I’ve been a member of many forums and something I’m finding disturbing is that people aren’t asking questions anymore. If you don’t understand the cause of a problem, you will never understand how to fix it.
You can train a dog to do many things – but behaviour isn’t one of them. When dog trainers stepped into the behavioural ring with their treats and tools, that was the start of a long and dark path for the dog.
Trainers have dog owners are doing the same experiments on their dog as Skinner was doing to animals in a lab. And that should give you pause. Skinner wasn’t an aspiring dog trainer, he didn’t care about the animals in a lab.
When dog owners sign up one of likely millions of dog training venues and ask a question, they tend to get a chorus of trainers and dog owners that start suggesting treats, crates, drugs, spay and neuter, ecollars, prong collars, clickers and there are tools that I can’t even think of. No dog parks, that’s another huge one. The number of mentions of behavioral euthanasia is staggering. And that’s on all sides of the dog training spectrum.
At what point do we stop calling this dog training? This is legalized animal abuse. But yet, rarely do I see anyone asking questions about what brought the dog to this point in the first place? No questions about the dogs needs, or if the dog is insecure – nothing. It takes discussion to understand what’s causing the problem – but it isn’t happening. Try signing up to any dog training group and tell them you have an “aggressive” pitbull and see what the results are. Better yet, call around and tell trainers you have aggressive pit, see how many beat a path to your door. The fear I see in dog trainers is all too common. If you fear dogs – it means you do not understand them. Man fears what he doesn’t not understand – and if he can’t control it, he destroys it.
That’s what dog training has become in a nutshell.
Alot of people can’t afford a dog trainer, especially for aggression or reactivity. They tend to get the same old chorus from the groups and then the start watching dog training videos. There’s some good news. I watched that Zak guy turn his dog Inertia into a basket case – and people cheered? I watch the bravado from the balanced community and I don’t even know what to think. Typical scared owner rolls scared dog into a scary new place. Dog doesn’t have a chance to investigate and calm, no, now he’s facing a scared trainer. I would fully expect said dog to flip shit in protection of self and owner. But now it’s declared a dangerous aggressive dog – not the scared dog that I see.
Positive Reinforcement, Negative Reinforcement – Positive Punishment, Negative Punishment. The quadrants of dog training.
Owners don’t realize what the quadrants really are. The quadrants of dog training – all quadrants including positive reinforcement dictates that you take the dogs brain away. “Free will is an illusion” to the dog – and Skinner coined that phrase. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard from trainers of all sides of the spectrum – as long as a dog thinks it’s making a choice – then it is. The quadrants also dictate that you reward and punish the dog for everything. So get this straight – dog owners are being told to reward and punish a dog for a choice it didn’t make – and moreso for a choice they couldn’t make. And we wonder why it doesn’t work? A yes from a dog doesn’t mean shit when they aren’t allowed to say no. B.F Skinner didn’t need the brain or the thought process to change behaviours, he didn’t care about the brain – neither does the average trainer. Skinner also wasn’t a fan of punishment, it was too easy to reach for and there are better ways. So, where did the punishment quadrants come from?
The human animal was Skinners target, not dogs. He did experiments in a lab on animals in order to understand how to use positive and negative reinforcement on us. He didn’t treat train his human clients, he didn’t shock them to my knowledge. Skinner didn’t care about the dog, he wasn’t some aspiring dog trainer either – he did cruel experiments on animals so he wouldn’t need to do it to us – the human animal. Skinner shocked dogs under the banner of negative reinforcement – not positive punishment as trainers will tell you. Skinner put the onus on the dog to figure out what he wanted. When the dog figured out that lifting a paw when the power was on would provide it with positive reinforcement. Yes, positive reinforcement is the removal of negative reinforcement. When Skinner turned off the power, he called that positive reinforcement. Turn the power back on and the dog is going to replicate pretty quick. No? It should make more sense when explained that way. He knew that sticking a cattle prod on your ass would change your behaviour pretty quick – but he learned why the prod works and how not to use it on us.
Negative and positive reinforcement – it’s all fear and desire. When governments put down mandates, people locked in their home – they applied ‘negative reinforcement’. People were begging for positive reinforcement – please mr government, give us our lives back. When most mandates were lifted, that was the application of positive reinforcement – the removal of negative – people breathed a sigh of relief. What really concerns me is that humans are so easily controlled, so easily shaped by the real Skinner. No brain needed. What concerns me more is that they aren’t willing to make the choice to step out of negative reinforcement without permission.
Fear is lack of trust and a fearful dog doesn’t trust. They have zero reason to follow that which they don’t trust – neither do you. Earn their trust, give them calm and they conquer their fears faster than you realize. I give the dog their brain back because the onus is on them to choose to leave negative and join me in calm where nothing is a big deal. I want to be the highest value treat in the dogs life, that’s positive reinforcement. If you’re scared of spiders – it’s no different. But if you trust me 100% to not let you get hurt, you know I have your back. That gives you the choice of trying to over come your fear. I’m being positive reinforcement at that moment and i understand that you need to choose to leave that fear state. Choose to leave negative reinforcement and join me in positive – this spider isn’t a big deal. If I have the patience, and give you the time you need to overcome it, I would. When you finally make the choice to use your trust in me and overcome that fear of spiders – that choice becomes the best reward you could get. But the dog doesn’t get that choice. It gets rewarded instead. And somehow, that’s supposed to be positive.
There is a war going on in dog training world if people haven’t noticed. Some balanced trainers have actually gotten death threats and threats of family harm. I ask again, can we please stop calling this dog training? And do you want to know the silly part of it all? Balanced and PR are fighting. PR/PP/FF tend to be fighting amongst each other, trying to out positive each other. They all tend to slag balanced training and anyone that doesn’t follow their lead. And they are all part of the “quadrants of dog training”. You don’t get to pull one quadrant out of that system and call it the good one.
What about the dogs and their owners? All this bullshit is getting dogs abused and killed for behaviours that the human has been told to create. The sad part is – it’s the owners and their dogs that are the victims in all this. The number of times an owner told me they’ve been through 6 or 8 trainers, paid thousands of dollars and the dog is worse. Is it really the dog? Are so many dogs really that bad? Or could it be possibly the system that’s failed – the system that was built broken 40 years ago. Some big names involved too. Grisha Stewart and Ian Dunbar are a couple.
Funny how calm dogs are never a problem. But get that brain excited, and all bets are off. What people really want, what they would be happy with is a overall calm dog. But yet, I watch many trainers creating excitement and the dog can’t calm down. But it’s getting lots of reward for being scared. What part of all that is “positive”?
Human beings were Skinners target, not the dog. But dog trainers built the quadrants based on what Skinner was doing in a lab environment. They didn’t focus on what he really learned from the animals he used.
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