A younger thinner me on the left in about 1984, with Blue and my friend Cheryl Davis. We were teaching a 4H dog class in Callaway County.Way, way back when I was much younger I trained my first dog, Blue, from a book. (Okay, I know. A dog named Blue. Because he was a blue Doberman. Original, no? I've never been great at naming dogs. We all have failings.)
But I remember the book, and you can still find it today. It was The Koehler Method of Dog Training. Now since that time I've met some people who knew Bill Koehler. And they assure me that he was a genius at reading dogs and that he was a sweet and humane man. I've also heard that when Koehler (pronounced KEE-ler) wrote this book he was angry at someone. I don't know if that's true or not. But I think the Koehler book has done more harm to dogs and the dog training world than any other book written to date, and that's saying something. (The alpha rolling nonsense in the Monks of New Skete book so popular with a certain TV personality is probably in 2nd place).
In the Koehler book there's a discussion right up front about what he felt were namby-pamby cookie pushers. In Koehler's world, dogs never worked for food. They worked because if they didn't they would regret it big time. The verbal praise earned by avoiding corporal punishment was apparently enough. Koehler's method centers around the "obey me OR ELSE" philosophy. Some of the "or else's" described include hanging the dog, hitting it with rubber coated dowel rods, submerging its head in a hole filled with water until the dog was unconscious (apparently to stop digging). The Koehler book haunts us today because people still feel it's perfectly acceptable to badly abuse their dogs in the name of training.
And a lot of people still feel that giving treats to a dog in training is cheating. That if you do so, you are the dreaded cookie-pusher or (gasp) human pez dispenser. Which is deeply weird when you really think about it. Because in our real lives, we give tangible rewards for good behavior all the time.
Let's think of it a bit differently. What if you did your job and your boss was pleased and he came by and said thank you often. But when payday came, he just shrugged and smiled and said, "I'm really pleased with you, but no check, my praise should be enough." Huh? No paycheck? I bet you'd quit trying so hard (if not quit the job entirely), because though praise is nice, most of us work for the money not just out of the goodness of our hearts. Then there are the rewards we dispense to others. When a co-worker does something unexpectedly nice, sometimes we buy them lunch or a small gift. Most of us give our kids allowances. Good grades are sometimes rewarded with cash or presents.
Now, if you quit giving your kid anything but praise for cleaning his room would he stop loving you? Of course not. Would he be as quick to clean the room next time? Well maybe, but adding a cash incentive is more likely to get him to clean his room more often and with less prompting.
So why on earth do we deny our dogs a tangible paycheck? Yes, they like praise. Yes, they do work for love of us. Trust me, if they didn't love us they wouldn't put up with a quarter of the crap we visit upon their heads. I mean, the whole bath thing? And have you ever met a dog that loves getting its anal glands expressed? That's love baby. Using food in training is just a way to give a real reward they understand for a job well done.
Of course like anything else, there are proper ways to use food and ways to abuse it. Food should be a reward not a lure, and food should reward progress. A good instructor can help you figure out when to reward.
As for what kind of food, it needs to be small, soft, smelly, and yummy. It should be something out of the ordinary they don't get every day. No hard crunchy treats. And by small I mean tiny. I give my Dobermans pea sized pieces of frozen Bil Jac and they will turn themselves inside out for them. Other good choices are string cheese (take tiny pieces off), or a rotisserie chicken with bone and skin removed, chopped fine. Hot Dogs can be sliced into thin rounds and microwaved on Medium until leathery. Treats Unleashed has Jurassic Bark and also carries Zuke's Mini Naturals, a perfect size and texture for treats.
So be ready to pay up! Reward your dog with praise and food. You'll progress much more quickly and have a dog that is an enthusiastic worker.
--Robin
2 comments:
This just isn't fair. I don't train Koehler method at all, but this is dire misrepresentation of his methods.
If you are going to quote all the business about whacking with dowels rods and drowning, you should at least have the decency to mention that both those cases were a response to the owner saying, "Either he stops doing *blank* or he dies."
I agree that the bias against training with food is silly, but so is blaming all of that strictly on Bill Koehler!
Saying this his methods have done the most harm to dog training, or whatever over the top claim you made, is just shameful and makes you seem so dishonest. He trained an enormous amount of dogs that I'm sure you or I haven't even come close to. And whether or not I agree with his methods, I respect that. And I respect his understanding of dogs.
Emily, I stand by my statements. Many people have trained enormous numbers of dogs, with and without Koehler methods. And, unfortunately, the worst harm of the Koehler book is that he described as normal, and in detail, methods he felt should only be used as a last result.
Disregarding the fact that IMO he was quite wrong to use those methods even with bad cases (there are many much better methods to rehab a dog than whacking it with a stick or hanging it until it loses consciousness), the dire fallout from his descriptions is that people *reading* the book used those methods as routine and expected.
I have been training dogs for 25 years and have taught classes for quite awhile as well. Dogs are my passion and my business. And I still battle, routinely, folks who feel, as Koehler did, that the dog was always a potential enemy to be conquered, always trying to get the better of the human. The fact is, Koehler dealt with almost everything from a positive punishment standpoint, and it was the wrong thing to do.
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