Has anybody thought of or tried to use ecollar technology on a raptor?

[EAZFalconer]

The dog trainers have that down to a science where it is a means of communication and not punishment.

[kitana]

Well, like it or not, the ecollar is and always will be a form a punishment. Punishment means something that will stop a behavior from happening.

Punishment, in its milder and more severe forms, have been tried on almost every species that men laid their hands upon. However mildly they are, they can have bad side effects even when used "correctly" and there is always a technique available that doesn't use punishment and that will lead to the same results. That's the reason why most wild animal trainers use reward based training technics instead of punishment based ones, because they don't want to deal with the risks of nasty side-effects. Dogs are a very forgiving species, we can beat upon them, break their bones and make them bleed and they will come back to their torturer and lick their hands as if to ask forgiveness for whatever they did wrong. Most species aren't as forgiving however, thus the positive training.

[rkumetz]

It would be difficult to build a training collar that would be light and small enough to fit on a bird. That is reason 1 why it would not be a good idea.

The 2nd reason is that (as Audrey pointed out) dogs are social animals and birds of prey are not.

Yell at your dog and he puts his tail between his legs and tries to get you to like him again. He wants the alpha dog to be happy with him.

Do something like that to your bird and he is likely to slip you the middle talon so to speak and head for the hills.

There are some exceptions to this: Harris' tend to have some recognition of social hierarchy. I can grab my MHH to maintain equipment or even toss him out the window like a football but he shrugs it off and is landing on my shoulder 5 minutes later. As far as I can tell he just assumes
I am the alpha in the family group. Perhaps I am delusional but that is the conclusion I have reached.

[EAZFalconer]

It would be difficult to build a training collar that would be light and small enough to fit on a bird. That is reason 1 why it would not be a good idea.

The 2nd reason is that (as Audrey pointed out) dogs are social animals and birds of prey are not.

Yell at your dog and he puts his tail between his legs and tries to get you to like him again. He wants the alpha dog to be happy with him.

Do something like that to your bird and he is likely to slip you the middle talon so to speak and head for the hills.

There are some exceptions to this: Harris' tend to have some recognition of social hierarchy. I can grab my MHH to maintain equipment or even toss him out the window like a football but he shrugs it off and is landing on my shoulder 5 minutes later. As far as I can tell he just assumes
I am the alpha in the family group. Perhaps I am delusional but that is the conclusion I have reached.

With dogs, ecollar training is not associated with the trainer. The good trainers don't use voice commands at all in the field except for a command to heal and one to come here. Most of the ecollar training is done as a tickle and associated with check cord training but they do have higher settings that hurt that would be called punishment. But with the punishment, the dog associates it with the action not with the trainer.

[hawkerev]

Well, like it or not, the ecollar is and always will be a form a punishment. Punishment means something that will stop a behavior from happening.

Punishment, in its milder and more severe forms, have been tried on almost every species that men laid their hands upon. However mildly they are, they can have bad side effects even when used "correctly" and there is always a technique available that doesn't use punishment and that will lead to the same results. That's the reason why most wild animal trainers use reward based training technics instead of punishment based ones, because they don't want to deal with the risks of nasty side-effects. Dogs are a very forgiving species, we can beat upon them, break their bones and make them bleed and they will come back to their torturer and lick their hands as if to ask forgiveness for whatever they did wrong. Most species aren't as forgiving however, thus the positive training.

Have you ever ecollar trained a dog ?

[kitana]

Have you ever ecollar trained a dog ?

No, and I will never. I will never stop someone from doing so however, I respect people's decision on the matter. But my formation enables me to train behaviors without using aversives of any kind, so if I ever want to use an aversive, I'll take a few moments and think about a way to avoid it, and if I have to ask more knowledgable people with more experience than I have (read: professional animal trainers, usually zoo and marine mammals trainers, or dog clicker trainers) I'll do it. There is always a way around it, sometimes it's easily found, sometimes it needs more thoughts, but a large part of my job is to treat dogs submitted to punishment (no matter how mild they can all have side effects) and I won't take the chance to see these problems arise with my own animals, be they dogs or cats or hawks.

[TiercelR]

The neck is a very vulnerable area for a raptor, but maybe if the system is placed on the backpack along of the transmiter, so its weight will be well distributed, and its antenna do not will be pendant from the neck of the raptor as pass with both the neck-mounted transmiters and bells.

[outhawkn]

Well, like it or not, the ecollar is and always will be a form a punishment. Punishment means something that will stop a behavior from happening.

Punishment, in its milder and more severe forms, have been tried on almost every species that men laid their hands upon. However mildly they are, they can have bad side effects even when used "correctly" and there is always a technique available that doesn't use punishment and that will lead to the same results. That's the reason why most wild animal trainers use reward based training technics instead of punishment based ones, because they don't want to deal with the risks of nasty side-effects. Dogs are a very forgiving species, we can beat upon them, break their bones and make them bleed and they will come back to their torturer and lick their hands as if to ask forgiveness for whatever they did wrong. Most species aren't as forgiving however, thus the positive training.

You dont understand how to use it properly then.............

[kitana]

You dont understand how to use it properly then.............

No, I fully and thoroughly understand the use of an ecollar, probably even better than most who use it. I studied the principles at lenght. I could describe it to you in details in OC terms, as well as what happens in the brains biochemistry when the animal receives the shock (no matter how small the shock is), what pathways are modified for life after that and how it can go wrong, biochemically and thus behaviorally, even when the training is well done. I could also go on and on about what happens when humans are "trained" with an ecollar, which is frankly quite funny in a desperate kind of way (Julie Shaw from purdue University did this experiment if you want to know more). But I will never convince no one to stop using it, and no one will never convince me it is needed nor it can be used with a 100% safety margin, so I'll leave the discussion as it is for it not to be thrown off path.

To my eyes, the real questions are these:
1)What unwanted behavior do you want to modify using an ecollar?
2)What behavior would you want to see in place of the unwanted one?
3)How can this (or these) behaviors be modified with a similar result without the use of the ecollar.

[andy hall]

Here is my question and functional analysis about e-collar use

Did the unwanted behavior significantly reduce in frequency?
yes - then it is punishment
no - then it is abuse

I have used them and even sold them for a few years. Have not touched one in 13 years, and have a much higher success rate for training. The idea of using one for a bird is completely deplorable to me. There is no situation that I could see it being effective with a bird (or almost any animal for training purposes).

Andy

[rkumetz]

Here is my question and functional analysis about e-collar use

Did the unwanted behavior significantly reduce in frequency?
yes - then it is punishment
no - then it is abuse

I have used them and even sold them for a few years. Have not touched one in 13 years, and have a much higher success rate for training. The idea of using one for a bird is completely deplorable to me. There is no situation that I could see it being effective with a bird (or almost any animal for training purposes).

Andy

I agree with this. The collar is designed to provide negative stimulus when the animal presents some undesired behavior. It essentially works on the premise that dogs (being smarter than people) will adhere to the "if it hurts then don't do that" principle.

What sort negative behavior does one expect to counter with a collar?
Carrying? Not returning to the glove? With the exception of screaming I can't think of any behavior which might effectively be deterred using a negative stimuli such as a collar.

When we were kids we used to want to fill our fishing tackle boxes with all of the latest gadgets. My dad would remind us that if you don't know how to fish all the junk in the world is pretty much useless. Granted that is a simplification but at some point training boils down to establishing a relationship with your bird and learning to read it. Nobody would ever mistake me for someone who would miss the opportunity to build a better mousetrap but you always need to think whether or not what you are trying is a better mouse trap or a pet rock.

[outhawkn]

Here is my question and functional analysis about e-collar use

Did the unwanted behavior significantly reduce in frequency?
yes - then it is punishment
no - then it is abuse

I have used them and even sold them for a few years. Have not touched one in 13 years, and have a much higher success rate for training. The idea of using one for a bird is completely deplorable to me. There is no situation that I could see it being effective with a bird (or almost any animal for training purposes).

Andy

What if I'm using not to stop an un-wanted behavior but to produce a desired behavior?

[outhawkn]

No, I fully and thoroughly understand the use of an ecollar, probably even better than most who use it. I studied the principles at lenght. I could describe it to you in details in OC terms, as well as what happens in the brains biochemistry when the animal receives the shock (no matter how small the shock is), what pathways are modified for life after that and how it can go wrong, biochemically .

Your telling me that a stimulation so small that I cant feel it is going to adversely affect the dog biochemically...............
Could you point me to the research?

[Mandragen]

Exellent thread, although a controversial one, I agree with everything Audrey has said. There is an old school of training and a new school, this is definitely old school. Just like anything else it can be done effectively and without harm to the animal, but it's still punishment.

These might help...

http://www.psychology.uiowa.edu/facu...shment.html#pp example

Punishment doesn't necessarily mean that you are hurting an animal, but a relationship using punishment as a training tool is definitely different than one using reinforcement. Think about what happens when you are driving down the road and you see a police car, to some certain extent you double check everything and make sure that you are doing the right thing out of fear of getting a ticket. Most people get nervous around them, which isn't exactly a fun thing. Most individuals' relationship with an officer is based upon punishment. You want to do the right thing for them but out of fear of punishment for doing the wrong thing.

Now think about the relationship you have with someone or something that is reinforcing. My Dad used to reward me for getting A's on my report card, however I was not punished for anything lower. I got straight A's because I wanted to be reinforced. I wasn't afraid of not getting them. How do you feel when you think about going to get ice cream, going to Best Buy, the mall, Disney World, Vegas... the same way as when having to go the the dentist or doctor?

[rkumetz]

What if I'm using not to stop an un-wanted behavior but to produce a desired behavior?

Can you please explain how one uses a negative stimuli to produce a desired behavior? A collar produces an unpleasant sensation that causes a dog to think something like: "hey- when I bark it is kind of unpleasant so I should probably not do that again". Which is similar to a sufficiently evolved human deciding it would not be good to touch the hot pot a 2nd time after having a negative sensation the first time.

I am not trying to flame anyone. I just can't see how this will work.

Splain............

[kitana]

Your telling me that a stimulation so small that I cant feel it is going to adversely affect the dog biochemically...............
Could you point me to the research?

If it's so small that you can't feel it, it won't affect the behavior at all. If it affects (stop) the behavior, it is therefore strong enough to be felt, and if it strong enough to be felt, it can have deep effects on the mental of the animal.

The resources about the side-effects of punishment are widely available, more than that they are widely vulgarized for regular people without a degree in psychology. If you look up Jesus Rosales-Ruiz research on poisoning the cue, and continue from there, you will be on your way to get a better understanding of punishment and reinforcement. Plus, many of the articles on this website (http://www.clickersolutions.com/articles/index.htm), although not all of them are from post-graduate researchers such as Jesus R-R, are bringing excellent infos to ones who want to understand. And finally if you are really interested, grab Temple Grandin's book "Animals in translation", it will blow you away, but it is not an easy read. It goes in depth about fears, consequences of punishment and fear, etc, but is still understandable by the general public.

[Mandragen]

What if I'm using not to stop an un-wanted behavior but to produce a desired behavior?

explain?

[outhawkn]

If it's so small that you can't feel it, it won't affect the behavior at all. If it affects (stop) the behavior, it is therefore strong enough to be felt, and if it strong enough to be felt, it can have deep effects on the mental of the animal.

The resources about the side-effects of punishment are widely available, more than that they are widely vulgarized for regular people without a degree in psychology. If you look up Jesus Rosales-Ruiz research on poisoning the cue, and continue from there, you will be on your way to get a better understanding of punishment and reinforcement. Plus, many of the articles on this website (http://www.clickersolutions.com/articles/index.htm), although not all of them are from post-graduate researchers such as Jesus R-R, are bringing excellent infos to ones who want to understand. And finally if you are really interested, grab Temple Grandin's book "Animals in translation", it will blow you away, but it is not an easy read. It goes in depth about fears, consequences of punishment and fear, etc, but is still understandable by the general public.

I might not have been clear about the way I worded a sentence. If the stimulation is so slight that I personally can't feel that level of stimulation with my fingers but the dog can feel it, I have a hard time believing thats going to do the dog damage....?

[Keith Denman]

You could rap the collar around the body under the wings. I think after a couple of shocks that the bird would figure out what is shocking it and when you go and try to put it on the bird would react negitively towards it. Just a thought.

[Mandragen]

If an individual can feel something, emotionally or physically, it has the potential to have an affect in some way, sometimes greatly. Take a slight breeze for example, sometimes so slight that you can barely feel it but can mean the world of difference if you are hot or cold.

The intensity of the stimulus to you doesn't carry any weight in this equation. It doesn't matter how you feel about it, or in this case don't feel. Someone can call me fat and I'll ask for another piece of that pie, but someone say that to another and it could cause them to take the easy way out.

[Dutch]

In my opinion, Audrey is dead on. None of the historical falconry books record any methods for negative reinforcement.

Jack Mavro said, "Falconry is gently leading on."

J. Stoddart

[rocgwp]

What if I'm using not to stop an un-wanted behavior but to produce a desired behavior?

This is precisely how I use an e-collar with my dogs. An e-collar is a tool I use for a short period of time in training. The e-collar is valuable in helping "generalize" a known cue and bring it under better stimulus control. George Hickox calls it contrast training and is a master at this. I don't know if I will explain it well, but here is the premise...

You use a CR (clicker) and rewards to teach a desired behavior. Once the dog is offering the behavior consistently you overlay a cue. At that point you begin only CRing and rewarding the behavior when the cue is given. When the dog will give the desired behavior on cue 80% of the time, you can move on to generalizing the cue. This is where the e-collar comes in. This also assumes you have gone through a process to teach the dog how to turn off the collar and that the dog has received some other form of negative reinforcement other than the collar (i.e. a bonker). You give the known cue to the dog. If the dog offers the behavior you click and reward. If the dog does not offer the behavior you give a different Marker Signal (One that will always precede the negative reinforcement) and the give the negative reinforcement. The trick to this working is the use of the Marker Signal preceding the negative. Because the dog understands the positive marker, they quickly understand the negative Marker Signal. Another key is that if the negative marker is given it is ALWAYS followed by a negative. Since a variable schedule reinforces a behavior (either positive or negative) you want to be consistent and always follow the Negative Marker with the negative. Otherwise, this is how a "collar wise" (or really "Correction wise") dogs is created.

What happens is the dog quickly learns that when the know cue is given, if it complies, it gets a reward. If not, it is notified with a Negative Marker and then a negative. The collar is used to teach the dog that if it does anything other than offer the desired cue, it will be given a negative. VERY quickly you see the dog offer the behavior when the first sound of the Negative Marker is given. The temptation is once the dog starts offering the behavior in response to the Negative Marker to not follow up with the actual negative. If you are consistent and give the negative anytime the Negative Marker is given, you will soon not need the negative or the negative marker. The dog will offer the behavior on cue in very demanding situations with lots of distractions.

This method works great. I've seen it work on very soft dogs and on very stubborn dogs. The e-collar is just a tool in one's training bag. It is a way to get a behavior very reliable in a relatively short period of time without putting a lot of force or pressure on the dog.

I should also mention that when I use the e-collar I use VERY LOW levels of stimulation. I go through a process of collar conditioning that teaches the dog how to turn off the collar and what the Negative Marker is. In 1-2 short sessions the dog is responding to stimulation so low that I am unable or barely able to feel it on my hands at that level. Once I took my my hardest headed wirehair through this process, he responded to a correction level of 10 out of 50 on my collar. I can't feel the stimulation on my hand until it gets to six. My current female wirehair that passed her NAVHDA Utility test with a 192 out of 204 possible points was trained with a correction level of 6.

[kitana]

I'm glad to see many people understand the downfalls of punishment.

First, stopping a behavior is punishment. If you add something aversive to stop the behavior, you are using positive punishment, positive in the mathematical sense (+). Ecollar is positive punishment, no matter how you word it or want to see it.

When you stop using the punishment, you are using negative reinforcement, negative in teh mathematical sense (-), you remove (-) an aversive as a reward. You can use negative reinforcement to reward a behavior: the dog bakrs, he gets zapped which stops the barking, thus it is a positive punishment, then as he stops barking yo stop zapping, earning the dog a negative (-) reinforcement for keeping quiet. So ecollar also brings negative reinforcement, that's the way it works.

Any positive punishment can lead to mental damage, and negative punishment (removing a reward) as well but it takes longer. It does not always happen, for if it did we would never ever use punishment, but the risk is high. What side effects can happen? The strain on the relationship is a very real one, as demonstrated by the policeman analogy. The creation of fears/shyness/agression is a very real one as well. One has to understand, before using any type or strenght of punishment, that animals will try to link the punishment to their environment way before they link it to their behavior. They will take a mental picture of the world around them as they get the punishment, and make associations, then decide later on how they will act toward the things that were in the pictures. They kind of decide that they were zapped because of the things that surrounded them, not because they acted wrong, so they may become fearful/shy of the things they saw in the picture, and even react agressively toward them later on. The fear pathways that are activated in the brain when the animal receives a punishment are impossible to erase; one can ease the fears, but they will come back under stress. And yes, the falconer can very well be part of the picture.

Finally, to be effective, punishment has to be timed perfectly at the precise moment when the animal thinks about acting "wrongly", up to the point where he starts acting. Punishing even a second after the act won't work. Moreover, punishment has to be strong enough not to be used more than once, max 3 times. So before to put the ecollar on an animal, you have to have perfect timing (try throwing a tennis ball in the air and zapping as it stops moving before going down, then zapping as it touches the ground... you'll see our timing is lousy!) and perfect strenght of stimuli to obtain teh desired response. Even when used perfectly, you could still end up with mental damage and unpleasant, long-lasting side-effects. And there is always a way to train the exact same behavior out or in an animal without the use of any aversive. Always.

Why do people like using punishment? A british study showed that, unbeknownst to the punisher, the pleasure pathways in the brain are strongly activated when the punisher delivers a punishment for a behavior he deemed wrong. Delivering a "deserved" punishment brings a very strong positive reinforcement to the punisher, regardless of the result of the punishment, weither it worked in preventing the occurence of the punished behavior or not. The pleasure pathways can then build shortcuts that will activate at a hairtrigger, thus being even more reinforcing. The neurotransmitters used in this pathway also have a very strong addictive effect, they act like a drug would act and one will want to experience the feeling again. Those are some reasons why we, as human beings, have the reflex to punish, not to reinforce, and we have to train ourselves to become positive trainers...

[kitana]

Jeff, I strongly suggest you read the research of Jesus Rosales-Ruiz about Poisoning the cue. He studied exactly the procedure you are speaking about and demonstrated the very potent negative side effects it has on the trainees, which were worst in some cases than when the behavior was trained using purely positive punishment/negative reinforcement.

[Tom Smith]

I have used the e collar to stop my dogs from attacking porcupines on several occasions and also I have stopped them from crossing busy highways on several occasions. I have stopped them from entering into pastures where cattle were being fed and the owners were the type that would shoot any dog present no questions asked.

Those are generally the situations I use the collar but I also would use it to discourage a dog from getting to familiar with a trained bird. For general training I very rarely use it all. I don't think it it as painful as it is a sensation and I usually test mine with the palm of my hand.

As far as using one for training a hawk, I don't think that the rules of reward and punishment work in the same way as a dog, no way. I can only think of one place I would use it and that is when a bird is about to alight on a power pole where electrocution is a possibility. The theory of the lesser of two evils might apply but I haven't had any problems along those lines, knock on wood, I don't see any reason to design an e collar that could be carried by a raptor. Now pigeons that could be a different story.... to keep mine off the neighbors house.

[rocgwp]

I'll look it up, but I think I've read it already. I'm always open to new ways of training and what is most effective. I'll look (I could be wrong here) but I didn't think his research studied the use of distinctly different Negative and Positive Marker signals used in conjunction with one another (i.e. a click for positive and beep for negative).

[JRedig]

I'd love to zap the sh*t out of my gos sometimes...but that really only has to do with a level of relief or satisfaction for myself...

An e-collar on a dog is just a tool in the tool box. If it works to achieve MY goals with the dog, that's fine for me. I've had many occasions in the field where my dog was out of vocal range and getting into trouble and the e-collar provides a way to communicate. How much experience do some of you have running say pointing dogs in open country? There are circumstances that arise that are WAY out of your control, if you mitigate for all of those, you'd never leave the house.

Why do these discussions always degrade into those of you with a very in depth understanding telling everyone else what's right and wrong? It's hard to want to read any of these topics...

[Tom Smith]

I'd love to zap the sh*t out of my gos sometimes...but that really only has to do with a level of relief or satisfaction for myself...

An e-collar on a dog is just a tool in the tool box. If it works to achieve MY goals with the dog, that's fine for me. I've had many occasions in the field where my dog was out of vocal range and getting into trouble and the e-collar provides a way to communicate. How much experience do some of you have running say pointing dogs in open country? There are circumstances that arise that are WAY out of your control, if you mitigate for all of those, you'd never leave the house.

Why do these discussions always degrade into those of you with a very in depth understanding telling everyone else what's right and wrong? It's hard to want to read any of these topics...

I agree

I have thought for a long time that just a two way radio with speaker attached to the collar could work for my dogs when they are out of shouting range to keep them out of trouble. Why shock them when one could just talk them out of what ever they are doing, or advise them to do something different. They have learned that certain profanity can have a dire result and are quick to pay attention that is when within shouting range.

[Mandragen]

I'd love to zap the sh*t out of my gos sometimes...but that really only has to do with a level of relief or satisfaction for myself...

An e-collar on a dog is just a tool in the tool box. If it works to achieve MY goals with the dog, that's fine for me. I've had many occasions in the field where my dog was out of vocal range and getting into trouble and the e-collar provides a way to communicate. How much experience do some of you have running say pointing dogs in open country? There are circumstances that arise that are WAY out of your control, if you mitigate for all of those, you'd never leave the house.

Why do these discussions always degrade into those of you with a very in depth understanding telling everyone else what's right and wrong? It's hard to want to read any of these topics...

This is an excellent post for many reasons. First off, there are many individuals that I would love to shock as well, there is satisfaction there.

An e-collar is another tool, and I've stated in another thread that you can never had too many tools in your tool box when it comes to training. I don' thave any experience in running pointing dogs in open country, although it something that I would love to learn more about. Do I think it can be done without the collar, absolutely, but that's the difference in your training and mine. As far as circumstances that are way out of my control, I'm sure I've seen a few.

I don't think this discussion has degraded, it's still an excellent discussion. I also didn't see anyone telling anyone that what they were doing was wrong. I've used punishers with my dog, not the collar, but he get's a nice push off the couch when I catch him sleeping on it in the morning (he's not allowed on the couch). When riding horses it's as simple as using the reins, that simple tug or pressure is a punisher by definition. You get the horse to move by adding an unwanted pressure to get the desired response.

[RyanVZ]

Why do these discussions always degrade into those of you with a very in depth understanding telling everyone else what's right and wrong? It's hard to want to read any of these topics...

I agree with you here Jeff. I consider myself "in the know" on this topic. Notice how a few were jumped all over and then no one else weighed in.

I have been professionally training animals long enough now to realize that it is an art, as much as a science. Shoot in the last year I've been informed by a psych professor, who is on this forum, that OC is out dated and discounted in a lot of psych these days in favor of more modern thoughts on learning. I use and have used "clicker training" techniques every single day for over 15 years now. I know the advantages and the disadvantages.

How many of those giving the advice though have had a dog running for the highway, full speed chasing a jack rabbit, with 30 mph hour winds and is a 1/4 mile away. How are you going to stop that dog? Yell at it, whistle, air horn, push it off the couch? The E-collar will stop that dog. There are practical applications for everything.

I got spanked as a kid. Not beaten but a swat on the butt and I turned out fine, with my kids they get rewards for good behavior and time outs, time ins, love and logic, etc and never a swat. Yet they do the same things I did as a kid, and get in trouble no more or no less.

The point is the longer I train animals, people, etc, the more new best-est training studies come out, and the more I realize that training comes down to what you are comfortable with and what works for you.

There will always be some that are good at training and some that aren't, and of the ones that are good; some are naturals and some must be taught.

So to answer the question of the thread....yes people have thought to use an e-collar on birds, I dont think anyone has actually done it. Its effectiveness on training birds I feel would be low. Dogs have been bred for thousands of years to bend to our will. Raptors are mainly working with us for an easy meal, a shock or two and they might just prefer to work a little harder to hunt on their own.

[outhawkn]

This is precisely how I use an e-collar with my dogs. An e-collar is a tool I use for a short period of time in training. The e-collar is valuable in helping "generalize" a known cue and bring it under better stimulus control. George Hickox calls it contrast training and is a master at this. I don't know if I will explain it well, but here is the premise...

You use a CR (clicker) and rewards to teach a desired behavior. Once the dog is offering the behavior consistently you overlay a cue. At that point you begin only CRing and rewarding the behavior when the cue is given. When the dog will give the desired behavior on cue 80% of the time, you can move on to generalizing the cue. This is where the e-collar comes in. This also assumes you have gone through a process to teach the dog how to turn off the collar and that the dog has received some other form of negative reinforcement other than the collar (i.e. a bonker). You give the known cue to the dog. If the dog offers the behavior you click and reward. If the dog does not offer the behavior you give a different Marker Signal (One that will always precede the negative reinforcement) and the give the negative reinforcement. The trick to this working is the use of the Marker Signal preceding the negative. Because the dog understands the positive marker, they quickly understand the negative Marker Signal. Another key is that if the negative marker is given it is ALWAYS followed by a negative. Since a variable schedule reinforces a behavior (either positive or negative) you want to be consistent and always follow the Negative Marker with the negative. Otherwise, this is how a "collar wise" (or really "Correction wise") dogs is created.

What happens is the dog quickly learns that when the know cue is given, if it complies, it gets a reward. If not, it is notified with a Negative Marker and then a negative. The collar is used to teach the dog that if it does anything other than offer the desired cue, it will be given a negative. VERY quickly you see the dog offer the behavior when the first sound of the Negative Marker is given. The temptation is once the dog starts offering the behavior in response to the Negative Marker to not follow up with the actual negative. If you are consistent and give the negative anytime the Negative Marker is given, you will soon not need the negative or the negative marker. The dog will offer the behavior on cue in very demanding situations with lots of distractions.

This method works great. I've seen it work on very soft dogs and on very stubborn dogs. The e-collar is just a tool in one's training bag. It is a way to get a behavior very reliable in a relatively short period of time without putting a lot of force or pressure on the dog.

I should also mention that when I use the e-collar I use VERY LOW levels of stimulation. I go through a process of collar conditioning that teaches the dog how to turn off the collar and what the Negative Marker is. In 1-2 short sessions the dog is responding to stimulation so low that I am unable or barely able to feel it on my hands at that level. Once I took my my hardest headed wirehair through this process, he responded to a correction level of 10 out of 50 on my collar. I can't feel the stimulation on my hand until it gets to six. My current female wirehair that passed her NAVHDA Utility test with a 192 out of 204 possible points was trained with a correction level of 6.

I agree and this is where I was going. I've attended Georges training seminars in the past and I personally dont see any damage being done to the dog. An example would be my dog gets up in the early morning and lies down in the sun. Ahhh... nice warm sun. Then the sun gets to hot so he moves to the shade. So with all this new age thinking the sun warmth was a punishment....

I'm glad to see many people understand the downfalls of punishment.

First, stopping a behavior is punishment. If you add something aversive to stop the behavior, you are using positive punishment, positive in the mathematical sense (+). Ecollar is positive punishment, no matter how you word it or want to see it.

When you stop using the punishment, you are using negative reinforcement, negative in teh mathematical sense (-), you remove (-) an aversive as a reward. You can use negative reinforcement to reward a behavior: the dog bakrs, he gets zapped which stops the barking, thus it is a positive punishment, then as he stops barking yo stop zapping, earning the dog a negative (-) reinforcement for keeping quiet. So ecollar also brings negative reinforcement, that's the way it works.

Any positive punishment can lead to mental damage, and negative punishment (removing a reward) as well but it takes longer. It does not always happen, for if it did we would never ever use punishment, but the risk is high. What side effects can happen? The strain on the relationship is a very real one, as demonstrated by the policeman analogy. The creation of fears/shyness/agression is a very real one as well. One has to understand, before using any type or strenght of punishment, that animals will try to link the punishment to their environment way before they link it to their behavior. They will take a mental picture of the world around them as they get the punishment, and make associations, then decide later on how they will act toward the things that were in the pictures. They kind of decide that they were zapped because of the things that surrounded them, not because they acted wrong, so they may become fearful/shy of the things they saw in the picture, and even react agressively toward them later on. The fear pathways that are activated in the brain when the animal receives a punishment are impossible to erase; one can ease the fears, but they will come back under stress. And yes, the falconer can very well be part of the picture.

Finally, to be effective, punishment has to be timed perfectly at the precise moment when the animal thinks about acting "wrongly", up to the point where he starts acting. Punishing even a second after the act won't work. Moreover, punishment has to be strong enough not to be used more than once, max 3 times. So before to put the ecollar on an animal, you have to have perfect timing (try throwing a tennis ball in the air and zapping as it stops moving before going down, then zapping as it touches the ground... you'll see our timing is lousy!) and perfect strenght of stimuli to obtain teh desired response. Even when used perfectly, you could still end up with mental damage and unpleasant, long-lasting side-effects. And there is always a way to train the exact same behavior out or in an animal without the use of any aversive. Always.

Why do people like using punishment? A british study showed that, unbeknownst to the punisher, the pleasure pathways in the brain are strongly activated when the punisher delivers a punishment for a behavior he deemed wrong. Delivering a "deserved" punishment brings a very strong positive reinforcement to the punisher, regardless of the result of the punishment, weither it worked in preventing the occurence of the punished behavior or not. The pleasure pathways can then build shortcuts that will activate at a hairtrigger, thus being even more reinforcing. The neurotransmitters used in this pathway also have a very strong addictive effect, they act like a drug would act and one will want to experience the feeling again. Those are some reasons why we, as human beings, have the reflex to punish, not to reinforce, and we have to train ourselves to become positive trainers...

I'm sorry and I'll leave this conversation before it gets too silly, but this is some far out ideas being thrown around as truth. G'day ya'll....

[Pedioecetes]

I use an ecollar to reach out to stop dangerous activity, such as chasing deer, antelope, livestock, jackrabbits, coyotes or to turn them back from a dangerous place like other hunters in the field, a road or just heading out and potentially going over a hill or ridge too far away from me for them to notice a command or whistle. I also setup all my dogs on porkies and skunks and shock them hard when they go in on them. Pulling a hundred quills out of a dog an hour away from a vet is no fun for the dog, or me. My local vet is a gal raised on a cattle ranch by a bird dog hunting father and her common sense advice and care of my dogs is wonderful. I live on a working farm where we have horses, cattle, chickens, etc. My dogs do chores with me and are familiar with all these critters in their lives, and quickly learn not to chase or harass them. Out on the wide open prairie, which is quite hilly where I live, there are lots of temptations and good bird dogs will all chase stuff that runs from them when they are young. A little electricity goes a long way out here and saves untold grief, PROPERLY USED. I don't use ecollars at all when training a dog, but they have one on every day in the hunting field. I would guess they get a "shot" a couple times a year on average, but I know those are times when they are definitely in danger, and nothing else will reach them. I think a big problem with ecollars are situations where the human is in a position of anger. It would be nice if all the circumstances we find ourselves in were perfect, but when they are not the ecollar can be of immense benefit. Like Tom Smith mentioned, I test the collar on my hand to see what it is capable of. My Tritronics Pro 100 gave me a huge surprise when I first got it and gave myself a 1/8th second "tap"!!!

[EAZFalconer]

Negative stimuli are used on raptors. I read on this forum not too long ago about someone using chili peppers to get a bird to not take a certain prey species. It was claimed to work. What is the difference?

[Heatherg]

I have to admitt I have been watching this thread evolve, and waiting for the right moment to post....just wanted to see what was going to happen...i guess morbid curiosity.
I TOTALLY agree with Jeff and Jeff and Bill!!!! I have been working with and selling E-collars for awhile now. Like most have said they are a GREAT tool in ones tool box....when used APPROPRIATELY!!!!!!! I have seen the negative effects in dogs when they were not used correctly, but have also seen those same dogs come around and be VERY comfortable with the use of a collar. I can say that while working at a training kennel we worked with 100's of dogs that returned year after year, and never showed negative attitudes with the collar. My own personal dog for instance runs to me as soon as he sees the collar....he associates it with something FUN and GOOD!!!! Thats the way it was meant to work!!!!
I respect Audry and those others that have voiced their opinion of not wanting to use the e-collars, to each their own. But, I have come to see e-collars as an invaluable and versatile tool and wont be giving them up any time soon.
As to the actual reason for this thread....not on birds...not a good idea!

[BestBeagler]

Negative stimuli are used on raptors. I read on this forum not too long ago about someone using chili peppers to get a bird to not take a certain prey species. It was claimed to work. What is the difference?

Or how about it being used on an imprint that you want to release?