Learning: focusing on the mechanisms, not the equipment

At COAPE we ask that you don't think in terms of 'this method' compared to 'that method' in training a dog (or any animal for that matter) because that (mis-) leads one to focus on questions regarding the nature of the actual equipment or technique and away from the real questions about the neural mechanisms that facilitate learning.

For example, the problem with 'dominance theory' as applied to dogs is that it is now widely accepted to be wrong. You will no longer find the term used in modern text books on behaviour theory to explain a dog's behaviour.

There is an excellent little review booklet by Barry Eaton, ‘Dominance : Fact or Fiction?’, that encapsulates what we now understand about dogs and which explains where the old ideas about dominance came from, and why they are no longer sustainable. You can order this directly from his website, (www.deaf-dogs-help.co.uk).

For anyone really wanting to understand what dogs 'are' in terms of their ethology, evolution and development, a seminal work by Prof. Ray and Lorna Coppinger,’ Dogs: A New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behaviour, and Evolution’, also available on Amazon, is absolutely essential reading as it will broaden and change the way you think about dogs for ever.

How TV shows are made

Most people appreciate that many of the TV shows on dog behaviour are designed specifically as 45min ‘nuggets’ of entertainment. Behaviour work with dogs or cats in real life is rarely as quick and simple as some of these programmes lead us to believe, just as the final sequences on most nature progammes don’t just appear live on the day in front of the camera crew…they follow hours of filming and editing to produce a finished, watchable show. Canine aggression cases in particular are often the most difficult and long-winded to respond to treatment in real life, taking months, even years in some cases to improve. Unfortunately many serious aggression cases are actually made worse by owners being advised that the simple singular root of the problem is that their dog is ‘dominant’ and needs his wolf-like perception of where he fits in some human family version of a lupine hierarchy ‘reducing’!

The Appliance of Science

At COAPE we approach all behaviour cases with a constantly evolving but fundamental understanding of what a 'pet dog' is and what a 'wolf' is both genetically and behaviourally, and the Coppingers' book will give you some initial leads here. Then we apply our understanding of the emotionality and neural mechanisms of learning – an application of the most up to date knowledge about the thought processes that go on inside a dog's brain. This is a complex area that has expanded enormously over the last decade or so and one where new information is coming to light in the scientific press all the time. We incorporate this information into our programmes of teaching and behaviour practice on an ongoing basis so as to better understand why dogs do what they do and how they learn to behave, so that we can treat them better when problems arise.

The Nastiness of NILF progammes

In terms of methodology, what does this mean if you're standing in front of a dog with a behaviour problem, such a food guarding? Let’s take one 'technique' that is often used by dominance theory behaviour practitioners and trainers – a Nothing in Life is Free (NILF) programme. What does this entail? You, the owner/’boss’ or alpha of your dog’s pack, must take control and teach him that you are in charge of all the resources available to him - 'make the dog work for a living' the owner is told.

Whatever the good intent of the behaviourist, and however well they explain what they are trying to achieve, most dog owners only pick up on the control aspect inherent in the principles behind it (dominance) and apply it badly.

This is not the owner’s fault; they are not the experts. They're just doing what they are advised to do. The problem with this is that it's very easy to get carried away by the principle (NILF in this example) and completely forget about how dogs learn. A dog’s primary source of information about what's going on in his human household is feedback via predictable signals from the family - either directly to the dog, or equally importantly, just through observing their everyday routines. It isn’t from some prewired, genetically based perception of their ‘social position’ in that family or from any set of seemingly plausible, but nonsensical rules that is supposed to be associated with all of their social relationships.

In fact it can be highly stressful both for the dog and the owners alike if the family suddenly change their dog’s access to valued resources, including denying or strictly conditioning his approaches to them for affection, play etc. This is because the dog loses all predictability and routine in his life, and loses all control of access to all of the rewarding elements of his life. The owners then often see their frustrated dog battle against this, and the specific behaviour problem in our example of food guarding worsen as he tries harder to get what he wants and needs. Finding that their dog becomes far harder to manage as a result, many owners rightly then give up fairly quickly with this type of programme. This is in spite of the fact that the behaviourist may insist that the changes in the dog’s behaviour are for the better and are part of the ‘cure’ for the food guarding. ‘Things must get worse before they get better?’ is what the owners are often told…or ‘he doesn’t like being shown who’s boss, but he’ll get used to it eventually and stop feeling that he has the social right to guard food’.

Even worse is that, as a result of such unpredictable widespread changes and loss of control to valued resources, a naturally more introverted dog may simply become resigned to all the changes and restrictions. Rather than try harder to keep his access open to the things he values, he may become utterly depressed in response to a NILF programme. And while the behaviourist may again try to infer that this too is a good sign of the dog being ‘demoted in the hierarchy’, it is in fact, a clear demonstration of psychological pain and abuse, and highly distressing both for the dog to endure and for the owners to watch. Fortunately, the owners usually abandon the NILF programme fairly quickly in this situation too and seek alternative help for the food guarding. This has invariably persisted anyway throughout the NILF programme, and irrespective of any overall impact on the dog’s general behaviour.

The Problem

Sadly, some owners do continue with the NILF programme regardless because they have been told this is what they must do to ‘cure’ the dog’s behaviour, and even may be told by the behaviourist that the dog still guards his food because they aren’t applying the programme properly or hard enough to convince him of his ‘low status in the pack’ yet!

Owners who walk away from such advice and seek alternative help may then simply be branded as ‘failures’ by the NILF behaviourist, or arrogantly marked down as ‘successes’ because they never heard from them again and assumed that the NILF programme worked!

So, a NILF programme is not just ineffectual as an approach to the treating the behaviour problem in hand, but is likely actually to be counter-productive.

What needs addressing specifically in our example of course, is the food guarding, not the dog’s entire lifestyle and social relationship with his family on the presumption that solely altering his lifestyle will alter his particular motivations or his success at guarding his food.

The Three Terrors of Torture

We're all well aware of prison and internment camps around the world established in response to various conflicts, and with the debates about what's been going on in such places, but we often fail to realise that there is a science behind torture. Effective torture entails 3 elements:

1. The obvious one,:  something aversive/painful and this is what we usually think of as 'torture'. But there are 2 other crucial elements involved as well:
2. Control: in that the victim has no control over his situation.
3. Predictability: in that the victim does not know what's going to happen next and when.

By far the most damaging and stressful long term, both emotionally and physically (via the ongoing release of stress hormones and their impact on the victim’s neurophysiology and immune system) is predictability. But what has this got to do with our food-guarding dog? The answer is ‘lots’ in terms of owner feedback to the dog when applying a behaviour modification technique in such an emotionally charged situation. If you get this wrong then problems like aggression can soon be exacerbated. This is why, at COAPE and CAPBT, we start with assessing the science behind the emotional physiological mechanisms that reinforce the undesirable behaviour. The behaviour of food guarding, of itself tells us nothing.

Tackling behaviour problems appropriately

In treatment of this type of problem, it's likely that a CAPBT behaviour practitioner will engage the owner with some measured, rather than blanket control over the dog's food resources, for example by temporarily feeding the dog by hand, first on a continuous schedule of delivery followed by a steady introduction of an occasional schedule of delivery.

This is to help the dog learn to endure frustration better and stay relaxed and unthreatened by people around his food, but it’s done in a manner where the dog maintains a degree of control over the process. This technique describes but one approach, and doesn’t apply to all cases of food guarding, but it comes from a very different proactive perspective from the dog's (and owner's) point of view, not a reactive one involving confrontation, or some blanket standard denial or control of all the other things that the dog values in his life and which he isn’t defensive or possessive about.

Sometimes the dog’s emotional needs are being well addressed when the owners seek help about the one particular behaviour problem, such as food guarding. In this case, having verified that position, a CAPBT practitioner will tackle the problem specifically, and not with a massively impacting generalised NILF or ‘dominance reduction programme’ that risks punishing the dog in so many obviously unrelated areas of his life and damaging his social relationship with his owners.

The CAPBT/COAPE approach to problem assessment and treatment is clearly VERY different to a standardised, ‘one size suits all’ total campaign of conditioning or denying everything of value to the dog and closing off all avenues of control and predictability with his family. Done to the extreme, we argue that this is simply to apply the second and third ‘rules’ of torture, and, given that emotional and physical pain are processed by the same neural systems in the brain, is the same as applying the first ‘rule’ of torture of beating or abusing the dog physically.

There are still huge numbers of ‘stamp and jerk’ dog trainers and whisperers at large with their choke chains, spiked collars, shock collars, rape alarms, correction sticks and bullying attitudes who haven’t chosen to move on into the humane, modern age of dog training.

ASK WHY? of those trainers who still want to be cruel to dogs by training with punishment, correcting jerks and coercion when kind training methods are so much better, and are so very widely known and applied all over the world these days?

ASK WHY? of those ‘behaviourists’ who persist in deploying those long out-of-date ‘dominance reduction’ and one-size-fits-all ‘nothing in life is free’ programmes in the name of behavioural therapy. Why are they telling you to ignore and thus punish your dog? Don’t they know that this threatens the bond you have with your dog and potentially inflicts huge psychological damage on him?

‘SAY NO!’ to all of them! There is no such thing as ‘Being Cruel to be Kind’ in the name of dog training or behaviour therapy. Such dog trainers, whisperers and behaviourists are simply being ‘Cruel to be Cruel’ with these long outdated, inhumane and discredited techniques. Don't be fooled by the fact that they may be members of some institute, council or guild. Ask to see their Code of Conduct. If they don't have one, ‘SAY NO!’ and walk away. If they do have one, see what techniques and equipment are NOT excluded and so might be employed with your dog. ASK WHY they might want to abuse your dog with any such unpleasantness, then, if you are not satisfied that your dog will be safe from harm, protect him! ‘SAY NO!’ and walk away.

Dr June Williams DipCABT, EdD, MEd, CertEd, MA(Hons), APDT 850 of the COAPE ASSOCIATION of PET BEHAVIOURISTS and TRAINERS (CAPBT) one of the largest such representative bodies in the UK for dog trainers and behaviourists, comments further:-

"Research, expert opinion, and the teachings and combined experience of COAPE tutors and CAPBT practitioners, members of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers and many others substantiate and promote that punitive methods of training dogs and approaching behaviour problems simply do not work - especially when dealing with aggression cases."

"Moreover people who use aggression to deal with cases of canine aggression only ever exacerbate the problems. How many other animals would stick around to be abused in this way and not fight back? How long would a cat put up with being threatened or hurt by being yanked about on a choke chain? And whether you agree with the idea of training performing sea mammals or not, could killer whales and dolphins possibly be ‘trained’ in this way?"

"It is truly amazing just how many dogs do not bite these so-called experts or their poor owners and it is sickening just how many traumatised, fearful, cowed dogs I have to deal with in my training classes and behaviour practice who have had such training methods inflicted on them. Why do such people apparently get a kick out of bullying dogs? It is a reflection of the devotion and endurance of the dog that the vast majority continue to adore owners who punish them so awfully in the name of the training; it is certainly not an endorsement of the methods or the total lack of ethics behind them"

"We are human, not canine and so it is clearly illogical to employ any models of ‘dog behaviour’ in communicating with dogs especially when, like ‘pack hierarchy’ and the concept of ‘dominance’ they are scientifically unsustainable, ridiculously simplistic and so very outdated. It is also often a sure route to being bitten!"

What sort of people would want to treat dogs this way?

It’s clearly time to question why such people are out there abusing dogs and exploiting their owners. Why would any trainer/whisperer/behaviourist or anyone want to use any painful treatments when, presumably, they are only working with dogs and owners in the first place because they like them?

Perhaps they don’t look at dogs and their emotions in the same way as the rest of us. Or maybe they are so hooked on what they think works by using punishment in training that they are reluctant to look around to see everyone else has moved on long ago to using kinder and more effective methods.

Or, perhaps, sadly, there are even more insidious reasons as to why they want to keep using such methods beyond simple ignorance or a reluctance to move into the modern age of training.

Dog Social Behaviour

The scientific community has now accepted that ‘dominance’, linear hierarchy, and the idea of an alpha figure exerting power through aggression does not apply to wolves in a natural, wild (non-captive) environment, let alone to pet dogs in human families. Such wolves live in extended family groups that cooperate in order to survive and reproduce.

Dr L. David Mech an internationally respected authority on wolf behaviour and ecology, wrote in the journal 'International Wolf', Winter 2008 “Hopefully it will take fewer than 20 years for the media and the public to fully adopt the correct terminology and thus to once and for all end the outmoded view of the wolf pack as an aggressive assortment of wolves consistently competing with each other to take over the pack.”

Dr June Williams adds "Your dog, far removed from a wolf, is not attempting to take over your family when displaying unwanted behaviour. Instead, he is behaving like an adolescent, one who needs a parental, guiding form of leadership that is '...established when a pet owner can consistently set clear limits, communicate the rules by immediately rewarding the correct behaviors and preventing access to or removing the rewards for undesirable behaviors before these behaviors are reinforced.' to quote Dr. Sophia Yin commenting in the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior’s position statement on the use of dominance theory in behavior modification of animals"

The American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior comments further: "Modern trainers and behaviorists focus on reinforcing desirable behaviors, avoiding the reinforcement of undesirable behaviors, and strive to address the underlying emotional state and motivations, including medical and genetic factors, that are driving the undesirable behavior..." "...the use of dominance theory to understand human-animal interactions leads to an antagonistic relationship between owners and their pets.”

Dr June Williams: "I deal with aggressive dogs daily and never use aggression of any sort, nor seek to arouse dogs any further in the name of treatment. I have special classes for dog-aggressive dogs, which are designed to help them and their owners. I only ever use techniques of positive reinforcement in these classes, and the withdrawal of anticipated rewards for unwanted behaviour, and steady, calm desensitisation. I also never forget that I am human and I use my human brain to monitor the emotional and mood states of the dog and assess what is reinforcing the aggressive behaviour using the methods taught by COAPE and others. I don’t make false interpretations of the motivation for aggressive behaviour, nor try to copy and emulate some inaccurate version of canine ‘hierarchy’ to explain it as that would only serve to confuse the dogs I am treating!"

Equipment Concerns: ASK WHY? SAY NO!

Dr June Williams: "Much of my behaviour work is with clients who have gone down the punitive route early on in training their dogs, or who have used such means in attempts at behaviour modification and only to find that they then have major problems and a situation that is much more difficult to deal with later."

"As well as long ago rejecting shouting and all forms of physical and psychological, punishment in training and behaviour therapy, I also refuse to have anything to do with the implements of sadistic and cruel approaches to training dogs, such as choke and check chains, spiked collars, ‘training’ sticks and electrical devices of any sort."

These should all be placed in museums, along with the canes that used to be used to ‘discipline’ our children in the name of education. Aerosol hissers and screeching rape alarms should join them there, as should the old fashioned tin cans filled with stones to rattle at dogs as they too only serve to scare dogs rather than deal with the real causes of behaviour problems. These products and approaches are designed to have an arousing effect on dogs and do little to help them stay relaxed, calm and focused so that we can treat those causes or train alternative behaviours.

Everything that we have said should be in museums will serve to remind us just how far many people have come in this field in the UK in COAPE, the CAPBT and the Association of Pet Dog Trainers and in so many other enlightened organisations, behaviour practices and training clubs around the world.

ASK WHY? SAY NO...

Dr June Williams: "When confronted with a trainer, whisperer, behaviourist or other ‘specialist’ who asks you to hit, shout, shock, frighten or maybe totally ignore your dog for weeks on end, I urge you to go with your gut instincts – protect your dog and just walk away. People who use these methods in the name of educating or rehabilitating dogs are just so wrong, even if they do appear regularly on television twice nightly displaying their ‘methods’"

For effective help using only kind, effective positive techniques from a modern professional who has signed up to a Code of Conduct that prohibits the use of all unpleasant equipment and punitive and coercive techniques.

www.capbt.org