I know I made some waves with my “Skinner” post. But honestly, if you look at the comments, I think it sparked some discussion that is valuable.
In the spirit of education, I thought I’d post a link to an early source of info I studied.
Leerburg.com is a great resource. It has a ton on streaming videos on a variety of subjects. There’s a ton of articles. There’s a very active, and informative blog.
And they have these:
There’s about a dozen podcasts, probably 30+ minutes each. They are really, very good.
They’re by Ed Frawley. He’s a “Balanced” trainer. Which is dog training slang for uses any of the 4 quadrants (from the “Skinner” article), without being a slave to any of them. A lot of the “reward only” people really, really hate the guy, because he will use a prong collar, or an E-collar. And, people really like to cherry pick some of his more controversial things out of context, and demonize him for it. Thing is, if you actually listen to him, he is actually VERY into the reward based training methods. He is a giant proponent of marker training. Which is essentially the clicker and treat type training that the “Purely Positive” folks love so much.
But, what really made me like him, was in one of his podcasts, he talked about how much he’s learned. He’s this 50 something year old guy, that has been in the dog game forever. Began his education in the old time “harsher” methods of dog training. But he’s got an open mind. And publicly admits he has found a better way. He even goes so far in one, as to say something along the lines of “this tape is an attempt to make up for all the dogs that I trained when I didn’t know better. They deserved better”. I’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea. That takes a level of courage and dedication that in beyond rare now days. I will always be an Ed Frawley fan for that one reason alone!
Check them out.