The sad reality in dog training today is that trainers are lying to you – and they don’t even realize it. Go to any dog training school today, and the only real options is to learn “Positive Reinforcement” and similar – or “Balanced Training” and similar. They are all based on outdated techniques and bad interpretation of B.F Skinner.
If you’ve never heard of B.F Skinner, and you’re trying to train your dog using either “positive reinforcement” or “balanced” training, perhaps it’s time to jump into that pool and learn why he was wrong and why training ideologies need to change.
Skinner didn’t care about the brain – and trainers learning the “Quadrants of dog training” don’t care either. The system was never set up to care that the dog is capable of thought, capable of problem solving. All that is taken away and is replaced with “listen to me or I’ll punish you in some way” and “free will is an illusion”.
What is “free will is an illusion”? Ask any trainer. As long as the dog thinks it’s making a choice, then it is. The dog accepting the trainers choice is good – but then, the dog faces punishment for a choice that it didn’t make?
Skinner didn’t believe in punishment, knew it wasn’t effective. Read up on his views of the human prison system – it’s a revolving door. Why? Because punishment doesn’t work. Take a petty criminal, stick him in prison, no rehabilitation. Even if prisoners change their life, they can’t get a decent job because are still being punished with a criminal record dogging them. So why is punishment and correction so prominent in the dog training world today?
In a conversation with Temple Grandin back in the 70’s – Skinner said “We don’t need to learn about the brain, we have operant conditioning.” This is the very problem with dog training today, we treat dogs like they need to learn to communicate with us. That they need reward and punishment in order to learn. Skinner has been dead for 30 years now, and so much has changed since his death – but why not the training world?
If you’re treat training, rewarding your dog for everything – then you’re using trainers interpretation of Skinners variation of Positive Reinforcement he used in a lab – not in his daily practice with people. If you’re using an e-collar/prong and you subscribe to punishment – then you’re following bad interpretation of Skinner. Why is the dog the only animal that typically gets trained with e-collars and prongs? Why not cats? Cause you wouldn’t get away with it.
Much of what Skinner did in a lab wasn’t supposed to be used in the real world but trainers managed to create the quadrants based on Skinners early career. I have never seen anything published in Skinners work like “positive punishment” or “negative punishment”. He did use negative reinforcement early on – an example of hooking a probe up to a dogs tail and shocking it til it performed some function. The removal of negative reinforcement was considered “positive reinforcement”. Again, how did this translate to real world?
The most prominent use of tools in the dog training industry seems to come from the balanced side of dog training – tools like e-collars, prongs etc. Muzzles – while not a bad thing – is represented in all sides of the training spectrum. Treats tend to be as well. But why are these tools becoming so prolific? Why is it that so many trainers can’t work with a dog without a prong or e-collar? We need to go back to the 70’s to B.F. Skinner – the God of behaviorism and where he really screwed up.
Skinner has been dead for 30 years (1990), but his legacy lives on in the dog. He believed that the brain was a “black box” that didn’t need to be investigated, that we have behavior to study and that’s all we need is operant conditioning – which is a method of learning that employs rewards and punishments for behavior. Alot of things have changed since Skinners death, we have new technologies that can map the brains of animals. New studies that are figuring out the way animals think and we really need to pay attention.
Enter Dr. Temple Grandin – Doctor of Animal Sciences and a heck of an impressive resume filled with degrees, papers, video etc. I’ve been following Temple for quite a few years, and would absolutely love the opportunity to meet her for a discussion about dogs. Temple is a highly successful autistic and she has successfully changed much of the domestic meat industries to be more respectful and humane to animals.
Robert Hynes Dog Training
Serving Edmonton, Alberta and surrounding areas.
admin@roberthynesdogtraining.com
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