Opinions of Training Styles - from the Dog-Door
by Dr Eisenbart, February 2011
Written for clarity, the following may seem blunt. In domestic life humans ought seem to their dogs as the natural “wise-leaders” because humans have opposable thumbs, can read the labels on the dog medicines, and are the main source of the dogs food, water, exercise, security and safety. In exchange as a family, the wisest (usually adult) humans get to establish rules about how the dog may behave. Mutual education of a dog who is new to a household is a vital event for happiness together - “mutual” because ideally but not always there is a thinking creature on both sides of the relationship or ends of the leash, as the case may be.
I. “Golden” Education-training of a dog as an intelligent[1] being capable of emotions:
Beginning: Assure by actions of the humans and any other species living there that the dog is physically and mentally safe and secure from arbitrary and capricious events beyond its ability to comprehend.
Learn what the specific dog wants (thinks are rewards) and what it prefers to avoid (unpleasantness or fears). For example, most dogs are social creatures like children and desire (want) companionship and the company of compatible beings (humans, dog or other species). So, approve as signified by words, gestures (clicks), or treats - nice “rewards” for their immediately preceding behaviors. Oppositely, temporary withdrawal of companionship (in US kindergartens called “time-out”) is unpleasant for most dogs (and humans) and at the same time gives the “person” a chance to mentally associate the unwanted result with the immediately earlier behavior(s). Excessive time delay between the behaviors and the results tend to be confusing to the dog (or human).
Especially rescued dogs might have fears and dislike some things for no reason obvious to their new family. It is often best to trust the dog’s judgment and let the dog learn over days and weeks that the new family doesn’t do terrible things to dogs. Rescued dogs often at first feel insecure about being separated from members of their new family, and they need to learn from experience of very short and short times of separation that you will always come back for then, and that they will never be “thrown-away.” Dogs that were forced to learn to survive in one strange place after another, like the post-WWII refugee children of Europe, will usually for a while save up and guard food, toys and perhaps bits of cloth. As they learn by experience that no humans are going to starve them, or take away their personal treasures, almost all dogs become remarkably trusting. Gaining the total trust of a rescued dog sometimes needs months of safety, kindness and consistent mutual companionship. In a few rare instances, the crucial “break- through” to solid trust happened when their new humans got down on hands and knees on the lawn or carpet to play ball (or use some other toy) with the dog.
Above all, never underestimate the ability of a dog to figure out what is going on, whether the people and other creatures can be trusted, and what are the new social rules (such as potty outside next to the tree but never on the rose bushes) that please their new family. They typically will learn of their own initiative to understand that the rules are different for adult humans, children, and the other intelligent creatures such as cats and maybe horses sharing the place.
Show the dog the behavior that is desired [or Not-desired] by example, shaping, clicker-training, observation of other dogs, children, or human adults, etc. A dog learns what is desired (but doesn’t instantly or automatically do it) as its people try to teach it, how they treat each other, and all the rest of the local social rules. Rescued and adopted adult dogs need to learn (or unlearn) which of the rules from their former place are no-longer needed or OK. For example, if the dog was formerly encouraged to sleep on the bed of the Lady of the House after the Master went to work in the morning, the dog might need quite a while and a few rejections to unlearn that fun habit
Demonstrate that desired behavior has good-pleasant resultsfor the dog; which results might simply be a nice edible bit, a verbal word of approval, a “click” of approval, or just an awareness of pleasing their relevant human.
Conversely, demonstrate that unwanted behaviors instantly get result that the dog doesn’t enjoy much, such as finding that attempting counter-surfing causes sticky tape on its toes, or that beginning to poop on the carpet results in being firmly, gently and quickly carried out-doors to a place where the human prefers dog-pooping done, etc. “Instantly” is important because otherwise the dog is likely to be uncertain about what exactly got the human so unpleasantly excited, raving maybe, and shaking a finger at the dog.
Fairness and Dog-justice: There is no longer serious doubt that most dogs have a distinct sense of fairness and dog-justice at the fundamental level of the “Golden Rule.” Such behavior was repeatedly observed among puppies from their age of about 10 days, when the puppies were observed 24/7 interacting with dog-siblings, adult dogs and humans. The learned “rule” was usually instilled when a puppy with needle sharp milk-teeth bit a sibling excessively hard and heard a scream from the victim, and soon thereafter him/herself screamed similarly when bitten on a sensitive part of its anatomy. The association learned in a fraction of a second between a scream, a bite and severe pain is apparently usually remembered for life. Later they each usually learn the dog-justice three rules of peaceful social existence described, by Alexandra Semyonova so well in her famous paper, from their experiences and biology.
“Junk science” peddled by K. Lorenz in the 1950s denied any such possibility and some “so-called experts” likewise denied the possibility as recently as 2010 in public literature. The ability of adult humans in possession of advanced academic degrees to engage in self deception and nonsense that gratifies their self-image and opportunities can defy easy belief.
Experience in homes, ranches, farms and academic laboratories proved that arbitrary and capricious apparently random connection of results (rewards and punishments) to actions can drive intelligent dogs insane. Kafka and the book “Catch 22” in literature seemed to offer the same for humans. Contrary to some modern popular doctrines, some breeds of dogs have both short term and long term multi-year memory of events and the apparent results. Some breeds are capable of easily learning new things, including for example the meaning of certain human words used in their presence, from a single event. Other breeds are alleged to need even thousands of repetitions of an event and its results before the dogs accept that there is a connection of the events and the results. Each dog is itself an individual, as A Miklosi brilliantly translated it (paraphrased) “There is no such thing as THE dog ….”
Variability from breed to breed was documented in publications and personally confirmed by Internet discussions with people who were devoted fans of their particular breeds. Remarkably, owners of traditionally slow learner breeds often preferred a dominance / submission way of training rather than the “education” way. There could be no question that the people who were so fond and devoted to their "slow-learners" intended to be as kind and loving as any others with their dogs.
Dog Anxieties, Embarrassment and Stealth/ concealment: Intelligent dogs who are suddenly faced with unsolvable difficulties that they can’t figure out how to solve, sometimes get anxious and contrive ways to avoid getting into immediate trouble with their humans. For example, a new young dog learned free use of a dog-door for getting out to the toilet, but when winter set-in the humans locked the dog door. The humans failed to notice that the locked dog-door caused no visible difficulty for their wee doggy friend. Weeks later when guests arrived for Christmas, they discovered that their dog had happily when in desperate need, used a fancy all-natural-wool deep pile grass green shaggy rug in the family’s back unused guest room. Some dogs are very clever in devising ways to avoid getting their folks excited.
II. Traditional Punitive-training (also known as (aka) “Beatings will cease when morale improves” perhaps from a former galley owner’s Management Handbook). Elegant academic and marketing labels still are used for the “aversive” style: Dominance/ Submission {Sadist/ masochist or Hollywood-CM} theory, Hierarchy based pack-leaders, WWII NAZI-zoo-wolf theory, Prussian infantry drill, Soviet infantry drill, UK Empire Drill of 1812; etc. If used on sane (at the beginning) intelligent dogs the documented results can include one or more of the following:
1) the dog dies physically or mentally (or one and then the other),
2) the dog becomes “robotic” without detectable personality, personal initiative or voluntary learning,
3) the dog “breaks” and either flees for its life or attempts to maim or kill its abuser.
Punitive training was aptly described in US media from data of the dog-fighting career of the splendidly athletic basketball player Mr Vick’s dog-fighting, who was applauded by the President of the US according to the Washington Post newspaper. Some humans who were themselves trained by punitive parents can conceive of no other way to train dogs, children, women and subordinates in corporations, military or government positions.
III. Pure-Positive Training: As an emotional modern reaction against the unpleasant aspects of the punitive style of training, many idealist persons began to reverse the style by relying entirely on kindness and treats as "bribes" for learning the wanted behaviors. Difficulties happened when idealist humans imagined that sweetness, kindness and plenty of treats will cause a dog that was rescued from terrible conditions to instantly fall in love and immediately learn the entire list of commands.
When it works, positive training (rewards only) is grand and makes everybody feel jolly. For puppies whose life and joy is learning new things it mostly works well, or anyway suffices. For adult dogs who have seen too many “owner-custodians” an approach recognizing that most dogs can probably think better than some of my relatives can be more effective and less painful for all.
Specifically, “positive-only” doesn’t work well to dis-persuade a dog that has already discovered the joys of un-social self-rewarding mental-inflation of their self-esteem [aka Autonomic instinct releasing – academically] such as counter-surfing[2], where the dog’s reward is instantly contained in the action itself. Some dogs quickly learn how to exploit humans who only possess “marshmallows” for convincing the dog to cease or avoid doing thangs the human dislikes, such as don’t poop in the middle of the new Persian carpet. Women who tried to devoutly rely exclusively on positive training were reported to sometimes “break” under the stress of being repeatedly frustrated by their wee darling – as for example the unfortunate lady who alledgedly one day bit her wee delinquent moggie on the ear so hard that it bled.
As the polar opposite of abusive training in the CMilen style, pure positive training became a modern dog-training fad. The pure positive style was a humane, decent style created in reaction to the opposite extreme, after the medias' apparent discovery that beating dogs, children and women into submission was a lousy method of training.
IV. Low Trainability Individuals: For more than 60 years, experts urged people to obtain dogs whose skills and personalities were compatible. So there comes a need to train some who prefer to Not be trained, or prefer to snooze in the sun/shade.
Despite wishful thinking by some modern advocates of “pure positive training” a few breeds and individuals are trainable by acting as though they have only the natural instincts of a robotic chicken – programmable by requiring it to do the same thing time after time until it no longer has a personality or desires and wants of its own beyond eating, pooping, peeing and staring adoringly. News reports indicated that some Japanese sold electronic dog-robots that could be trained like that or by a “program.” US trainers who market that style may be of the Pavlov (Russian) or Skinner (US) school of psychology of placing dog-babies in a box that prevents all unwanted experiences and subjects the thing to deep-conditioning of its responses to specific stimuli, such as the words Come, Sit, and S- -t.
Experiments at Purdue U research on rats, Harvard on rabbits, and other places proved that if “pushed too far even a rabbit will bite” and many subjects will escape by suicide or some other way. Border Collies were notorious for reacting poorly to unilateral mental coercive training emotional-deprivation, as we witnessed when a BC puppy was accidentally sold to a person of the Skinnerian style (which was the way the person was allegedly trained as a child, so it seemed OK.)
V. Irrational styles: Before trying to train a dog it is crucial for the human to decide what their purpose is in obtaining the dog. The worst category of dubious reasons for owning a dog is for the prestige or social values thereof. Training a dog acquired for such purposes best fits into one of the next two methods:
Décor Dogs: People who prefer dogs of high boutique score and perfect conformation with no needs except dusting, no expenses and no effort in training are urged to visit FAO Schwartz toys store or the higher class art galleries to select their next ceramic or plush faux dog.
“Trompe d’ Oile” (fool the eye) Dogs: Anybody whose only goal is to train their dog to never mess on the floor, never chew furniture or otherwise never do things the humans don’t like should immediately take the dog to a taxidermist to be taxidermized. After that has been done, it will perfectly obey all commands such as “never mess in the house”, Sit and Stay; never do “bad” things, and only require occasional dusting.
[1] See the excellent books by Adam Miklosi, Marc Bekoff and Stanley Coren. /Here “golden” meant sane and decent.
[2] Counter-surfing: US jargon for a dog’s serving herself from food on the table or kitchen counter. Nibbling on electrical wires and snatching-instantly-swallowed nasty and dangerous things from the ground during walks with a human are kinds of “counter-surfing”.
I. “Golden” Education-training of a dog as an intelligent[1] being capable of emotions:
Beginning: Assure by actions of the humans and any other species living there that the dog is physically and mentally safe and secure from arbitrary and capricious events beyond its ability to comprehend.
Learn what the specific dog wants (thinks are rewards) and what it prefers to avoid (unpleasantness or fears). For example, most dogs are social creatures like children and desire (want) companionship and the company of compatible beings (humans, dog or other species). So, approve as signified by words, gestures (clicks), or treats - nice “rewards” for their immediately preceding behaviors. Oppositely, temporary withdrawal of companionship (in US kindergartens called “time-out”) is unpleasant for most dogs (and humans) and at the same time gives the “person” a chance to mentally associate the unwanted result with the immediately earlier behavior(s). Excessive time delay between the behaviors and the results tend to be confusing to the dog (or human).
Especially rescued dogs might have fears and dislike some things for no reason obvious to their new family. It is often best to trust the dog’s judgment and let the dog learn over days and weeks that the new family doesn’t do terrible things to dogs. Rescued dogs often at first feel insecure about being separated from members of their new family, and they need to learn from experience of very short and short times of separation that you will always come back for then, and that they will never be “thrown-away.” Dogs that were forced to learn to survive in one strange place after another, like the post-WWII refugee children of Europe, will usually for a while save up and guard food, toys and perhaps bits of cloth. As they learn by experience that no humans are going to starve them, or take away their personal treasures, almost all dogs become remarkably trusting. Gaining the total trust of a rescued dog sometimes needs months of safety, kindness and consistent mutual companionship. In a few rare instances, the crucial “break- through” to solid trust happened when their new humans got down on hands and knees on the lawn or carpet to play ball (or use some other toy) with the dog.
Above all, never underestimate the ability of a dog to figure out what is going on, whether the people and other creatures can be trusted, and what are the new social rules (such as potty outside next to the tree but never on the rose bushes) that please their new family. They typically will learn of their own initiative to understand that the rules are different for adult humans, children, and the other intelligent creatures such as cats and maybe horses sharing the place.
Show the dog the behavior that is desired [or Not-desired] by example, shaping, clicker-training, observation of other dogs, children, or human adults, etc. A dog learns what is desired (but doesn’t instantly or automatically do it) as its people try to teach it, how they treat each other, and all the rest of the local social rules. Rescued and adopted adult dogs need to learn (or unlearn) which of the rules from their former place are no-longer needed or OK. For example, if the dog was formerly encouraged to sleep on the bed of the Lady of the House after the Master went to work in the morning, the dog might need quite a while and a few rejections to unlearn that fun habit
Demonstrate that desired behavior has good-pleasant resultsfor the dog; which results might simply be a nice edible bit, a verbal word of approval, a “click” of approval, or just an awareness of pleasing their relevant human.
Conversely, demonstrate that unwanted behaviors instantly get result that the dog doesn’t enjoy much, such as finding that attempting counter-surfing causes sticky tape on its toes, or that beginning to poop on the carpet results in being firmly, gently and quickly carried out-doors to a place where the human prefers dog-pooping done, etc. “Instantly” is important because otherwise the dog is likely to be uncertain about what exactly got the human so unpleasantly excited, raving maybe, and shaking a finger at the dog.
Fairness and Dog-justice: There is no longer serious doubt that most dogs have a distinct sense of fairness and dog-justice at the fundamental level of the “Golden Rule.” Such behavior was repeatedly observed among puppies from their age of about 10 days, when the puppies were observed 24/7 interacting with dog-siblings, adult dogs and humans. The learned “rule” was usually instilled when a puppy with needle sharp milk-teeth bit a sibling excessively hard and heard a scream from the victim, and soon thereafter him/herself screamed similarly when bitten on a sensitive part of its anatomy. The association learned in a fraction of a second between a scream, a bite and severe pain is apparently usually remembered for life. Later they each usually learn the dog-justice three rules of peaceful social existence described, by Alexandra Semyonova so well in her famous paper, from their experiences and biology.
“Junk science” peddled by K. Lorenz in the 1950s denied any such possibility and some “so-called experts” likewise denied the possibility as recently as 2010 in public literature. The ability of adult humans in possession of advanced academic degrees to engage in self deception and nonsense that gratifies their self-image and opportunities can defy easy belief.
Experience in homes, ranches, farms and academic laboratories proved that arbitrary and capricious apparently random connection of results (rewards and punishments) to actions can drive intelligent dogs insane. Kafka and the book “Catch 22” in literature seemed to offer the same for humans. Contrary to some modern popular doctrines, some breeds of dogs have both short term and long term multi-year memory of events and the apparent results. Some breeds are capable of easily learning new things, including for example the meaning of certain human words used in their presence, from a single event. Other breeds are alleged to need even thousands of repetitions of an event and its results before the dogs accept that there is a connection of the events and the results. Each dog is itself an individual, as A Miklosi brilliantly translated it (paraphrased) “There is no such thing as THE dog ….”
Variability from breed to breed was documented in publications and personally confirmed by Internet discussions with people who were devoted fans of their particular breeds. Remarkably, owners of traditionally slow learner breeds often preferred a dominance / submission way of training rather than the “education” way. There could be no question that the people who were so fond and devoted to their "slow-learners" intended to be as kind and loving as any others with their dogs.
Dog Anxieties, Embarrassment and Stealth/ concealment: Intelligent dogs who are suddenly faced with unsolvable difficulties that they can’t figure out how to solve, sometimes get anxious and contrive ways to avoid getting into immediate trouble with their humans. For example, a new young dog learned free use of a dog-door for getting out to the toilet, but when winter set-in the humans locked the dog door. The humans failed to notice that the locked dog-door caused no visible difficulty for their wee doggy friend. Weeks later when guests arrived for Christmas, they discovered that their dog had happily when in desperate need, used a fancy all-natural-wool deep pile grass green shaggy rug in the family’s back unused guest room. Some dogs are very clever in devising ways to avoid getting their folks excited.
II. Traditional Punitive-training (also known as (aka) “Beatings will cease when morale improves” perhaps from a former galley owner’s Management Handbook). Elegant academic and marketing labels still are used for the “aversive” style: Dominance/ Submission {Sadist/ masochist or Hollywood-CM} theory, Hierarchy based pack-leaders, WWII NAZI-zoo-wolf theory, Prussian infantry drill, Soviet infantry drill, UK Empire Drill of 1812; etc. If used on sane (at the beginning) intelligent dogs the documented results can include one or more of the following:
1) the dog dies physically or mentally (or one and then the other),
2) the dog becomes “robotic” without detectable personality, personal initiative or voluntary learning,
3) the dog “breaks” and either flees for its life or attempts to maim or kill its abuser.
Punitive training was aptly described in US media from data of the dog-fighting career of the splendidly athletic basketball player Mr Vick’s dog-fighting, who was applauded by the President of the US according to the Washington Post newspaper. Some humans who were themselves trained by punitive parents can conceive of no other way to train dogs, children, women and subordinates in corporations, military or government positions.
III. Pure-Positive Training: As an emotional modern reaction against the unpleasant aspects of the punitive style of training, many idealist persons began to reverse the style by relying entirely on kindness and treats as "bribes" for learning the wanted behaviors. Difficulties happened when idealist humans imagined that sweetness, kindness and plenty of treats will cause a dog that was rescued from terrible conditions to instantly fall in love and immediately learn the entire list of commands.
When it works, positive training (rewards only) is grand and makes everybody feel jolly. For puppies whose life and joy is learning new things it mostly works well, or anyway suffices. For adult dogs who have seen too many “owner-custodians” an approach recognizing that most dogs can probably think better than some of my relatives can be more effective and less painful for all.
Specifically, “positive-only” doesn’t work well to dis-persuade a dog that has already discovered the joys of un-social self-rewarding mental-inflation of their self-esteem [aka Autonomic instinct releasing – academically] such as counter-surfing[2], where the dog’s reward is instantly contained in the action itself. Some dogs quickly learn how to exploit humans who only possess “marshmallows” for convincing the dog to cease or avoid doing thangs the human dislikes, such as don’t poop in the middle of the new Persian carpet. Women who tried to devoutly rely exclusively on positive training were reported to sometimes “break” under the stress of being repeatedly frustrated by their wee darling – as for example the unfortunate lady who alledgedly one day bit her wee delinquent moggie on the ear so hard that it bled.
As the polar opposite of abusive training in the CMilen style, pure positive training became a modern dog-training fad. The pure positive style was a humane, decent style created in reaction to the opposite extreme, after the medias' apparent discovery that beating dogs, children and women into submission was a lousy method of training.
IV. Low Trainability Individuals: For more than 60 years, experts urged people to obtain dogs whose skills and personalities were compatible. So there comes a need to train some who prefer to Not be trained, or prefer to snooze in the sun/shade.
Despite wishful thinking by some modern advocates of “pure positive training” a few breeds and individuals are trainable by acting as though they have only the natural instincts of a robotic chicken – programmable by requiring it to do the same thing time after time until it no longer has a personality or desires and wants of its own beyond eating, pooping, peeing and staring adoringly. News reports indicated that some Japanese sold electronic dog-robots that could be trained like that or by a “program.” US trainers who market that style may be of the Pavlov (Russian) or Skinner (US) school of psychology of placing dog-babies in a box that prevents all unwanted experiences and subjects the thing to deep-conditioning of its responses to specific stimuli, such as the words Come, Sit, and S- -t.
Experiments at Purdue U research on rats, Harvard on rabbits, and other places proved that if “pushed too far even a rabbit will bite” and many subjects will escape by suicide or some other way. Border Collies were notorious for reacting poorly to unilateral mental coercive training emotional-deprivation, as we witnessed when a BC puppy was accidentally sold to a person of the Skinnerian style (which was the way the person was allegedly trained as a child, so it seemed OK.)
V. Irrational styles: Before trying to train a dog it is crucial for the human to decide what their purpose is in obtaining the dog. The worst category of dubious reasons for owning a dog is for the prestige or social values thereof. Training a dog acquired for such purposes best fits into one of the next two methods:
Décor Dogs: People who prefer dogs of high boutique score and perfect conformation with no needs except dusting, no expenses and no effort in training are urged to visit FAO Schwartz toys store or the higher class art galleries to select their next ceramic or plush faux dog.
“Trompe d’ Oile” (fool the eye) Dogs: Anybody whose only goal is to train their dog to never mess on the floor, never chew furniture or otherwise never do things the humans don’t like should immediately take the dog to a taxidermist to be taxidermized. After that has been done, it will perfectly obey all commands such as “never mess in the house”, Sit and Stay; never do “bad” things, and only require occasional dusting.
[1] See the excellent books by Adam Miklosi, Marc Bekoff and Stanley Coren. /Here “golden” meant sane and decent.
[2] Counter-surfing: US jargon for a dog’s serving herself from food on the table or kitchen counter. Nibbling on electrical wires and snatching-instantly-swallowed nasty and dangerous things from the ground during walks with a human are kinds of “counter-surfing”.