Welcome to Dunbar in Oz!
  
The official site of author, veterinarian, animal behaviourist and
dog trainer Dr Ian Dunbar's 2012 and 2013 Australian lecture tours.

NEW Melbourne Venue Now Available

5th December 2011

The Melbourne event for SBDTwF (10-12 Feb 2012)
has moved to The Village Green, Mulgrave!

After the original venue sold out in November, we are pleased to announce that a new venue has been secured for the Melbourne event offering significantly increased capacity and improved facilities, promising an uncompromised experience for all delegates.  We thank everyone for their extraordinary interest and support of this event so far, and for their patience waiting for venue details to be announced.

Click here for full venue details.

If you have any comments or questions about the Melbourne event, we would be glad to hear from you and invite you to:

• Fill in the Contact Us form on this web site, or
• Email us at  info@betterdogs.com.au.

 

In 2010 Dr Dunbar once again broke ground and influenced the very core of dog training with his sell-out SBDTwF tour in the U.S. In 2012 Ian brings this innovative lecture series to Australia - so don't miss out on this exceptional opportunity to hear Ian speak, at two events only:

Sydney 3 - 5 February 2012 At Parramatta RSL

Melbourne 10 - 12 February 2012 At The Village Green, Mulgrave

This 3-day seminar highlights a number of diverse theoretical and practical issues that are severely holding back puppy-raising and dog training. We must all strive to make training as quick, easy, effective, expedient, efficacious and as enjoyable as possible for dogs and their owners.  When socialization or training is under par, dogs make mistakes, owners get frustrated and then, dogs get punished, banished, surrendered or euthanized.

Read more...       

Dr. Ian Dunbar's Science-Based Dog Training (with Feeling) Seminar Series refocuses on the scientific principles of learning but also makes sure that trainers do not lose their souls in the process.

Dr Dunbar says,  Far too many trainers are neglecting the most basic rules of learning — that behavior is driven by consequences and that consequence is binary. So many lure/reward trainers, who neglected to phase out the lure after just a dozen or so trials, end up trying to bribe adolescents — trying to drive behavior by increasing the value of the lure — greasier and smellier lures. But it just doesn’t work. Behavior is driven by consequences, not by antecedents.

Some trainers use rewards only and other trainers use punishments only. Certainly reward-only is infinitely more enjoyable than punishment-only but in either case, it’s just too silly to try to train with only 50% of possible feedback. Consequence is binary. The fear, of course, is the specter of punishment — everybody thinks that punishments are scary and painful. Not necessarily so. Occasional punishment is essential for reliability, but by using our voice, punishment need not and therefore, should not, be painful or scary. Instead, reprimands become instructional.

And sadly, the art of training is becoming lost in technology as so many trainers have become technicians — clicking clickers, delivering treats, jerking leashes or pushing shocks. Training has become sterile; it’s losing fuzziness and feeling. We have to get back to talking to our dogs — our companions. When we use our voice in training, we simply transcend the constraints of laboratory-generated learning theory. This stuff is just so exciting, as it is an enormous quality of life issue for dogs and their owners.

SBDTwF Seminars describe how to avoid (or resolve) the many pitfalls of puppyhood and adolescence and the quickest and easiest way to teach reliable, off-leash verbal control without the continued use of training aids. Moreover, this seminar rewrites existing laboratory-generated learning theory to revitalize the spirit and soul of dog training in this sterile quantum world of clicks and kibble and jerks and shocks.

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