Do Dog Trainers Use Punishment Because It’s Familiar?

Since World War II punishment has been the primary dog training technique. But just blindly following what has been done before isn't the only reason that punishment has found it's place in dog training. The fact is that training by punishment is familiar to most humans because we  are raised using the Compulsion Method (usually badly applied), it's what we see all around us, so it comes naturally to us. You don't have to look far for examples. Just walk around Target hunting for moms and little kids. One classic example is the mom looking through for towels, while her 4 year old son, Johnny, is looking for action. He is bored, and there's not much to entertain a 4 year old in on the towel aisle, but the toys on the next aisle are pretty intriguing. Naturally Johnny nips around the endcap to investigate the GI Joes on the next aisle. After 60 seconds or so, the mom realizes that her son is venturing a bit further than she is comfortable with, and she says, "Johnny, stay close." Johnny looks up. He can see her--she's right over there, and it doesn't seem all that far to him, so he figures he's close enough and goes back to looking at the toys on the end cap of the aisle. After another 15 second, she called him again, "Johnny, stay close, and don't touch that." Nothing has changed. Johnny still thinks he close enough, and he isn't touching anything. He figures he's good. After another 30 seconds Mom isn't satisfied and calls again, "Johnny, get over here!". Johnny doesn't even look up this time, doing typical ignoring,--I don't hear you. (In fact, there were several patrons who were wishing we weren't hearing her). Mom is reading the tag on a towel and ignores Johnny for about 30 seconds. Yes, I really did time this stuff, it facinates me. Then Mom realizes that Johnny is still not close enough, so she actually goes over to him, obviously pretty angry, and says, "If you don't get over here I'm going to spank you." . At that point Mom grabs his arm and yanks him over to the towel aisle, stands him beside the basket, and says, "Just stand there." Johnny does stand there stiff as a board, but after about 20 seconds, he relaxes a little and takes a few steps away to look at something else on the towel aisle. He's still about 3 feet from the basket. Mom turns around, quite angry, grabs his arm yanks him over to the basket, and says, "Do you want me to hit you? You're going to get a spanking when you get home !" When I was a kid, she would have just spanked him right there, but nowadays she can't hit him in public because someone would call child services. Just for fun because like I told you ,this stuff facinates me, I followed Mom and Johnny through the check out line and out of the store. What happened was really interesting. Johnny was quiet and well behaved through the check out line--no whining for candy. But when they got through the exit door, Johnny bolted out, running to the edge of the sidewalk, looked quickly for cars, proving that he isn't an idiot, and ran out into the parking lot. Now, this little domestic scenario is enlightening not only because it shows up some really ineffective methods of teaching children, but because it illustrates almost exactly the methods a lot of people use when they interact ( I can't honestly call it training) with their dogs. Looking at the details of this little mom/son incident....first, mom said "stay close" which is vague. She meant "be right beside me", Johnny thought he was "close enough". Next, she said basically the same thing, still with no action. The third time she called Johnny had tuned her out--that's what happens when you repeat yourself to both people and dogs. Finally she threatened him, but she still hadn't taken any action to move Johnny over to where she wanted him. Please, this is a 4 year old. She could easily just pick him up and take him over to the towel aisle and deposit him in the shopping basket, but apparently she would rather discuss the matter than solve it. When Johnny finally got out of the store, he demonstrated a behavior seen often in dogs. He bolted! Duh! This wasn't a very comfortable incident to watch, and I realized that if people use that kind of compulsion with their children (she didn't actually hit him--although she did yank and yell), it's no wonder they find it easy to yank a dog around, possibly hit him, or subject him to an electric collar, and how hard it would be for them to believe that there is another more effective way to train a dog? --Jane Rohde

Tagged as: compulsion dog training, compulsion method, dog punishment, dog training