Specialized Training
Dogs are also trained for specific activities such as Competitive Obedience, CGC Certification, Agility, Herding, Tracking, and Flyball, and to undertake particular roles such as Detection dogs, Assistance dogs, Hunting dogs, Police dogs, Search and rescue dogs or Guard dogs.
Captain Arthur Haggerty, who for forty years was the major supplier of trained dogs for the U.S. entertainment industry, advocated the teaching of tricks to pet dogs, explaining that dogs bred for active duty herding, guarding or hunting were unemployed in modern society. He believed that dogs that are bored or frustrated, and consequently badly behaved, would find a purpose, a stronger relationship with their owners, and a way of filling their idle hours in learning tricks. Haggerty advocated working with the breed or the individual dog’s characteristics to teach tricks based on retrieving, scenting, vocalising and so on, publishing a trick aptitude chart for various dog breeds. He distinguished between tricks based on the dog’s normal behaviours (Kiss, Wag your Tail) and tricks that were taught. While Haggerty was publicly critical of trainers using total positive reinforcement for obedience training, he encouraged food rewards for trick training.
Read more about this topic: Dog Training
Famous quotes containing the words specialized and/or training:
“In the twentieth century, death terrifies men less than the absence of real life. All these dead, mechanized, specialized actions, stealing a little bit of life a thousand times a day until the mind and body are exhausted, until that death which is not the end of life but the final saturation with absence.”
—Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934)
“I’m not suggesting that all men are beautiful, vulnerable boys, but we all started out that way. What happened to us? How did we become monsters of feminist nightmares? The answer, of course, is that we underwent a careful and deliberate process of gender training, sometimes brutal, always dehumanizing, cutting away large chunks of ourselves. Little girls went through something similarly crippling. If the gender training was successful, we each ended up being half a person.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)