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Can “positive” herding using Dogs exist?The short answer is no. I want to preface this article with the fact that I’m no...
02/07/2023

Can “positive” herding using Dogs exist?

The short answer is no.

I want to preface this article with the fact that I’m not calling for an end to any practise or condemning it. This article is purely to act as a discussion point and what I think is a unique topic I haven’t seen discussed.

Now I’m not saying you can’t teach a Dog to herd in a positive way. A lot of Dogs are bred for that purpose and find it incredibly reinforcing and there’s been a huge move to get away from “old school” teaching on the dogs side and teach the animals with positive reinforcement. That’s something that needs to be praised.

What I’m talking about is the fact there’s another animal involved (the one being herded) and the fundamental relationship is based on using negative reinforcement to make animals move to where we want.

This comes in a few ways:

Typically least force is staring/physical proximity but in extreme cases dogs have been bred to nip live stock etc.

These are all taking advantage of negative reinforcement to get an animal to perform a behaviour.

They add pressure to an animal which is then removed when the animal performs it.

That’s the definition of negative reinforcement.

Perhaps positive trainers of herding dogs are aware of this and choose to ignore it or think that it’s fine. However it is also possible that people just haven’t stopped to think about the fundamentals of herding from the herded animals perspective and that’s why I’m posing this question.

Now I love to deal in “solutions” and for that we can look at zoos. I’ve seen many zoos go from herding/using negative reinforcement to teaching herding or other animals to have a recall or “place”. Co-operative care is a huge part of the zoo movement these days and there’s absolutely no reason farmers cannot adopt this practise too.

There’s also sports that utilise herding instincts/teaching on non sentient objects for those dogs who are bred for that.

Just something worth thinking about (I think atleast)

Let’s preface this with the fact I personally do not advocate the use of E-Collars in any circumstances.Most often peopl...
14/06/2022

Let’s preface this with the fact I personally do not advocate the use of E-Collars in any circumstances.

Most often people will justify the use of E collars by saying they’re not painful. They do this by trying it on themselves or a client before putting them on the dog.

The fact is just looking at the pain aspect is simplifying the implementation of them.

To really experience what the dog is going through we’d have to try E - collars on people in a few different scenarios depending what we’re using for.

A clear example would be a fearful dog. To replicate this we’d put an e collar on the person and put them in a room with a spider. Everytime they showed fear or undesirable behaviour we’d shock them. All other times we wouldn’t or we would give them a reward.

Another example would be taking someone to a theme park and telling the learner they can only walk. If they run or get excited they get a shock. This would be the same as teaching a dog to walk nicely on a lead with shock.

I think the hardest one is probably while teaching specific behaviours. This takes a lot of thinking and pain, aversive stimulus and anxiety which a shock collar will produce make thinking and making choices harder.

Imagine being put into a room and trying to learn a new skill and you get shocked either until you do the right thing (sometimes even behavior the learner does not know) or shocked when you do the wrong thing.

There’s so much more than just pain to consider when using a shock collar on anyone.

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