Honest question. How many choices does your dog get in the run of a day? Think about that as you read this.
“Positive Reinforcement” is one quadrant of a 4 quadrant system that dictates that a sentient creature like the dog cannot possibly learn without reward and punishment – and the worst of it – the dog doesn’t have any choices. It’s listen to me or I’ll punish you.
This is what trainers tend to learn. Why do they believe the dog can’t learn without reward or punishment? The man blamed for all this crap is a man by the name of B.F Skinner. He was an animal behaviorist – but moreso a human psychologist – he did experiments in a lab on animals to understand us – the human animal. Skinner screwed up alot of animals with treat reward – and that’s exactly what trainers have you doing to your dog. Skinner was shocking dogs 100 years ago, we still do it today. Skinner didn’t care about the animal brain – he didn’t need it cause everything can be conditioned – or trained. This is what trainers learn – they don’t care about the brain, they don’t care about choice.
That ladies and gentlemen is “ABUSE” in itself.
How do you look at your dog? As an intelligent thinking creature? Or a brainless automaton that needs to be trained in every which way to exist in human society? Well trained doesn’t equate to well behaved – and owners need to step back and understand what they want. Do you want well trained – or do you want a well behaved family dog? One can be trained – the other can’t.
I believe that dogs need free will, the ability to think, to make choices, to learn from those choices. To become independent. Sound familiar? And the fastest way to get a dog out of a dark hole of fear and reactivity is through social cognition. Dogs are sentient, they aren’t a brainless automaton that needs to be trained for everything and anything to exist in human society.
As you read, you should come to a big realization – the problem is choice. The dog isn’t getting one, they never do under the “quadrants of dog training”. If you give a dog their free will back, and the ability to learn through social cognition? They will change so fast that your head will spin.
Lets begin.
Frustration defined – the feeling of being upset or annoyed, especially because of inability to change or achieve something. The dog wants something – but the human is standing in the way. Post that in positive reinforcement, it’ll be removed. Could the owner be creating at least some of that frustration? It boggles my mind the number of times I’ve heard trainers say – we don’t use dictionary terms here, we use our own. But, the dog. But, they want you to train an incompatible behavior or leave it or watch. This only serves to increase frustration. The dog wants something – that thing over there the owner is making a big deal of – but we’re going to sit here and teach you to do it my way? This is a living thinking creature at the end of the leash. Chew on that for a while.
Fear defined – an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat. One can also define fear as lack of trust. We don’t trust something, and perceive it as a danger. And we sure as heck wouldn’t put our lives in the hands of someone we don’t trust. But, the dog is forced to. Do you believe that your dog trusts you in every which way – everywhere?
Now you’re being told to happy talk and give yummy food to a dog that is scared. When animals – humans included – get stressed due to fear or whatever, we produce something called cortisol – the bodies fire alarm. Cortisol can also be addictive, think addictions – how long has the dog been like this? So, lets break this down. The dog is fearful, and you’re taking it to a place that scares it and it doesn’t have a choice. But you have to use a happy voice – first of all, happy voice tends to be a reward – it’s like praise, and you use it on a scared dog. Think about that. Now lets feed the scared dog – the dog is generating cortisol, and now you’re forcing it to stress eat. Yeah, that’s positive isn’t it? To top it off – also according to Skinner – the dog needs to justify that reward in that state of mind. And that to me is mental abuse of a sentient creature. Never mind that one of the top training treats is dried liver – dangerous to the dog long term both medically and behaviorally. I’m willing to bet you haven’t been told these things. Oh, and by the way, they are now pushing treats for the life of the dog – great, now you have to carry a treat bag for the rest of the dogs life. Why bother taking it off? And somehow, that’s become normal.
Thresholds, how I loathe thee. This might surprise you, but your dogs eyesight isn’t that great. Less than half of humans, but they learned to cope with it very well. They only see blue and yellow colors. Stop and think – there is a dog 50 feet off. What do you think your dog sees?? Which threshold is it – the dogs or yours? Maybe it sees a shadow off in the distance, does he know it’s a dog? Dogs learn through social cognizance – they want to meet these things, but you keep saying no. But the human is trying to make a big deal out of it – and that’s probably why the dog is making a big deal out of it – either through excitement or fear. That’s not fair.
Now onto the big one. Don’t use corrections or punishment. Finally we agree. However, if you made it this far – all of the above is punishment to a sentient creature. Not once are you giving the dog a choice and allowing it to learn the way it was meant to. Chew on that.
If you made it this far, I beg of you, watch Dr. Gregory Berns on youtube, he’ll blow your mind on what he’s learned about dogs from their brain. They are not brainless automatons.
We have redefined what the dog is to justify what we do to them. You should chew on that long and hard.
This is just one quadrant of a 4 quadrants system. And it’s supposed to be the positive one, the good one. Dare I get into the other 3 quadrants?
And dog owners, this is not your fault. I’m looking at the trail of destruction left behind this system, and the owners still living it. The quadrants of dog training should never have existed in the first place.