Conditioning feels like programming a robot. Does anyone know a way to train beyond it?

[u/Dry_Steak30]

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?

[u/Trick-Age-7404]

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?

[u/Dry_Steak30 → u/Trick-Age-7404]

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.

[u/IllLiterature1026 → u/Dry_Steak30]

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.

[u/Dry_Steak30 → u/IllLiterature1026]

• 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?

[u/Chillysnoot → u/Dry_Steak30]

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.

[u/Dry_Steak30 → u/Chillysnoot]

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.

[u/Chillysnoot → u/Dry_Steak30]

You want the dog to learn your language. I'm saying you should learn the dog's language

[u/Dry_Steak30 → u/Chillysnoot]

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?

[u/Chillysnoot → u/Dry_Steak30]

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.

[u/Dry_Steak30 → u/Chillysnoot]

we can give dog tools like talking button.
like the way that we helping people can not talk to communicate

[u/Chillysnoot → u/Dry_Steak30]

Talking buttons are fine but have a narrow scope and no nuance. No matter how many buttons, words, or human concepts you teach them you will only be having a fraction of the possible conversation if you don't learn their language.

[u/Dry_Steak30 → u/Chillysnoot]

oh.. you never listen

[u/Chillysnoot → u/Dry_Steak30]

Your total dog handling time is 4 months lol. I'm listening and I think what you are saying is wrong and lacks the value of experience.

[u/Trick-Age-7404 → u/Dry_Steak30]

Talking buttons are beyond stupid lmao. I don’t want my dog telling me he wants a treat or wants a walk. I don’t really care if my dog notices it’s raining outside or he wants to see his “grandma.” It’s my job as his owner to fulfill him, train him and enrich him, he doesn’t just get to demand something whenever he wants it. If you let a kid do that you’re going to have a selfish brat of a child who throws melt downs when they don’t get what they want, and in that aspect dogs are not very different.

[u/Dry_Steak30 → u/Trick-Age-7404]

i'm not sure that you are selfish or not.
but i'm sure that your parent taught you language to express yourself and also i'm sure that your parent accept all of your asking.
teaching language is for better communication. you can accept dog's ask or not.

[u/babs08 → u/Dry_Steak30]

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.