4 ms·
As the old saying goes, if you put ten dog trainers in a room, the only thing they'll agree on is that nine of them have no idea what they're doing.
by awillen 6y ago
As the old saying goes, if you put ten dog trainers in a room, the only thing they'll agree on is that nine of them have no idea what they're doing.
- anonporridge 6y agoJudge a tree by its fruit I guess. I wonder if someone has tried to try to do a research study to compare the dogs that are outcomes of different schools of training. I imagine it would be hard to define and measure 'desirable' outcomes.
- heffer 6y agoIt has been attempted, albeit with a relatively small group of subjects and mostly focused on aversive vs. positive reinforcement methods: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0225023 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
- mgarfias 6y agoMaybe look at international competition, and see what kind of training everyone has converged on? There’s no one training Koehler in high level IPG (IPO/schutzhund) or one of the ring sports. I’m also not aware of actual LE/Mil doing anything Koehler. They’re all using all four quadrants of the operant conditioning.
- anonporridge 6y agoI'm sure it's easier to judge training methods for competition or legit working dogs where there are objective outcomes to measure. It's less obvious for the average person who just wants a well behaved pet.
- awillen 6y agoThe biggest challenge comes with the fact that you're often dealing with rescue dogs that are so wildly different from one another that you'd need a huge population and extremely consistent methods to show a meaningful result. It's more doable if things are controlled (e.g. take a bunch of German Shepherd puppies given to very experienced trainers at birth), but those circumstances don't necessarily tell you what the "best" method is in a generalizable fashion.