Dog Aggression and Positive ONLY Training – Robert Cabral Dog Training Video
so in an understanding the makeup of the dog which is the real the predator the wolf we have to look at why dogs do certain things and why they don’t so if we look at the aspect of positive training or a reward based system as I said as long as the dogs desire for the object the positive object the reward object is greater than its natural predatorial instinct to chase kill and eat the dog will opt for your reward so if you put the dog on a sit and you tell the dog come and you have a treat the dogs desire for that treat will outweigh his natural instinct to be lazy and not succumb so he’ll come and he’ll get the treat now if you tell the dog to stay and when he stays he gets the treat he’ll stay because he wants that treat but if a chicken or a rabbit runs by and that triggers his natural predatory instinct to sight scent hunt kill and eat that rabbit that will outweigh his desire to get the little treat from your hand and that’s where oftentimes positive training will fall apart and we have to look at that in a real a real clear a real sterile situation we don’t want to really slam positive training because positive training has so many benefits it can really develop a solid behavior between us but it can develop a great relationship between us to develop a lot of fun times and stuff like that but it falls apart because the dogs ingrained nature is going to be survival and the more Drive a dog has the more natural instinct the dog has for whether that’s aggression or prey drive or defensive drive which all kind of fall in the same category which we’re going to talk about when we get to drives the the the behavior of the dog or the desired behavior that we’re trying to shape will fall apart so if he sees a chicken crossing the road or a chicken crossing in a field in front of him then he’ll probably chase the check rather than then sit for you and know that he’s going to get the marker the mark which is the reward or the treat if he thinks there’s a negative implication to him getting up to go chase that rabbit now that can be an electric collar correction it can be a Yank on a pinch collar it can be a physical maneuver with you putting him back and correcting him and he understands that your physical pressure your physical strength will outweigh his physical strength then he will defer to you so when I look at someone who will never correct a dog but will only mark the good behaviors and tries to ignore the bad behaviors which is kind of the concept of positive only training and I think it’s wonderful trust me I’m a much more positive trainer than I am a compulsion based trainer but think about it from the dogs perspective for a minute he’s sitting in a stay you tell him to stay you walk back to me give him a treat good boy you sister says stay you walk back you give him a treat good boy he gets up and he walks around and you say nope you wait till he goes back and he sits down and you give him a reward again he’s getting it though as long as he’s sitting there he gets a reward but there’s no negative implication there’s no negative reinforcer to make him say oh when I get up I get in trouble you don’t really get in trouble you just don’t get the reward so he’ll decide okay well you know what if I want to go over here and sniff the grass and my desire to pee or poo or do whatever is greater than my desire for that treat or your praise or the toy then he’ll do whatever he’s going to do but the scary part is because dogs are domestic animals we need that negative reinforcer to let them know that we’re not going to accept that negative behavior all right so if we have a German Shepherd and he’s sitting on a sit and I say stay or tell him to down or whatever the command is and a kid rides by on a bicycle and he has crazy prey drive and he wants to go chase that kid on the bicycle and knock it down just in a play mode let’s forget about the aggression mode right and there’s no negative reinforcement to stop him from doing that why would he do it right when he does it I say nope nope nope and I wait for him to go back to his place and when he gets there I mark it and I go good boy well he’s gotten to good boys right he’s gotten the good boy of chasing the kid on a bicycle or the cat or the squirrel or the bird or whatever it is and he gets the atta boy when he sits back in this place that’s where we need to put a negative reinforcer and that’s when a dog is going to need a correction so when we have a dog that’s dog reactive right dog reactivity is one of the biggest things that we’re gonna have to deal with in shelters and shelter dogs and rescue dogs right so when the dog has that negative desire to lunge out and snap at that dog bark at that dog or bite that dog which all aggression all aggression is reactive talking about dog aggression it’s all reactive whether real or perceived it’s the dog’s reaction to something and reaction can be a fear right he sees the dog he thinks that dog is going to attack him he’s going to bite him so aggression becomes the reaction to a a perceived thought it might be if the dog is lunging at him he lunges forward then it’s a reaction that we could see but a dog can read body language he might think that dog is being aggressive and that’s as real as anything right they’ve done studies that people marathon runners who can close your eyes and focus on running the marathon they can get their heart rate up and their muscles stressed in the exact same way as a real marathon runner so for a dog that perception is just as real as the aggression so when a dog acts aggressively whether we think it’s proactive or reactive we whether we see the action or we don’t see the action the aggression the reactivity of that dog is going to be something we need to counter right and waiting for him to stop and using a positive marker at that point isn’t enough to block the negative action of him lunging at that other dog or god forbid that person he has a suspicion of people with hats of mailmen of you know of people in uniform of people of color you know or people of different nationalities which happens in dogs if they’re not properly exposed to it if they have that we’re going to go back to because that’s a predatory instinct that’s something a predator would do your pet dog you know your Labradoodle who’s never had that kind of pressure is less likely to do it than a dog that’s more predatorial in in their drives so the reactivity to that must be countered by a negative implication and if we can physically maneuver the dog by an interrupted behavior which could be a yank on the leash it could be a correction on a pinch collar could be a collection on an electric collar it could be a disabling of the dog so he can’t do that behavior whatever that is the dog will start to identify that the negative that you’ve put on them outweighs his desire to do something right because if the dog was in the wild and ran out another dog and a tree fell in and clocked him in the head he would think well I’m not going to chase that for that dog anymore because last time I chased after him the tree fell he’s not gonna think it was happenstance so we need the dog to identify that negative with us right he needs to identify that our authority our role as his pack leader which is a term I hate using because of the guy on TV but because of that position that we hold with him it’s our job to control him from doing anything that will endanger us as well as endanger him because he goes and attacks the other dog two things can happen one he can get killed by the other dog or two he can kill the other dog or damage the other dog and then end up being put down the shelter nothing good will come of that right but we need a negative interrupter to stop that and that goes back down to the dog predatory skills and oversee I should say the dogs predatory instinct which shapes his skill as a dog a dog is not going to attack a 600-pound lion it’s just not gonna happen but a lion will attack a 100-pound dog and if even leopards in the wild in Africa eat dogs all the time their favorite thing to eat is dogs and baboons because they know they can kill them there are more they’re more of an apex predator than a dog a dog is not the greatest predator a good predator not the greatest predator so the reason I want you to understand the genetic makeup of the dog and understand how it shares its DNA with the wolf is because in that core issue when we get to a core problem with the dog and that’s really what we face a lot in the shelter is a core problem the dog is severely aggressive in this in this situation okay obviously the positive training didn’t work so we need a negative in there now here at the shelter we’re not going to use electric olives not use pinch collars and my private training I do but we are going to use a correction on a leash to get the dog to redirect to us and we’re going to abundantly reward the right behavior right we’re gonna put a correction pop on the bad behavior we’re not gonna beat up the dog we’re not gonna hit the dog we’re not gonna flip the dog on his back and do some nonsense like that right we’re gonna correct the dog on a leash as hard as the dog needs to be corrected and that is with a slippery that’s all we’re gonna use and when the dog does the right thing we’re going to reward the dog abundantly when he does the wrong thing we’re gonna say no and we’re gonna block the behavior any kind of aggression or reactive behavior which again goes to a predator in nature and a dog needs to be hit immediately right and not I mean hit like hit it means be targeted immediately and we need to correct it quickly because once the dog gets into the elevated Drive of aggression of reactivity it’s harder and harder to pull the dog back down it’s like if somebody’s getting sad and then we can kind of pull them out of the sadness by telling him a happy story but if they’re in this crazy sadness that’s elevated and elevated elevated elevated it’s much harder to pull them down right so the more you can do to preemptively undo or squash any kind of a reactive or aggressive behavior the sooner it’ll work and that’s what I want you to do with the dogs in the yard I want you to take the dog out get him to focus on you if he has a reactivity to another dog start to focus on getting him back to you triggering back to you the more he focuses back to the lessee focuses on the other dog by hook or crook you got to get the dog to focus back to you because the more the dog focuses on the other dog or the aggression if that’s to a person or a dog the more that dog is likely to to continue in that escalated state and like I say going back to what we talked about originally with positive training we can’t reinforce the positive if the dog is not offering the positive right we want we kind of almost have to force the dog to do something good right and that’s fine right we’re here really to save the dog’s life and if the positive thing would have worked he probably wouldn’t have ended up here maybe one steps to the crack I don’t know but it’s rare that I see a dog here that is just based on positive positive positive once the one they might need a little correction on the leash and I’m hoping you’ll give it to him you give him a chance to live okay if you like this video give it a thumbs up and subscribe to this channel
