Hey, Have You Heard The One About Climate Change And Dog Training?”

[dogbesotted]

Hey, have you heard the one about climate change and dog training?”

http://unexamineddog.com/2012/07/15/hey-have-you-heard-the-one-about-climate-change-and-dog-training/

H

[Weasels]

Thanks for posting :)

I did the Honours year of my science degree on evolution, and as an 'insider' it was obvious to me what was factual, what things were genuine questions remaining to be answered and which questions were just red herrings. As an 'outsider' in dog behaviour science (and climate change for that matter!) I've learned how hard it can be to establish which voices can back up their claims and which voices are just the loudest.

[sandgrubber]

A well written and clever article . . . but I did my PhD in conjunction with NCAR, one of the leading climate institutes in the US and the world. I must say, I resent the author's use of the debate over climate change as a Trojan horse to push what is an opinion -- albeit one backed by quite a bit of evidence -- about the value of positive methods of dog training -- followed by a strong and not well founded condemnation of the prong collar and aversives in general.

There is no question that positive reinforcement is a powerful tool, and experimentally proven to be effective. That doesn't give positive methods the same sort of first principals and evidence-based credibility as the 'greenhouse effect'. I like positive methods, but I see no solid evidence indicating a need to throw aversives out, entirely. I think the explicit condemnation of the 'toolbox' approach to dog training is dogmatism, not science.

To date I've not seen anyone demonstrate that positive reinforcement is as effective as a good fence for keeping a dog in your back yard. And if your back yard is several acres, I see no harm in the strong aversive of an electric fence. It works. It's certainly better than having your dog run free and get run over or get shot for running livestock or suffer any of the other ill fates that can happen to an free-roaming dog in our modern world.

The bottom line of the article is anti- prong collar. I would love to see a serious scientific study that demonstrates that positive methods are as or more effective than light aversives for un-training a dog who has learned to pull hard on a leash. In my limited experience, the prong collar can be a lot like the electric fence. I no longer have my prong collar. I used it only twice. The girl I used it on was wont to dislocate my shoulder with pulling hard on the lead before I used it. The prong collar got the message through immediately. She didn't react as though the collar hurt. When it was on her, she walked happily . . . she simply stopped pulling. And five years later she still doesn't pull. Likewise, the single electric strand that I ran around my 13 acres was only powered for a few weeks . . . since then the dogs have made no attempt to go under my deer fence.

[melzawelza]

What a ridiculous, frustrating article. I really don't have the energy to go into detail about why except to pick out these quotes:

ut the key difference between that group of people and those who claim to be using a “balanced” approach, mixing tools like the prong with positive reinforcement training, is that the latter group lacks a guiding set of principles

Sorry, what? Just because someone isn't dogmatic about EITHER side doesn't mean they lack a set of principles. It means they wholeheartedly understand operant conditioning and ALL FOUR QUADRANTS that come with it, and can and will use all of them if needed.

The so-called “balanced” group members have no grounding methodology to speak of

Again, WHAT?!

OPERANT CONDITIONING - it IS science!

This argument perplexes me SO much, the notion that anyone who uses punishment does not understand or use science in their methods. The science SUPPORTS the use of punishment as a training tool. It is all there. It is just the extremists who have chosen to completely disregard that part of the science and shut out two quadrants.

I can't be bothered writing anymore, I'm too annoyed by the article.