New Bill Hillmann Youtube is posted

[TuMicks]

Bill Hillmann is perhaps THE most significant retriever trainer and theorist for folks bringing up a young field dog. He has been posting a series of very short Youtube videos on training by conditioning. He distinguishes it from teaching. In his lexicon, a dog is "conditioned" to do the behavior when he cannot resist doing it.

In video 1 he describes how dogs are inadvertently conditioned to do the wrong things and explains the benefits of conditioning the dog to do the right thing.

In the most recent video he demonstrates a dog "conditioned" on HERE. He explains that his dogs know if they perform behavior X, they get "to play the game" (which, frustratingly, he really doesn't explain). But the purpose of the demonstration was to show the alacrity of the dog's response to the command. It's fast and positive and it's clear the dog is viewing the command as more of an invitation to "play the game".

But the interesting thing from my standpoint is that he says we should not be training the dog NOT to do the bad behavior (creeping is a good example, jumping up on the screen door is another) but to condition the dog to intensely want to do the good behavior (sitting steadily as birds are thrown, or sitting quietly at the screen door to come in). It's clear, you cannot get that speed and spirit from using the collar (though Bill does use the e-collar). I don't think you can get it with cookies or clickers.

So, I'll be waiting for more installments in the series. He's obviously breaking it down into itty bitty pieces (thus conditioning us to keenly anticipate each new video).