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This is interesting - how many dogs have you trained? And how long have they been tracked for relapses? How well do other people do with the training?
And is there someplace we can hear (in general) from your customers? A specific program to help dogs lose interest in chickens would be very helpful to me, if I could be sure it was effective most of the time...
Hi, Mulewagon. You can see in my post above why it's taken me so long to respond, with my regrets.
How many dogs have I trained? I've worked with dogs since I was about 12, and I'm now 56. I've always had great success with them, garnering many comments of amazement from friends, but have never worked with dogs in high concentration. I only addressed the chicken issue about eight years ago, more or less. It seemed an easy and obvious solution to me, which has proven to be true. I have since trained a couple dozen with completely universal success, small to large breeds, aggressive known killers to simply overzealous pups. I've helped a couple dozen owners who have called and asked for long-distance assistance; of course, I can't track those, but know that some have had great success, some reported improvement before we quit corresponding, and I know of one lady in her sixties that gave up and rehomed the dog, but stayed in touch and later said she wished she had stayed with it and kept her dog. I believe any failures to be a result of my inability to adequately convey just what to do and how to do it through words alone. I believe the video would have helped ensure success for all. So not huge numbers, but, for me, overwhelming evidence of the universal applicability. I've been personally involved with various teachers of natural horse training, and no one today reasonably questions that there is one universal "horse language." I am a firm believer now, with experience, that the same can be said of domestic dogs relative to their kill behaviors. I have no doubt that there is a reliable "one technique, one result" that will fit all dogs. In fact, we have been fashioning a concept for a $1,000 reward to anyone who brings me a dog for which this does not prove true. I spoke of this on a recent radio interview. I plan on introducing it sometime down the road...but this project is not a main focus in my life, so it will take some time for me to get it pulled together.
Relapses? My experience is that the fix is good for life, and it makes sense to me to believe so. I have not tracked dogs of those people I've helped long distance. I have never known a dog I've trained to relapse to killing chickens. Once you remove the excitement element that any creature causes a dog, the dog has no reason to ever again respond to that creature with grab-and-kill reactions. However, I have had one small relapse in my own terrier. When we moved, the dog went about three years without exposure to chickens. When we finally got chickens again, one day within the first few weeks I caught her carrying one across the yard in her mouth. Previous to her training, she had aggressively killed chickens, but this time the chicken was unharmed, and one very brief, calm retraining period of just two or three minutes has resulted in a return to her protecting chickens rather than her earlier killing them.
The project is too new for me to have a read on how well other people in general do with the training. Until I was making the video, I had always trained with my steps in a particular order, which admittedly required a certain amount of timing skills with animals. And this is the order I taught others via phone and email. But in doing the video, I learned some things from an incredibly difficult dog that caused me to reverse a couple steps, and I believe the result is that those particular timing skills are no longer required. I will be attempting to track and report more on this question as the project matures.
We have considered establishing some kind of forum within the project for people to share their experiences. It's new, and we haven't gone there yet. Some of the people I have helped the most don't have the personality, ability, or perhaps the inclinations to be involved in social sharing, which hampers this element of the project a bit. But in time we'll begin to collect feedback that will put this into proper perspective. So far, I am willing to personally coach anyone who has difficulty with it, but since its release, I've not yet been asked for additional coaching.
Now, let me repeat what I said to Carolinagirl. I have not intended this as a commercial. I intend it as being helpful to someone who had a problem, and as a direct response to you. Any reader of this forum is welcome to a free sixty-day access to the library, until this post is sixty days old (I know from experience that if I don't limit it, this post will hound me for many years). I'll send you your credentials via email. Perhaps you can later start the feedback process.
--Bryan
