I was just asked a question about emotions. The concern was the emotional reactions that come from suppressing a behavior via punishment. That is a great question because it leads to an examination of a fundamental question – what role does emotion play in behavior?
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I have a couple of priorities that I consider necessary to begin a successful training program. I must have a way to make a behavior more common and I must be able to stop a behavior immediately. If I fail to create a foundation for those things I will eventually find gaps in the dog’s repertoire, later. If the gap includes important behaviors and inhibitions such as escaping out the front door, failing to come when called or chewing a live extension cord, any gap can be fatal. That is an ever-present consideration in my life. If I fail to do my job the dog could die. It’s not just with “serious” behavior problems. It is about creating a repertoire that preserves life. I assume that both polarities must be addressed – creating necessary behaviors and creating necessary inhibitions. Of the two, the overwhelmingly more important is stopping and inhibiting unacceptable behavior. That is the primary cause of death to dogs in the US. They do things that people can’t live with. Stop the behavior, save a life. Ignore the behavior or take too long to fix it and you might as well schedule an appointment for euthanasia. Continue reading
About 30 years ago I was a brand-new shelter manager of a small humane society in Oregon. Soon after my hiring I was responsible for performing and supervising euthanasia – a necessary part of the job. One morning I was attempting to give a fatal injection to an adult Lab mix. I was still learning my craft and a little hesitant with presenting the needle. As the needle kissed his skin, the dog jerked his foreleg back and tried to bite my hand.
Good science does not propose rules that are not confirmed by objective observation of nature. Good science reveals nature as it is. If reality contradicts science, then it’s not really science. This is the “Emperor’s New Clothes” phenomenon. If a child correctly perceives objective reality it doesn’t matter how many highly educated people wish to contradict the obvious. For instance, if you drop two balls of unequal weight from a high tower, you will personally k
now about terminal velocity. If you suggest that the heavier ball hits first, everyone in attendance can check your statement. The child who says, “They hit at the same time” is correct, regardless of how many peer-reviewed papers wish to question his report. (OK, if you want to be totally anal retentive, if they are Galileo’s balls, used in his free-fall experiments, the ball of larger diameter touches a millisecond before the smaller diameter ball. That doesn’t change terminal velocity – the phenomenon controlled by earth’s gravity.) Likewise, a traditionally trained dog with a bird in its mouth is an observable fact. If the science-based training does not lead to a dog pointing and then retrieving the bird, that, too, is observable.
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Let’s accept for a second that any use of punishment is horrible. OK. However, I don’t know that it kills very many dogs, outright. It may scare them for awhile and require time to rehabilitate the dog, but death isn’t the usual outcome. However, being intent on clarity, I’m going to accept for a second that punishment somehow kills dogs. My next question is, “how many”? Is it 1:100, 1:1000, 1:1,000,000? The reason I want the numbers is because I want to make a rational decision about the topic. Without some kind of numbers we can’t make logical comparisons. So, we will have to plunge into this topic with some educated guess-work. I used to be a dog catcher. I was a shelter manager. I have real-world experience to help me make heads-or-tails of this. If my perspective seems a little funny, you can chalk it up to my experience. Continue reading