Welcome to Animal Advice! Introducing my training techniques.

This being my first post on this shiny new blog, I thought I'd begin by introducing the fundamental aspects of my training techniques:

1. Humane

According to the Oxford English Dictionary 'humane' means either: 'having or showing compassion or benevolence' or 'inflicting the minimum of pain'.

To me it means 'inflicting the minimum of pain or discomfort, both mental and physical'. 

Before you try any new training method you must ask yourself: "Is this hurting the animal? Is it more stressed than it needs to be? How will this affect our relationship? Is it complying out of enjoyment and willingness to please, or out of fear of what will happen if it fails?"

This is, by far, the most important thing. At the end of the day most training is done to help animals live with us as our companions, so any method that negatively impacts on our relationship with them would be counterproductive! Not only that, but it makes owners and trainers feel bad when they think they have to treat an animal harshly - so if there's a better, gentler way, its win-win. 

2. Effective

Of course, all the love in the world isn't going to do squat, if the method is fundamentally flawed!  So the ability to actually train the behaviours you want to train must be weighed against being as kind as possible.

For example: It might work to force an aggressive animal into submission - but it's not exactly the kindest way to go about solving the aggression. And whilst you might want to cuddle away the fear in a nervous animal, it may just serve to make it more afraid.

'Effective' for me, also means using techniques based on the latest scientific research into how animals behave, think and learn so that we train them in a way that is easy for them to understand, and therefore set them up for success.

And, last but not least:

3. Good training, is fun!

Training done right should not only be effective, but also FUN for all involved. If you are getting stressed, or the animal is getting stressed, then something isn't right. Its easy to get frustrated if you aren't making as much progress as you'd like, especially if you are trying to train something very important for the animal's health or safety (like training a dog to have great recall, no matter the distractions around him) but if you start to get frustrated, then you may start to be overly harsh, or try to push the animal too far too fast, which just sets it up for failure.

Good training should focus on getting the animal to succeed, so that it gets plenty of rewards and learns to enjoys its time with you and enjoy training! It shouldn't be solely about getting the animal to the level you want, as quickly as possible. 

So, all training, no matter the animal, is about balancing these three principles and finding a way to teach an animal that not only works as well as possible and causes the least amount of stress/discomfort as possible, but is also as enjoyable (for everyone involved) as possible!

These three things are, for me at least, embodied by the principle of positive reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is one of the four quadrants of 'operant conditioning', shown here:

Operant conditioning is a type of learning whereby  the behaviour of an animal is modified by changing the consequences of that behaviour (ie: 'good' behaviour results in pleasant experiences and so is repeated more often, and 'bad' behaviour results in unpleasant ones and so is less likely to be repeated).

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning

All the quadrants were shown to work to some extent when training animals, but its obvious that positive reinforcement and, on occasion, negative punishment, are the most humane and least stressful ways to go about training behaviours, so these are the areas I (and most reputable trainers) choose to focus on.

Now, you may be thinking - "This is all well and good if I want to train my dog to sit, or my cat to high five, but what if my issue is an aggressive or fearful animal who I need to rehabilitate?"   

This is when the principles of counterconditioning and desensitisation come in. http://www.aspca.org/pet-care/virtual-pet-behaviorist/dog-behavior/desensitization-and-counterconditioning

Counterconditioning is the idea of re-training an animal's response to something. Basically speaking, you can use counter-conditioning to help him 'un-learn' the fear response and instead have a pleasant reaction to the thing he previously feared. For example: We had a cat (who due to a previous stressful experience being caught in a cat-trap for strays) hated his carrier. It terrified him and he would disappear as soon as we got it out. This made taking him to the vets not only difficult for us, but highly stressful for him! So we used counter-conditioning techniques to teach him that, rather than something to be feared, his box was the source of all great things in life - in the end he loved it and it made vets visits so much easier and calmer for everyone involved. 

Desensitisation is the process of allowing an animal to become so used to a stimulus that it no longer elicits a response. For example, an animal which is terribly afraid of a certain noise (fireworks, the vacuum cleaner etc) could be played a recording of that noise for a length of time every day. It would start barely audible the first few times, and the volume could be increased gradually, once the animal no longer showed any response to the noise, until they were successfully tolerating it at its full, natural volume. 

Desensitisation is not to be confused with 'flooding'.  http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooding_(psychology) This is the act of throwing the animal in at the deep end, so-to-speak, by suddenly surrounding them in the stimulus they fear (eg: taking a dog which fears other dogs to a doggy daycare or dog park where he is surrounded by them) in an attempt to show them that the thing they fear is no threat.  This is not something any good trainer will recommend (and beware trainers who call it 'desensitisation' when they are actually flooding).

Flooding is something that can work in humans with phobias - facing your fear of snakes by going to the reptile house at the zoo, or conquering a fear of the dark by sitting in a dark room. But it works for us because we can rationalise and think things through (and even then it is still highly stressful). Someone with a phobia, who is using flooding can say to themselves: "The snakes can't hurt me, they are behind glass. And it says here this one only eats tiny animals." Or: "The dark can't hurt me, there's nothing in my room I didn't put here myself." Plus, of course, we can choose - we can leave, or turn the light back on or ask someone to help us. An animal can't do any of that because it doesn't understand what's going on, because its their owner that controls their environment, not them and because their owner might not be able to read the sometimes very subtle signs that it is getting stressed and wants to get out of there.

Flooding an animal may work for some, but for others it can cause absolute panic, and may even increase the problem. And even in those where it does work, it is always stressful. So why not save the animal a massive amount of stress and possible catastrophic failure and just do things gradually? 

Both counterconditioning and desensitisation are methods that, when done correctly, ease anxieties and fears (and indeed, any other reponse e.g.: aggression or over excitement) gradually and with the minimum of stress. There are no 'quick fixes' in animal training! 

So, that about sums up the core aspects of my methods. 

I hope, whoever you are, that you will find the information on this blog somewhat useful. 

My plan is that future posts will be much less broad, and will help people with specific training or animal care issues, so if you are reading this and need some advice on something specific then let me know - I might just be able to help you out!