Positive reinforcement = removal of negative reinforcement?

Direct quote from one of B.F Skinners books. How did this become clickers and “have a treat”! Someone, please, explain that to me.

All this training quadrant stuff goes back mainly to one man – B.F Skinner. If people would actually sit down and read his books instead of trainers interpretations of it? There would be alot more understanding of animal behaviour. Skinner wasn’t an animal trainer – he performed experiments on animals in a lab to understand us – the human animal. He made it clear that humans – like all animals – can be conditioned. We share many behaviours.

Dogs read us like a book – all we are to them is energy, emotion, body language – you can’t lie to a dog. If you’re fearful of what the dog is going to do – what do you think the dog is going to do in response? Whether you realize it or not, you’re creating a threshold. Thresholds are what create control and management – what you see as a threshold is the dog building up to protect. The dog has no confidence in the owner, what reason do they have to be confident? Lack of confidence by the way is insecurity. Fear itself is lack of trust. It’s trust that conquers fear.

Reactive/aggressive dogs live with so many negative reinforcers. If a mother and father are both scared of spiders, you can be sure they will use negative reinforcers on their child – and pass that fear onto them. It’s no different for dogs – if you’re constantly pulling your dog away from things that scare you – then what do you think it’s doing to the dog? But yet, trainers claim that you can’t reinforce fear?

Skinner originally defined “positive reinforcement” as the removal of “negative reinforcement”. For example, he would shock a dog til it performed an action – when he turned off the power – that was “positive reinforcement”. How did that turn into “have a treat!” Reactive dogs live with so much negative reinforcement today – so, lets remove some of it.

When I meet client dogs for the first time, I remove the owner and I’m sorry, but they are a negative. If I enter a back yard, and the owner is there with a reactive dog – I will expect to see aggression from the dog – protecting the owner. This is what we commonly see in dog training videos – scared owners rolls scared dog into a scary training facility – dog doesn’t get a chance to check out this new environment. Now the dog is faced with a trainer that one can clearly see is afraid of the dog. What do you think the dog is going to do? Flip shit? Well, that’s what happens – now we are dealing with an aggressive dog. Trainer passes a tool to the owner – put this on your dog for me – or they reach for a catch pole because they are afraid. Now the dog is treated like it’s aggressive – and one gets aggression in response – the dog is defending itself. Now this scared dog is being punished – for being scared and defending itself. Nowhere in that arc of a story does “positive” come into play, it’s all negative.

I don’t want that – because now I’m going to be a negative target – I want to be a positive in the dogs life. Meet the dog alone in the back yard, it takes away that need for the dog to protect – and we see the real dog. The scared dog, the insecure dog – that’s the real diagnosis.

More removal of negative – the tools of punishment – the prongs, the e-collars etc. First chance I get, they go in the garbage. I don’t care what trainers call these tools – communication, whatever – they are tools of punishment used to control and manage a dogs behaviour. When you use an e-collar, you’re correcting a dog for what you think is bad behaviour – if you don’t know what proper dog behaviour is – then you shouldn’t be using the tool.

The clicker, good bye. The clicker basically turns all behaviours into tricks, that’s all it does. And any good trainers will tell you that. Use a clicker wrong – and most times they are used incorrectly – and it makes it really difficult for the dog to adapt and overcome, makes the dog worse. Why use a tool when there is such a high risk of incorrect use?

Treats? They are negative too in many ways. So many posts – “what is the highest value treat I can give my dog”? Go look in the mirror – the person staring back at you should be the highest value treat in the dogs life – but lets replace you with a piece of food and call that positive reinforcement.

I watch people luring their dog to a target that it’s scared of with food. You’re forcing the dog to generate cortisol – the fight or flight hormone – then you take it away force the dog to stress eat. How is that positive reinforcement? It isn’t. It’s negative reinforcement.

This is not dog training, this is a joke. Tools are unnecessary when you step back and understand what a dog is – and understand why the dog is acting out.

Robert Hynes Dog Training – Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
email: robert@roberthynesdogtraining.com
Phone: 780-863-9547
https://roberthynesdogtraining.com