Category Archives: Ethics

Ethical issues in behavior, training, keeping and caring for animals. I have been working with humane ethics for more than 30 years – in shelters, animal control, training and behavior modification. These are posts that examine the underpinning of our relationship with animals and our ethical treatment of them.

Do you give what the dog needs, or only what you like to do?

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It is easy to get comfortable with specific practices and expectations. The more we refine our methods the more likely we are to unintentionally offer a cookie-cutter approach – because of our past successes. Those accomplishments positively reinforce specific courses of action that generally lead to beneficial outcomes. However, our choice of tools may be the result of something else…our own comfort. In the majority of cases that isn’t a problem. When a dog doesn’t fit the mold, doing what comes naturally may not be the best solution. The biggest casualty of such complaisance is the dog sitting right in front of us. If we fail to examine a dog’s needs as an individual we may well go astray and give them, not what they need, but what we choose to give them. Continue reading →

Let Biting Dogs Lie: Fix ‘em or forget ‘em.

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My best friend recently put down his 3-year-old Rottweiler, Zeus. He had a very aggressive cancer. I trained him when he was 12 weeks old and he was part of my extended family. When the diagnosis was confirmed, it was a slam dunk decision to give him his last few weeks of life based on quality and then end it before he suffered. This loving and thoughtful decision points out a glitch in our cultural perceptions. While ending a life to prevent pain and suffering seems to be the logical choice in all cases, what would you do if the problem was behavioral and not medical?
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Emperor Skinner’s New Clothes

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In the late 1930’s, Burrhus Frederick (B.F.) Skinner wrote his magnum opus, The Behavior of Organisms. Today, his perspective on behavior is the foundation for almost all behavioral fields that deal with non-verbal animals. Skinner is the creator of the term operant conditioning, or “learning by consequences.” Skinner’s primary desire was to create a science of behavior. He promoted the idea that scientific behavioral control would make the world a better place. The essence of his ideology was a non-punitive society that would control behavior through “reinforcement” – the strengthening of behavior through rewarding good behavior. (See: http://clickandtreat.com/wordpress/?p=44 for more about the “non-coercive society of B.F. Skinner)  If you have noticed that scientists with an agenda often stray from the essence of science, you’d be correct. B.F. Skinner failed to create a science of behavior. Instead, he created an ideology that fails even cursory tests of scientific validity. You can skip any reference to veritas – truth for truth’s sake.
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Rebound Aggression:

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61Iw-+dSv5L._SL500_SY344_BO1,204,203,200_One of the big bugaboos of the modern, ‘positive’ training ideology is the generally promoted concept that if you punish aggression you will trigger “rebound aggression.” Most of the people who say this pretend to be “scientific” in their perspective and claim scientific validation of their opinion. Bunk. Their fascination with rebound aggression simply displays their ignorance of a full reading of the literature and their unwillingness to look at the world around them. For starters, here’s a quote from The Effects of Punishment on Human Behavior by Axelrod and Apsche. They are referring to a foundational study that is never cited by ‘positive’ ideologues. In the study, monkeys were shocked into attacking other monkeys. (Ulrich, Wolfe & Dulaney, JEAB, 1969, Punishment of Shock Induced Aggression) This was called ‘elicited attacks.’ They caused the monkey to attack with electric shock – and then stopped that aggression with electric shock. They used electric shock because of the ability to tightly control the conditions of the experiment.
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Abuse or Not Abuse, That is the Question:

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About 15 years ago, I spoke at a conference of one of the largest dog training professional organizations. I gave a demonstration of how to safely and quickly stop food aggression. My demonstrator for the event was a five-year-old German Shepherd – not just any German Shepherd. This dog was a FEMA certified search dog. Her problem was that as she grew older, she started attacking any dog that came near while there was food present – which in most cases was another search dog.

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