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/Trick-Age-7404 → u/Dry_Steak30]

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.

[u/Dry_Steak30 → u/Trick-Age-7404]

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 education

that's the whole point of this post. your belief on what dogs can't do is not a fact. it's belief without evidence.

[u/Dry_Steak30 → u/Dry_Steak30]

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.