By Fran Jewell
When I had my first dog, my father taught me so much about training. That was 63 years ago! We had a Brittany spaniel named Susie. My father would have me hold her upstairs, and then he would hide a piece of cheese or lunch meat in the living room. He would say, “Go hunt!” and I would let Susie go. Off she would run downstairs to find the cheese. My father would then hide it under a rug, a chair, on the bookcase, any place he could think of. He started teaching Susie to use her nose when she was just a pup about 8 weeks old! By the time hunting season came, she was excellent in finding the pheasant. Nobody trained their dogs with food back then. I have to chuckle that my father knew about canine enrichment before there was such a thing.
Dog trainers at that time (the early ’60s) primarily used compulsion or correction-based training with dogs. There was no such thing as food training. (When I started training, not one company made dog treats. I had to make my own.) Consequently, since compulsion training is very difficult to master for the human and in many cases the dog would shut down and not perform anything, gradually other forms of training started to metamorphose. More praise was introduced for the behaviors we wanted.
Eventually, along came “clicker training,” or operant conditioning. It was a method that trainers of whales and dolphins, particularly, were using. Operant conditioning was developed by B.F. Skinner. If you have studied much of Skinner, you know that many of his theories were not highly regarded. Some were. Soon, the dog training world with Bob Bailey (“Chicken Training with Clickers”) and some of the other clicker pioneers, including Morgan Spector (a dear friend of mine) and author of one of the first clicker-training books, Clicker Training for Obedience, took hold and changed the dog-training world. Later came Karen Pryor.
The dog-training world that consisted mostly of compulsion and correction soon grabbed the operant-conditioning method, so successful with dolphins and whales, and soon began an entirely positive method that involved no consequences at all.
As we know even from our human society, if there were not consequences for unacceptable behavior, like robbing a store, we would live in complete chaos. We also do not thrive in a “no-choice” condition.
Now, here we are with dogs that must chase instinctually—maybe after game, a scent, or cars—in which the chase is more rewarding to the dog than any food or play toy we could control. How do we become more important to dogs than their instinctual behaviors? On the premise that dogs are opportunists, how do we make something we control the best opportunity for the dog?
Here is a short story for your consideration: Many years ago I had clients, a husband and wife, both retired professionals. For their retirement enjoyment, they got a Labrador retriever puppy. Truly, that was a nice choice for them. As we all know, Labradors are well known for their extremely social desires with people and other dogs. They took several classes from the time the dog was a puppy. They were told never to say “No,” never to use a leash to correct the dog that was pulling and they were told never to provide any consequence at all, only food reward for the desired behavior. So, when the woman was walking her dog with food reward by her side to keep her dog in the heel position next to a five-lane busy road in Seattle, her over-friendly Lab saw another dog on the other side of the street and bolted to play with the other dog. In doing so, he pulled the woman over, breaking her face that required three reconstructive surgeries to repair. The dog somehow made it across the street without getting hit, but then he also was positively reinforced for pulling the leash out of her hand and causing her to fall on the pavement when the Lab got to the other dog and began to play. The play with the other dog was the reward for pulling the leash out of the owner’s hand and bolting across the street without harm. Then, shortly after that incident, the dog pulled the husband over and he required six months of physical therapy.
Neither the husband nor the wife could walk the dog any longer. What were their choices at this point? Was if fair for the dog to learn there were consequences for bolting? Or should they have euthanized the dog? Should they have given the dog they loved to rescue? Or given the dog back to the breeder for someone else to get pulled over by this 110-pound bulldozer?
Compulsion-based training is the pendulum swinging to the top of one side. The only positive reinforcement is the pendulum swinging all the way to the other side. The point I am trying to make is moderation in everything; the midway of the pendulum. Let’s let every dog know exactly what we want him to do with reward in whatever form is most valuable to the dog. At the same time, provide some guidance about what is not acceptable with meaningful (not brutal or abusive) consequences. Would we run our own society without any consequences for unacceptable behavior?
Guidance does not have to be abusive. Sometimes, no guidance without consequences can be just as devastating to the dog always trying to guess what he should be doing. I love operant conditioning and learned it from the greats when it first came to be in dog training. But, not all dogs have the confidence to provide offered behaviors that the completely operant condition method relies on. And, many dogs have so much instinct it overrides any reward we humans can provide. From my perspective, when we train dogs, we must take each dog in front of us and have ALL the tools necessary to apply them appropriately, just as teaching humans does.
All dogs learn differently, but, then we add instinctual behaviors into the mix. We need to be open to what works for each dog.
Fran Jewell is a dog behavior consultant, NADOI-certified instructor and vice president. She owns Positive Puppy Dog Training LLC and can be reached at (208) 721-7221.