Dr. Gregory Berns is a neuroscientist and a dog enthusiast. He’s watching their brains live and in color using MRI technology for over 10 years now. This one statement sums up everything so nicely.
“Eventually, I came to the conclusion that the key to improving dog-human relationships is through social cognition, not behaviorism. Positive reinforcement is a shortcut to train dogs, but it is not necessarily the best way to form a relationship with them. To truly live with dogs, humans need to become “great leaders.” Not dictators who rule by doling out treats and by threatening punishment, but leaders who respect and value their dogs as sentient beings.”
The number one thing I hear from dog owners is “I don’t trust my dog”. One of the big things I hear from dog trainers – “you don’t need to trust your dog”. But you will never respect or have confidence in that which you don’t trust. If you don’t trust your spouse, the relationship is already over.
My videos reflect building a solid relationship with every dog I work with. A solid relationship is what is missing with our dogs today – and the dogs that I work have never known what a solid relationship is like. And with that relationship – change that comes happens in hours. Not months and years of training. Fix the relationship you have with your dog, and you will be surprised at how little “training” they actually need. When an owner learns to trust their dog enough to remove the leash in a dog park – that takes trust. The one thing that dog trainers tell you not to do.
Dog owners, it is time to take a step back and reevaluate what you are being told to do to your dog. The abuse that has been normalized in the dog training world is immense – and it’s killing dogs in droves. It’s breaking my heart.
The “Quadrants Of Dog Training” were built broken – and that includes Positive Reinforcement. Positive Reinforcement is one quadrant of that system of abuse and it is a system of abuse.
The quadrants literally dictate that you take away the dogs choice – what B.F Skinner called “free will is an illusion”. The quadrants also dictate that you reward and punish a dog that could never make a choice in the first place. Well, the man that they blame for the creation of the quadrants – B.F Skinner – didn’t believe in punishment at all. So the positive and negative punishment quadrants shouldn’t exist in the first place.
Do that to a human child, and you will screw them up for life – it would be classified as abuse.
But the dog. Oh the dog.
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