Michael Baugh CDBC
Balanced trainers pride themselves on using a mix of positive reinforcement dog training and, when needed, punishment. They might use food and praise, or even clicker training. They might also use choke collars, prong collars, or shock collars. At first glance, it sounds pretty good. Let’s use all the tools and techniques available to us. And if the dog does well with positive reinforcement, we don’t have to resort to the nasty stuff.
Honestly, I can see the appeal. But I see the trapdoors and tripwires, too.
The truth is all dogs do well with positive reinforcement training. We know this because it’s the natural way all organisms learn. No one invented this. We discovered it. It’s a law of nature, like gravity. You don’t have to believe in gravity. It just is. You don’t have to believe in positive reinforcement either. It simply is, and it doesn’t fail (just like nothing ever falls up).
So, where’s the failure? Why do we so easily reach for the leash correction or the shock collar?
Here’s what I’ve learned. Positive reinforcement is easy for our dogs. It’s hard for us. Why? We don’t have enough experience with it. Our world is punishing; don’t do this; don’t do that. Very few people acknowledge when we get something right. Punishment is the norm. We struggle to see how reinforcing behavior works because we are starved for reinfocemet in our own lives.
Even dog trainers dedicated to teaching with positive reinforcement struggle. We learn and re-learn year-after-year. We need reminding because positive reinforcement doesn’t come naturally. Of course, it works. We see it working, and yet we remain blind.
A balanced trainer is simply this: a positive reinforcement trainer who lost sight.
Positive reinforcement training teaches our dogs what to do. Come. Sit. Lie down. Stay. When we open our eyes, it’s intuitive. Positive reinforcement builds and maintains behaviors.
Punishment attempts to tear down behaviors. But there’s more to the story. Here’s what we’ve learned over the past century about what punishment really teaches.
Escape. We and our dogs retreat from things that are painful or scary. This is as natural as positive reinforcement, but it’s much less precise. A dog escaping a shock by running back to his human can masquerade as good training. But we are teaching the dog more about what he’s running from than what he’s running to. Don’t count on any lasting dog-human bonding here. There’s also the genuine danger of the punishment getting hitched up with other triggers in the environment. Think of ripples in a pond. The shock is frightening. Run. But what else is associated with the shock? A bird? A cracking twig? That guy over there? Lots of things can spook our dog now. Anything can predict a shock and lead to a terrified, bolting dog. Plus, we are sliding dangerously close to Escape’s more troubling cousin.
Avoidance. Sometimes we just shut down. We’re done. I’ve met dogs trained on shock collar fence systems who won’t leave their back porch. I’ve met dogs for whom walks are so punishing that they are afraid to go out at all. I’ve met dogs who hide and cower and won’t do anything. The dogs get slapped with labels like “stubborn” or even “dominant” when in fact they are just terrified. It’s sad, but not as dangerous as what could come next.
Counter Coercion. That’s the technical term for pushing back. We do it. Some dogs do it. There are plenty of studies now that link painful training with owner-directed aggression. I suspect the ripple effect of punishment leads to dogs lashing out at less culpable targets as well. Violence begets violence. It’s a mnemonic we know well but too often forget when we think of our dogs. And too many dogs end up paying for our forgetfulness with their lives.
I sometimes wonder what life would be like if we constantly supported and encouraged each other’s best behavior choices. What if, instead of crashing into a punishing day, we tilted into our better angels? We could tip the scale all the way to a lighter, more joyful, more natural kind of being, with our dogs and with each other. What if our lives, in this one beautiful way, were delightfully out of balance?
Michael Baugh teaches dog training in Sedona, AZ. He specializes in fearful and aggressive dog training.