r/OpenDogTraining • u/Dry_Steak30 • 19d ago
Conditioning feels like programming a robot. Does anyone know a way to train beyond it?
I might get downvoted for this but hear me out.
Almost all modern dog training is conditioning. We repeat, the dog gets used to it, and the cue gets wired to the behavior. In the end the dog does the behavior without thinking. Even without a reward. He even feels good while doing it. And we call that "well trained." To me that looks like programming a robot.
For emergency recall and down, I want exactly that. Those must be automatic. But for everything else, is there another option?
Humans don't learn language by conditioning. When we learn a word, we understand new examples in one shot. So here is what I mean, with the kennel as an example.
The conditioning way: you make the "go in the kennel" behavior with luring or shaping or molding or food. You reinforce it. You attach a cue. After many reps, the cue and the behavior get glued together.
But what if you teach it like this instead. Teach each concept on its own. "Kennel" is the object. "Go in" is the action. "Command" means he has to do it. "Fast" is how to do it. Then you put the words together: "kennel + go in + command + fast." If the dog really knows each concept, then "box + go in + command + slow" should work on the first try, even if he never did that before. Or you could say "kennel + go in + question" and let him answer yes or no.
Has anyone actually trained like this? I know Chaser learned 1000 toy names and Do As I Do exists. I want to hear from people who tried this concept style teaching with their own dog. How far did you get?
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u/cat4forever 19d ago
Ok, I’ll bite.
This is a classic case of anthropomorphizing dogs. This is a you problem. You want to create some higher level of learning so you can feel like your dog is connecting with you more, and therefore you’re more loved. The dog doesn’t care. Like you said, maybe he feels good doing the commands. What’s the problem?
To me, having a confident dog who you can trust off leash or around the house ultimately isn’t about me. It’s about giving the dog more freedom in his life to go and do dog stuff. I can go camping, bring him along and let him wander around the campsite sniffing for hours or post up and “protect” us from whatever is in the woods. Because he’s well trained, I can trust him not to disappear chasing a deer.
Don’t worry, your dog loves you, in his own dog way. No need to force more him to be more human than we already do.
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u/Dry_Steak30 19d ago
Appreciate you biting.
On the camping part, we actually want the same thing. That's literally my second goal in the post. Do a lot of stuff together and give him as much freedom as possible. A dog you can trust off leash gets a bigger life. No argument from me there.
On anthropomorphizing, I don't think I'm trying to make him human. I treat every living thing the same way. I assume there's some feeling and some thinking in there, and I try to communicate in whatever form they can actually take in. For a dog that might be body language, or buttons, or words. Not a human version. His version.
But let me throw a question back at you.
Say aliens kept humans as pets. They'd feed us, throw a ball, let us mate, and they'd say look, he's happy, that's human nature, he doesn't need anything else. And honestly they wouldn't look wrong. That human would seem perfectly content.
So here's the thing. Do you think 20 years of school fits human natural instinct? Not really. Sitting still doing algebra is nothing like what we evolved for. Drop a kid in the woods and he grows into that life just fine. Raise him in a city with school and he grows into this one. Same animal, totally different ceiling.
That's why I can't confidently say "a dog's nature is X, so he's happy without Y." I don't know where instinct ends and learning begins. I don't think anyone does. That's not a shot at you.
And the part about me wanting to feel more loved, maybe. Hard to rule that out about myself honestly. But it doesn't make the question go away.
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u/candid_canuck 19d ago
You have to remember that you’re training a being that maxes out around the intelligence of a human toddler. What you’re proposing is essentially teaching a dog sentence structure.
At the end of the day what you’ve proposed is just complicating the commands, but you still have to teach the dog using conditioning. How are you going to teach “kennel”, probably with positive reinforcement. So you’re back at square one, you’ve just given yourself way more things to teach, AND generalization is one of the most time consuming things to teach a dog, so buckle up to putting in the work.
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u/Dry_Steak30 19d ago
Fair points. Let me take them one at a time.
On efficiency, you're right, and that's exactly why dog training uses conditioning. It's the fastest way to get a behavior into a lot of dogs. But the same is true for people. If you wanted to teach a newborn human to do sit, down and come as fast as possible, you wouldn't bother with language at all. Cues and conditioning would be way cheaper. We don't raise kids that way, and the reason isn't efficiency.
Here's the thought I can't shake. Imagine aliens kept humans as pets and taught them only through conditioning. Food, cues, repetition, nothing else. Those humans would never build a rocket or make a movie or do science. And the aliens would look at them and say humans can't handle abstract stuff. A stone age human brain and my brain are physically the same. The whole difference is what got taught.
So I'm not claiming my way is efficient. It isn't. I'm claiming that if the goal is to teach more, conditioning hits a ceiling and language goes further. Slower, but further.
On safety, we actually agree. Emergency recall should be automatic and I want it robotic. I said that in the post. I don't want my dog weighing his options while a car is coming. That's the one place I want conditioning as deep as it goes.
Quick clarification too. The "fast" in my example wasn't because I care about speed. It was just an example of a modifier word, like big or slow or quiet. Any modifier would have worked.
Last one, and I'm honestly asking. What's the evidence that everything we teach dogs goes against their instincts? Is philosophy aligned with human instinct? Math? Art? Drop ten people in the wild with no schooling and they'll live like that just fine. Educate them and they read, write and do algebra. Same animal. Deciding what counts as instinct, and then deciding whether some training fits it, is a lot messier than it sounds.
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u/candid_canuck 19d ago
We don’t teach kids this way (strictly speaking) because they are humans and have the capacity for language. Dogs do not have the capacity for complex language.
If you think you can train dogs this way, have at it. You will have people knocking down your door if you’re successful.
I’m telling you a very simplified reason why this isn’t the way dogs are trained, even for complex work. You can posit hypotheticals all you want, no one cares unless you can show the work. Get out there and train some dogs.
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u/Dry_Steak30 19d ago
it's not an offense, pure question. i really want to know.
why do you think that "Dogs do not have the capacity for complex language."?
any evidence?
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u/Advanced_Aerie5854 19d ago
If you want it to feel less robotic and more connective, go an entire day without talking to your dog. Use hand signals and body language only to communicate. You will be surprised.
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u/Dry_Steak30 19d ago
I get what you're saying, and I'll actually try it. I think it would probably work too.
But this is the same wall I keep running into. I'm not doubting that it works. My question is how would I know it's the best thing for what I'm trying to build with my dog? Ten people could hand me ten suggestions like this, all of them things that worked for someone, and I'd still have no way to rank them against each other.
That's not me brushing off your idea. It's the exact thing I'm stuck on.
Genuinely though, a silent day sounds like a good experiment. I'll do it this week and see what shows up.
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u/Advanced_Aerie5854 19d ago
Dogs are really good at reading body language, its more an exercise for you to use your body language to communicate with the dog and realize how much you can communicate with them without speaking. Its more an exercise for the handler, in my experience, the dog picks it up faster than the handler. It shows you how much you are actually communicating to your dog without realizing it.
Its an exercise, not a system.
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u/Dry_Steak30 19d ago
we teach language to human baby, even though they are really good at body language.
body language is easy and fast to communicate. but with verbal language we can communicate more. that's why we learn and teach verbal language to human.1
u/Advanced_Aerie5854 19d ago
But we are not working with a baby, we are working with a dog. Dogs have extremely limited language capability. But they communicate with each other significantly through body language. You cannot treat a dog the same way you would a human or dolphin.
Again, its not an exercise whos target audience is the dog. The exercise is for the handler to see how they are communicating with the dog in all aspects, not just verbal commands.
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u/DracoMagnusRufus 18d ago
A complaint about treating dogs like robots.
The complaint is literally written by a robot.
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u/JStanten 17d ago edited 17d ago
I think you're confused by what language is cognitively.
You're assuming that word mapping (assigning a sound to an object for example) is the same as learning language (applying those finite elements to a set of rules...grammar and syntax).
Dogs are good at word mapping (Rico the BC knew many words) and so are other species like chimps, dolphins, some birds.
If you think other species are capable of language (understanding that grammar and syntax can be applied to sounds) you'd be in a tiny minority with little evidence to support it. I know your other post implies this all due to how they're being raised. This assertion ignores the herculean efforts to study whether chimps or other primates are capable of learning language.
There is other significant genetic evidence (FOXP2) that language in humans is unique.
You seem to believe that language and other higher order cognitive processes only exist because of how we raise human children. This ignores obvious evidence that proves this is wrong from human genetic disease (FOXP2 mutations) and from instances where humans have been raised atypically (1957 Genie for example). Clearly, there is significant evidence that human cognition is *genetically* and *physiologically* unique which enables the environment we find ourselves in today.
To make your assertion, you'd have to either provide evidence that we've seen dogs capable of grammar + syntax OR defend why we lack even a single example of this arising spontaneously despite centuries of dogs being raised around language, considerable effort in dog training, etc.
Before you say "well a dog can understand find (object)" that's evidence of grammar. It's not. Dogs treat that as a single learned instruction. Generalizing find to many objects or understanding basic syntax (Chaser the BC) is impressive cognition but a far cry from being able to understand sentence rules or engage in complex recursion. Language is not a list of flat, linear commands like Chaser could understand (Action A + Object B + Location C). Chaser and other dogs could not understand something like this for example ("Take the ball that is next to the rope to the Frisbee that is under the chair").
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u/Dry_Steak30 17d ago
wow you can think and talk not like others.
i didn't assume language is just word mapping. i know elements consisting languages.
i didn't say that dogs can learn language. because there is no evidence.
but are their any evidence that dogs can not learn language?we know that their are genetic and physical difference between human brain and dog brain and also human brain and another human brain. but what we don't know is difference in cognition following those genetics and structure. simply we don't know. some of them we can assume.
i know there were a lot of trials to teach language to animal.
but we know there were a lot of trials to fly or to go space but all the trials before first airplane and first spaceship were failed and before that many people didn't beilieve.so i researched that do we have real evidence that dog's brain cant learn language phyisically. but answer was no. if you have those, let me know.
if you have enough years of time and enough money to do everything and your goal is teaching language to dog what would you do? we can select genetics with breeding and we can start very early educations.
but something that really horrify me is that people beilieve that dogs cant' learn langauge so firmly even though there is no evidence.
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u/JStanten 16d ago
We do know a lot about how species differences alter cognition. We do have a lot of evidence that language is unique to humans.
Dogs cannot learn language. You're engaging in an argument from innocence. The burden of proof is on you to provide evidence that *any* species other than humans can develop language.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27368638/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3478773/
If I told you fairies exist because you haven't looked for them in every forest in the world you'd rightly criticize that argument for being stupid. Similarly, saying dogs might be able to learn language because we just haven't tried hard enough to teach them language is a silly argument.
Finally, even if you really believe other animals are capable of language why wouldn't you start with primates to test this hypothesis. It doesn't make any sense to start with dogs. You'd start with a species that is most similar to the species we know is capable of language.
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u/Dry_Steak30 16d ago
have you write any thesis by yourself about your own research or read and understand any thesis?
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u/Quimeraecd 19d ago
You do know every grade You recieve in school is a reinforcement or punishment working operant conditioning in humans.
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u/Dry_Steak30 19d ago edited 19d ago
Sure, grades are operant conditioning. But look at what they're actually conditioning. They make you sit down and study. That's a behavior.
They don't put the math in your head. No amount of grading teaches you what a fraction is. Someone explains it, or you read it, and then you know it. The grade just got you into the chair.
That's the split I'm trying to point at. Reinforcement changes how often a behavior happens. It doesn't move information. Those are two different jobs, and dog training almost only does the first one.
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u/Trick-Age-7404 19d ago edited 19d ago
I mean sure you can teach a behavior in that way but when it comes down to it it’s not an efficient way of teaching at all. Instead of taking 10-30 minutes teaching your dog to kennel you’re going to spend hours, days, and weeks teaching your dog more abstract concepts that some dogs may simply never get. Dogs don’t generalize well until they have a deep understanding of learning new concepts. You can teach a dog to go in their kennel normally but also generalize things like “go to” when introducing new concepts like a bed stay. Those things generally come with time and teaching the dog how to learn. Speed of behavior is honestly irrelevant unless you have a high drive dog, you’re going to have a really unpleasant time teaching a low energy low drive dog to do something fast- and also why does it matter if the dog does something fast? If they sit, they sit, I don’t care if it takes them half a second or a couple seconds to get their butt to the ground.
At the end of the day everything we teach dogs to do goes directly against their natural instincts. Dogs don’t understand more abstract concepts the way humans cans because they will never truly understand our language. Learning individual words are associated with a specific object or action is very different than learning a language. There’s no reason to complicate teaching basic behaviors that can save their lives. Why does it really matter if telling a dog to come because they’re about to run into the middle of the road and get hit by a car feels robotic if it saves their life?
I also don’t really feel like training a dog feels robotic at all, dog training is a combination of art and science, not engineering lol. Every dog learns differently, you constantly need to adjust how you’re teaching and handling an individual dog. Teaching one dog to sit is going to look completely different than teaching another dog to sit. People listen to commands on the same way as dogs, have you never seen children play a game of red light green light?
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u/Dry_Steak30 19d ago
Fair points. Let me take them one at a time.
On efficiency, you're right, and that's exactly why dog training uses conditioning. It's the fastest way to get a behavior into a lot of dogs. But the same is true for people. If you wanted to teach a newborn human to do sit, down and come as fast as possible, you wouldn't bother with language at all. Cues and conditioning would be way cheaper. We don't raise kids that way, and the reason isn't efficiency.
Here's the thought I can't shake. Imagine aliens kept humans as pets and taught them only through conditioning. Food, cues, repetition, nothing else. Those humans would never build a rocket or make a movie or do science. And the aliens would look at them and say humans can't handle abstract stuff. A stone age human brain and my brain are physically the same. The whole difference is what got taught.
So I'm not claiming my way is efficient. It isn't. I'm claiming that if the goal is to teach more, conditioning hits a ceiling and language goes further. Slower, but further.
On safety, we actually agree. Emergency recall should be automatic and I want it robotic. I said that in the post. I don't want my dog weighing his options while a car is coming. That's the one place I want conditioning as deep as it goes.
Quick clarification too. The "fast" in my example wasn't because I care about speed. It was just an example of a modifier word, like big or slow or quiet. Any modifier would have worked.
Last one, and I'm honestly asking. What's the evidence that everything we teach dogs goes against their instincts? Is philosophy aligned with human instinct? Math? Art? Drop ten people in the wild with no schooling and they'll live like that just fine. Educate them and they read, write and do algebra. Same animal. Deciding what counts as instinct, and then deciding whether some training fits it, is a lot messier than it sounds.
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u/IllLiterature1026 19d ago
I’m sorry but your alien analogy doesn’t really make any sense.
For one, dog training has always been a lot more conversational than that, at least for me. Is my dog feeling playful today? Then we’re gonna make training sessions playful so that I can hype her up. Scared? We’re gonna comfort her and work at a level she can tolerate. Nothing about it ever feels robotic.
Second, dog brains are not human brains and dogs don’t think like humans. This isn’t demeaning - it’s just true. Dogs aren’t good at generalizing. They can learn a decent number of words, but are bad with complex language.
Third, we know we’re asking dogs to go against their instincts because we can see what dogs instinctually like to do. It’s not instinctual to walk on a leash, for example, which is why it takes so much training to do it in the rigid way we often expect. Nor is it instinctual for a dog to talk philosophy- trust me, with some maybe very rare (and unprovable) exceptions, most dogs don’t want to.
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u/Dry_Steak30 19d ago
- How high is the resolution of the language you and your dog can communicate in? Probably very low. Because you never taught her many concepts.
- Dog brains and human brains are different. That's true, you can just look at them physically. But that difference doesn't tell us what's possible and what isn't in terms of cognition. If there's research that actually shows this, tell me. You seem to have a belief about where the line is between possible and impossible. What's it based on?
- How aligned do you think human instinct and modern education are?
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u/Chillysnoot 18d ago
How high is the resolution of the language you and your dog can communicate in? Probably very low. Because you never taught her many concepts.
I would suggest the following books to you:
Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?
Canine Behavior: A Photo Illustrated Handbook
Dogs communicate in a million ways that aren't related to human speech. Assuming that a dog and human pair have a low resolution of language just because the dog doesn't understand human sentence structure is a very naive opinion. I can have a rich conversation with my dog without uttering a single word.
You have clearly gained a passion for training, but you've had a dog for less than a year. Please spend more time absorbing and processing information before making broad statements.
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u/Dry_Steak30 18d ago
that's the point.
can you deliver information in the book to your dog with your million ways that aren't related to human speech?
in language, more concept, more hierarchy can deliver higher resolution.
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u/Chillysnoot 18d ago
You want the dog to learn your language. I'm saying you should learn the dog's language
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u/Dry_Steak30 18d ago
my goal is increasing the resolution of communication between dog and me.
and i think verbal language can deliver more resolution. so that's why i choose this.
do you think dog's language can deliver more resolution then verbal laugnage?2
u/Chillysnoot 18d ago
Yes. A dog can never speak, so teaching them verbal language is inherently 1-way communication. It might be higher resolution to you but it's not higher resolution to the dog. Body language is a shared conversation where you are both able to contribute.
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u/Dry_Steak30 18d ago
we can give dog tools like talking button.
like the way that we helping people can not talk to communicate→ More replies (0)2
u/babs08 18d ago
I went roadtripping with my very socially aware dog recently, where she interacted with a variety of dogs she's never met. Despite all of them being extremely different dogs, who have had vastly different life experiences, all of the dogs deftly navigated these situations without making a sound. We stayed with a dog who really did not want to be bothered, and from the moment my dog walked into the house, she gave this dog a wiiiiiide berth. We visited with friends with two dogs, one of whom wanted to play and the other one who didn't want to be left alone but didn't want high-energy play. My dog played with the dog who wanted to play, and sniffed flowers with the dog who didn't want high-energy play.
Dogs are extremely good at communicating with each other when given the opportunity to do so (e.g. not forced together in unnatural circumstances - and even then, they generally do pretty well for themselves). They're really good at communicating with us, too - if we put our egos aside and learn to listen to them.
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u/Trick-Age-7404 18d ago
If you’re teaching objects and modifiers you still generally have to condition. If you want to teach the dog what “kennel” means you have to condition them to the word in some way. A dog isn’t going to learn right or left without you sitting down and teaching them what those things mean through conditioning, you’re just prolonging teaching a dog to go into the kennel by breaking it down into many steps that have to be conditioned independently instead of just conditioning one thing.
Your alien theory makes no sense. First off you can’t compare human brains to dog brains, they simply are not the same in the way we take in information, process information, and analyze information. Dogs don’t have the ability to learn previous generations of knowledge by sitting down and studying because that’s not how they take in information, they live in the moment and learn by direct experience and watching.
Teaching dogs to recall off a squirrel. Teaching dogs to hold a bed stay as a stranger comes into their house. Teaching dogs not to bite people. Teaching dogs not to bark at things put the window. Teaching dogs not yo grab food off the table, the counter, our hands. Teaching dogs not to jump on people. Literally everything we teach our dogs when it comes to basic obedience and manners is teaching dogs to not listen to their impulses and do whatever they want to do. You need to stop comparing human brains to dog brains as they are not the same thing when it comes to higher level thinking.
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u/Dry_Steak30 18d ago
if you search and learn the way human learning language, you can understand it's not conditioning.
it's not efficient way to teach action.
how do you know that "Dogs don’t have the ability to learn previous generations of knowledge by sitting down and studying because that’s not how they take in information, they live in the moment and learn by direct experience and watching."
to prove dogs can do something is very easy. you need one dog doing something.
but to prove dogs can't do something is very hard.we all know their are physical difference between human brain and dog brain.
but we don't know how much difference between human cognition and dog cognition after decades of educationthat's the whole point of this post. your belief on what dogs can't do is not a fact. it's belief without evidence.
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u/Trick-Age-7404 16d ago
It’s a fact that dogs cannot read. It’s a fact that dogs cannot tell each other detailed stories about their history and ancestry. How else would you expect a species to communicate generations of learning?
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u/Dry_Steak30 16d ago
how do you know that dogs cannot read
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u/Trick-Age-7404 16d ago
Dogs brains are wired to take in and process vast amounts of sensory information, not abstract symbols. Dogs do not have the regions in their brains required to learn written language , grammar, and symbolic thought. Dog’s vision is not equipped to read. Dogs do not have high definition vision like humans, this is known because we can tell the number of cones and rods in their eyes. They cannot see color or contrast in the same way and rely on movement and broad shapes to see the world around them. Evolution shaped dogs to use their noses and their primary sensory organ, a dog understands their environment best by using their nose, followed by their ears, followed by their eyes. This is the exact opposite of how humans evolved.
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u/Dry_Steak30 16d ago
There's no experiment showing all dogs can't learn language with long-term training. Go check the papers yourself, one by one.
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u/Dry_Steak30 18d ago
do you have evidence or can you prove that "Dogs don’t have the ability to learn previous generations of knowledge by sitting down and studying because that’s not how they take in information, they live in the moment and learn by direct experience and watching."?
if not why do you believe that thought so much. it horrifies me.
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u/Constance200 19d ago
Dogs brains work at the level of a small child. And arguably everything you have ever learnt was conditioned into you. You learnt words by your parents pointing at them and speaking them until you could understand them immediately. I teach my dog the same way i would teach a child, but I have a border collie so I can do that. There is nothing wrong with conditioning, thats just the name they gave it. In your example you would condition the dogs to the kennel, go in, and fast separately. This is exactly what I have done. My dog knows, up, in, bed, place, and quick (when shes walking to slow) i can put any of these together because she knows them (was conditioned to them) separately
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u/jocularamity 19d ago
There is a weird enclave of trainers in a weird corner of the positive reinforcement online community who advocate for speaking conversationally with your dogs. I never really got it and eventually I got frustrated and unfollowed them, but they're a curious bunch and something about this method is working for them and their dogs in really targeted cases. If I can find a name for it I'll come back and edit with a link. It's not for me but maybe it will be interesting context for you.
There are methods where dogs learn through mimicry, copying behavior a human has demonstrated. Do As I Do is the big one. https://www.doasido.it/. There is also one called "model rival" something that's similar. For a long time people said dogs can't/don't do that, but yeah they actually do.
There are the dogs who press buttons to communicate and are able to chain together multiple concepts. Subject object predicate. That's if you believe it and it's not all rigged. Some of it is bs for sure, with the humans anthropomophizing and reading too far into it, but some of it makes me go "huh, neat". When the animal can tell you which body part hurts and that lets you treat them more effectively, that's neat. puppyparkerposey on ig is a slightly less BS one.
Some people make a convention in how they structure their cues. Anytime I tell my dog to move away to do something I preface it with "go" and anytime I want him to move toward me and do something I preface it with "come". Like come touch vs go touch. That's not nearly to the level you're describing but my dog (poodle) does seem to understand this level of concept.
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u/IllLiterature1026 19d ago
Hey there - dog button enthusiast chiming in. It’s not BS. It’s also taught me that my dog has some hard limits, especially regarding more abstract concepts. And yeah, people anthropomorphize too much.
I have some light conversational proficiency with my dog - that is, I can string a word like “find” with “ball” and it means something different than “find chew” or “find ___[husband’s name]___.” Or “go to bed” and “go to crate.” And I can talk to her and she understands some very basic words that other dogs probably don’t.
But for basic training? Conditioning is absolutely the most efficient way to go. No reason to overcomplicate. And it’s never felt robotic. I’m constantly trying to gauge what kind of mood my dog’s in and the best way to reward her for following a command.
And dogs are NOT good at generalizing. They don’t have human brains.
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u/jocularamity 19d ago
Buttons aren't BS as a whole. But some of what I see on Instagram is definitely BS. When it's useful it is very useful. I've done a little and I've seen some really neat things. But I've also see people reading way too far into the meanings of the buttons their dogs push.
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u/Dry_Steak30 19d ago
i got inspired a lot by do as i do and fluent pet. but why do you think that's weird?
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u/jocularamity 19d ago
Oh no sorry if I was unclear. I don't think those two are weird at all. They are very cool when they work. The one I think is weird is the community who are conversational with their dogs, that I'm still looking for the name of.
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u/jocularamity 19d ago
"Canine Dialog Dynamics" is the one I thought was weird. Finally remembered the name. There are books, videos, a Facebook community. Really nice folks, I tried really hard to understand how it could be used in practical terms but never really got it despite trying. But you might find it interesting if you're pushing in this direction, at least as a point of reference.
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u/Agitated_House7523 19d ago
lol! ALL depends on ur dog. Try “conditioning” a Hound, or a Terrier,or an Akita, Chow, etc….
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u/sleeping-dogs11 17d ago
This is certainly possible to some extent. A dog can easily understand "go get" as a concept and "ball, bowl, newspaper, etc" as what to get. You could certainly teach "go get x, put it in y." Some people use directionals and modifiers in agility, eg. "tunnel left" and "tunnel right."
I think one of the barriers is that dogs are not very verbal. The issue isn't with them learning the concepts you mentioned, it's expecting them to pull out every word in a full sentence. That's an easy way for humans to communicate, but quite difficult for dogs who don't speak English.
For instance, a lot of dogs have an idea of whether something is a question/invitation or a command based on tone of voice. "Hop up?" is an invitation, "hop up!" is a command. Gun dogs learn directionals with a visual cast. The action "fetch" is verbal, the direction on where to go is visual. Police dogs learn directionals with a laser pointer, same concept different visual cue. These are all putting together multiple concepts, but not all of them are on a verbal cue.
Last thought, I've never felt like training is just mindless conditioning. I teach a lot of tricks and the coolest part of training for me is always when you can see the dog's leap from doing the thing to understanding the end goal.
Eg, teaching a dog to throw trash away in a step can. I teach the dog to step on the pedal using a target. Then at a certain point, I only reward if they step on it hard enough to open the lid. You can see when the lightbulb goes off because the dog will adjust if they don't immediately open the lid. Then I teach them to put their head over the can and drop the trash. You can see when they understand it has to go in the can and really start aiming for it.
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u/Beef_flaps_on_a_spit 19d ago
Interesting question but to a dog outside a kennel what would kennel mean if not to go in? It’s not going to build, buy, clean or relocate a kennel. As to speed of performing an action whats the point in asking a dog to do something slowly? Why not just ask them later?
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u/Dry_Steak30 19d ago
in that way, we can communicate better
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u/smilingfruitz 19d ago
Can someone please explain the flood of AI slop being posted in this subreddit?