There are 3 animals on this planet that you could beat senseless, and they come back and apologize to you. That’s horses, dogs, and humans. This is the reason why dogs keep coming back to us, even through we can get mean with them. Beat a cat, and you’ll never get close again. Do you think dogs want to be aggressive or reactive? Do you think they want to live in a dark hole where everything is scary? Imagine your dog is human, what would we do different?
Gregory Berns is a neuroscientist that created The Dog Project some 10 years ago. What he’s doing is training dogs to lay completely still in an MRI and he’s watching their brains live – what he’s finding is amazing. People interact with the dogs while they are in the MRI using hand signals and such, and watch which part of the brain lights up in real time. Areas of the dogs brain lights up just like ours. Dogs have the same emotions we do. They think like we do. They do not speak english or any other human verbal language as much as we like to think they do. We don’t speak dog. They respond better to praise than treats.
We both communicate with body language more than most people realize. The next time you’re talking to someone face to face, you’re looking at their eyes, reading their lips, many people move their hands, others move their head when they are talking. All of that is part of our conversation, we tend not to notice we do it. Dogs always show us their intentions – most don’t know what to look for. Unfortunately, owners with reactive dogs tend to focus on the environment because they don’t trust their dog, they don’t trust what their dog is going to do. They should be focusing on the dogs body language – maybe this is why so many people can’t read their dog.
Todays dog training goes back mainly to one man, B.F Skinner. Skinner died 30 years ago – but this is all new science right? Trainers created the quadrants based on bad analysis of Skinners work. Skinner was a human psychologist as well as an animal behaviourist. He wasn’t interested in dogs, he did experiments on animals in a lab environment to understand us – the human animal. Skinner used negative reinforcement earlier on – he would shock a dog til it performed a specific task. Could be something simple like lifting a paw – and when the dog performed that action, the shock stopped. It was the removal of negative reinforcement that Skinner declared positive reinforcement. Imagine that, positive reinforcement is turning off the power. But somehow, that became have a treat.
Ask any positive reinforcement trainer to define what positive reinforcement is beyond “one quadrant” and treats. You will find it difficult to get a straight answer, an answer you can understand. Positive reinforcement comes from choice – the animals choice. When you learn to cooperate instead of control – the dog needs to figure out when I calm down, we move forward. When I act out, I stop moving toward what I want. Once they figure out that calm gets them what they want, and understand that choice to be calm at all times, that’s the reward the dog really wants. You’re reinforcing the positive choice of remaining calm by rewarding the dog with getting what it wants. Yes, dogs can self-gratify.
Remember the old saying “Man fears that which he does not understand, if he can’t control it, he destroys it”. That holds so true in dog training. You fear that which you do not understand. Many trainers won’t admit it, but they are afraid of a bit of aggression. I can see it in many on youtube. Many claim to be the best of the best with aggression, but run away when they meet it. Or they get rough with the dog without even trying to understand why the dog is having behavioural problems in the first place. I’m appalled at how many trainers are recommending euthanasia. Many carry the attitude that if they can’t fix it, nobody can. If a dog bites – kill it – doesn’t matter why it bit. Can you imagine as an owner being told over and over that you need to train your dog, many follow to the letter but nothing seems to change, or the dog gets worse. They come back and ask for more, and get the same advice. I want to puke when I hear over and over – it didn’t work for me, might work for you.
The dog has become a protocol and people have created a protocol for everything. When the protocol fails, it gets adjusted – not tossed in the garbage where it belongs. Look at Grisha Stewart – started out with BAT 1.0, now it’s BAT 2.0 – upgrade why? Because BAT 1.0 wasn’t sufficient. The dog has become something to be trained.
People don’t look at themselves as animals anymore, but we are mammals in the animal kingdom. So are dogs. We share some 70 to 80% of our DNA with dogs. We’ve removed ourselves from the animal kingdom and we took the dog with us – placed it somewhere else to justify what we do to them. Now it’s dog behaviour – not animal behaviour. If you want to understand the dog – go look in a mirror at the animal that you are. Alot of dog training today is nothing more than abuse of an intelligent and incredible animal.
Lets talk treat training. First of all, medical. Dried liver is likely number one treat for dogs, pet stores are selling massive bags of it. Trainers and other owners are pushing it as a great treat. Problem is, nobody is telling them that feeding too much liver long term can kill or injure your dog? Hemochromatosis and hypervitaminosis A can cause heart disease, diabetes, and a whole array of other diseases. Liver is packed in iron and vitamin A. My 10 pound minpin is raw fed, his daily allotment of liver is 2 small pieces the size of a dime wet. How much do people feed? And we wonder why sickness is going through the roof. If you’re feeding your dog a balanced diet – then treats on top of it – you’re putting vitamin and mineral load above and beyond what the dog needs into the dog.
Treat training your puppy and wondering why it won’t housebreak? Food put into the dog has to come out so if the pup is pooping alot – you may want to step back and rethink that treat training.
I was at a dog park last week, and there was a lady with 2 Aussie shepherds and a treat bag on her side. Her dogs charged me barking, not a big deal – they will charge everyone. They went back to her, sat nicely and she fed them treats. She’s likely giving the dog a treat for sitting – not realizing that she’s actually training her dogs to charge and bark people. Can she not see that the dogs are seeking reward for charging at people? I see people using treats improperly and that makes things worse – if there is a risk of doing something wrong, then why do it in the first place. Treat training for behaviour, yeah, it can work but there is more chance of failure.
Dogs are incredible. All we are is a catalogue of smells and a bag of emotions and they read us like a book, and they dig the details. Their eyesight isn’t that great, less than half of ours, but their visual memory is incredible. They know every smell your body gives off, and they can smell when something is wrong. This is why some dogs get weird when a woman gets pregnant. The dog knows before the woman does, they smell your hormonal changes. They detect cancer, impending strokes and heart attacks – they smell something. They understand us – but somewhere along the line, we lost our understanding of them. We are told to train everything – that everything needs to be trained, that the dog can’t learn without reward and punishment. And there is much punishment being pushed in dog training today – right up to euthanasia. Even Skinner didn’t believe in punishment, not that effective. This is ludicrous. Dogs are being shocked, pronged, choked, controlled and managed and beaten and when they fail to understand – too often the pink juice is recommended – kill it. I’m amazed at how many dog owners straight up tell another dog owner to kill their dog. Trainers do the same, they have never met the dog, and based only on a post on facebook – recommend euthanasia.
To ice the cake – there is nothing but fear. Vets have people afraid over vaccines – don’t have your puppy around dogs. If you feed raw meat your dog will get sick, even though the dog is bloody carnivore. Then training has gotten people to normalize so much like the use of a crate, there’s some good news. And people have convinced themselves that our dogs love being locked up. How did this happen? Let’s cherrypick from the wolf. Wolves are denning animals right? Wolves are not denning animals and I’ve never seen a den with a door and a lock. Yet, owners will fight tooth and nail over crating their dogs. I agree, there is a time and a place for crating. The list goes on and on and on.
Aggression and reactivity are nothing more than anti-social behaviours. They are both symptoms, the outcome of a problem. People should be focusing on understanding why the dog is displaying certain behaviours. Once you understand it, then you can fix it. Fix the underlying cause and the aggression and reactivity disappear.
True aggression is pretty rare overall. These are the dogs that will rip you apart and not stop. What if I told you that aggression and reactivity both come from fear? And what is fear but lack of trust? The dog doesn’t trust anything and people aren’t giving the dog any reason to trust anything.
People get a puppy and they are told to create an anti-social dog. Lock it in a crate, not allowed around dogs, heaven forbid you go to a dog park etc. People are creating anti-social dogs by listening to the “professionals”, they wouldn’t steer me wrong would they? And then they get surprised when the dog shows the aggression and reactivity. Now it’s apply human created protocols based on bad analysis of old science, and call it training.
Training videos upset me. Why are dogs diagnosed aggressive so much? Because they are forced to display it, forced into that situation and set up to fail. Aggression and reactivity are not a diagnosis, do better. I meet reactive and “aggressive” dogs one on one, I don’t want the owner around. I’m taking away that thing the dog feels the need to protect, set it up for success, not failure. I want the real conversation and I’m going to get it. There is nothing to protect when I walk in – and this “seriously aggressive” dog runs away in fear. But, trainers will get the owner to walk the dog in. The dog is nervous, so is the owner and the dog is reading it. Owner rolls the dog into a facility the dog hasn’t seen yet – the dog isn’t given the time to check it out, have a sniff. No, now he’s faced with a trainer that I can see is scared and getting the owner to put a tool on the dog. Or worse yet, they grab it with a catch pole. What do you think the dog is going to do? Show aggression. Now we’re dealing with an “aggressive” dog, not the fearful one that’s reacting to some bad stuff.
This is the ideology that’s taken over dog training. And the sad part is, that seems to be all there is – quadrant based dog training. Bring something else to the table, and you get laughed at and ridiculed. And many of these people have problem dogs of their own that training isn’t working on. I shake my head. Positive reinforcement is still one quadrant in that system of reward and punishment – and you cannot have positive without negative. Anyone that believes positive reinforcement doesn’t use negative? Give your head a shake. Simple things like witholding a treat from the dog is punishment, Berns proved that. They respond better through hand signals than verbal. They prefer praise over treats, so why are people treat training everything?
All they need is one person that they can trust completely to get them out of that dark hole they are in. If your dog were human, what would you do? If you were to adopt an abused child, what would you do differently? You would build a relationship with the child, earn their trust and translate that trust to everything. You wouldn’t hit them, verbally abuse them and lock them in the room – cause that’s likely where they came from. Someone has to change. When a child trusts those they are with, they have no need to be afraid. If something scary comes along, they will use their trust in you to make a choice to overcome that fear.
That’s what you need to do with your dog.
But somehow, that ideology makes me the target of ridicule. These people have problem dogs of their own, training is failing them but yet…
I’ll get off my soapbox now.