Not a badly worked out commercial add by an e-fence commercial competitor. For those who don't know, there are very stiff planning laws in US (where this advert for Karen Prior is based) as regards fencing around gardens.

From what I understand of it, it is almost impossible to get planning permission to fence off a front garden in almost any town in any state, e-fences for dogs & cats are prolific there for that reason.

The protocols for e-fence training, including flags, are the same or simlar games, food etc as the clicker methods described by Karen Prior but initialy without a tone (clicker).

After a recomended 2 weeks of reinforcement training (games, food, human presence reinforcers etc), inside the flaged area the dog is allowed to go to the edge of the flaged area, when it reaches that marked boundry it is introduced to a beep tone, or on some collars a clicker tone, followed shortly (appx 1 sec) after by a pulse from the collar a sec after the tone. It learns not to go past the flagged boundry because that behaviour causes discomfort. At this point the human presence is gradually removed & the games inside the flags gradualy phased out.

The more common sence logical explanation is that going beyond the boundry is life threateningly dangerous and the dog should never go past the flags or it could be killed.

Historical, Relevant Facts
One significant thing in Karen Priors clicker promotion add which is missing is the fact that Karen Prior was using an e-fence with her own dogs for several years, it was only around 2003/4 she claimed she had stopped using them, maybe it was pure coicidence that at that time those promoting commercial clicker training & using Karen Prior as a reference head figure of clicker training on their net promotions were being challeneged by others pointing out that Karen Prior herself was using an e-fence and had been for several years.

Once word was well & truely around the net that Karen was using the same e-fence she was telling others not to use she had to declare that she had stopped using them, well what a surprise!

The methods outlined on her commerciaL promotion site & linked by L4L are copied from early e-fence methods & now seemingly promoted as her own, another surprise in 'galsswear'. Also, of relevant interest:

The then (2001 onwards period) head vet of the RSPCA, Chris Laurenson, was also using an e-fence, he is the current head vet of The Dogs Trust, strange really as the RSPCA at that time was asking for e-collars to be banned (yes, inc e-fences), even more strange the RSPCA did not tell the public its own head vet was using an e-fence! Significantly L4L has ommited the above information, strange or not strange?

A dogs learned behaviours to aversive stimuli
YouTube - ‪E-Collar Trained. Dogs Learned Responses To Aversive Stimuli‬‏

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You do realize he is using an aversive?

yes - Ian first teaches Dune a pattern: we get to here & we Stop & Sit -
then get up & move off. This becomes a habit, but he is doing this in a short vignette here.

then he sets the dog up - which IMO is not a good idea, i would personally see this as a 'test',
& would not set the dog up to fail for the verbal-startle, instead i'd simply say, 'whoops',
realize i have not taught it thoroughly enuf - the dog needs to practice & proof more! -
& do more rehearsals till the dog stops or even SITS before i cue her/him in any way.
then i know they've got the concept! i can even teach the dog to ignore being called
across the boundary by friendly-strangers - or even known children or visiting relatives, etc.



Ian uses a verbal interruptor of indrawn "ahhhh!" - registering shock & dismay.
a verbal interruptor is not a physical aversive: there's no collar-jerk, no pinch/poke of prongs,
no shock, no shut-down airway from a skinny slip-lead or slip-collar...
it startles the dog more than anything, & obviously we'd gauge the dog's ability to handle that.
soft dogs or easily-scared dogs cannot typically tolerate such surprises, unless very mild;
obviously, Dune is a happy, confident dog & not a timid, shrinking one.

this is a mild aversive & while i would not use it to train, i MIGHT use it to startle an untrained dog,
just so that i could stop her/him before they crossed the bounds, if i was too far away to get between
the dog & the street - making that shocked-sound, followed by turning away from the dog [who looks
to see what the heck we're reacting to] & then doing the famous contact-lens search could bring a dog
right back to me to see what i've got, riffling thru the grass that way...


Ian also uses a chain-loop martingale on a smooth-coated dog with a massive neck -
Dune [who BTW is recently deceased - he had a chronic issue with bloating ] has no coat
to be snagged by the chain, his hair will not be tangled or pulled, but it might pinch his skin -
it's a remote possibility, as the collar is not lying slackly, but it could.

so if Dune were my dog, i'd use an all-fabric martingale 2-inches wide [due to his size] to eliminate
any possible chance that he might get pinched, even if it would be rarely.

__________________
terry pride, APDT-Aus, apdt#1827, CVA, TDF
*wolves R wolves, dogs R dogs, + primates R us.*
tmp, sept-2007

BOOK - 'Born to Be Good' - prosociality, teaching, learning & signals.

video -
YouTube - ‪Born to be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life‬‏

So you posted, without comment, a video of Mr. Dunbar using an aversive for boundary training in thread entitled "teaching boundaries without aversives"?

Why wouldn't you use the mild aversive to train? Unless there's a lot of creative editing going on, it seems to have worked pretty well.

YouTube - ‪Invisible barriers- dog training‬‏

Splash is extremely clicker-savvy & has a lot of default behaviors, so quickly generalizing
from just a few site-specific trials would not surprise me - he's smart & a thinker.

__________________
terry pride, APDT-Aus, apdt#1827, CVA, TDF
*wolves R wolves, dogs R dogs, + primates R us.*
tmp, sept-2007

I LOVE nilif it's never failed for me

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Because as lFL explained, the interruptor "startling" the dog requires guaging the dog's ability to respond well to it. A nervous, or very soft dog, might be seriously set back by such.

In general one does not want to use aversive interruptor, as it introduces ambivalence into your relationship with the dog. A positive interruptor has no such problem.

So in same situation, I could say to our dog "uh oh" gently (NRM), then "back!" should I be training auto-sit on property boundary line.

The set up, seems perverse to, one trains the dog to follow to heel on leash (or off) and now suddenly it's "wrong". That may confuse a dog making it less sure in other situations that it's doing the right thing.

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For eager & reliable recall, be fun for the dog to come back to! Then often send them off right away to do what they wanted!
DT&B - Glossary of acronyms & jargon terms.
Encouraging good behaviours, whilst consistently avoiding practise of bad alternatives leads to extinction of the bad. So if dog sits 6/10 times it doesn't sit 4/10 times, encouraging with the right rewards (positively-reinforcing) enough for 9/10 times means it now fails to sit only 1/10 times, sit 10/10 means...