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IN TOUCH – STEP Training with Guide Dogs

TX:Ìý 06.09.2023Ìý 2040-2100

PRESENTER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý PETER WHITE

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PRODUCER:ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý BETH HEMMINGS

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Dogs barking

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White

It’s a sound to melt the heart of all dog lovers.Ìý Around 80 dogs preparing for the training which will, hopefully, turn them into successful guide partners for visually impaired people.Ìý The training of guide dogs has been taking place in the UK for almost a hundred years but here at Guide Dog Centre North West in Greater Manchester these dogs are learning using a method only adopted by the organisation in 2017.Ìý It’s known as the STEP method, standing for Standardised Training for Excellent Partnerships and it’s based on the concept of positive reinforcement – reward rather than reprimand.

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The organisation believes it produces more confident and engaged dogs and faster training and in a more humane way.Ìý Not everyone agrees, including some guide dog owners and they blame it for long waiting lists for dogs and doubt that it’s really effective.Ìý So, who’s right?Ìý Well, we’ve come to Atherton, the training centre here, to watch the STEP method at work and look for some answers.

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Actuality – training

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I’ve come to what’s known as the arena and it’s an indoor training area and this is where the dogs start their learning process.Ìý Claire and Emma, who are on the training staff, are just going to explain to me what’s going on in front of us.

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Emma

We train our dogs to walk towards a sort of rectangular shaped platform.Ìý Platforms can be used for many things, so, one of the things is distraction training.Ìý So, where we’re stood now in the Atherton arena, we’ve got lots of potential distractions around – we’ve got barking dogs in the background, we’ve got toys around, we’ve actually got some sticks around as well that I’ve just found.

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White

Are you also trying to get the dogs to ignore each other as well…

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Emma

Absolutely.Ìý So, the demonstration that we’ve just given is two guide dogs walking next to each other, platform to platform, they’re about two metres away from each other.Ìý They were walking platform to platform with their heads looking straight ahead.Ìý So, actually, there was minimal input needed from the handler, from the trainer, from the guide dog owner, to get them to walk past another dog whereas historically you would know another dog was there because your dog would lunge towards it and then you would have to use your lead corrections to sort of keep them straight.Ìý So, the way that we do things now is we actually train the behaviour that we want by using the platforms, rather than using that positive punishment to show them what’s wrong with showing them what’s right instead.

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Actuality – training

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White

We’re hearing that clicking noise, so explain what that’s supposed to do and what happens after they hear the clicking noise.

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Emma

Sure, so, essentially, a clicker is a marker to the dog that says yes, you’ve got that right, reward is coming.Ìý So, for some dogs that’s praise, for some dogs that’s food, for some dogs that’s a toy.Ìý The reason we use the click is because for a dog to perform a behaviour and then for a reinforcer to happen, it takes 0.5 seconds for that link to be made, that’s how quickly that pairing needs to happen.Ìý What we would have done, historically, was correct them for doing the wrong thing, so, if they took you to the kerb edge rather than the crossing box they would maybe have had a physical correction for that.

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Claire

Just to add from that because I’ve been taught both ways, been in the association, I think, now for about 18 years, so corrections we used to use half checks, which are half collar, half chain, which tightens on the dog neck, so you would be encourage to quickly sharply whip the lead, so it tightened on the dog’s neck and then released.Ìý It also made quite a noise.Ìý The other thing we would use and teach clients to use is handle corrections, where you would get the handle, you would lift it up in the air and flick it down.Ìý So, again, it would jerk the dog backwards and away.Ìý We did reward, maybe not as much food reward but we would use physical reward but alongside that we would use punishment.Ìý So, we kind of use both ways.

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White

Right.Ìý I mean what I’m trying to get my head around here is – I mean I’m not a guide dog owner but I have always been a dog owner – and what I would do if a dog is doing something that it shouldn’t do, I would not hit it, I would say ‘No’ very firmly and in my experience that works.Ìý What’s different about what you’re doing here?

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Emma

One thing that’s massively different is, you know, you can say no to your dogs but essentially what that is, is that’s just an interrupter, so it’s interrupting an unwanted behaviour and that is something that we do.Ìý I think a big myth within Guide Dogs is that we don’t say no to our dogs, we do sometimes say no, we also use other interrupters like a collar hold, so, if a dog is really gluing themselves to a sniff we’ll take hold of their collar, we’ll gently move them away, we’ll pause and then we’ll tell them a cue or a command that we actually do want for them, so, in that instance it would be straight on.Ìý So, rather than punishing the unwanted behaviour, we’re telling the dog what we do want instead with very clear cues that they do understand, like straight on, forward, left or right.

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White

Right.Ìý Now I know you’ll say well when current owners get a dog, because we’ll have trained them, they won’t behave badly but I want you to kind of explain to me what happens for an owner who has got a dog with persistent bad behaviour – what are they supposed to do because I think people’s instinctive thing would be to tell the dog not to do it?

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Emma

Yeah, so, I mean for a start class training is five weeks, so whether you’ve had no dogs before or five dogs before every dog is different, you will be trained how to work specifically with that dog that has been matched so carefully to you.Ìý So, we train them, probably in most cases using platforms to walk past the good things to get a better thing at the platform or at the kerb edge. ÌýFor some dogs that’s always going to be a bit hard so we do have management techniques that we use.

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Claire

I don’t think before STEP any guide dog owner would probably say that their dog never sniffed, they did and that’s always been an issue because of what we’re working with, we’re working with dogs and they have instincts and they follow them, it’s just now the issue is reduced because, as Emma said, the fact that they want to get where they’re going because when they get to the kerb they get the food, they get the reward.

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White

That was my question, in a way, which you’ve cleverly anticipated, it works well for the dogs.Ìý Is this more dog orientated than it is people?

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Emma

I think we have a duty.Ìý If we are going to use dogs to sort of help us out as humans, we have a duty to look after their welfare and that’s both physically and emotionally and mentally and that’s what this does.Ìý There’s no denying that before we train guide dogs, we train them to a good standard, they went out and they changed people’s lives, it did work.Ìý What I would say now is I have dogs that are more positive, they’re more willing to engage with the handler and engage with the task, they look happier and by that I mean their tails are up, their ears are forward.Ìý So, it’s not that the old way didn’t work and this way has fixed every problem, it’s just that it makes a happier more confident dog which is then more likely to get things right, which is then, in turn, keeping our guide dog owners safer.

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Actuality – Eric Griffiths

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White

Eric Griffiths is on his fourth guide dog is on his fourth guide dog – Tilly – she’s lying in front of us.Ìý So, that means, Eric, that you’ve had three dogs that were trained, if you like, that were old school and Tilly, who’s been trained under the STEP method.Ìý What’s the difference?

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Griffiths

Right, well, the first couple of days I was out working with Tilly one of the most obvious things was when we sat at the kerb I used to push off on the harness with my older dogs, now we don’t do that.Ìý And that was a very difficult habit to get out of.Ìý All my dogs have been very, very successful and it’s the way us, as guide dog owners, engage with our dogs after training as well. ÌýI have a lot more confidence when I go into a restaurant or pub, she will find an empty seat, she will find a seat at bus stations and bus stops for me, whereas before that didn’t really happen.

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White

You’ll know, I’m sure, that some guide dog owners are not happy about STEP, some people say you need that kind of firmness with a dog to get good results.

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Griffiths

I haven’t come across that with my new dog yet because every time there’s been an incident, like with a dog coming past snapping and growling at her, I’ve just been very calm in the situation and let the situation pass, so I’ve never had to have any issues where I’ve had to be really firm with her.Ìý It is quite common with a lot of guide dog owners that they don’t like the STEP method, you know, it’s unfortunate because I think it does work.

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White

I mean what do they say, why do you think they don’t?

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Griffiths

I think basically because we’re old school and it’s very difficult to get out of an old school into a new school routine.Ìý They feel the dogs are not responding as well but I think it’s all a matter in your voice and how you deal with the situation is how it resolves itself.

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White

Just tell me a bit more about how you use Tilly, what Tilly enables you to do.

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Griffiths

The biggest thing is cars parking on the pavement, so she avoids me walking into them.Ìý And bin days are the worse where the bin men just throw all the bins in the middle of the pavement [indistinct word].Ìý Other obstacles where councils believe that when they build a new road that putting a lamppost right slap bang in the middle of a pavement is the best thing to do, not realising that we’re going to walk into that, so she helps me avoid all obstacles of everyday life which I appreciate.

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Actuality – training

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Stafford

This is just a zig zag type course where we’ve got obstacles in the way like traffic cones…

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White

That’s Tim Stafford, Director of Canine Affairs at Guide Dogs.

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Stafford

Start working on the platforms, get the dogs used to platform to platform working, then put one obstacle in the way, so the dog learns to avoid that obstacle to get to the next platform.Ìý Expand the distance, put two obstacles in the way, three obstacles.Ìý We put babies’ buggies in.Ìý We’ve got stuffed dogs, as well, like life size stuffed dogs that we put in the way when we’re starting to teach dogs to ignore other dogs, then we might put a stuffed dog in the first instance because the first couple of time dogs will often react to a stuffed dog in the same way as they would a real dog.Ìý But it’s a good way, when we talk about errorless learning and you want to give the dog something easy that the dog will get right and then you can reinforce the right behaviour.Ìý And then we can start saying okay, so we’re going to replace the stuffed dog with a dog that looks a bit like that stuffed dog, so if we used the Labrador as a stuffed dog, we could put a Labrador in and then we can say, well it now needs to ignore a Jack Russell terrier and a Great Dane.

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White

Tim Stafford, first of all, why was the STEP method adopted?

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Stafford

I’ve been involved in training dogs for over 40 years, 38 years in Guide Dog organisations.Ìý When I kind of reflect back over my career there’s been such a difference in how we think about and interact with our dogs and that, in many ways, mirrors general societal changes as well – how we treat our children and how we treat people in the workplace.Ìý Things had changed and we really challenged ourselves on our established techniques what is was there a different way, a better way and a more ethical way to train our dogs.Ìý And so, that was the start of the thinking around what has now become our STEP methodology, we wanted to train our dogs as efficiently and effectively as we can but also, as ethically as we can as well.Ìý We believe that using our STEP methodology we can get the same level of success, in fact actually during our pilot project we’re seeing more success out of our STEP methodology than less.

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White

But this is, if you like, a method which is applied across the board but dogs differ, you know, just like human beings, does this really suit all dogs?

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Stafford

Yes, it does suit all dogs but every dog and every person is indeed an individual so we have to have flexibility.Ìý When we started looking at the project in 2016/2017 that was actually starting to take the form of different trainers coming into the organisation and starting to experiment with clicker training, for example but we couldn’t have a clicker trainer in Atherton and then a traditional trainer in Exeter because the dog might go from one to the other and the dog would just get completely confused by those different training methods.

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White

But if a dog doesn’t respond to this form of training does that mean it fails because you certainly don’t have a 100% success rate with dogs, do you?

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Stafford

No, we don’t, we have in the region of 60% success rate at the moment which is lower than it was before the pandemic but getting better.Ìý But the important thing is we’ve never had 100% success rate using any technique, so as long as our new approach at least meets the same standard as the previous technique then kind of why wouldn’t you train your dogs more ethically if you could and achieve the same results?

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White

But I can remember times when it was claimed that you were getting something like an 80% rate success, which is a lot higher than 61%.

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Stafford

Certainly, we were up in kind of about the 70% success rate before the pandemic but the pandemic has had such a huge impact upon our ability to socialise our dogs and we’re now in that position that our dogs coming into training now are post-pandemic dogs, so we’re going to start to see that climb.Ìý And the other point that I think you just have to be honest about is when you’re changing some methodology within an organisation it takes time to retrain your staff.Ìý We had and we have around about 250 different trainers across different training roles and so it takes a while to reach out to all of those people to start providing them with that professional development that they need.Ìý So, it’s to be expected that not all of our trainers who are going through a transition of their own learning will be automatically as proficient as they would have been in the past.

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White

But, Tim, if this method produces effective partnerships why is the number of successful working partnerships going down – 5,000 a few years ago around 5,000, somewhere around 3,600 now?

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Stafford

That hasn’t got anything to do with the STEP methodology, that has everything to do with the pandemic effect.Ìý During the pandemic year we bred less than 450 puppies as opposed to 12-1400 puppies.Ìý And it takes us two years for a puppy to become a partner.Ìý So, obviously, there is a time lag between recovering from the pandemic and during that time dogs are ageing and dogs are being retired and they’re not being replaced in the same numbers as they were in the past.Ìý So, we are actively now catching up with that, we’ve got 1200 puppies currently out in the community being raised, our breeding numbers are pretty much back where they were before, we’ve got in the region of 600 dogs in training now.Ìý So, we’re playing catchup but it is playing catchup with the pandemic.

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White

I do understand the effect of covid and I think most people do but critics say those numbers started to go down in 2017, long before covid and in the same year that the STEP method was introduced – coincidence?

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Stafford

Yeah, more a correlation, Peter, is the answer to that question.Ìý What we also had at that time was, organisationally, we had quite a large percentage of the workforce retiring as well, so I’m talking about business-critical roles, such as our guide dog mobility specialists.Ìý Any guide dog programme anywhere in the world relies on three fundamental pieces to be sustainable, its finances, it’s having trained people who can deliver the job and it’s having sufficient dog supply.Ìý If anyone of those things fail then the service becomes very vulnerable.Ìý And to correct that, we’re obviously addressing the dog supply issues now.Ìý We’ve got more than 90 new trainers and guide dog mobility specialists currently in training.Ìý We’re rebuilding our workforce; we’re rebuilding our dog supply.Ìý

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White

How evidence based is the belief that STEP results in quicker and more plentiful successful partnerships?

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Stafford

We did that piece of research in 2020, so looking back at the very early partnerships that were coming out using STEP methodology, they were training in 30% quicker times with about the success rate, in actual fact slightly higher.Ìý There’s overwhelming scientific evidence in support of the training methodology in terms of science based learning theory.Ìý And if you look at all of the other organisations involved in training dogs, welfare organisations, if you look at their position statements you will find that they all talk about positive reinforcement training.

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White

So, you’re saying that maybe the issue about how quickly it can be done is not necessarily so clearcut but the end result, you’re saying, is much more effective?

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Stafford

The end result is at least as good if not better than the previous results.Ìý Clearly if we can get the cycle times – how long a dog takes to train – the quicker you can train a dog the quicker that dog can go into partnership, so, of course, that is a driver for us, we would love to train our dogs as fast as we possibly could but they still have to be good guide dogs.Ìý And those two things together, once we’ve got the proficiency that we’re seeking within our workforce, we’ve got absolute confidence that this will be a way that we can get the guide dog service completely back on track, the waiting lists coming down and so on.Ìý And we can already see the evidence of that happening now.

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White

Tim Stafford, Director of Canine Affairs at Guide Dogs.

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And now it’s your turn.Ìý Next week, we’ll be hosting a question-and-answer session with Guide Dogs where the questions come from you.Ìý We welcome points raised by tonight’s programme but also other issues that you’d like to raise about the service you get and the way the organisation works.Ìý You can email intouch@bbc.co.uk or you can leave your voice message, preferably in the form of a question, on 0161 8361338.

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That’s it for tonight.Ìý From me Peter White, producer Beth Hemmings and studio manager Simon Highfield, goodbye.