Dogs don’t have a concept of shame, and there’s no reason for them to make the connection between some random object and a behavior they aren’t engaging in at the time. The “guilty” looks we see are usually appeasement gestures the dog is giving us.
The stress of having to wear a muzzle may be enough to trigger anxiety and fear in the dog. Nothing is going to mature the dog except growing up. It isn’t a teenage boy who needs a reality check, it’s a domesticated animal and should be expected to behave like one.
A muzzle worked well and quickly for my beagle mix but you have to use it sparingly and only in immediate response to the biting. I agree it should not be your first resort at all but it looks like you’re running out of options. I’d give it a try. It’s almost certainly not going to make things worse.
And AS a dog, what he wants is play and attention. I’m not suggesting to treat him like a kid - I don’t have kids, don’t want them, and prefer dogs.
Some dogs can take physical correction, but it has to be done correctly. If your timing isn’t good and you aren’t consistent then you just make the problem worse. Can you thump a dog into submission? Sure, most of the time. But if it backfires you have a hell of a problem on your hands, and the bigger and bolder the dog the bigger and bolder the problem.
I see a lot of disagreement about methods. Different things work for different people. I have always considered myself a gentle trainer. I never get angry when training. But I feel certain situations are best handled with stearness. I kept my bird dogs in a large dog run with about 5 dogs. They had one food bowl, if I introduced another dog to the group and that dog or one of my dogs showed aggression I would swat their butts with a belt. They knew aggression would not be tolerated and it was rarely ever an issue. If a dog ever snapped at me or growled I would swat him pretty hard. My dogs had no fear of me because they knew what to expect, fear of the unexpected is what causes a dog to cower.
Gentle positive methods work for most things, and of course they should be tried first. But they really don’t work for everything. Pretty much all the pro trainers in my town are all positive all the time trainers. Their own dogs are pretty obnoxious – dog aggressive, car barkers, lungers – because there are distinct limits to this moral code of training (and it IS a moral code, not a technique).
There’s currently a war between the all-positive trainers who start from the ethical premise that there are a host of training methods which are off-limits to them because they don’t fit with their morality, and what could be called the relationship trainers, who believe that the important thing is communicating clearly with their partner about acceptable and unacceptable behavior, so that the dog can relax into their place in the family hierarchy.
The former believe the latter to be cruel bullies (“inhumane” is the common word), while the latter believe the former to be ineffective and pathetic. The fact is, both use both types of training all the time, and behavior mod theory influences both types, although you’d be hard pressed to find a dog trainer who actually knows the science, not just the pop version.
I was very enamored of the behavior mod stuff when it first became popular, because it is a far better method for teaching skills than what was used before. You can teach a puppy sit, down, stay, come, etc. with positive methods about twenty times faster and the dog has a happy eager attitude throughout. BUT, when it comes to hardwired behavior like aggression, prey drive, resource guarding, digging, anxiety behaviors, all-positive very often fails spectacularly. I have seen it over and over and over.
A dedicated dog trainer who constantly monitors their dog and is always working on refining their training can spend the prolonged (sometimes endless) time ‘redirecting’ and ‘replacing’ the unwanted behavior, with the impeccable exact timing that it requires. The general dog owner will never be able to do this nor is it fair to expect them to.
No - done correctly, it’s a technique called Operant Conditioning. Morals don’t enter into it. Operant conditioning isn’t just about being nice to animals. It’s about shaping their behavior using positive reinforcement to communicate to the critter precisely what you want them to do.
Operant conditioning was initially used by B. F. Skinner and his students to train dolphins and birds for military purposes. You can’t use negative training methods on dolphins. They’ll just go sulk at the bottom of the tank and then what are you going to do about it, Two-legs? With operant conditioning, you can pinpoint for the dolphin precisely what you want done and precisely what’s in it for him if he cooperates.
See also Clicker training, for a practical applied method of animal training -
Operant condition as researched by Skinner could include negative reinforcement as well as positive reinforcement. However it was found that results can be achieved through positive reinforcement alone provided the subject is cooperative and the situation communicated precisely. Dogs are generally cooperative animals - we’ve been selecting them for the ability to pay attention to us and work with us for thousands of years. Operant conditioning will work just fine with most dogs which have a positive, cooperative, relationship with the trainer.
The yelp method mentioned upthread is in fact a form of negative operant conditioning taught by the puppy’s mother when a pup nips her nipples. But the mama dog isn’t expressing any kind of moral judgement. She just yelps and withdraws briefly from the puppy, which is pretty much the worst thing that can happy to a newborn.
It hasn’t got to do with morality, it has to do with what is effective. I grew up with adults who who spanked dogs who were badly behaved–and we had the worst, most annoying dogs in town. They barked, escaped and ran all over the neighborhood, chased cars, peed in the house on a daily basis, stole food, etc. Now I use clicker training and my dogs, while far from perfect, are much better behaved. I did once believe that for an animal, there is no better teacher than pain (applied at a crucial moment). Now I know that dogs are much smarter than most people realize, in a doggy way, and they respond better to rewards for good behavior than to beatings for bad behavior.
I see the OP hasn’t come back. I hope this dog does’t wind up in a shelter.
Typically, I find the people who advocate force, “dominance,” or punishment claim that the “other side” is making a moral choice based on emotions…but it turns out they themselves are emotionally committed to using dominance and force, and refuse to try alternatives. That they’re not even interested in finding out if their dog will behave if they stop hitting him says a lot.
In fairness, I’m of two minds on Cesar Milan. On the one hand, his methods seem to work for him. Also he’s out there in the public eye, spreading the word that behavior problems really can be corrected. I’m sure he is keeping lots of dogs out of shelters in situations where owners would otherwise have given up. I might disagree with him, but he is a positive force overall.
On the other hand, his methods are dangerous. You don’t stare a dog down and you don’t manhandle it and you don’t get down “on its level” or in its face unless you’re prepared to get bitten. Those dogs don’t respect him, they are terrified of him.
This is the bottom line, in my experience. I jumped at the chance to use a less violent method, because I want what’s best for the dog emotionally and psychologically. People that are so attached to physically punishing the dogs, in spite of overwhelming evidence that there are better methods available, are borderline psychos as far as I’m concerned. Maybe they are taking out their frustrations on the dog? It’s one thing to live in ignorance, it’s another to willfully continue to live in ignorance when people are handing you the information you need for free.
I agree with you, I know people like that too. I myself have both succeeded and failed using all kinds of techniques from both sides. I have found that I will eventually get stuck if I dump anything out of my training toolbox. I’ve also found that the moral high horse that the all-positive trainers are on is higher and more self-righteous and more blind to evidence than the one anyone else seems to get on, as a rule.
Okay, here is a story about all-positive training methods and their limitations. Second-hand from a good friend and excellent trainer who, in an effort to improve her knowledge, took a six month certification course from a nationally-famous all-positive trainer.
The students had a facebook discussion group, and one of them reported that her small dog continually attention-barked when her boyfriend was over, and nothing she tried “positively” helped at all. Calming techniques, redirection, substitution of incompatible behaviors, did not work. Her relationship was suffering. Her boyfriend asked her if he could just try one “negative” thing once. Out of desperation she agreed. He looked at the dog and said in a firm voice, “Be quiet!”
The dog shut up. After awhile it started barking again. Boyfriend said, “Be quiet!”
Dog never did that again.
That’s not the end. When this lady shared her experience with the group, the outrage at her boyfriend’s, yes, inhumane, behavior was universal and loud. One person opined that it was a terrible cruel thing to do, when the problem could have been so much more humanely solved with sedation.
I trained bird dogs for close to 20 years. A good trainer knows that the key to be successful is having a dog who actually enjoys training in general, or working with his master. We always try to end thigs on a positive note and rarely except in extreme circumstances do we actually strike a dog. We also know when a dog is confused or if he is being disobedient. We don’t reward every obedient act, we expect it. A dog trained purely on positve feedback will be unreliable in most cases, many dogs are just obedient in general and this type of traing comes pretty natural to them. Others are tougher and need a bit more pressure to submit.
Eh, could have happened that way, although coming third-hand, that sounds like a caricature of their actual position. I’ve never met anyone like that, but have met people who mis-represent the position of people with whom they disagree.
Uh, you know that “the other side” ALSO doesn’t reward every correct behavior, right? The slot-machine principle makes reinforcement work better.
Many dogs are “just obedient in general,” but one trained by positive feedback will be “unreliable in most cases?” So it’s worse than not training at all?
I think your experience here differs from that of many trainers.
This sounds made up, and even if it isn’t, so what? I tell my dogs to STFU all the time. Just this morning I told my dalmatian he was a disgusting son of a bitch. Newsflash: dogs don’t speak English.
I used the Yelp method on my pug and it worked like a charm. The only hard part was getting enough of my friends to sign up and leave 1-star reviews for him until he got the point.
