If you want to understand animal behaviour – go look in a mirror at the animal staring back at you.
Now look at your dog – your dog is your mirror, a reflection of you, a reflection of your emotions. You
can’t lie to a dog, you can’t hide your emotions from a dog. If you’re happy, sad, scared etc – they
know it and will react in kind.
Do you realize that dogs can self punish? And it’s much more effective than a human offering some
sort of punishment. But, like children, they need to make right or wrong choices and learn from those
choices – yet training tends to take away choice.
For example, the first time I let Monty go off leash, he chose to run to meet dogs – and that’s fine. Then
he ran off to another group, and another group. He kept doing this til at some point he stopped and
looked for me – but couldn’t find me. I knew where he was and let him choose. He made a bad choice
and lost access to the one person in the park he trusts – me. At this point, he’s self punishing – he put
his paw on the hot stove and got burned – he started freaking out. When I finally let him know where I
was, he joined me. I didn’t say anything, didn’t scold him, didn’t punish him – just said lets go and
we’re off again. He made a bad choice and now understands the consequence of that bad choice is
losing access to me. This solidified “know where I am at all times” and he keeps a close eye out. This is
the reason I spent the first few days building that solid relationship with Monty.
The “quadrants” need to go in the garbage as they are doing more harm than good, especially the
punishment quadrants. The quadrants encompass everything dog training today, there is nothing else
and when you try to bring something else to the table, people can be like a pack of ravenous dogs
nipping at your heels. I don’t get it, training fails so often today.You hear owners saying they’ve been
through trainer after trainer, spent thousands of dollars and no results. But yet, they keep looking for
ways to train their dogs using quadrants when they won’t work. There is only quadrants – and this
needs to change.
B.F Skinner was blamed for creating the quadrants, but he didn’t. Skinner wasn’t an animal trainer, he
simply he experiments on animals in a lab to understand them – the human animal included. Skinner
understood that all animals – humans included – share behaviours. Humans were his main target.
Skinner didn’t care about the animal brain, he didn’t care about the thought process – and even coined
the phrase “free will is an illusion”. Skinner knew that punishment wasn’t effective at changing
behaviour of animals, there are better ways. He spoke at length about the prison system being all about
punishment – not rehabilitation. Pay your debt to society, and you still get punished with a criminal
record dogging you for the rest of your life.
How can you punish a dog for a choice that it didn’t make or understand? Imagine as a spouse or a
child, being punished for someone else’s choices – or because you didn’t accept someone elses choices.
Doesn’t work very well. Dogs are no different – they are very similar to us and Skinner proved that.
This is all trainers and behaviourists tend to learn as well and you will hear trainers say “as long as the
dog thinks it’s making a choice, then it is”. They don’t care about the brain and don’t care what the
animal wants. But, listen to me or I’ll punish you in some way isn’t a choice.
People today seem to want their dog to comply with everything, and that’s not fair, that’s not a way for
any animal to live. You would be far better off cooperating with your dog vs trying to get it to comply.
After all, we should be having real solid relationships with our animals.
Lock the dog in a crate is a very common form of punishment. That’s the same as throwing a person in
a jail cell – but owners seem to think it’s healthy for a dog. “My dog love’s its crate” – no it doesn’t, it’s
been conditioned to accept being thrown in jail for no reason other than for the human safety and
security. If it’s not for the humans benefit – then take the door off. Dogs are not denning animals – nor
are wolves. Yes, they will den when they have puppies, but that’s maternal only.
Stop and think about what you are doing to your dog. They want to be with you, to be a part of your
life, this is what they’ve been bred for over 30,000 years – to be with us.
Cooperate – don’t control. Life can’t be all about complying with someone else’s demands.