The Internet needs more Michael Ellis We need a official Michael Ellis channel Full social media team The legendary Real accomplished trainer's need a presence to stamp out all these garbage channels and content
Same here - he really made all the difference in the world in how I reshaped my training resulting in success for my dogs and clients. All while keeping if FUN for both dogs and handlers!
Great stuff as ALWAYS! Well first off, whenever I see the word "effortless"..... ("Hey Alexa..." 🙄) (i.e. me becoming fat and lazy). What Michael explains here makes so much sense. And this is very reminiscent of the force- free thing isn't it? The thing about failure or setbacks, etc. is that if you think about, it's built in to everything as human babies, toddlers. I mean, in an hour of a toddler's life there are a number of failures- that's a big part of how we learn... I mean, ice cream falls off cone, you learn about gravity and not leaning forward in the future. Happens all the time. It's also why you see toddlers screaming like their life is over, then 10 seconds later they're laughing about something... It's a very quick resilience to what didn't work just then.
Hi. I love these channels about animal behaviour and how it's used in training. My background is farming sheep and cows. So a dog makes a mistake for example it's meant ,get over ,that's the command and the dog chooses the wrong thing to over. What follows is a loud repeat, still not working then it's rapidly increases in voice with added swear words. Finally, the dog either does what the farmer wants or is told to, go home Your method is much better. Another thing I find amazing is the dog walking by your side looking up at your face. Here they heel behind. The dogs weave from side to side but never go in front until they are set or cast off the herd etc . The herl position is the fallback position. Dogs will sit behind their owners
What's fun? There's lots of trainers that get great success with minimal human interference. Let a dog make a mistake and actually learn their environment, and you'll see them figure out the scent again. I've watched this in the desert and windy arenas where cattle left a few hrs ago. Understanding how the brain works, truly can help us, help our dogs succeed more.
We advocate for minimal human influence in detection…. This is a primary aspect we teach. This however is different then never letting the dog have a error.
I think errorless learning doesn’t mean no errors. I think it means minimizing errors to such a low point. if there is an error it just gets ignored AND it makes the correct behavior obvious. when you reinforce the effort of trying again that builds resilience and persistence but I could call that adding duration. I do this ALL the time with Serivce dogs. You NEED the dog to be accurate and persistent when alerting to low blood sugar or waking someone up from a smoke detector.
