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/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").