Oh PuhLESE folks. Do I beat them to within an inch of ther life? No.
Did I spank the Cat and put him in the shower with the water on when I awoke in the middle of the night to him peeing through the conforter on my ankles? Hell yes.
It is an effective part of a spectrum of discipline. Anyone that can’t grasp that has a WONDERFUL black and white view of the world.
That said, I don’t do it to the African Grey. It’s a completely alien concept to them and thus does not good. If he bites aggresively, he gets a few minutes on the floor (height=status to birds), in the bathroom (doesn’t like carpet), with the lights off (calms birds), ALONE (birds are very social).
Never fails to adjust his 'tude.
So if never hitting any living thing ever makes you feel superior. Here’s your sounding board.
Sure (for my puppy/dog). But just like children, you have to do it properly. You give them a stern no, and if they do something wrong again in a short amount of time, you give them a good swat.
In reality, when I (and most people) hit their pets, they don’t actually hurt them. If you hurt a dog, you will know it because it will yelp. Bascially it is a very easy to understand form of disapline that translates “master is very unhappy with you.”
Most of the time I only reserve a swat for really bad things, like pulling down the potting plant.
Proof positive that swatting works for my dog: If I get to the “scene of the crime” fast enough and give him a good swap… he never ever does what he did again. Ding Ding Ding! We have a winner!
I never said it made me feel superior, I just don’t feel a need to hit my animals. I don’t like to be hit myself, why in the world would I subject my pets to it? To vent my anger at them? I have found my methods are sufficient at making any problems stop.
This is getting very close to those Child spanking threads…
I used to have a friend who used to have a dog that he used to keep in a studio apartment. The dog was perhaps the world’s biggest Great Dane and the poor thing was not only huge but albino and epileptic and, more to the point, completely deaf. The only way he could get the dog’s attention (he claimed) was to bash it on the snout with a closed fist hard enough to crack someone’s sternum open.
I didn’t necessarily agree with this as a means of getting the dog’s attention, but I did see that sometimes when he struck the dog less forcefully, it would go blithely along as if nothing happened worth noticing.
When I got my parrot I got a bunch of parrot care books. One thing they kept repeating was “Never, ever throw your parrot”. I thought that was a rather odd comment. Until, that is, the first time I had the bird chomp down hard into my hand and not let go. As I’m jumping around trying to get him the hell off me, I remember thinking, “Ahh. This is when a person could be tempted to throw their parrot”.
I would never hit him, he’s really not that big, I could accidentally really hurt him. A squirt of water or an loud “No” usually works, but if he’s being really feisty he goes in the cage with the sheet over it. Parrots hate being ignored.
Full disclosure- I have hit other peoples dogs, particularly an incredibly rowdy boxer that was a nasty biter. A sharp crack to his head (nothing violent, but an attention getter) and he left me alone to torment other people. I felt bad because the hippy owners hadn’t trained their dog at all, I should really have been punching them, but this was survival.
When Phyllis was a puppy, she clamped down on one of Mr. S’s nipples with her sharp little puppy teeth. He responded with a couple of big swats across her nose and a LOUD shout of “OUCH!!!” (It HURT!) She didn’t do it again, and neither did he.
So Phyllis 1, Dottie 0. Yet for some reason Dottie likes to cower when he ask her to sit, as if she’s expecting some huge beating, even though we’ve never laid a hand on her (and we’ve had them both since 8 weeks).
We do joke about “getting the big stick and giving them their daily beating.” But of course they have no idea what we’re talking about.
I’ve never hit either of my dogs. I really don’t need to. My dogs are extremely eager to please and very submissive. A stern look or “NO” usually makes them cower. If I actually hit one of my dogs, they’d probably have a break down!
I suppose I would hit one of the dogs if the behaviour was particularly awful. The one example I can think of is biting a person. I don’t like physical punishment, but biting is too dangerous. The dogs would need to know that kind of behaviour results in severe, immediate consequences.
I’ve never had to deal with that though. They did nip sometimes as puppies while playing, and I did the yelp and stop interacting with them thing. But they’ve never bitten or so much as growled at a person (even when one of the neighbor kids tried to pick up one dog by the tail).
I never hit my cat either. I don’t think it would have worked with her. The whole pack dynamic was different with my cat than with my dogs. The cat never really looked at me as pack leader so much as food dispenser. Hitting her probably wouldn’t have stopped her behaviour but would have made her resent me. Whenever I scolded her, she’d just run away, ignore me for hours, and then try to do whatever bad thing she’d been doing when I wasn’t looking. She did much better if she thought the consequences for bad behaviour (like jumping on the kitchen counter or stealing my dinner) came from the heavens in the form of a squirt gun shot.
Not in the sense of "bad dog!"smack - not ever. I suffer enough guilt pangs when I wedge my feet under her in order to make her move so that I can, in fact, have enough room on my own bed to sleep. And, yeah, the occasional light tap on the rear to get her tush out the door into the yard.
Especially now that I only see the dog while home on breaks, the only thing she’s got to worry about is me getting her fat by giving her all manner of treats.
The occasional smack, if required. Same as kids. I wouldn’t condone hitting mature pets, or kids, who would (or should) know better. But correcting unacceptable behaviour with a small thwack is the way to go.
And that’s what’s wrong with pets and kids today…!!!
Ferret Owner here. Never hit the little fuzzies. It would do no good at all. The discipline of choice with my ferts is a strong scruff on the neck and depending on the offence, a hiss and/or dragging them across the floor a few inches or so in scruff. - the same thing a mama or dominant ferret would do. The scruff releases endorphins in the ferret, which helps them relax and the hiss and drag is more or less a “no, cause I said so.”
A dog is not a cat is not a ferret is not a parrot is not a child. I believe in using physical discipline to the extent appropriate based on the creature’s normal societal interaction, and possibly in special circumstances for safety.
To that extent, I swat the cat lightly when it’s really necessary, which is almost always limited to times when he’s playing way too rough and seems to have lost sight of the fact that what he’s chomping is me. Not enough to hurt him, just to surprise him and make him release.
I would not spank a child for regular discipline, because the society we live in now places a large emphasis on solving your problems nonviolently. I can understand spanking a child if they did something particularly dangerous and you really needed to get the point across.
I hit my dog because she’s a breed that is capable of seriously injuring or killing a human being, and I want to have complete control of her by the time she’s old enough to be aggressive in that way. Right now she’s almost 1 year old, which for a German Shepherd is still a puppy, really. She’s not aggressive, in fact she’s decidedly submissive. But I’m a small person (4’11", 100 lbs.) and she can yank me clear off of my feet going for a squirrel. I just can’t risk NOT being the alpha dog in this relationship, or I might as well play with a loaded gun in public. And sometimes she acts like a snotty teenager, and challenges my authority. So I act the way a dominant dog would. And I know how that is because I’ve seen her own grandmother bite her on the nose for… well a hell of a lot less than what I hit her for. So it’s not necessarily “bad” behavior that gets a smack, but when she’s clearly challenging me. I never HURT her, she never yelps or acts afraid of me, but correcting her physically when she’s trying to challenge me works immediately. The past few days, I’ve been going in and out of the room with the cat in it a lot (they aren’t OK together yet), and she really wants to get in there. So I make her sit a few feet back from the door. But sometimes, when I tell her to sit (and she knows damned well how to sit, believe me) she’ll ignore the command, and look at me with that look… I swear it’s identical to the look in a teenager’s eyes when they’re playing dumb to avoid doing something you want them to do, or to get out of not doing something they were supposed to. A slap under the chin or across the ears, repeat the command, breaks the look in her eyes and she sits obediently. The message is “do what I say, even if there’s something else you’d much rather do elsewhere.” I consider this responsible dog ownership when you have a large breed and a small body. It needs to never come to a test of strength between us. I don’t even have sharp teeth.
Oh HELL no. Especially not with the cat. The dog occasionally gets a light little tap on the nose, (a VERY light attention getting “this” is the part that is misbehaving tap), followed by a firm but gentle squeeze on her muzzle when she starts getting snappish and territorial with strangers. It’s not done in punishment, but to call her attention away from what she’s doing, and the part that is the problem, her growling snappish little mouth.
The cat gets squirted and if she tries to get out the door, she occasionally gets somewhat squished in between my foot and the door jamb, but that’s not intentional.
I would hit my cat whenever he would shit on the floor (a total of two times). I don’t know if it was the abuse or that Thomas just figured it out on his own, but he doesn’t shit in the house anymore.
I also tried to train him to fight a bigger cat. I would put on a glove and try to get him to maul the glove. I had to aggravate him a little bit, but other cat doesn’t mess with him no more.
I don’t think he hates me. He still won’t sleep in any room that I’m not in and he usually tries to curl up in my bed when I’m falling asleep.
No more shit in the house, no more cats bulling my cat and my cat still likes me. I’m perfectly fine with that.
Never. Our directions from guide dogs is to yank on the collar, which works for correcting a dog during walks also. Guide dogs does not do treat based training, pats, good girls and yanks.
No way. Besides the fact that, with respect to dogs at least, I think it’s cruel because a dog will always adore its owner no matter what he/she does, it’s really quite pointless - they will never know why you are hitting or smacking them. I just say, “BAD!” in a gruff voice, or stare at him (my dog) until he looks sheepish and stops doing what he’s doing.
I realized today that there’s another time she gets tapped. She likes to stand on her hind legs (she’s short) and dig her claws into people’s knees. Hard. She gets a tap on each foot, which cats really don’t like, and she takes her claws away.
And when I say a tap, I mean a tap. Forefinger down on paw, less force than striking a piano key. Only Cosmo gets tapped, but she understands what it means.
So it’s not necessarily “bad” behavior that gets a smack, but when she’s clearly challenging me. I never HURT her, she never yelps or acts afraid of me, but correcting her physically when she’s trying to challenge me works immediately. The past few days, I’ve been going in and out of the room with the cat in it a lot (they aren’t OK together yet), and she really wants to get in there. So I make her sit a few feet back from the door. But sometimes, when I tell her to sit (and she knows damned well how to sit, believe me) she’ll ignore the command, and look at me with that look… I swear it’s identical to the look in a teenager’s eyes when they’re playing dumb to avoid doing something you want them to do, or to get out of not doing something they were supposed to. A slap under the chin or across the ears, repeat the command, breaks the look in her eyes and she sits obediently. The message is “do what I say, even if there’s something else you’d much rather do elsewhere.” I consider this responsible dog ownership when you have a large breed and a small body. It needs to never come to a test of strength between us. I don’t even have sharp teeth.
:mad: . My Wife will sometimes growl at them to correct them.