What I hope will change is that we understand more about canine cognition, how they learn and what they pay attention to and how to tap into that. Because I think classical, and especially operant conditioning is a very good tool. It is quite clear you can achieve a lot with it, but I think dogs understand a lot more, and if we understand what they understand we can make our training much more effective. And that’s where I hope it will go, that what is being done in the field of canine cognition, that we will start using that more in training dogs.
Minke:
So good morning Patrick
.
Patrick
Good morning. Here we are again.
Minke:
Yes, we’re back. And this time again in English, although our guest does speak Dutch very well. We have been talking this morning and decided we will do this one in English. It’s my very big pleasure to introduce to you our guest of today, we are at her kitchen table and her name is Adee Schoon.
Adee:
Hello Minke. Hello Patrick. Nice to welcome you here in my home.
Patrick:
Thank you very much.
Minke:
Thank you for having us here. It’s a pleasure and I have been very excited to be able to interview you. But before we do that, maybe we need to assess what we are going to talk about.
Patrick:
Yes, well, perhaps it would be nice if we introduced ourselves, so that listeners know who Adee is and what she has done. And, well, how we wind up here at her kitchen table.
Minke:
I will make a small leap on that because I have met Adee in previous courses I have done. To be honest, I was very drawn to Adee’s way of speaking at courses and very inspired by the way you were teaching. That’s how I got the know you first, and later on I started reading about you and bought a book you’ve written.
Patrick:
I brought it with me.
(Laughter)
Minke:
Maybe she will sign it for you.
Patrick:
Yes, that would be great.
Minke:
But without any further due, Adee, could you maybe in a couple of words introduce yourself and tell us what your role is in the working dog community? Because that is more or less what we are about.
Adee:
Okay, thank you. Well it has been over thirty years ago that I started. I went to university, did biology, and basically focused on behaviour. That was my main topic at the time. I did experiments with horses to determine whether they could see colour.
Minke:
Oh, wow.
Adee:
Using learning techniques, I taught them to respond to a particular colour and then tested them to see how well they generalized. However, when I graduated there was absolutely no room for a biologist in society and I ended up working at a computer company. That was until the professor that I had done the work with in Leiden tracked me down. At the time, they were being confronted with a situation where they wanted to do research into the reliability of dogs in performing scent identification line-ups - that was being done in Holland at the time. He told me that they thought I might fit the bill. I had a fixed job, a permanent job with the computer company but I went to talk anyway. I then had to consider whether I was going to give up this fixed position for doing this research for four years. I could choose to make it a PHD, so after thinking a little about it I decided to do it. It was just fascinating.
Minke:
It’s a chance in a lifetime.
(Laughter)
Adee:
It was. But I did want to do a PHD because I realized then that in Holland there are very few people who actually do anything at a scientific level on learning behaviour. That is very much an American thing and not done a lot in Europe. So, I thought it would be good to have some people on board who will follow such research in a critical manner. And we agreed, so in 1991 I started as a biologist. The money was being given by the ministry of Justice to the law department at Leiden University, so as a biologist I started working at the law faculty to do a PHD on dogs. During this time, I was travelling around the country, bringing these scented tubes with me that we use in Holland for that purpose. I would travel all the way down to Limburg in the south and all the way up to the north to do tests with dog handlers. Because of that I got to know them very well.
That was a tough time because the police were reorganizing and the dog handlers that were doing these tests had just moved from what was called the tactical police into the technical police. This meant that there were now more people with a little bit more of a scientific background who were looking at them, being slightly skeptical about what these dogs were actually doing. Whereas before they could proclaim about anything; they were the experts after all, now there were more people being critical about them. In addition to that, there had been a top-down change in how these line-ups were supposed to be done, so everybody was very upset. Then on top of that came I, this young university chick coming around… It was a completely male dominated world at the time, and they were afraid I was going to take away their jobs. The very first year it was very much like that. It was a struggle, but we sort of started to work together and they started to appreciate what I could bring them. I was learning a lot, that is the one thing that I tried to hold on to. Everybody goes through a phase in which they’re a little bit cockier, where you feel like you know a lot. You sort of go through that and then you become less cocky and you become humbler again.
Minke:
(laughing) Other than in the Kruger effect you mean.
Adee:
Yes, exactly.
(Laugher)
Adee:
So, yeah, it is good to realize, looking back at your life, when you might have been a little bit too cocky.
I did the research on the scent identification line-up and a result of that research the line-ups changed quite drastically. As a side effect, they realized - at what was then the national police canine school, that they didn’t really have someone who could give them the kind of knowledge that I could. There were contacts with TNO, which in Holland is sort of like a lab associated with our defense forces, our military. They could tell them about the types of explosives and some background on that, and there were contacts with our national forensic institute on the kind of drugs that were there and what they were made of, but there was no one that they could talk to about what human scent actually is. There was no one to talk to about what learning is, what training is and where they intersect. In any kind of new things they were stuck. So I sort of got this role as a scientific counsellor and I started to work part-time. That was a new contract with the police and Leiden University but this time with the animal behaviour group. I worked with the police for a long time as a scientific counselor, that is; doing the research bits that were there - that were necessary, setting up training material and educating people and helping them think along more scientific lines. My English is quite good, I always wanted to publish or half publish and that created a network which helped me a lot. That way, as soon as I had a new question it was easy to access and ask people. I really tried to act like this spider in the web and get everybody together. I have been lucky in that way. Being part of some international working groups widened my own horizon as well.
Then, gradually, things outside of the police started coming in. The first thing that happened was through my contacts with APOPO, which is a Belgian NGO that trains African pouched rats to detect landmines. I got more into the landmine world. APOPO had come to Holland to a Dutch detection dog school for advice when they started training on landmines. We gave them that advice, and I sort of followed them from then on. They started training rats in Antwerp before they left to Tanzania where they are now and where I went to visit them in this big warehouse where they had the rats and where they had big trees and sand in which they would burry tea eggs with TNT in them. I saw what they were doing and then they moved to Tanzania.
At one point, the project needed to be evaluated and they asked me to be one of the official evaluators so I went there together with someone with much more of a landmine background and spent a week or two in Tanzania looking what at they were doing. That really widened up my horizons, and I started to become much more interested in landmines. They had organized a conference and I met other people. After that I started to advice NPA, which is the Norwegian people’s aid that also has a big dog training school. I was fascinated by how different things were done there. That was my first introduction to other things. It grew from there. New things popped up; cancer detection, corrosion detection, different products... It is very wide what you can do with dogs.
Minke:
You can do so much, yes.
Adee:
And you can do so much wrong.
(Laugher)
Patrick:
Yeah, totally. That sound like some sort of snowball effect that you encountered…
Adee:
Yes.
Patrick:
…thorough your career.
Adee:
And you get to realize that some odours... In the forensic world it is very important to know how sensitive and how specific the dogs are responding, because a lot of follow up activity is connected to that. But in some cases, for example if you have wildlife detection, it depends. If you are just helping someone to monitor a certain species, to find scat for example, because dogs can do that much quicker, you are just helping them out. It is not a problem if you miss something.
Minke:
Exactly, yes.
Adee:
The whole atmosphere, the whole setting is different. But if you are doing search and rescue work you want to be able to say; there is no one left alive here, we need to refocus. And then it does become very important that you actually know where the limits are of what dogs can do.
Minke:
So what percentage of certainty you can give about whether an area is clear or not.
Adee:
Yes. So, it depends very much. Thinking about that, I … All these different areas I have learned about… I mean when I started off I was just working with the police and by doing things that are more related to industry, and more related to other fields where dogs are being used, diseases for example, you sort of broaden your view on what the possibilities are. I have learned a lot from people that are very much enthusiastic about THEIR dog, and they want THEIR dog to develop further. So it’s not like: “I need to do this job and this dog isn’t good enough, I will get a new one”. It’s really: “Okay, what can I do with this dog”. You need to improve your training and you need to be very creative. On the other hand, you also need to be realistic, and think: “okay, there are limits to this dog. I am doing the best I can, but there are limits. I cannot take this dog to this situation because it simply won’t work.” That balance, that is something that fascinated me, because I think some people could learn from the creativity of others, and others could learn from people with a more objective view of what they should be doing.
Minke:
Yes, the disciplined side.
Adee:
Yes, exactly. And that is sort of what triggered the book as well. There are so many things that fit in the picture. For instance , one of the questions I usually get asked is: “What is the best breed for a detection dog”.
Patrick & Minke:
Yes.
Minke:
What is your answer?
Adee:
Well, I think…
(Laugher)
Adee:
…It is very much the individual dog. Which dog is preferred in a particular country says more about the handlers than it says about the dogs.
Minke:
Oh, can you explain that. I am curious, what are your thoughts on that?
Adee:
Well, I think the world is opening up much more now. You see a lot more different breeds. Not very long ago, in the UK you would find Labradors as detection dogs and here you would find Malinois.
Minke:
Yes (laughing).
Adee:
And I remember talking to someone who gave me a really good explanation. She said: “Labradors are [16:16]-proof”. I said: “What do you mean?”. […]-proof means that you need to spend a little bit of time teaching a Labrador something but once he knows what to do, he will just do it, no matter who is on the other end of the line. That’s a [16:31]; someone working as a handler and maybe not being a handler. They will continue doing what they need to be doing. A Malinois on the other hand doesn’t stop learning, so if you’re not very careful in how you follow up, you’re going to be teaching him new things. There is no way you can tell a Malinois: “This is what you need to do, and this is what you need to do the rest of your life.” They will continue to figure stuff out.
Patrick:
Does that mean in training, for instance, that you might use a different protocol when you’re training a lab then you would when you’re working a Malinois? Or do you still stick to the same protocol?
Adee:
I think you can afford to be clumsier and make more mistakes with a Malinois then you can with a Labrador. If you have a protocol that will work for a Labrador or for a more sensitive dog, you will certainly be able to use that on a Malinois, but you might not be able to make the kind of mistakes that you can make with a Malinois with a Labrador, because a Labrador will look at you and say: “This is not fun anymore, I don’t get this. Go do your homework”.
(Laughter)
Minke:
Ah, that’s how you mean it.
Adee:
I think the thing with Malinois is that they are so eager to work, they are so willing to try to figure out what you want them to be doing, that if you do make a clumsy mistake, they will just shake their heads and say: “Okay, we’ll try again”. They will continue and continue.
Minke:
They want to learn what you want them to, even if you’re doing it wrong.
Adee:
Exactly. I sometimes feel sorry for them, because they can take so much bad training. It’s just incredible. It’s fantastic to see what they are able to figure out.
Minke:
I never looked at it like that, but it’s an interesting explanation, definitely.
Patrick:
What I was also wondering… I always thought that the Netherlands was dominant in the world when it comes to dog training, that this was the place where the experts in the field were. I heard you say that you also visited the Norwegian People’s Aid and that you went to Tanzania. Are there other countries of which you might say that they have evolved even more and perhaps have become, let’s say not per se better, but for simplicity’s sake; let’s call it better than the Netherlands? Because everyone is always saying that the dog industry, the dog training business, has started in the Netherlands, but I think that’s not true.
Adee:
I think the KNPV has much to do with that. The whole KNPV training program and the exams that they do, they’re pretty tough. And the dogs that come out of that are. In addition, it has never been the case that you needed to have purebred dogs either, like you have with the VDH. Those have to be purebred dogs. I think the KNPV program, the way it works and the way people train their dogs; it creates dogs that are used by police forces in many countries. In my opinion that is the basis for this idea. The KNPV and the police dogs as well as patrol dogs, that’s very old. The more sensitive detection side of it is much more recent. I think those are two different worlds really.
With regard to patrol dogs, I don’t have a good view on that worldwide. I don’t know exactly. Determining what is a good program is defining what you want the dogs to be able to do, and if your needs are different, then the description of what you want them to be doing is different. For example, there is a permanent discussion whether a patrol dog can also be a sniffer dog. In the US, most patrol dogs are also detecting some other additional thing, usually narcotics. Are those dogs not as good as our dogs are? I don’t know, you’d need to test them. But you also need to look at the money side of it. If you have patrol dogs that can also do some detection work - maybe they’re not as good patrol dogs and maybe they’re not as good sniffer dogs - but if you then have a much shorter response time for everything because you have dogs all over the place – you might miss fifty percent, you also do have fifty percent that you’d maybe have missed if you have one specialized dog that cannot be everywhere in time. So it’s the balance from an organization point of view. I think if you have a top dog and a top trainer that you can get all kinds of things done with the same dog. Then as a trainer you need to be very specific: now I want you to do this, and now I want you to do that. And you have to monitor that very closely with your dog as well. If you have a dog that is a biting dog and a drug sniffing dog and you end up in a situation where you are supposed to be sniffing but there is also someone running around being very aggressive, then that can be a very strong trigger for the dog. Can you actually really refocus him to do the search whilst this other person is running around and he would love to go and bite? Will you be able to do your work as well as you would if you wouldn’t have that person around for example?
So there is always this trade off. I think if you define what you want very clearly, see what your own capabilities are, and look at what the dog can do, then you can get the best out of it. I would be hesitant to say that this is better, or that is better. It all depends on how well you meet your needs, and a description of these needs is the first step. Also, these needs may vary a lot between countries, between disciplines.
Patrick:
And, of course the way that you started training towards your goal. If you have a young dog that you’re training to be a dual-purpose dog for instance, but you use a lot of arousal during training, then it might be very difficult for him to perform the task of detection if you’ve got someone around who is being aggressive. What I miss a little bit in the patrol dog world - that’s my cup of tea of course- is that there is some scientific base for how things are done but not a lot, and I hardly see people in the patrol dog world who are willing to dig into that scientific piece further. Who are willing to look at how it really works. A lot of people, within their enthusiasm just start to train and if during that training they encounter a problem, they’ll see what happens then. There is no real scientific basis for how they train. What I also see is that training is always focused merely on the dog. If the exercise goes wrong it is always the dog who is to blame. We all know, as we’re sitting here at this table, that that’s not the case. I am really convinced that a lot of times it is the handler that makes that the exercise fails. That is something that I think is changing a little bit, but not very fast.
Adee:
It is difficult to do good scientific research on such a complicated topic as patrol dogs and teaching them to bite and release. If I may take just one example that I know more of in the scent detection world; a lot of the research that is being done, the really interesting neurological research on how brains actually work, are done with mice and rats – rodents - that are kept in laboratory circumstances to begin with. Now we all know from other research that odour deprivation during development and even during your life, if you’re not confronted with …
(Dogs barking)
Minke:
(laughing) So let’s just take a moment, let the dogs tell us what’s going on.
Adee:
Something very dangerous.
Minke:
Is there someone at the door? No, okay, so we just keep going.
Adee:
Yes.
Minke:
It doesn’t matter.
Adee:
Well, they’re kept in an environment where there’s not a lot of variation in odours. We know that variation in odours - being exposed to a variation in odours - increases your sensitivity and your ability to discriminate. So, you’re going to be doing scent work with animals that are not optimally kept to be able to develop that sense. Then, the way they do it, they use shock conditioning, because it’s a very simple and basic way of learning which involves mainly the amygdala and is easier to standardize. But we also know that using shock conditioning is only one type of learning. It might well be that the rules that you discover here have absolutely no application in more reward-based training. You see that already in that field, to do proper scientific work where you have controls and where you can duplicate things in order to create some reliability – is hard to undertake and already very limited in what it means in the real world. think that’s the same case with a lot of the more complicated questions that you have with learning. I mean, everybody knows that once an animal is overstressed, he will get into this learned helplessness kind of phase. That’s something that people should know. I think dogs that have that become traumatized, they fall out of the whole process at some point in time. However, not a lot is done in that field because it’s so much more difficult to do. In addition, there are also ethical considerations; how far will you go, how far will you push to see what happens? I don’t feel very happy about some of the things that I’ve seen done with the rats, the mice, for research purposes into scent detection capabilities. I am grateful for the results because they tell us a little bit, but I wouldn’t much like to be involved in training animals that way, in doing the research myself. It’s not very happy research. And there are different elements there. I mean, there are some people that are capable of looking at dogs very well; they can really read the dogs, describe exactly what’s happening, but if you give them a clicker they’re not capable of marking correct kinds of behaviour. They wouldn’t be able to free-shape. On the other hand, there are people that naturally have a very fast response time. They’re organically fused with the dog and it’s wonderful to watch but if you ask them to explain what they’re doing you get a jumble of words and they can’t really explain because they themselves don’t have the analytical kind of mind you need to be able to take all of these pieces apart.
Patrick:
They just have a God-given talent in being correct on the timing. In working with the dog and in feeling the dog. Yes, that’s what we see a lot.
Adee:
Exactly, there are people that read dogs extremely well, have fabulous timing but have been taught in a more traditional training way using repressive methods. They can get a dog to almost do everything because they know exactly when to force a dog and when to release pressure. So even though they’re using aversives a lot, they get really good dogs, they do. With those people I try to approach them saying: “Hey, you have good timing, you read the dog well, you know exactly where you want to go. All you need to do is make the switch in your mind that instead of using aversives, you can also use appetitive controls, use the fun things, use the rewarding things, and your dog has a happier life as well.”
Patrick:
Yes, that’s what we hope will happen. That people will come to realize that the dogs’ wellbeing is important and that positive training methods are going to be the future. Because if you keep being stubborn and say: “I have done this for thirty years, I know it works, and it got me results. I got into the national championships”, it will eventually destroy the thing that you really love, because like you said, from an ethical point of view, there are more and more people who are questioning if the use of aversives in training is still something we want in modern day society. So they have to change, but some people find this really difficult. In order to change they need to be motivated, to want to change.
Minke:
Yes, but you also need to want and be able to make the switch. I think we aren’t tapping into our full potential as human beings. That’s a fact. I think it’s difficult but we need to inspire people to try. I think that’s [32:11].
Patrick:
I think what the biggest problem is, is that if you have been successful in that way of training, it becomes like a positive reinforcer for yourself.
Minke:
Yes, definitely.
Patrick:
So that’s pretty difficult, but I think if you really have the motivation and you’re willing to have an open mind, accept that there are also other people that know how to train dogs, if you’re able to set aside your ego and open up to different things and other people and other insights, that you are actually going to improve as a trainer.
Adee:
I think you become more versatile because you are increasing your toolbox if you can use reinforcements as well as using corrections. I think people that have had good results have earned the right to be cocky because they have already done quite a lot. They often see no need for change because what they do works. And if they’ve done it repeatedly, they usually also know how to balance it. Even when aversive training methods are used, you do see those dogs running around with wagging tails and looking fairly happy. The stress they experience may be more on the inside and may have more effects than what is directly visible, health wise for example. Those are extremely difficult to measure; cortisol doesn’t always say everything and behaviour can be difficult to interpret. They can look really happy, but you don’t know what’s really happening inside. It’s good if those people are open enough to at least listen. I think one of the things that works best is to challenge them, to say: “Hey, I see you can do this like this, would you be able to do it like that too?”. That might be one approach to take. The one thing that you have to be careful of is not to condemn them for working in that way.
Patrick:
No, definitely not, no.
Adee:
Another thing that might be of influence is, is that you see a lot of people that use a lot of positive reinforcement having dogs that do absolutely nothing at all, that are playing around and are absolutely not focused on what their supposed to be doing at all. I remember one of the first demonstrations I was at where the clicker was being demonstrated in a police environment. For one thing, the type of dogs that came in weren’t the kind of dogs that at that time were police dogs. They were these joyful little dogs that were jumping around all over the place. In addition, they had become what I call “clicker-happy”. They see a clicker come out and they’re like: “Okay, what are we going to be doing now, let me try this, let me try that”. They were all over the place and they became so enthusiastic about finding out what the rules of the game would be this time. Really happy dogs, but that’s not something you want as a professional police officer. You want a dog that is going to be able to do the job that you have selected for him and not fool around too much. So this was completely different. More or less like a baker who wants to know how to make bread but instead he is given the recipe for pastries. It just doesn’t match. How can you say with this recipe for pastries: “I am going to improve my bread baking”? That’s something different!
(Laughter)
So you have these big miscommunications. I think there needs to be understanding from both sides - and that is coming. In my opinion we need to try to bridge the gap; if you use terminology, try to keep it as simple as you possibly can. There are some people where I get completely lost, they become too academic for me.
Minke:
I am so happy you say that. (Laughing)
Patrick:
Because they’re too theoretical.
Adee:
Yes, they stretch the limits of what most people can comprehend. It can become quite complicated. I think you need to keep it as simple as you possibly can and use real-world examples. That’s what I try to do, and that’s also what I wanted to put into my teaching in general and in the book. It has actually been translated into French and I got the nicest compliment from the person who translated it. She is a French teacher and has her own dog school. She was referred to me and told me after she translated it: “I want to thank you for being allowed to translate your book because I learned so much”.
Minke & Patrick:
Oh, wow.
Adee:
That was the best compliment ever and I really thanked her for it.
Patrick:
Yes, I can imagine.
Adee:
In order to say something like that you really have to read it thoroughly; not just read it as a book, but read it to translate it.
Minke:
Yes. But your book is very complete. Just to get the title of it…
Patrick:
We’ve got it here in front of us.
Minke:
Yes, in English it’s called: “Training Dogs to use their nose – a Blueprint”. I have used it with people that are doing my courses, or the courses at K9 NOSE, because I am not the only teacher there at this moment, luckily…, finally… (laughing). Marjoleine van Doorn is helping me with that. She is a very practical person and very knowledgeable… We meet each other in the middle and that’s really nice. But your book is also meeting us in the middle, it’s taking both sides. That’s really good. So I can imagine the compliment is very well addressed (laughing).
Adee:
Because I do think that’s important. You need to be practical, you need to know where you go… Most of dog training is actually thinking about what your next exercise is going to be, and most of the time is going into setting up the exercises in such a way that the dog learns what you want to be teaching it. The nice thing about English is, is that there are two different words for learning and teaching, and if you’re training in an effective way the two will meet. But sometimes you could be trying to teach something, and the dog may be learning something completely different. If you haven’t thought things through beforehand you get stuck. You think you’re going well and then all of a sudden you do something and it doesn’t work out. Then you have to retrace your steps – where did I go wrong?. And you may have been…
Minke:
You may have been doing things wrong for quite a lot of steps.
Adee:
Exactly.
Minke:
I hear something about a progression plan in this.
(Laughter)
Adee:
Yes, it’s like a mantra.
Minke:
Yes, it is. It’s a name for something that a lot of people use. I think it’s a good thing. It’s fun to realize that although a lot of people actually do plan, a lot of people don’t... What I’m finding now when teaching people is that they’re surprised that they have to think beforehand. It’s just exactly what you have been explaining. But getting back to your role at the Dutch National Police; has that changed at all in the last years?
Adee:
Oh, yeah. Well, changed in some areas. In terms of content it both has and hasn’t changed much. Of course there are many more disciplines now, I have contributed to that in different ways. I always try to get things published, so in that respect there is a higher visibility in the scientific world about what’s happening in Holland. That’s good. In the police world it has always been quite well known of course. In addition, I think the teaching is continuing. I see the pupils change, which is fun to see. They’re becoming much more computer-savvy for instance. Because of that you can change your teaching. What I used to do in the beginning for instance is to give frontal classes to people. When Corona came I decided to do my flipped classroom idea. So when I was at home a lot I revised all the teaching material I had and broke all of the topics down into manageable 25 minute videos.
Minke & Patrick:
Oh, wow.
Adee:
I still have the same 4,5 days where I use to give basic instruction. Now what I do is let my students watch the movie clips first and make an assignment about the material. Then we meet, talk about the assignments and do a Kahoot quiz. We do some practical work then as well. That’s the flipped classroom idea.
Minke:
That’s really nice. I can imagine that it is much more fun that way, both for you and your pupils.
Adee:
Yes, there used to be people who didn’t know how to watch a movie on the computer …
(Laughter)
Adee:
Younger people are much savvier in that way.
Minke:
Yes.
Adee:
So, that’s good. It’s interesting. It is interesting to do stuff together, because then you FEEL more of what your dog is going through. For some people that is easier to get. And it’s fun! I like teaching, I like interacting with people, so I always get a lot of energy from those days.
Minke:
How much distance do you have from the dogs in your role as advisor? Can you define that?
Adee:
Well, I don’t work with dogs myself. I have always taken the role of observer and not competitor.
Minke:
Yes, yes (laughing).
Adee:
And I ask questions. I don’t judge, I try not to at least. I ask questions like “Why are you doing this?”, “I see this, how do you see this?”. I try to open up the conversation. And I have done that from the beginning because, well as I said; when I started off I came in from the outside and people were a bit hesitant and skeptical at that time.
Minke:
…”Who is she, what is she going to do?”
Adee:
Exactly. There is a colleague in Belgium who also has a behaviour background, but she is now one of the people who is actually training dogs within the federal police. She doesn’t have this scientific distance anymore because she is doing it herself as well. It is a way to create more of a distance from the subjects, distance you sometimes need to be able to analyze things.
Minke:
Oh, okay. So it’s actually an advantage for you sometimes, but maybe not in other times…?
Adee:
Sometimes you see dogs and you think: “Oh, that dog could profit from a different kind of handling”, then it can difficult. And sometimes decisions are made that I don’t agree with, that can also happen. But that’s something that you have to be able to put aside in some way. “Schikken in je lot” we call it in Dutch.
(Laughter)
Minke:
(Laughing) Oh.. Let ‘s try and translate this one. Maybe something like fate?
Adee:
I think it’s to accept your role, even though there might be things you dislike about it and would have rather seen differently.
Minke:
Yes, that’s true.
Adee:
You have to limit yourself to giving advice and try to refrain from telling them wat to do even though you might not agree with the way they handle something. There may also be completely other reasons why choose not to follow your advice. Operational pressures, things like that.
Minke:
That’s something I didn’t realize enough before I actually entered this whole world of working dogs. I think it’s also something the general public does not see, and of which I think sometimes it would sometimes be beneficial if they would know a little bit more so they don’t judge as hard as they do. But that’s just me and my two cents of opinion.
(Laughter)
Patrick:
It is good that you come up with this topic because what we find a lot is for instance that management is telling people to train in a more animal-friendly way but at the same time has unrealistic expectations about the time it takes to overcome certain problems in training using solely positive training methods. They might need the dog quickly because the night shift is empty or something similar. Because of that it’s always trying to find a balance. I think as a trainer you really need to convince your management that it can only be done in a certain way. In this example, if they have a problem with the night shift, it’s their problem. If they really want to change the training methods used, they have to give us more time. It doesn’t mean that you ALWAYS need more time, because sometimes training smarter will get you the same results in a shorter period of time, but some problems are so big, so deeply engraved, that you just need more time. It’s difficult to find that balance sometimes. Management has another role, another desire, then I have as a trainer.
Adee:
And of course management has become accustomed to having trainers that have been using repressive methods, and they do work quickly…
Patrick:
It’s a quick fix.
Adee:
It’s a quick fix for a limited period of time, but yes, it is a quick fix. So they have been pampered in a certain way, they have grown up in a certain way themselves. That’s one thing that’s a problem.
The other thing is that handlers who are working with dogs can also really ruin what has just been achieved in training. Dogs, especially Malinois, continue to learn and if you as a handler make a mistake at a rather crucial moment in time, you can have a dog that is learning something different from what you as handler actually want to convey. An example: if you have a dog that is indicating a target but that touches it and may even be biting it which you may want to prevent him from doing; if you correct at the wrong time, then you as handler may be thinking that you are correcting the touching and biting of the target but the dog may be learning that it’s not supposed to indicate anymore. If that’s the case then you have a bigger problem on your hands than what you started with. I think once the instructors are at the correct level there is a whole batch of stuff that still needs to be done with handlers as well.
Actually, one system that I’ve seen where a lot of this has been taken into account already is in the mine detection world. There the balance has really shifted strongly. Here you see that dogs are being trained for a very limited task. They just learn to walk up and down twenty meters, ten meters, alongside you. Detecting mines is a very stable search pattern, a very fixed search pattern. They always do the same. The training takes a long time because what they try to accomplish in training is get the animals so completely accustomed to doing only what they’re trained to do and to not pay attention to what their handlers are doing, that they become immune to handler errors. Actually, handler errors are incorporated into the training. After a particular phase in which they have learned exactly what to do and have been reinforced countless times for what they’ve been doing, they start to introduce what they call the proofing of the dog. They give tugs on the leash at odd moments to teach the dog that these are irrelevant. So if you later have clumsy handlers that steps on the line or something like that, the dog isn’t upset by it because he has already learned that this constitutes as background and that he can still get his reinforcement if he continues. But you have training periods of like two years before the dogs are actually accredited. That gives them a foundation to be able to continue to work. You will need refresher training, but at that time it has become a motor pattern, they know exactly what to do. That is something of which I don’t know if it would be achievable with other kinds of detection work or with patrol dogs because the circumstances there are always so very different. But I think laying a good foundation, especially if you use backchaining techniques, is really good because you’re creating a stronger dog, a dog that is more resistant to flux happening around him and is less upset by that.
Minke:
So it’s actually the mechanics of training that are happening, is that what you mean?
Adee:
I don’t know … If you look at the way those dogs are trained, in Bosnia for example, the training center there is almost like a factory. They have pups being born that are taken care of the first eight weeks in a certain way by one person or a group of people that are responsible for that period of time. Then they go into first stage where they have the socialization exercises outside of the GTC. That’s someone else who is doing all of the puppy work and is really skilled at that. Then they go to the next instructor, and the next instructor, and so on. Each instructor has a particular piece that he or she does with the dog. The dogs are evaluated on a daily basis. They have to be above a certain standard, if they’re above that standard they just graduate through the system. So by the time they get to be operational it’s their seventh handler. You can see that they’ve already passed through a lot of hands, but all of those hands are experts at what they’re doing. Additionally, there’s always someone walking around and keeping check of the whole process, saying: “Okay, this is going a bit too much here” or “He is not developing as well as he should be doing. Let’s take a closer look”. So, there is the quality management on top of that. If you do it like that, it’s like a factory where you just have these different…
Minke:
… assembly lines.
Adee:
Yes, exactly. You have to bear in mind that it’s a very specific task that you’re training for. A lot of things are irrelevant. In mine fields it’s very quiet. There are very few distractions there. You don’t have to be able to do it with cats running around. All of that is not necessary. You just need to go up and down, straight up and down, turn to the left, come back... That’s what you need to limiting the dogs to do, do it very enthusiastically and do it when it’s forty-five degrees outside. It’s a tough job, but those are usually really high-drive dogs. Speed is important as well: They mustn’t go too fast or too slow, just exactly right in order to be able to smell such minute things as land mines. It’s incredible, it’s the only area where dogs have really been validated on a large scale. All the other detection disciplines should take an example of how things are organized there, because it’s really well organized and well thought through. The accreditation systems are really good, the dogs that make it through the training are very reliable, they will just continue doing what they have been taught to do, no matter who is at the other end of the leash.
Patrick:
Wow. Have they ever considered such a system being used in the Netherlands? Where they start breeding their own dogs, have their own training facilities…
Minke:
Factories, he means factories.
Patrick:
Yes, factories. Has that ever been considered? Because there is a lot of knowledge in the Netherlands. Do you know anything about this?
Adee:
No, I don’t think so. You have to bear in mind, if you look at GTC for instance, and their breeding program… They want improve all the time. So of the litters they would have, about half of the dogs on average would not make it. What do you do with those dogs?
Patrick:
Yes, that’s a big percentage.
Adee:
That’s a big percentage, but it’s also an ethical issue. At that time, they had someone in Croatia who was willing to work with the dogs that fell out, because even those dogs that were not good enough for the mine detection world, were still very trainable. You could make really good dogs out of them. The test is done at around ten weeks and the dogs that did not fit the profile at that time went away, but that did not mean that they could not become good dogs given a slightly different way of training. The dogs that come in have to fit the system, those that did not fit the system just fell out. At the time that I was involved there you could see that the level of the dogs went up. It was still fifty percent, but the quality was going up. But you really have to consider what to do with the other dogs.
I know that in Germany they have a breeding program where they also follow the dogs. If they meet certain criteria, they’re given to handlers to raise. There used to be a testing system but they make use of a guidance system now, where people can come back for advice. But they have to find family homes for the pups that don’t make it, that aren’t strong enough, especially environmentally. Some of them go to Search and Rescue, some just become family dogs, but that’s a big thing to be managing. Look at the KNGF for example, the guide dog foundation, if you look at the way they breed their dogs, train their dogs... They now have different tasks that those dogs can do. So if a dog is not environmentally strong enough to become a guide dog for the blind - those dogs have to be really stoic – it can still become an autism buddy dog for example. They have different disciplines that they can put them in. That could also be an approach; to breed dogs in general and then try to put them into different niches because different disciplines require different types of dogs. You need a certain kind of dog for it to become a good patrol dog and another kind of dog that you can use for detection work, and some dogs you may need to find family homes for. However, for all of this to work you need to set up a whole system. The KNGF has done that really well, but it’s a big program. You need to really monitor what’s happening with the dogs and you need to watch carefully because someone who has never done it before may do some stupid things. I some instances of this. For instance, if you put a puppy with a person that won’t accept any “nonsense” behaviour, it takes away initiative from that pup, because that person won’t be able to handle a puppy that’s going to be too…
Minke:
Resourceful.
Adee:
Yes, too rowdy; a puppy that displays behaviour that you may need to tone down a bit. But if you do that in the wrong way, you’re taking away the initiative of that dog. If that is allowed to continue for a year or longer, you’re going to get back a dog that doesn’t dare to take initiative anymore because that has been taken away. You have a very obedient dog, but it’s difficult to learn if you have no more initiative. You need to feel free to sort of experiment with your environment to see what’s going to be working. If that initiative has been taken away from you, if you have conditioned a dog to not do that anymore, then you still have a very happy looking dog, but not a dog that can readily and easily learn…
Patrick:
No. That’s not going to be an operational working dog.
Adee:
No, exactly. So it’s always a balance, and if you look at the costs side of it…
Patrick:
It’s extremely expensive.
Adee:
Yes, it is. It does become very expensive.
Patrick:
I think that’s the biggest problem. I’ve seen an extensive program within the English police force where they have their own center where they breed and train their dogs. Once trained, other departments from the UK can buy those dogs, actually buy them. In the Netherlands it would be different. The dog would be given, because it’s already property of the government. The dogs that do not make it through the program will become family dogs. There are enormous amounts of families that really want to have such a dog.
Adee:
I don’t think they breed Malinois then, do they?
(Laughter)
Patrick:
No, they breed Germans. They had a couple of Malinois but they’re predominantly orientated towards the German Shepherd.
Adee:
Well, that’s a different kind of dog to have as a family pet.
(Laughter)
Patrick:
A different kind of dog, yes.
Adee:
No, the GTC has Malinois.
Minke:
I was just going to ask that (Laughing). What dogs do they use?
Adee:
Yes, Malinois. And only dogs that have proved themselves in the field. So they’re all dogs that have gone through the training program so they know that they’re capable of doing that kind of work. It may have changed now, but the females used to continue working until just before the moment where they actually deliver the pups. They are high drive dogs who need the activity, and doing nosework is the best thing for them. There’s basically no risk of hurting yourself if you’re sniffing the ground and you do get rid of a lot of energy. The work is quite intense.
Patrick:
The ten-week test you were talking about, is that constantly being re-evaluated?
Adee:
I don’t know. I think they still do the ten-week test as well. If we do look at puppies here, we use it as well. Unfortunately, it has never been published. I have written it down for them and I think they should be putting it up on the website, but GTC is now part of a bigger organization which is not allowing them to have their own website anymore so it has never been published. I think it’s a pity. It’s a simple test but you can’t really train for it, and so a ten-week-old puppy just shows you what it’s like at that point in time. If it passes that test, it’s environmentally pretty strong. Of course you can shrew it up later by letting the dog have bad experiences. It remains a snapshot of a puppy’s development though. You can’t make definite conclusions based on it; maybe the mental age of the pup isn’t as far as you might think it would be, the puppy might be a bit slow in development and still improve a lot. It’s not a hundred percent predictive test, but for that environment it was a very good prediction. Both before and after it was all standardized, it had high predictive value of which dogs would pass.
Patrick:
Has at any time a study been done about that 10-week-test? For example, in how many cases can you speak of genetic predisposition in pups that pass or fail the test?
Adee:
No. There was a study at GTC at the time, because they were doing something what they call early neurological stimulation. That was a series of steps that you did with pups from the day they were born until they were twenty-one days old. It was propagated by something that was called “The Super Dog Program” in the States. There was one guy that, out of this whole program that had stopped, had taken five exercises that he said you needed to do with you dogs to improve their performance. They were pretty fixed and when I read about it I thought: “Why on earth are they doing it”. So I asked them. “Ah”, said the director at that time; “I have read about it and it seemed like a good idea”. (me) “But does it work?” – “I don’t know”, he said. I said: “Would you like to know?”. (him) “Yeah, that might be a good idea”. So for a year I went there and we divided each litter that was born, I think it were eight or nine litters born that year, into two groups; one half was given this early neurological stimulation exercises, the others were just held for that same period of time. They all followed the normal socialization routine, so everything they were doing normally, they were also doing in the study. And that was a rich socialization program. From very early on they would have what they called “puppy hugging time”. The mother would then be taken out for a walk while the pups would be handled, because with Malinois you never know exactly how they will respond if strangers will come near their pups. They would be held by different people including children, especially from the international school there. Lots of things were happening. So at ten weeks we did the test. This was done by someone who didn’t know whether the pup had had the early neurological stimulation or not to prevent any form of bias. The other things were also monitored. Among others the guy that advocated for the program claimed that the nervous system as well as the physique of the pups who had the early neurological stimulation would be developing faster and that the pups would show certain behaviours at an earlier time, that they would start teething earlier... Lots of claims were made, and we couldn’t find anything different. Nothing. It was completely the same. But it was a rich environment, where a lot of things were already happening. So we didn’t find any difference there, but we did see that some pups made it and other pups didn’t, and those pups that made it were followed for a year to see how they would come out, and they kept a number of the pups that did not make the test to sort of see how they developed. I think out of the thirty pups that did not make the test, they managed to make a detection dog out of one of them. Mine detection is done in two ways, one where dog the dog is independent and walking away from you, those are the stronger dogs, dogs that cannot do that, they become short-leash dogs and they walk with you. This became a short-leash dog. The others, I think a couple of them fell out, but most of the others made it all the way to the end. So for that system, it was quite okay. This study has been published, but we haven’t combined that with genetic studies.
There is a professor, I think in Oslo, who is working on that but I’ve never seen anything come out of it. It is difficult. The gene group in these environments is also very open because they get new dogs in all of the time. If you really want to do genetic analysis you need to know the parents, the parents’ parents, their parents… and everybody else. All the siblings… Only then will you be able to deduct things from it. I am not sure that will work for dogs because the genetics is one thing but the environment plays an important role as well. There is so much learning happening and so much interaction going on. It is very difficult if not impossible to keep that constant, to not have variations in that. It’s very hard to do work there. I think genetics are great if you have something that’s easy to measure, like the amount of milk that a cow gives.
Minke:
(laughing) Yes.
Adee:
I mean, that’s something that you can imperially measure. Especially if you don’t have people but robots milking the cows because then there is no chance that the relationship between the person that is milking the cow and the cow might affect the results. Then it becomes quite objective. There there’s an easy deliverable that you can measure. In training, it’s a lot more difficult.
Minke:
There are so many variables.
Adee:
So many variables, and is not always clear where you want to go. The goal is not always clear or well described. People, even within the same discipline sometimes, have different ideas about what a good dog looks like, what it should be able to do.
Patrick:
That’s also something that has to do with your personal opinion and your personal experiences, because what I might find a good dog, someone else might think of as an average dog.
Adee & Minke:
Yes.
Adee:
Yes, and if you can’t even agree on where you want to go, how are you going to agree on how to get there?
Minke:
And how is the dog supposed to understand when you’re training it.
(Laughter)
Minke:
That’s another thing I always worry about. I think we’ve discussed quite a lot of things this morning and we don’t want to take up your whole day, but I do have one really…
Adee:
…Burning question.
Minke & Patrick:
Burning question.
(Laughter)
Minke:
Yes, but it’s a bit of a philosophical one. Do you mind me asking it? I would like to know your vision on what is going to change in dog training? Where is it going to be in ten to twenty years? What will change?
Adee:
Well, what I hope will change is that we understand more about canine cognition and how they learn, what they pay attention to and how to tap into that. Because I think, classical, and especially operant conditioning are very good tools - It’s quite clear you can achieve a lot with it - but I think dogs understand a lot more. I believe that if we understand what they understand we can make our training much more effective. That’s where I hope it will go, that we start to incorporate more of what is being done in the field of canine cognition in training dogs.
One example of something that might be interesting to look at I think is this whole idea of personality. People you can sort of divide them into two groups; the ones that think the glass is half full and the ones that think the glass is half empty. They have a different outlook on life, a different way of approaching what they’re doing. Dogs are like that too.
Minke:
Yes. There have been studies on that as well.
Adee:
Yes, exactly. Those are the cognition studies. I would be really interested to see if a dog that is the glass-half-full type generalizes in a different way, if his learning process during the generalization phase is different from a dog that is more of the “glass-half-empty” type. You might even decide that the one that is “glass-half-full” is better at certain jobs than the one that is “glass-half-empty”. For example in medical research, in a situation where you only have a dog as a diagnostic tool. If it indicates that you have a particular illness; this has a lot of consequences. Then a person’s diagnosis depends on this. So you want the dog to be really sure. They have to be very specific. In that case, they may not be as sensitive, but they have to be very specific. For this sort of job it might be that you need a “glass-half-empty” kind of dog. This is when you have a dog searching for a particular illness, not looking for people that are sick in general. In that case you would need a follow up to determine the diagnose and specificity might be of less importance. In the scenario I mentioned, you don’t have that. If you only have the dog to rely on, you would need them to be very sure before they indicate. They must have a very specific idea of what they want. This may fit the profile of a dog that is more of the type: “glass-half-empty”.
On the contrary, if you have a task where specificity is of less importance, at an airport for instance, where you certainly don’t want explosives to get on board, then you can’t train on all of the explosives. There is too much variation, so you need dogs that have more of a general idea of what they’re looking for and are quicker to say: “Okay, this really smells odd, you need to check this”. That might be more of the “glass-half-full” type of dog. That would be fascinating to check, to be able to see if there’s a link there. If that would be the case, then you could perhaps select dogs that are more naturally capable of one thing than the other which might help their career choices.
(Laughter)
Minke:
Yep, yeah. That is really interesting.
Adee:
It is a very practical thing. I think that would be interesting. I believe there is a lot that can be
done and I am sure it will happen.
Minke:
I think so too. That’s a really cool answer, thank you.
(Laughter)
Patrick:
Thank you very much.
Minke:
Patrick, what do you say? I think we can sit here all day…
Patrick:
I would really love to pick your brain even more.
Minke:
I hope if we ask you again in the future Adee, that you would be willing to talk some more with us. After we listen back to this one that is, because there are so many things going through my mind now. I have so many questions I would still like to ask. We don’t have the time now and it’s better if we just chop it into pieces and come back some other time. Would you be willing to do that?
Adee:
Yes, of course.
Minke:
That would be great.
Adee:
And maybe your listeners have ideas on what they would like to ask.
Minke:
Yes, I am sure they will. So that’s an invitation to our listeners I guess. I think we’re going to round it off, and we will have something to eat as we always do afterwards. It seems to become sort of a habit. There are some “Berliner bollen” staring at me from the kitchen table.
Patrick:
Thank you very much for you precious time, and I hope to talk to you again soon.
Adee:
Thank you.
Minke:
Have a really nice day.