When I trained with my first guide dog, Waffle, I was taught to use negative reinforcement methods with her.  That is, to correct the unwanted behaviours using my voice, the lead and/or the harness.  This method of training and working with my dog never sat very comfortably with me so my corrections were pretty pathetic and ineffectual.  It was remarked upon on on more than a few occasions that I needed to get better at using these methods to get the best out of my dog.  That my command of these methods was rather despaired of was actually a matter of pride to me, albeit a secret one.  I very much wanted to continue working with my guide dog and treasured her though so bit my tongue on the occasions I was corrected for my poor performance as I was worried that failure to come up to the required standard could mean my dog would be removed from me.

Towards the end of our partnership I started to do some learning in dog behaviour and psychology and moved further away from the methods I had been taught instead favouring positive reinforcement which focusses on building an association in the dog of the behaviour you do want and something pleasant resulting from that behaviour being given.  So for example using negative reinforcement method for my guide dog being distracted by a pet dog I would need to give a sharp “no” followed by a harness flick (designed to physically remind the dog that she needed to focus on her guiding), and if that didn’t work, a lead flick (designed to physically remind the dog that she needed to focus on her guiding but as it is given on the neck, any physicality of it is felt to a much greater degree than through the harness which is around her chest).  Using positive reinforcement, when Waffle ignored the pet dog, I praised her and would follow this with a small piece of food which helped to strengthen the ‘positive’ from her behaviour and thus reinforcing the behaviour I did want.

Sadly Waffle became seriously unwell when she was 5, was retired early and only had a 4 week retirement with me before gaining her angel wings.  All that I had learned from Waffle meant that I wanted only to use positive reinforcement with any future guide dog.   That was to be her legacy.

When I was matched with Sadie she had been partly trained using positive methods and these were the ones I adopted when training and working with her.  For anyone who has followed my blog, particularly for our refresher training, you’ll know that when the charity who gifted me Sadie didn’t know why she was throwing off certain unwanted behaviours (mainly stopping on the pavement and not budging, and conversely leaping around on the pavement) partly because they didn’t know why Sadie was doing this and partly because at that time punishment methods were still relied upon to alter behaviours in the dogs, particularly the unwanted ones, these were the methods used for the refresher training.  I went with this but my heart was still not in it.  I adored my dog, had spent time trying to understand her and the very last thing I ever wanted to do was to be correcting her all the time.  Had these methods worked, I MIGHT have stuck with them, but they didn’t and both of us were pretty miserable.  So I ditched them and stopped blogging about what I was doing mainly because I was still wary of doing something wrong in the eyes of the charity and risk having my dog removed from me.

One the first things I learned during my human psychology training was that behaviour never occurs in a vacuum. One of the first things I learned from my early days with Sadie was that I might not know why she was behaving in the ways I didn’t want, but correcting her out of them wasn’t going to work.  I was adamant that her “problem” behaviours were stress led, others disagreed and argued that it didn’t matter why she was doing what she was doing, we just needed to get her to stop them.  Punishment methods do work, but they are not in my personal and professional opinion ethical or moral when superior methods exist which do not cause the dog any physical or emotional harm.  I moved from correcting unwanted behaviours, to solely focussing on rewarding the behaviours I did want.  Over time Sadie became less stressed, and as she did so the problem behaviours started to disappear.  She learned that she had no need to be stressed with me, I wasn’t going to correct her if she gave me an unwanted behaviour, I was just going to refocus her on the behaviour I did want, and as soon as she gave me that, reinforce it.  She learned it was much more fun to be out and about in the world being praised and being fed little food rewards for helping me.

However,  2 problem behaviours remained and over the past 4 years of our partnership I have asked at various times for help with these, but it was still punishment methods being recommended to resolve them.  As I wouldn’t use them, I effectively socially isolated myself and Sadie so she didn’t have the opportunity to keep practicing the unwanted behaviours.  At our recent annual follow up visit from the charity I spoke in depth about my feelings of being isolated and not wanting to use punishment methods to train Sadie to give me the behaviours I wanted.  Happily they listened and fortuitously had themselves moved to only using positive reinforcement with their dogs.  Yes there are still a substantial number of working dogs who have been trained and currently work to punishment methods, but all new pups and training (both canine and human) is done using only positive reinforcement.

Today Sadie and I met with a senior trainer with the charity and we started working on her unwanted behaviours.  I’m hoping to blog about our training to share the methods Guide Dogs now use and, hopefully, our success using them.  The most important thing for me in this training will be that at (long) last I will be taught how to teach Sadie the behaviours I do want, and not to punish/correct those I don’t want.  Dogs are no different from humans – they don’t learn what you do want them to do unless you teach them that.

Although I have talked in this post about the methods used by the charity who gifted me Waffle and Sadie, and may do so in future blogs, I am in no way intending that to be viewed as casting a negative light on them, or any of their staff.  They care passionately for all their dogs and will always do their very utmost, often going way above and beyond anything that could be reasonably expected of them to train the dogs and help visually impaired people like myself to get out and about.  They are to be commended for moving to training techniques that have been shown to be superior, to being committed to only using those going forward and to retrain an entire workforce to only use these methods along with all their volunteers; a not insignificant undertaking.