What I learned from Dr Ian Dunbar

I was lucky enough a few weeks ago to travel to Toronto for a 3 day seminar with Dr Ian Dunbar, who is without a doubt, maybe one of if not the most important figure in modern dog training. He is credited with the mass use of lure reward training, the creation of puppy classes, and founder of the largest group of trainers in the world the APDT.

Here's a summary of what Dr Dunbar discussed over his 3 days:

Day One: Puppies

He said we are wasting puppyhood and many things that are old must become new - such as classical conditioning. As he put it : "we are not doing one tenth of the training, one hundredth of the socialization or one thousandth of the classical conditioning required to provide puppies with manners, confidence and social savvy"

He discussed that many issues such as guarding, chewing, housesoiling, barking and separation anxiety should be prevented at puppyhood to avoid these problems later in life.

Much of what he discussed during puppyhood can be found in his free books that I've provided on my webpage.

Day Two: Scienced based training

Much of day two was a discussion on learning theory. He discussed why its important not to focus too much on all the science and how easy trainers and people get confused by all the terms and that trainers can sometimes confuse clients with all the jargon. He explained why feedback using your voice is very important to dogs and that most learning theory doesn't discuss this, because the experiments were performed on rats in labs and mostly by computer. While he doesn't discount this science, he wanted us to look past it as well to the relationship with the dog.

He stressed that differential reinforcement is the way to train, always trying to improve the dog performance. Ian talked a lot about punishment and stressed that punishment doesn't need to be painful or scary. Here's something from the notes:

Punishment - Criteria to protect us from our inconsistencies:

1) effective - must actually be decreasing the behavior
2) Immediate -.5-1 second after behavior occurs
3) instructive
4) punishment fit the crime
5) must know appropriate behavior (previous training on what TO do)
6) Warn first
7) Consistent each and every time

He also stated that reward vs punishment should be a 10:1 ratio - you must reward 10 good behaviors before you can punish 1 bad one.

Day 3: Off leash lure reward

One thing Dr Dunbar really stresses is off leash control. He states that a dog isn't trained until he sits at a distance, under distractions under verbal command with no training aids of any kind.

He uses a method he calls 'repetitive reinstruction and negative reinforcement" in that he trains the dog by cuing over and over until the dog listens, then is allowed to return to what he was doing, or is rewarded. He states that trainers go crazy when he says its ok to repeat the cue - but if the dog isn't listening to the cue what use it is anyways. The dog will eventually learn that SIT means do it right now or else I'm going to keep coming.

Thats just a VERY brief set of notes from the seminar - it was 9-6pm each day so you can imagine the information.

I got to hangout and chat with Ian one-one on Saturday night at the bar and it was a great experience getting meet one of your training 'heros'.