Drowning out the Seagulls

The loudest voices are not necessarily the correct voices. My master coaches call them the "seagulls" because they drown out everyone else with their raucous.

I spent the first four or so hours of my 10-hour drive from eastern Idaho back home to the Columbia River Gorge listening to a podcast called Sold a Story.

The podcast investigates why so many schoolchildren around the world, but particularly in the US, are poor readers.

The reason, according to the creator, education journalist Emily Hanford, is because for an entire generation, educators had bought into a reading method that didn’t work. In fact, this method made it more difficult to teach children to read, yet the authors of the program did a hell of a job selling the idea.

She pointed out that she believed that the authors didn’t mean any harm, that they truly believed in their method, however, there was never any real evidence that the program worked.

It wasn’t until the pandemic, when parents were able to join their children’s lessons, that they started to realize that there was something strange about the way their children were being taught to read.

For decades, parents had thought that the issue was their child. Maybe they had dyslexia or another learning disability that hindered their reading abilities, they thought.

But with some private tutoring and/or using different methods, the parents saw that the error lay in the system, not the child.

Throughout the multi-episode podcast, I kept thinking about how this logic applies to the dog training world, too.

As you may already be aware, the dog training world is very divisive.

Force free or positive only versus balanced training.

E-collars and prong collars are torture.

Never say no to your dog.

My master coaches, Bart and Michael Bellon call the adversaries seagulls. They’re obnoxious and noisy and drown out the other voices that have methods to share that work very well and are humane.

But dog owners have been feed a story about how to train and live with their dogs.

Such stories include:

• Positive reinforcement only is the best and only humane way to train a dog (+R)

• Punishment is “bad” and should never be used on a dog

• +R is the only kind of reinforcement (there’s also negative reinforcement)

• Prong collars and e-collars are abusive and inhumane

• Dog parks are great places to socialize dogs to be friendly with other dogs and people and provide adequate exercise for them

• The best way to greet a dog is to stick your hand in their face and let them smell you

• Sniffaris allow dogs to enjoy a relaxing walk while providing them with enrichment

• Any type of training that uses aversive tools is not science-based.

I could go on and on.

As a dog trainer who has worked with hundreds of dogs, I can tell you that these stories that owners have been sold create unstable, reactive, nervous and fearful dogs that cannot cope with stress, bite people and other dogs, have no motivation to work or play, and cannot count on their owners to advocate for them.

These dogs are an absolute mess.

Because owners have been sold the lie that +R is the one and only humane way to train a dog, we are a last resort for them, after they’ve already spent thousands and have gone through several trainers.

I could write an entire post on all of these (and perhaps will, eventually), but for now, I want to briefly dissect a few of these stories and I’ll give you my take, based on my experience and education.

+R only is the best and most humane way to train a dog

+R is a fantastic way to teach new behaviors to dogs. In fact, it’s our primary method of teaching new behaviors to dogs that have motivation.

The problem is, most of the dogs we see don’t have motivation.

They don’t want to play.

They don’t want to eat.

They don’t want to engage.

So, how are we supposed to use +R to train the dog?

Let’s define positive reinforcement. All it means is adding something the dog likes in order to increase the likelihood that a behavior will happen again.

We like to use the dog’s daily amount of food. Dogs require food to live, so it carries a lot of value for them.

If you use something the dog does not find valuable, then why would they want to work to earn the reward?

Think of a low-paying job you’ve had or a shitty boss you’ve worked for - you probably weren’t overly motivated to go into work every day and perform your best in exchange for the paycheck.

You did it because you had bills to pay, but your effort matched the circumstances and you were likely pretty checked out and doing the bare minimum in order not to get fired.

Now, in order to use +R successfully you need two things that the seagulls don’t talk about:

You need negative reinforcement (-R) and negative punishment (-P)

In order for the training to work, the dog must be hungry. Therefore, by using food to train the dog, you are removing hunger (-R) from the dog.

There’s also a very significant punisher that is used in +R training and that is negative punishment (-P). In +R training, if a dog is refusing to work for food, then you must stop the training and take away the food (-P).

You can try again later, but the dog still might not want to eat.

Folks will try to argue that this is inhumane, but if a dog is being offered food and refusing to eat, is the owner starving the dog? No.

If I offer you $100 and you refuse, am I denying you $100? No.

+R is the only kind of reinforcement

+R has a buddy and that is -R (negative reinforcement).

But because it has the word “negative” in the title, people believe that it’s “bad.”

Think of it instead like math. You are merely subtracting something in order to increase the likelihood of a behavior from happening again in the future.

In our training, we primarily use tactile pressure to motivate dogs to go into the behaviors we want.

When you pair it with +R, man, do you get some seriously hard working dogs who learn fast and fly into behaviors with glee!

This system is called NePoPo® and it stands for Negative (reinforcement) Positive (reinforcement) Positive (reinforcement)

Here’s how it works:

Let’s say you have a prong collar on a dog that is food motivated.

I want the dog to sit.

I pull up on the prong collar adding pressure around the dog’s neck. As soon as the dog’s butt hits the ground, I release the pressure (-R and +R because it feels good to the dog) and then mark with “yes” and give the dog a food reward (+R).

This method of teaching uses three reinforcers and is very clear to the dog.

Think about your seatbelt alarm.

I can’t stand the dinging, so I put my seatbelt on before I start my car.

And if I don’t, I put it on as soon as I hear the first ding.

The ding stops as soon as my seatbelt is buckled. That’s -R in action in human terms.

Prong collars and E-collars are abusive and inhumane

Anything used inappropriately can be inhumane–your hand, leash, flat buckle collar, harness.

So why do prong collars and e-collars get a bad rap?

Why is there no campaign against using murder weapons (aka knives) to make food for our families every day?

It’s a similar logic.

The people who argue that prong collars and e-collars are abusive have either a) never used them on a dog; b) have used them on a dog, but incorrectly and/or c) have no idea how Learning Theory works.

I look at prong collars and e-collars as communication tools.

Dogs are tactile communicators, which means that they communicate primarily by touch.

Humans communicate verbally primarily (and as a result, we talk to our dogs waaaaay too much).

So there’s a lot lost in communication between dogs and humans.

The prong collar and e-collar serve as translators, delivering crystal clear communication–again, when used correctly.

I’ll dive deeper in to both eventually, but here are some articles I’ve written on my blog about the prong collar and the e-collar, as well as aversive tools in general.

What I wish people would do when it comes to training their dogs is question why we do things a certain way. Ask potential or current trainers why they do or do not recommend a tool or method or solution to the issue you’re facing with your dog.

If something isn’t working for you and you’re not getting the results you desire, then question the reason. Seek whether there is a different path toward the solution. The answer might surprise you.