I’m Scared I’ve Ruined My Dog For Life

[lasaruse]

@ericm I don't know how to use Reddit most effectively but go to google scholar and search for yourself. I read canine studies all the time. Try searching "impacts of punishment versus reinforcement on canine behavior. I certainly have anecdotal evidence but a study with 100 dogs is legitimate, maybe not end-all be-all, but can you show me a legitimate study with 100 dogs that shows how punishment is beneficial? Or at least, not harmful? Are you able to see this study? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8463679/

 

[lasaruse]

@ericm Here's another. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8463679/ It's hard to see things when they are disappearing. The function of punishment is that it weakens (maybe extinguishes) behavior and potential behaviors, and while you might notice if it's damaging a behavior you've targeted, punishment can hit unintended targets, and dogs lose confidence, motivation, creativity. I've noticed punished dogs don't communicate as well as my dogs, they hide what they really think. I like the fact that my dogs can see hear smell perceive and understand things differently than I do. So I want them to tell me what they think. If they are worried about making a mistake, if they are just performing like robots, doing what they're told, then I feel like I only have half a dog. I want my dog to be working with me, I don't want a shell of a dog obedient like a puppet. I want a creative thoughtful dog who understands and loves his job, who trusts and believes in me completely. People who teach their dog -- do it or else -- when they take away the dogs ability to choose they are only using part of the dog's brain, and they are relying on their own forcefulness instead of relying on the forcefulness of the dog. You get a lot more out of the dog when the dog is controlling his own body, rather than when the handler is trying to control the dog's body with the use of aversives and force.

 

[imagebeastmarkbeast]

@lasaruse I always appreciate effort in animal research, and I am in no way anti research - and in fact just got done with a doctorate dissertation about viscoelastic testing in cardiac surgery….and can honestly say that every trial I have ever read both for and against aversives is absolutely terribly done and any results from those trials should really be taken with a grain of salt.

Like I said - I do appreciate the effort. But it’s all nonsense and simply can and should not be applied to real life if you are actually interested in reproducing the results. Furthermore, many of them are not peer reviewed. And the ones that are are either entirely subjective with result reporting, or identify the total lack of applicability the “results” show.

Like I said, to each their own.

 

[lasaruse]

@imagebeastmarkbeast You teach children using the same philosophy?

 

[imagebeastmarkbeast]

@lasaruse I don’t treat children like I treat a dog. What is wrong with you?

 

[leathamoll]

@lasaruse Dogs are not children.

 

[lasaruse]

@leathamoll We don't write the laws of learning, we have to live them. And the laws of learning -- behavior science -- apply to ALL animals, humans dogs butterflies birds.https://blogs.worldbank.org/educati...eality-corporal-punishment-children-and-youth There are tons of great studies on the negative impacts of punishment on children. The same sorts of impacts -- increased aggression, depression, anxiety disorders -- are what we see in dogs. If you're accustomed to punished dogs, you might think they're okay because you don't know what you're missing, you don't realize what communicative and creative problem solving abilities, what sort of deeper partnership possibilities you've squashed. https://www.first5california.com/en...-techniques-newborn-baby-toddler-preschooler/

 

[jamesapado]

@imagebeastmarkbeast The results are pretty clear: dogs trained with aversives have a higher incidence rate of problematic and maladaptive behavior. There’s no control study for case normalized dogs receiving either aversive or non aversive treatment, but the evidence is broad enough that scientific boards like the AVSAB have come out against aversives based on their review of the literature.
They could be wrong, but there’s a very good reason lots of detection dogs are switching to R+ and working dogs like racing Greyhounds are on R+ training regimes as well. Motivation via punitive measure is just less effective when you need a dog to work and be fearless. You cannot punish a dog into chasing a lure at 45mph, you breed them to want it and reward them when they chase.
Your creds in a different scientific field don’t really apply, but congrats on that anyway?

 

[leathamoll]

@jamesapado Of course you wouldn’t use aversive as for sports or work. But those are unsafe behaviors that need to be fixed and kept under control. You also wouldn’t punish a dog before teaching them a behavior via positive reinforcement. Anyone who uses an aversive before teaching a dog what to do is a crappy and not reputable trainer. That doesn’t mean you can’t use correction once a behavior is learned.

 

[lasaruse]

@imagebeastmarkbeast but I've noticed and I may be wrong is that the authoritarianism of Donald Trump and Putin and someone like whatever his name is in Florida this kind of idea that punishment is essential but you wanna lock them up and physically stop the election or stop the kneeling or stop whatever it's no surprise to me at all that same punishment oriented authoritarianism is currently in fashion in certain circles of dog training. It seems to me that Trump followers lean heavily on punishment. Maybe I'm wrong. But it just so happens that I don't think I have a single Trump follower in my training club because we train here with reinforcement. We don't want to hurt our dogs we want to build our dogs trust. We try to empathize with the dog and be fair. We are not in any big rush to control the dog, because we're teaching the dog to control themselves. We don't want to prevent the dog from communicating to us so that means sometimes the dog may disagree with us and we learn from that. We train with games were yes there are winners and losers but nobody gets hurt. So anyway I'm just curious. Are there any strong Biden followers using shock collars or is that just a Trump thing?

 

[imagebeastmarkbeast]

@lasaruse I can't speak for everyone else but I would appreciate if the conversations here stayed on topic and you didn't grasp for straws to connecting training style to american politics.

 

[lasaruse]

@imagebeastmarkbeast It's on topic. Why do people decide that they "have to" use punishment? How do trainers pick and choose who or what they believe? Whether to believe the collar manufacturers or the university studies? It's nice to imagine people make rational choices but the truth is emotions lead the way, in politics as well as in dog training. It's interesting to notice relationships between beliefs in the idea that punishment is safe, harmless, and political ideologies. You might think it's off topic, but when someone is wondering, why is my dog aggressive? And science shows that use of punishment tends to create more aggressive dogs, yet some people just can't or won't believe or examine the evidence, isn't it kinda obvious how there is also a political party that curates which sources of information they believe and what sources they refuse to consider based on politics, not based on what the laws say or what the studies say, but based on what they want to believe?? https://www.jonesanimalbehavior.com/post/what-does-science-say-about-shock

 

[mairie]

@lasaruse You must be fun at a party. Fucking projecting politics in here, reddit is bad enought everywhere else. Stop

 

[lasaruse]

@mairie Just asking. It's a thing I've noticed, the idea that we need to crack down, get tough, punish mistakes, demand obedience, the idea that we need to dominate, intimidate, threaten, force, a as ll that is political. Behavior science research says punishment creates more anxious dogs with less predictable responses. Dogs go to reinforcement like it's a bullseye, they seek to escape or avoid punishment in all different sorts of ways, dogs develop tolerance for punishment just like humans develop tolerance for traffic, so it can lose its effectiveness over time. I have noticed that people who believe they need to punish tend to be leaning authoritarian, I'm maybe totally wrong

 

[imagebeastmarkbeast]

@lasaruse Well, now you’re just being a moron lol.

 

[lasaruse]

@imagebeastmarkbeast you saying I'm wrong? You're a Democrat?

 

[teksoft]

@trustgodalways If you’re getting your positive techniques from balanced trainers (whether you’re using corrective gear or not) or from positive trainers on the internet, you’re likely not getting the best positive reinforcement method training.

I had a dog who was nervous at under a year old. She started to get aggressive. I could hand her off to someone else and she would do “fine” (super shut down and do nothing). I got the help of a balanced trainer and my dog got worse, fast. Finding a trainer who went through a similar experience that I did and made it her mission to understand and use reinforcement super well was a game changer and made me fall in love with training. That dog is now almost 6 years old and when I tell people she was diagnosed fear-aggressive at one point by a Veterinary Behaviorist, they really don’t believe me.

Hope is not all lost, but if what you’re doing isn’t working, try something new with someone new.

IAABC behavior consultants are who I go to when I have a behavior situation like this. If you do go this route, make sure when you search you’re not looking at IAABC-ADTs. I find them when I search for behavior consultants for some reason and they are not at the same level. CDBCs are mostly what you would be looking for.