Soo...I saw this on another one of my lists. It seems that Mr. Frawley has caught on to the power of using markers and rewards/food in training...this year Leerburg has produced two new DVD's:
The Power of Training Dogs with Food, and The Power of Training Dogs with Markers......
Now, I haven't watched them,
From http://leerburg.com/219.htm
I had been training dogs for almost 45 years when I started to learn this system. I felt like a kid in a candy store when I saw how well it worked and the attitude of my dogs that were being trained with markers. The fact is I still feel like that when I see dogs work with markers.
It was not than many years ago (in 1990’s) that I was pretty vocal about how stupid I thought clicker training was. Those comments were made from a position of ignorance and a lack of understanding. Simply put, I was dead wrong and I made those comments without knowing the details of how the system worked. The power of marker training lies in understanding and applying the details.
Since the early 1900’s dog training has been an evolving skill. We only need to look back to the 1970’s and the methods of William Kholer or Winifred Strickland to see how far dog training has improved is the last 25 years. In my opinion no one is ever going to reinvent a better way to train dogs than with markers. The only thing that we will see change will be people who do a better job of applying this method of dog training.
Very interesting indeed. I really am happy to see that once all trainers, of any philosophy, open up their minds and thoughts, that one can see quite easily that using a marker in training (what people call clicker training) is a very sound, valid, reliable, and exceptional science.
At first I guessed that Mr. Frawley simply jumped on the bandwagon for financial reasons, but in reading some of the marker and food-training things on his site, I think that he genuinely does have an interest in making this a permanent, and valuable, part of his training program. And for that, I applaud him.