogs over
there who look like they'd be much more fun to play with than to
listen to whatever it is you think you can get a dog to do. Or,
there's food on the ground that is more stimulating and
attention-grabbing than you are. Or, a dog has no idea what to do and
just stands there. He doesn't know, doesn't understand what you're
saying because he knows no commands, and food can lure him into the
right spot without force.
For all these situations, food is a primary reinforcer. Because a
dog's strongest sense is his sense of smell. You can get a dog's
attention with food. You can make a dog follow you with food. With
food, you can establish yourself as the only person or one of the
people a dog should trust.
I'll tell you, I work with dogs who don't know me, who don't trust
these new people with these new voices and new faces, and dogs who
don't understand what they are expected to do. So yes, I use food to
motivate them--to make them want what I want. If a dog won't get into
her cage, I toss a few treats in there, rather than begging, pleading,
pushing, pulling, prodding, forcing and fighting her to just get in
the God-blessed cage! It's much less stressful for both caretaker and
dog to just throw food into the cage, and voila! the dog climbs in
like magic.
Now, just because treats are a primary reinforcer, doesn't mean they
are the first reinforcer you resort to. It just means it is the most
rewarding reinforcer.
For instance, I will step into or crawl into a dog's cage to lure them
in before I resort to treats. But if a dog shows that they couldn't
give a crap about being with me in the cage, or being in the cage just
because I'm attempting to make it sound awesome, then yes, I whip out
the treats. It's quick, convenient, efficient, stress-free, and
force-free.

Many of the schools treat train because it speeds up training. A dog
understands a behavior is good when there's food involved. It
solidifies understanding quickly. Voices can be confusing with their
various tones, pitches, rates of speech, and inflections. But like the
clicker, food is consistent. It almost always means something good.
The dog has done, or is doing something good, and so he does it again
and again to keep getting the food.
But like basic commands, food is a basic reinforcer. You can build
upon it with more reinforcers, and eventually remove that food
reinforcer with a rewarding substitute. But that takes time.
This is not something that applies to, works for, or is necessary for
all dogs. But it is guaranteed to work with 8.5 out of 10.

Treat training is not the reason for scavenging. As someone said, dogs
are naturally scavengers. They are opportunistic carnivore scavengers,
so this is an instinctual behavior in many dogs. Notice that puppies
start out exploring with their mouths, picking things up, retrieving
things unnecessarily, and so on. This is not taught, it is engrained
within them, primarily for survival, though it is no longer needed.
Heck, even human infants do this! And like any behavior, sometimes you
can train out the instincts, and sometimes you can't. You can mitigate
it, but you might not be able to train out the behavior altogether.
Plenty of dogs have been treat trained, and don't have food
distractions. My golden was treat trained, and he is not a scavenger.
He is trained to eat on cue, regardless of whether it's on my hand, in
a bowl, or on the floor/ground. He is trained to leave something
alone, when I say "leave it," even if he's about to put his tongue to
a delicious beef heart. And if I don't say "eat" or "take it," he's
not eating; it is as simple as that.
I've trained plenty of dogs using treats, and they were perfectly able
to ignore things on the ground, even after being taught the "leave it"
or "ignore" cues using treats.

I don't see the link between dog distractions and the use of food
rewards encouraging or propagating this behavior issue. I have been
able to lessen the Golden Guy's dog distraction by using a head
collar, redirection, praise, and practice. But this has grown easier
as our relationship solidified, and I gained a better understanding of
force-free training, and calming techniques for myself and my dog.

A big problem is that the kennel reverses many house manners. I take
care of dogs who are well-behaved in their homes, but are balls of
troublesome energy in the kennel. My mentor raised a pup to be a guide
dog. After 3 weeks her dog was pulled from the program. She says that
in those 3 weeks, her dog was changed, and her manners haven't been
the same since.

I think a problem could be that we are using retriever breeds, but not
capitalizing on their retrieving abilities. In earlier days of guide
dog training, dogs were trained to find and retrieve dropped objects,
and even carry them for the handler. I'm not aware of a program that
trains or even encourages this behavior any longer. I'm only saying
this is a possible cause or correlative link, not that it is the
reason for scavenging. It's just a theory.

Furthermore, labradors seem to be the primary culprits for scavenging,
and in the earliest days of guide dogs, German shepherds and collies
were used. I'm not saying other guiding breeds don't scavenge. And
perhaps it is a faulty claim, considering most of the guide dog
population is comprised of labs, and so by default, most of the
scavenging guide dogs will be labradors. However, I've noticed that
compared to other breeds used for guiding, they are more
food-motivated, and more inclined to have their noses glued to the
floor and be distracted by food and other objects on the ground. I'm
not saying they're bad guides by any stretch, just pointing out some
simple, and perhaps harsh truths here.
Of course, labradors can easily be motivated by praise. They are
easily excitable creatures. However, it seems that labradors have
serious food obsessions in my experience.
-- 
Raven
Founder of 1AM Editing & Research
www.1am-editing.com

You are valuable because of your potential, not because of what you
have or what you do.

Naturally-reared guide dogs
https://groups.google.com/d/forum/nrguidedogs

On 7/1/15, Kaye Kipp via nagdu <nagdu at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> Most of the schools do treat train now.  I can see where it could lead to
> scavenging.
>
> Kaye
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nagdu [mailto:nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Vivianna via
> nagdu
> Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2015 7:40 AM
> To: NAGDU Mailing List, the National Association of Guide Dog Users
> Cc: Vivianna
> Subject: Re: [nagdu] What's up with all the scavenging anyhow?
>
> Yes, GDF does treat train.
>
> Vivianna
>
>> On Jul 1, 2015, at 9:26 AM, Applebutter Hill via nagdu <nagdu at nfbnet.org>
> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Vivianna,
>> I didn't realize that the schools were doing this. This is a major
>> step down IMO. I can understand the use of treats by a handler if the
>> dog develops some sort of aversion based on a bad experience; we
>> recently talked about dogs slipping when they jumped into SUV's and
>> not wanting to go to a certain location like work. Those incidents are
>> far different  than training a dog from scratch using treats. It goes
>> against everything I was ever taught in the past with my four guides.
>> I'd like to know if GDF is doing this. And, I can't imagine that this
> practice wouldn't lead to scavenging.
>> Donna & Hunter
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: nagdu [mailto:nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Vivianna
>> via nagdu
>> Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2015 1:51 AM
>> To: NAGDU Mailing List,the National Association of Guide Dog Users
>> Cc: Vivianna
>> 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 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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