One thing I hear often in the world of dog training is that if you put three dog trainers in a room, the only thing that you’ll get two of them to agree on is that the third is doing it wrong. It’s a phrase that’s used often by trainers who are trying to excuse the fact that the world of dog training is mired by conflict and controversy.

To be honest, it’s not true at all. There are many, many trainers I agree with 100%. Many of them don’t just train dogs. When you’re talking to someone who trains killer whales, you aren’t talking about right and wrong, you’re talking about what works and what doesn’t. There are different ethical discussions, sure, but what it comes down to is what works, to what degree it works, and whether it continues to work without fallout. All I’m interested in is what works, how effective it is and what the consequences of it working are.

That’s all I want to talk about today: what works and how effective it is.

Whenever we ask about effectiveness, we should also always ask: “Is it ethical? Does it have emotional fallout? Are there other ways I could train this behaviour that have less potential fallout?”

When you stop asking if everything is right or wrong and focus on whether it works and whether it’s ethical, you stop having those arguments with other dog trainers and you start agreeing much more.

For instance, at a local event, I was in the happy company of one of my favourite local dog behaviourists and trainers, Lydie. We had one of those eyebrows-and-looks moments over another trainer’s methods. It wasn’t a ‘right or wrong’ moment, but a ‘it doesn’t work’ moment. And that we can agree on. Our raised eyebrows weren’t ‘right or wrong’, but over the fact the methods were counter-intuitive and running against the grain of what is effective.

You all know I disagree with aversive, coercive, forceful or punitive methods. But people call me all the time with their dogs who are trained in those ways. Mostly, they are calling me because those methods aren’t working, and I have to get to the bottom of why. I don’t judge them for using them: if I turned away every client who had used aversives with their dogs, I’d have no clients. And I’m sure trainers who say they are ‘balanced’ or use coercion get plenty of calls from people who have tried using food or reward-based training and had problems.

A bit of empathy is always required alongside a lot of problem solving. We’re all just trying to change behaviour in the best way we know how. Mostly, why people choose coercive methods is just lack of knowledge about more efficient ways to achieve the same ends without emotional fallout that essentially leaves our dogs unable to trust us. Often, people choose unpleasant methods because of that never-ending tide of well-meaning but inexpert advice from every single person out there who thinks they know how to change animal behaviour. You know, the well-meaning people who’ve been to one or two training classes back in the 90s and suggest you put an electric fence in if your dog is getting out. Chokes, shocks, raised voices, electric fencing, weird ‘interrupter noises’ like Cesar Millan’s famous ‘tssst’, water sprays, citronella collars, and physical manipulation are so often recommended that you’d think they work. I know I don’t have to tell you that we get a number of dogs who turn up at the pound with an electric collar on to stop them escaping…. or who arrive with worn-down teeth from being tethered, or even who arrive with the tether itself. And I don’t need to walk far around our local parks to see people popping, jerking or yanking a choke chain with absolutely no change in the dog’s behaviour.

What’s that famous quote about insanity?

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

I’m sure the person popping a dog’s choke collar ten times a minute and offering treats for good walking was expecting different results. But ultimately, the dog was still pulling, still walking out of the heel position and still more interested by the other dogs than by his owner.

It’s the same for the people who I hear saying “No! No! No! No! No! No! No!” with their reactive dog.

If it was working, they wouldn’t need to do it.

But when clients call, it’s important to get to the basics: is the thing you’re doing – whatever that may be – working with your dog?

So if someone tells me they’re using electric fencing to stop escapes, I ask, “How’s that working out for you?”

You might hear sarcasm. It’s not intended. I genuinely want to know. Is it working?

Sometimes they say that it is. And if I see before me a happy, healthy dog who is full of joy, then I move on. There are other battles to pick and I understand the complexities of trying to teach a dog to stay on the property. I’d prefer a lovely fence and some shrubbery, but if electric fences are working and are not having emotional fallout, then so be it. I’ll never recommend electric fencing myself as I think it can have unintended side-effects, and I might point out some of the potential bear-traps of electric fencing, but that’s not the problem they’re calling for. And if their dog is anxious, upset or shut-down, we’ll have a discussion about how that fence could be contributing to that.

Mostly though, the aversives haven’t worked, which is why they’re calling… and business is brisk, which means those aversives fail pretty often.

Choke chain and verbal reprimands not working with a dog who is reactive around other dogs…

Electric fencing that is not working with a dog who is an escape artist…

Spraying with a citronella collar not working to interrupt humping…

Banging on the crate and saying “no!” not working for a dog who is howling in a crate…

Spraying a dog in the face with a water spray not working to stop in-house canine conflict…

Kneeing in the chest not working with a dog who is jumping up…

And there are lots of times when people think that what they are doing is working, when it quite clearly isn’t. People using choke chains with dogs who are still pulling, for example, or bark collars on dogs who are still barking.

It works the other way too. It’s not just aversives that fail.

Squeaky toy not working with a dog who has poor recall…

Food not working with dogs who are barking…

Food use ending in greedy dogs who mug their owners…

Toys becoming a source of obsession and frustration…

Dogs who won’t do something unless you bribe them…

So why do our attempts to change behaviour fail so often? And yes, it is often, otherwise all our dogs would be PERFECT! I think they are perfect as they are but I’d be dishonest if I didn’t wish Heston didn’t bark so much, that Tilly didn’t feel the need to roll in stinky stuff and Amigo wasn’t quite so shut down on the lead. And I wouldn’t volunteer at a shelter where

Behaviour is SO simple. SO, so ridiculously simple. You’d think we wouldn’t need it explaining to us, it’s that simple. It’s so straightforward to understand that you think it’s a trick.

What is behaviour? And how does it develop?

There are two main types of behaviour: reflexive, automatic, physiological, emotional, unconscious, involuntary behaviour (sometimes called Pavlovian, classical or respondant) and conscious, reflective, voluntary behaviour (sometimes called Operant). These are intertwined in a kind of chaotic Gordian Knot. Sure, we have automatic, emotional physiological responses (like the look of disgust I give from time to time or the way my eyes go big when I don’t believe something) that are often emotional, but not always, like goosebumps and shudders, salivating and blinking when air is blown in our eyes, but these behaviours function in the same way as conscious behaviour.

Behaviour can only do two things.

Increase (or maintain)

Decrease (or disappear)

And that, my lovely readers, is behaviour in a nutshell. Not so complex is it?

In order to have one of those two outcomes, I can use two methods to bring it about.

Let’s take the crazy circling that Heston does before a walk. That behaviour is a response to me locking the door. It can only go one of two ways. He can either circle more (or keep doing it at the same frequency, intensity and duration), or he can circle less (or stop completely). If I change nothing, that behaviour is probably going to stay the same. I lock the door, he circles, we go for a walk.

So how do I increase or decrease voluntary behaviour?

There are really only a small handful of methods.

This is adapted from the work of certified animal behaviourist Kathy Sdao and canine behaviourist Maureen Backman.

So often, clients tell me they want behaviour to decrease. They want their dog to stop barking, to stop pulling, to stop biting, to stop chewing.

Because as human beings, our natural modifiers are sticks rather than carrots, we think the same is true of animals too… that the bad stuff is the best way to teach. This flies in the face of science and experience, which teach us the best ways to increase behaviour are by starting the good stuff, and keeping it going.

Sometimes, that means we have to change how we phrase things … “I want my dog to heel more… I want my dog to have increased calm… I want my dog to chew appropriate things” instead of saying “I want my dog to stop pulling… stop barking… stop chewing…” and it also means we have to think about the methods we use to get that increase.

My main problem with decreasing behaviours is that it has one huge, glaring issue.

We spend so long wanting to decrease behaviours that pretty much our animals would be lying around in a sleepy heap most of the day. The dogs that people describe to me, the ones who don’t jump, who don’t bark, who don’t chew, who don’t engage with the world, who don’t pull… they sound like stuffed toys rather than real dogs. We do our dogs a disservice to expect them to have no behaviours at all. What do we want a dog for if we don’t want it to be a dog?

Also, I’m of the opinion that behaviour abhors a vaccuum. Have you ever tried to just sit and do nothing for more than 30 seconds, not sleeping, not moving, not fidgeting with your hands? Imagine if your only option was sleeping, but you were more than well-rested? I think that would drive me crazy. Even meditation or mindfulness is focused ‘doing nothing’.

But we often, by eliminating or decreasing our dogs’ behaviours, give them few things that we want them to do instead. That’s when they become self-employed and start doing other behaviours that dogs do to occupy themselves… digging, foraging, wandering, barking, chewing, jumping, spinning, circling, tail-chasing, licking, flank sucking… not all of those canine behaviours are productive, and several are a well-recognised sign of distress in animals.

That’s why I ask my clients to rephrase what they want, thinking about what they want to increase.

It’s also why I tell them they can’t ask to increase ‘dead men’s behaviours’ – are you asking to increase things a dead man could do? Lie still, be quiet, stay on the bed. All things a dead man could do.

So if I wanted to change Heston’s circling, I have to think of several questions:

“What behaviour do I want to increase?”

That means coming up with a behaviour that is not circling that I want him to do instead.

I ask myself for a replacement behaviour that has the same function as the other.

I have to ask myself, “what function does the circling have?”

I think that it is partly frustration, as he wants me to stop locking the door and start the walk. It is partly excitement and over arousal. It is partly a way to get rid of a burst of over-excitement. It feels good and, as anyone who’s ever spun until they’re dizzy will attest, it gives you a sense of euphoria. It feels good. So I need a behaviour that is equal to this. He needs to do something that gets rid of that burst of over-arousal, something that feels good, something that gives him a feeling of euphoria. So I get a big bag of his favourite squeaky rugby balls. I teach him “Find it!”. I hide a rugby ball in the yard before the walk and I tell him to “Find it!” so that I can lock up in peace. By the time he has his ball, I am ready to go and the circling is no longer. The best thing about this is that it’s also dealt with his excitement barking and also my own frustration at trying to manage getting all the dogs out of the door.

Coming back to “does it work?” – the proof is in the pudding. It does work. Using food wouldn’t work here because dropping treats on the floor is not going to give him the sense of euphoria even if it dissipates his arousal burst. I use this sometimes, but it depends on the dog. Putting him on a tight lead before we go out of the door and bopping him on the nose if he tried to circle may also work, but I bet I’d see the circling move up the chain, if you like. I’d see that circling before I put the lead on him, in the house. As soon as he realised a walk was on the way, I’d still get the behaviour because bad stuff never addresses the reason why the dog is doing the behaviour in the first place. And because aversives may lead to the animal putting distance between themselves and the handler, I would predict that he would be harder to put on the lead and be less likely to approach me to have it put on until he’d stopped circling.

This is also why you’ve got to think of the individual dog. What is it that motivates them? One of my shelter dogs was happily jumping and bopping handlers on the face before walks. Same function, different behaviour. What replaces bopping and greeting? First, five minutes of a low-down face-to-face greeting where she doesn’t have to jump to say hi, and then lots and lots of hand-targetting. She loves to bop with her nose, and a hand target is a great way to have a bit of a bop. Hand-targetting, is, guess what, great for heel walking and getting dogs in position as well as preventing them from jumping (or also redirecting them away from your face) and that’s why every bit of “good stuff” is as individual as your dog.

When it comes back to it then, whilst there will be trainers out there who would do alternative things instead of “Find it!” or hand-targeting, really, those of us who know about behaviour know that we have a few simple routes open to us. How we get there may be different – we can use the whole world of doggie “good stuff” to meet the same ends. We may do things differently, but we don’t disagree. We know that you need to use good stuff to increase behaviour and that this has the fewest side effects. There is no disagreement about that unless you don’t have a grasp on how animals learn.

Where Lydie and I may have sometimes different methods or different approaches, the result is the same.

That’s not to say I couldn’t pick other training methods. They’re things that just end in emotions that aren’t particularly conducive to the relationship I want with my dog. Nor are they as effective.

I guess I could use time-outs to decrease the circling – go back in the house, go out of the kennel, turn to stone until the behaviour stops, but that is why I stuck those feelings on the diagram … frustration is not so fun when you are dealing with an animal. Though I think it absolutely vital to teach dogs to tolerate frustration and to be able to “do nothing” (as all three of mine are doing as I write this), an over-excited animal is going to find some other behaviour for the emotions behind what they are doing, and I don’t want to add frustration to the mix. When you deliberately choose methods that rely on a feeling of frustration to increase a behaviour, and you do so with a dog, you should expect that frustration to pop out in other ways. For dogs, that is normal in a fair few ways, including barking, jumping, pawing, leaping, but also biting. Displacement bites and frustration bites are far too common, because witholding the good stuff depends on frustration to change the behaviour.

Coming back to the central premise of this article, it’s clear to see why I think it’s carrots all the way.  The good stuff is not without its pitfalls, but the pitfalls are much less severe than the bad stuff. That’s why, if you put me in a room with two other trainers, if they understand behaviour, then we’re all in agreement. You can’t argue with outcomes.

What always depends is what the dog understands to be good stuff (and this is where basic trainers can get trapped into very limited thinking) and whether that stuff is good stuff at that moment in time. Food is not the only tool in my toolkit, and a good trainer will be thinking of scent, play, touch, behaviours, interactions, praise and functional behaviours in the “good stuff” camp too. What many beginners fail to get their head around is that many of the ‘good things’ we tend to use with dogs need to be taught. Praise is meaningless to a dog who doesn’t understand it, and likewise touch. At times or with certain dogs, touch can fall solidly into the “bad stuff” camp. Ironically, the stuff that dogs don’t need to be taught to enjoy, things like chasing a rabbit, flirting with the opposite sex, rolling in dirt, smelling other dogs’ urine, are the icky things that many trainers wouldn’t even consider using to shape behaviour. And there are things dogs enjoy themselves which they have learned pay off, like the crinkle of a crisp wrapper. There are things that a dog would consider to be “good stuff” having been taught, like laser pens, but that many trainers wouldn’t use because of the risk of compulsive behaviours.

So if your training method isn’t working, one of the common reasons is relying too much on punishers that are ineffective. Another can be choosing either positive or unpleasant stuff and keeping doing it even if it’s not having an impact on behaviour. Expecting to always decrease behaviour and ending up with the equivalent of a dead dog is another reason training using aversives can go wrong. If you don’t address the function or emotion behind the behaviour, you’ll probably not succeed in the long term in making any behavioural changes.

One very big reason why training doesn’t work is in mixing and matching the good stuff and the bad stuff. Whilst I have my own feelings about aversives, there are some really, really powerful reasons you shouldn’t mix the two. So if you’re going to use aversives, then use aversives, but the ‘balanced’ training is a complete fallacy for reasons which deserve a post of their own. You either go with the good stuff or the bad stuff, but if you mix and match, you may certainly not get the results you want. So if you use punishers, aversives, shocks, prongs, chokes or other unpleasant things such as sprays or ‘interrupters’, make very sure you only use those. Behaviour is not a pick and mix.

In the next post, I’ll look at how training goes wrong when you mix and match the good stuff and the bad stuff – the potential side-effects of using both the carrot and the stick in the same sessions. There are some very big reasons for not using the two together that are worth exploring in full, which might explain more why I’m so skeptical of ‘balanced’ trainers who use both methods without clear distinction.

When you start using positive reinforcement to train a dog, you are often operating under the notion that it’s almost fallout-free, that there are few negatives associated with it. Indeed, I’ve only ever used positive reinforcement to train my pup Heston and it wouldn’t have even crossed my tiny mind way back when I started that there were things that could go wrong. I’d happily sing the wonders of positive reinforcement training with my friends. And as I learned more, I read more. Academic textbooks, papers, studies. Back to undergraduate psychology textbooks and Applied Learning theory. I can’t tell you how many courses I’ve attended, how many DVDs I’ve watched, how many books I’ve read. Few people talk about the challenges or difficulties of positive reinforcement training, leading to a view that it is somehow easier than using aversives.

That isn’t quite true, however.

So often, positive methods of reinforcement are seen as a panacea for all behaviours as well as being the ethical choice. I personally operate under the notion that you almost can’t go wrong when you’re a ‘cookie pusher’. I hate this term, but I know it’s how many of the French dog trainers see me, as they don’t understand what I do. It’s not about cookies, though, is it? I have a wide repertoire of reinforcers (including toys and smells, functional behaviours and other conditioned environmental reinforcers – I really try to keep that repertoire of reinforcers as big a basket as I can) and I’m still at the beginning of a marvellous learning journey, where I have the privilege of being able to practise these methods in the shelter where I am a member of the board of trustees. I’m always learning about how to use reinforcers and different cues, and it’s so much more than being a cookie pusher.

I think that’s why positive reinforcement is seen as the ‘easy’ option. It has been reduced by critics who don’t understand it to a simplistic explanation of what R+ trainers do.

Because, too, they imply that we don’t work in ‘all’ the quadrants, we’re kind of ‘quarter’ the experts. That also contributes to the notion of how ‘simple’ R+ is. We must be idiots if we only use a quarter of the available ‘tools’.

There is also a cheery enthusiasm associated with positive reinforcement. A glossing over of the negatives or difficulties that is sometimes coupled with a righteous indignation about ethics.

And I try to be open-minded. Really I do.

That said, I’m hyper-critical of aversive methods. I know I am. And I recommend nothing other than the most minimally invasive training or Premack methods with a “do-this and have this” methodology that is as minimally aversive as I can make it. As my last post no doubt made clear, I’ll happily tell you about the fallout of aversives. They are etched in my mind for every single time I think, “Wouldn’t it be quicker just to…. ??”

But one thing I think is necessary for those of us who use the least aversive method available is that we deal with all the potential effects of the methods we are using. Some of these effects may be ones we hadn’t thought about, and I certainly feel that some of the effects of R+ are not things often discussed – or as often as they should be.

If we gloss over these effects or don’t pay them enough mind, we run the risk of passing them onto clients who are ill-prepared for things that might go wrong or the potential ‘fallout’ when you use reinforcers. I know it’s a line I often use, that you can do little harm if you get R+ wrong, but that’s not entirely true and it’s rose-tinted thinking at best. Ironically, where I think this is most true is with ‘cross-over’ adult dogs who have been used to aversives.

So many great presenters and great teachers of trainers gloss over some potential undesirable consequences of positive reinforcement , especially with owners. By not being mindful that positive reinforcement can have unintended effects too, we’re damning dogs and owners because we’re not being honest enough – in the same way as ‘balanced’ trainers who are not honest about the potential fallout from aversives! Certainly, having had hundreds of hours of training, the ‘fallout’ of positive reinforcement is rarely mentioned, yet in practice, it’s my view that we need to be aware of these, especially when we promote it as a fail-proof method when it is not. And we need to share these potential ‘risks’ with clients, who may fail if we do not.

Not sharing the difficulties of R+ training is a massive blind spot that I see across the industry.

First off, we need to stop being humble about how easy positive reinforcement is, and share the benefits and the consequences in the same way we wish our aversive-loving colleagues would do. R+ is not the easy option.

We spend so long as positive trainers being humble. We pick up on things like that great statement from Dr Ian Dunbar about “to use punishment effectively, you need a thorough understanding of canine behaviour, a thorough understanding of learning theory and impeccable timing… and if you have those things, you don’t need to use punishment” (apologies for misquoting, but you get my drift) and we say things like “I’m not a good enough trainer to use punishment” in mock humility. Honestly, there’s something a little wrong with this approach. It suggests R+ is easy. Sure, there is much less that can go wrong, but there still are things that can go wrong, and the view that R+ is free from side-effects and that it is better for beginners or owners belittles what great trainers do and underestimates what our clients will find difficult about it.

Of course we are good enough trainers not to use punishment. We know that too. That’s why I said ‘mock humility.’ I got a dog to stop being so aroused around bikes and joggers last week. Do you think that I truly think I’m too crappy a trainer to have done it without a shock collar or choke collar? Yet I often hear trainers use this as an ‘excuse’ for why they use the least intrusive methods of behaviour mod. “Oh, I use R+ because I’m not good enough to use other methods.”

We need to be honest about the fact it is hard work – sometimes harder and usually more time-consuming than punishment is. Who knows? One high jolt of electricity might have put that dog off bikes and joggers for life. But the risk of fallout is too big to risk getting it wrong.

That’s why I spent hours working with this dog.

I’d have been disingenuous to promote this method to the owner without saying the method may be hard, may be time-consuming and may be frustrating. It’s that lack of honesty that sometimes sends our clients from us back to balanced trainers for a quicker and more immediate intervention. Sure it adds another ten minutes to an already-overscientific explanation to owners. I am a fan of putting all the behaviour mod programmes out there for owners and saying, “these are the possible – and likely – consequences of X, Y and Z… ” without always making it explicit that there are consequences of games, toys and food too. I need to change that.

That self-effacing mock humility some positive trainers use covers up a kind of smugness that, in fact, we are good enough trainers that we have never found it necessary to use those ‘most intrusive, most aversive’ methods. And that smugness can be hard work for owners as well. Our sometimes saintly ethics can be a real aversive to owners.

I am proud to have found a workaround to those typical horrors such as kneeing dogs in the chest, using electric collars for recall, jerking on their lead to get a heel, or using bark collars.

I also know it takes a lot more time and it can be difficult to stick to. That’s something owners and novices need to know.

We need to prepare novices and owners for the frustrations of positive reinforcement. Those frustrations are often ours, not the dog’s. I’d be dishonest if I didn’t say that sometimes I let out a big “For Fuck’s Sake, Heston, that hare’s over a bastarding kilometre away. Chill your fucking beans.”

Aversives are our species-wide preference and I am not a saint when my dog is going mental about a hare in a field and I’m trying to finish the walk so I can get on with my actual job. Frustration is a big part in my own autoplay behaviours and preferences. Our own frustrations are something we need to share with our clients, as well. They need to expect to feel frustrated at times and to know that using aversives is our natural autoplay as a species. It is so easy to turn to them the first time our own lack of skill with reinforcement lets us down.

As Balsam and Bondy (1983) point out, there can be symmetrical undesirable consequences to positive reinforcement too. I’m not sold on ‘symmetrical’, more ‘parallel’ or ‘similar’. If you ask me, they are not symmetrical because the consequences or risks are not of the same intensity. They don’t do the same damage and they can be easily worked around or anticipated to avoid.

Most of these unexpected effects are rarely shared with owners, or rarely discussed, as if the only undesirable consequence of training with food is that a dog may gain some weight unless you’re careful. In fact, I’d hazard a guess that most trainers know the fallout of positives from their own experience, but there’s little literature out there that actually makes it clear. Ironically, if there were, the “balanced” trainers would probably be hot on pointing out the ‘drawbacks’ of positives, rather than resorting to ‘cookie pusher’ insults, saying our dogs will get fat, or that we aren’t using ‘the full quadrant’ as if we’re somehow deficient and inadequate.

It behooves those who use positive methods of reinforcement to understand each of those parallel consequences, to be prepared for them, to know when and how to use R+ properly instead of using it as a remedy that anyone can use – R+ is not “Training for Dummies”, safe in the hands of non-experts.

What are the unintended effects of R+, then?

Where an undesirable consequence of aversive methods is anger and aggression, there are times when R+ trainers will have faced frustration, even anger and aggression, most notably when withholding a food or toy reinforcer or when they aren’t coming quickly enough.

In my experience, this is most likely to happen with ‘crossover’ dogs who are suddenly faced with the joys of reinforcers for the first time in their life.

This is what I call the ‘put the fucking lotion in the basket’ response after the scene the Silence of the Lambs where the serial killer Jame Gumb has repeatedly requested a behaviour from his would-be victim (in a scene that is coincidentally a perfect example of an escape/avoidance routine which hasn’t worked – the frustration of which is the handler, not the subject… another side-effect of behaviour mod we should all be conscious of – handler frustration!)

Of all the dogs I’ve worked with, I’ve had anger and frustration a couple of times. For me, I think it’s related to control, and has both times been with dogs who had issues with handling and coercion. This is why I think it’s more a problem for cross-over dogs. The moment they get the illusion of control (I do this… she gives me this…) there can be real issues regarding who has access to the reinforcers. “My treats. Why is that silly woman holding the bag? I could quite easily snatch it for myself.”

For dogs who have never known anything but R+, this isn’t an issue. Certainly for my own dogs, I’ve never seen anger or real frustration that they have had a reinforcer withheld either accidentally or on purpose, and I’ve never had a “just give me the fucking cookie” moment – but they have a clear understanding that their behaviour is operating on my giving the reinforcer.

I also understand that if I don’t get the behaviour, I’m asking too much.

Ken Ramirez on video not getting a walrus to open his mouth is a good example.

He asks for a simpler behaviour and the walrus obliges.

Then he goes back up and escalates through behaviours, asks again and gets a flawless open mouth.

Good trainers know this. Increase the rate of reinforcement, lower the complexity of the task. Get some reliable behaviour and then try the unreliable behaviour again.

Poor R+ trainers get stuck in the loop of asking for behaviours and coming unglued when they don’t get it. This can lead to frustration and anger from both handler and animal.

For me, this frustration and aggression will come early in the process where a dog has not grasped the notion of control-within-control, where the task has been too difficult or where reinforcers have not been rapid enough. With crossover dogs, then, go easy and have a really, really high rate of reinforcement for simple behaviours and keep sessions really short. Be mindful that this is going to raise eyebrows with owners and critics alike. There’s this assumption that you are always going to need to do the same level of reinforcement that frightens the unfamiliar. Working with one dog at the beginning, I burned through a pouch of chicken in about three minutes. You can see why that might raise eyebrows among people who don’t understand R+. But it’s a good way to avoid anger or control problems with dogs who have only known punishment. Watch Ken Ramirez in action and you’ll realise short bursts, the right level of Goldilocks’ challenge (not too easy, not too hard) and rapid reinforcement avoid these emotions on the whole. See what I mean about how we shouldn’t suggest R+ is the easy option?

One factor I also noticed in the two dogs who were aggressive with reinforcers was that they had little relationship with me. If you think that frustration could be an issue with an unfamiliar dog you are training (often with big, male, unruly, mannerless dogs who have been ruled with an iron fist previously) build up a conditioned emotional response to you first and then start doing other things afterwards. Channel your inner Ken Ramirez: reward frequently, back up if it’s too challenging, keep it in small bursts. You may also find that having a two or three hour neutral period with no food or toys with new dogs helps you get to know each other better. I do a couple of walks with no reinforcers from me.

When you work with animals with a history of aggression and punishment, don’t be surprised if you get a moment where the dog looks at you and you find yourself wondering if they are weighing up whether to mug you with menaces or do your silly little game. I had a moment with Lidy where I’d just started reinforcement training – basics like ‘sit’ and ‘four paws on the floor’ where she turned around and looked at me – I swear she looked like she was weighing up the pros and cons of stealing my treat pouch and running off into the forest in a blaze of glory. By using reinforcers frequently – copiously, even – for stupidly small behaviours, every dog I’ve worked with has come to realise that they can quite literally have their cake and eat it in return for our silly little games. But there can be moments where you are praying to the Gods of Dogs that an unruly, powerful dog who has a well-defined history of using threat to get what they want doesn’t decide that mugging with menaces is a better option. It is a behaviour they have honed already. Cooperation has never been a concept they understand. Lidy and Hagrid were like that at the beginning. For dogs who have always been coerced, cooperation is a taught skill. I think this is where some less polished R+ will fail.

Make it easy and build in ‘no mugging’ training as you do with puppies fairly early on and you avoid the accidental P- of positive reinforcement. Susan Garrett’s “It’s Yer Choice” is still viable with unruly dogs who have had a lifetime of aversives. Not something I would do with a dog with a history of using aggression to get what they want though, not until we’ve got a working relationship in order to avoid those ‘put the fucking lotion in the basket’ moments.

Over-arousal is another side-effect for some dogs around reinforcers: shall I tell you about the day I started using food with one dog and it was obviously too highly arousing as I got humped every time there was a lull in action? You have to be mindful that for some dogs, whatever you are using as a reinforcer is just too much of a distraction and it interferes with the learning. Working with a hungry Hagrid on his bite inhibition is like running the gauntlet. I absolutely have to back up to some fairly undesirable treats that are the size of my fist and taste like flour. I also do it after he’s been fed and when he’s had a good meal.

These issues come back to poor impulse control and frustration tolerance. But you have to be mindful that you may have to put those things to one side for a while with some adult dogs who come to you with a history. For me, that’s one reason people might stop using R+ with a dog who has not been used to reinforcers coming from humans.

So unexpected emotional issues can be one side-effect of R+ training that you need to prepare yourself for. Always have a contingency plan and always know that whenever you start working with food or toys with a dog who has never had R+ training, you may need to address a few emotional issues first. It’s not to say you can’t use them or you will never be able to, but just you might need a workaround whilst you find the right level of reinforcer – reinforcing but not distracting and whilst you find a natural rhythm with the dog – frequent enough not to be frustrating. Be mindful of what you do with dogs with RG issues too.

A second issue relates to proximity. If aversive methods lead to animals who don’t want to be near you, R+ can lead to animals who want to be near you all the time. You might not think this an issue until you are working with a dog who is hyperattached or who suffers separation anxiety. But it’s true of a range of ‘normal’ dogs too.

Once, my little cocker spaniel heeled in perfect position for 5km. She didn’t drop a step. Why? I had a pig’s ear in my pocket from something unconnected. That promise of a pig’s ear meant that the maximum distance she was from me was about 50cm at most. The pig’s ear had become a stimulus, not a reinforcer, and whilst that might seem like a dream dog, that’s the mindless automatons R+ training is sometimes criticised for making. R+ means dogs want to be near you and want your attention. Live in a multi-dog home and YOU can become a highly-valued resource to guard… or a source of wars. I’m not suggesting R+ is responsible for velcro dogs or inappropriate attention seeking, but if aversives send dogs from you, reinforcers can bring dogs in. If you think this is an issue, remote training devices like remote treat dispensers can help, as well as the strategies specialists in separation anxiety use to occupy a dog when teaching them to cope with absence or distance. I read tonight the criticism that R+ dogs can be constantly waiting for training, and in a horrible ‘R+ gone wrong’ world, you can see how you could create a monster. Easy to get around by building in ‘release’ cues and encouraging interaction with the environment. I start all my sessions with “Ready?” which is my cue that we are working. But I guess there are a few trainers out there whose dogs are constantly hanging around in the hopes of a little learning. Those reinforcers and that learning can be addictive. R+ plays on the same reward pathways as other addictive behaviours, and then the moniker of ‘cookie pushing’ is not far from the mark. This is another accidental by-product of R+ training that you might see in novice dogs or in novice practitioners.

Another drawback comes in the form of increased behaviour. If aversives diminish behaviours, reinforcers can not only increase the target behaviour, but other behaviours too. Dogs who are clicker-savvy offer lots of behaviour. It can be a bit “how’s this? What about now? I’m going to try this… now this? What do you think of this?” To me, this is not a problem. I don’t mind my dogs doing more. I don’t mind them offering behaviours either. I’ve been doing leg weaves and stationing between my legs with Lidy and she is fairly delighted with her behaviour so she does it often. You don’t want to get caught out by an excited mali-mutt doing leg weaves when you don’t expect it.

Get the behaviour-offering mixed-up and cue-less and you can also make yourself a problem. I had this with Hagrid. This is a mali x GSD who has arousal issues. He is 40kg of jumping, mouthy, hard-mouthed dog. I like him to walk in front of me where I can see him (he has a thing about coming behind and herding, so I don’t ever let him walk behind me so we can avoid the ankle and calf nipping) but Hagrid and I had a dysfunctional relationship for a while. I’m going to call it reverse heeling. I wanted him not to heel. He would move in to heel position, so I would throw him a biscuit to get him to move away and in front. He increased the moving in as I increased the biscuit throwing. There’s that ‘dog gets closer to handler/reinforcer’ side-effect too. Only the cue became him moving in, the behaviour was me throwing the biscuit… and we had a horrible circle. I got out of it by withholding the treat throwing for a millisecond at first, then building up his ‘heel’ and teaching it like a proper heel on the 300-peck method (he walks to heel for one, I reward…. for two, I reward…. up to three hundred paces per reward) and gradually spacing out the reinforcers to 6 minute intervals… so he has now a perfect heel and it looks like I taught him rather than the other way around. What this is is a cautionary tale. Rewarding offered behaviour which has not been cued can lead to a rapid increase in offering behaviours and dogs who seem to be “testing” you. What you need is a dog who understands ‘no cue, no reinforcer’ so they don’t keep offering and offering. A dog who doesn’t understand that behaviour must be cued is a dog who is a nightmare to teach hand-targeting to, as they are constantly butting your hand to see if it works. So clients need to have a modicum of understanding that the dog can’t just go around ‘behaving’ and being reinforced – it must be cued. At this point, I’m reminded of when Heston was a young pup and he would bring me toys constantly during my lessons. I became a dab hand at pulling a tug whilst teaching A level English Literature. It got manageable when I realised I had to ask him to play and ignored his attempts otherwise, but how many of us explain to clients that they must initiate the behaviour, not the dog? Therefore, another important potential fallout to be mindful of.

The final parallel side-effect of R+ training is in generalisation and specificity. This tends to be the one drawback most trainers are aware of and talk about – how clients must practise behaviours everywhere beyond the classroom, otherwise the dog risks never generalising the behaviour. The need to generalise is well-accepted as a potential sticking point for R+ training, so I won’t labour the point. Likewise with the need to fade out reinforcers… where punishment and aversives may stop being effective when their application comes to an end, so behaviours that have been subject to reinforcement may also fade if you don’t practise and reinforce them from time to time. They stop being habits without at least occasional reinforcement.

When we are mindful that reinforcers may have emotional fallout, that they may cause an animal to decrease distance to the source of reinforcement, that reinforcement – like punishment – can get in the way of learning, that it can lead to a lot of increased behaviours as well as offered behaviours, that animals may fail to generalise unless we teach them to, and that unless we keep practising from time to time, behaviour may fade or become extinguished, we are better prepared to help our clients navigate these issues. Although the fallout of aversives is enough to keep me from using them, the fallout of reinforcers just makes me a little more careful in how I use them myself and in how I explain them to clients.

In response to Balsam and Bondy, I think it is fair to say that there is not perhaps a symmetry but an equal and opposite reaction. Punishments and aversives create negative emotions. On the whole reinforcement creates positive emotions (which is why I could only find you two examples of dogs at the beginning of R+ who had some negative fallout). Punishment increases distance; reinforcement decreases distance. Punishment decreases behaviours offered; reinforcement increases behaviours offered. Both can have transient effects if the consequences are discontinued, and both may face issues with generalising and specificity.

To finish, whilst I am mindful there will be some “balanced” trainers who will seize on the notion of flaws in the great panacea of R+, it is timely to remind people that, in general, organisms seek out reinforcement and avoid punishers/aversives. For that reason, reinforcement is what an organism chooses. The ethics of that should not be overlooked. Although I may be very much in control of the rates of reinforcement, the schedules of reinforcement, what the reinforcement is… reinforcement is how an organism chooses for themselves. Thus, it is the only method for those who want a partnership with their animal, who want to work with their animal and although there are occasionally unintended effects of positive reinforcement, they are engineering and management issues rather than ethical ones. Most are tied up with getting the reinforcement just right. If you get the reinforcement rules, rate and schedule right, those accidental effects cease altogether. That cannot be said of aversive training. The “side-effects” of reinforcement can be eradicated by becoming better at R+ training – they are beginners’ errors (whether the animal or the trainer is a beginner!) Eradicating the fallout of aversives is a much more complex procedure and not always possible.

It is vital that we talk about these unintended effects that positive reinforcement can have. This way, we can avoid them altogether. Maybe with a more critical eye to balance out our enthusiasm, we can ensure our clients don’t make these errors and are therefore less likely to default to aversives. We can also ensure novice R+ practitioners get the best out of their experience, meaning they are more likely to use it again in the future. R+ is not the easy option. The fallout is far less frequent and much less dramatic than aversive training, but if we don’t think about those parallel consequences, we do our clients and their dogs a disservice.

It’s not often I write a post (or two!) for trainers alone – most of my site is guidance for owners of dogs who they have adopted. Often it’s a place where I can send people who ring me who need something for those minor issues: humping, jumping, house-training and so on… things where there are well-established protocols to change behaviour quickly by changing the environment or tackling a single, isolated behaviour.

There’s a reason I have these posts for minor issues. Kathy Sdao talks of doing triage over the phone. I think a lot of dog trainers and behaviourists must do this. You do intake interviews, sure, and I have a 13-page intake assessment form, but those first phone calls go like this:

“Hi Emma…. I’ve been given your number by so-and-so. My dog’s pulling on the lead. What can I do?”

or:

“Hi Emma… I’ve just picked up a new dog and he’s humping my own dog. I’ve tried X, Y and Z but he’s still doing it and my dog is getting stressed.”

or:

“Hi Emma… I’ve just got a new dog and she’s peeing in the house. Can you help?”

Lots of my phone calls go like that. And that’s fine. These are the people you can help in an hour consultation as long as they implement your advice. Cheap and easy hand-holding with tried-and-trusted techniques.

And I don’t worry about hidden blind spots or things clients aren’t considering.

I find people usually start with the most severe problem in a couple of seconds of the call, and although there will be an enormous amount of back-story to fill in which may take an hour or so, even for these ‘simple’ cases, it’s not something that needs an enormous skill to address in non-aversive ways.

Then you get some that go like this:

“Hi Emma… you’re my last resort. Our bouvier bernois has bitten my husband.”

or:

“Hi Emma… please help. We can’t cope any more. Our labrador is growling at our children.”

or:

“Emma… can you take my dog? Otherwise we’re going to have to have it euthanised. It’s fighting with our other dogs and I don’t know what to do.”

And increasingly, I have calls that go like this:

“I’ve got a dobie/shepherd/rott that we’ve been taking to club, but he’s become really unpredictable at bitework, getting more and more aggressive in general, and the club said we can’t take him any more.”

Those are the ones that currently take up a lot of my time. It’s not that there are more of them. It’s just that I’ve got a bit of a reputation as a Last-Chance Saloon following a dog I worked with. I did an assessment of a German Shepherd who’d been trained for “protection” work and who had become mean and uncooperative, unpredictably growly and the club had banned the dog from going anymore when it had attacked the club owner. These clubs are surprisingly popular in France. Malinois and GSDs are the top two ranking breeds in terms of popularity, and a surprising number of those end up at ‘cynophile’ clubs. Whilst I don’t have any problem with obedience heeling, finding strangers to bark at and tracking scents, putting bitework in there needs to be done with care, and it’s invariably this bit that goes wrong. Trainers in France require no qualification and these clubs are renowned for high levels of confrontational training. I’m making no comment and no judgement about how these dogs are trained and the club these dogs are coming from is pretty easy-going in terms of what’s acceptable training-wise. I don’t even really know exactly how the dog in question had been trained, and to a large degree, it didn’t matter. I immediately asked the owners to do a full blood and x-ray/ultrasound work-up under sedation at the vet hospital in Bordeaux. They did so and it revealed quite significant hip dysplasia as well as problems with his spleen. Medication, surgery and 3500€ later, he was almost a different dog. Sure, he needed a bit of counter-conditioning and a complete change in pastimes – no more long walks and definitely no pretend “protection” work – but his owners really did treasure him. Well, kind of. Didn’t stop them sending him out to stud, even with his hip score, but that’s a different post altogether. Anyway, after that, every few weeks, I’d get a call from owners who’d been kicked out of club. The second is a malinois that I’m still working with. The third was a GSD in such poor physical health that the owners wouldn’t foot the bill and put him to sleep. To be honest, when the vet showed us the x-rays, I was surprised the poor dog was still walking and it was the kindest thing altogether. Subsequently, I’m the girl who puts an “off” on a bite – if it’s possible with the dog at all – and I’ve got a pretty good life programme set up for those with whom it is not possible. That programme of lifetime management does start to rebuild the bonds, re-establish trust and make bites less likely, but I’m not one to say it works until the dog is dead of old age and there hasn’t been a bite between them coming to me and them dying. Sadly, a lot of what I advise is managing the environment to keep the dog – and the humans around it – safe. But if you love your dog and euthanasia is unthinkable, then I can help you create a sanctuary-style life for your dog that will minimise the risks. Most of the dogs I work with privately over the long-term have significant health issues that are contributing to aggression, or significant genetic factors. Just so you know where I’m coming from.

Add to that the other ‘quicker’ cases: over-aroused big dogs who are nipping and/or pulling, uneducated little dogs who guard beds and resources, dog-dog aggression, dog-human aggression, and most of my work is with canine emotional issues. By that I mean that they are either fearful or over-aroused. Many have learned to be aggressive as a very effective tool in their behaviour repertoire. All, and I mean all, have been subject to aversives – be they ‘mild’ like water sprays and spray collars, or more severe – from chokes (prongs are not really well-known in France, but choke collars are everywhere) to electric collars and physical manipulation, stare-downs, rolls, restraint or hitting/kicking. and these have not worked. That’s why they are with me. If these methods worked, they would not be calling me for help.

So, not only have the aversive methods failed, which is one potential hazard of punishers, but you get to see all the well-known behavioural ‘fallout’. These dogs come to me as the poster dogs for why it’ll be a cold day in hell before I use them. They are all I work with. My conversations go like this…

“So, what methods have you tried already to deal with this behaviour? [Insert aversive of choice] … Okay…. and what happened when you tried that?”

Now I’m pretty non-judgey. Plus generally speaking, my clients have no idea of the consequences of their actions or how their behaviours may have contributed to the situation. I might be cross at the trainer or the TV programme or the book they got the advice from, or the breeder, the neighbour or the friendly neighbourhood know-it-all, but my clients have dogs, not a long-term interest in reading scientific manuals and watching endless DVDs about dog behaviour. In my opinion, their ethics are severely out of whack, but I keep that to myself. I like to think that if someone had offered me that advice, I’d have gone, “yeah…. no thanks!” even if it had been the most effective thing on the planet, but I’ve been bonkers about animals since I was a nipper. Plus, I like my clients’ dogs and I want a chance to work with them. That’s not going to happen if I say, “Are you effing kidding me? You thought that forcing your dog to the floor and holding him there was going to work? What planet were you born on??! How about I try that on you?” etc. etc. etc.

But through the owners’ own admissions, they have tried some pretty hideous and gruesome training techniques – and those methods have failed.

Now I realise that kind of statement can attract the comments of trainers who use aversives who say that the owners must have been doing it wrong. I don’t know enough to know how you should punish animals for emotions, but I do know that there is fallout, even if you do it ‘right’. I don’t, by the way, think there is a right way of doing it, for the following reasons. Whether you are using punishment or escape/avoidance methods, the potential fallout is the same whether you do it ‘right’ or you make a hash of it.

The first risk of aversives in learning is that an emotional risk of anger and aggression, which then interferes with your behaviour modification.

Herron et al. (2009) documented the reactions of dogs to a range of aversives (direct and indirect aversives as Doctor Jim Ha calls them) including yelling, staring, water sprays and also those such as hitting or kicking. Some of these methods are almost a 50:50 for aggression as a consequence. Kick or hit a dog and 41% will respond with aggression. But some methods which you’d consider less intrusive, such as staring, also had a high rate of aggressive response. Growling at a dog is almost as likely to elicit aggression as kicking or hitting. Staring has a 1 in 3 chance of causing aggression.

That is one thing that ‘balanced’ trainers either don’t know, don’t understand or don’t explain to owners.

I picked up three dogs this year on my books who had escalated aggression in consequence of stare-downs. One of the dogs was up for euthanasia as a result of their new response, not as a result of the initial behaviour. That is aggression that is a direct result of an intervention – caused by the programme – not by any other environmental change.

That anger and aggression, by the way, may be to the handler, or to others in the environment. You might not see a rise in anger directed to you personally, but the dog can easily redirect. Redirected bites make up a good number of the bite cases I do… dogs who can’t get to a target and turn to the nearest available biteable thing. Often that is another dog in the household. Sometimes it can be a child. Anger and aggression are not the only emotional fallouts. Aversives run the risk of increased anxiety and fearfulness, so I see a number of dogs who self-harm through tail biting or chasing, or flank/foot licking or chewing.

The second risk of fallout is a reduction in all levels of behaviour.

Punish a dog or use escape/avoidance methods and find yourself getting less behaviour in general.

I’m reminded of an A-level class with a teacher who would constantly tell us off, so we gave up responding. We stopped offering responses, our homework was minimal but on time, we arrived on time and we left on time. Being late and not handing in homework were also punishable, otherwise you can bet your bottom dollar we’d have stopped offering those as well. We engaged as little as we could.

Now some trainers (and many owners) like dogs that behave less. They do less. A shut-down dog is one step up from an automaton, and that is a dream dog for some people. Not so good if you want to show them, do classes with them or enjoy them. Plus, you find that there is a reduction in behaviours around the primary handler/punisher and a spate of those canine behaviours out of sight. Barking, digging, chewing and roaming are all things the dog does out of sight, as all they have learned is not to do the behaviour around the person dishing out the aversive. Dogs are dogs. That behaviour will more than likely pop out somewhere. And do you want it where you can’t see it (and you can’t intervene or address it) or where you can see it and do something about it?

The third risk of fallout relates to escape and avoidance.

If a dog connects something unpleasant with you, then you’ll notice they want to be around you less. Sometimes that’s inadvertent. Last week was really cold here. I called Heston back and he stood on a frozen nugget of mud that got stuck in his paw. He came back and I picked it out. But the next time I called him, I noticed the latency of the behaviour was less strong. Somehow me calling him and that nugget of mud had become attached, and I noticed hesitance in his recall even though those things were not connected. Avoidance of aversives is well known. It is the principle upon which electric fences work. Businesses use it to create items that make dogs avoid places because of the consequence. This is why someone who uses aversives with a dog may find their dog reluctant to approach. That sucks for recall, even with the best and most well-trained dogs, and I know a good few owners who can’t let their dog off-lead at all, not because the dog goes off exploring the environment, but because the dog leads them a merry dance to get them to come near them at all. Taking dogs to the vet in the shelter is a good example of this. We have to sometimes use quick and dirty muzzling with closed muzzles, and the fallout of this is enormous. The dog wants nothing but to be away from handlers and vets after that.

This leads us to the final risk: generalisation and specificity.

Fear is a great teacher.

Here’s an example. I got in a car accident the other year. A car came towards me and cut right across me so I clipped it. Now I generalise like mad. I’m nervous around cars coming in the other direction. I avoid the place the accident happened. I hate the type of car. I’m on high-alert when I see cars of that colour. I won’t drive into that town on market day. I hold my breath every time I see the spot it happened. I also generalise about things that didn’t happen: I’m nervous around people pulling out of junctions or who look like they won’t stop. My general anxiety when driving is much higher than it was, even in situations that have nothing in common, like driving on motorways.

Animals can do the same and generalise that fear, connecting unconnected things and finding causation in accidental correlations. Our primitive brains handle startle responses inappropriately well and our “mum-mind” or “parent-mind” kicks in, our mind’s airbags, helping us to avoid everything our tiny lizard brains think is vaguely connected with that moment. It puts those airbags on a hair trigger and they keep popping out inappropriately and far, far too often. When something happens again in the same or related circumstances, our mum-minds go into overdrive.

This generalisation is why I don’t want to use products or procedures that build on fear in a dog. Most of the dogs I’m working with are already afraid of one thing or another. Why would I want to put that emotion into a dog when all my work is about taking it out?

You simply can’t predict what dogs will generalise or connect to the situation.

Likewise, you can’t know if they will actually generalise at all. With a reactive dog, I’m very cautious around places in which we’ve run up to unexpected things, but both the dog and I are blithely indifferent in other situations and I don’t exercise the degree of caution that I should. So aversives can cause generalisation and they can cause a lack of generalisation. This is the bugbear of all trainers: what we teach in one place doesn’t always equate learning in another. Why stuff works in a class and seems to have been forgotten in the home.

And worse still, we don’t get to pick whether a dog gets really general about what caused the emotion, or whether they fail to generalise at all. I’d like Heston very much to generalise that all people are nothing to be afraid of, and I seem to spend most of my life teaching him that this one is fine, that one is fine… they’re all fine. But he doesn’t generalise the good stuff. He isn’t actually very specific about the bad stuff either. I wish it was ONE set of circumstances that set him off, but I’m buggered if I know which people he’ll like and which he won’t. Like Lidy my shelter project dog at the weekend. Aggressive responses with raised hackles to one woman. Non-aggressive responses and submissive behaviours to another. I could say “it’s a hat thing”, but they were both wearing hats. I could say it’s a height thing, but both were the same height as me. I am absolutely buggered if I can see a pattern in who she’ll have raised hackles with and who she won’t. So when you use fear (P+) as a method of teaching, you don’t get to choose if the dog will a) start generalising wildly about non-connected things that were present at the time, or b) never generalise and only ever ‘obey’ in a very particular set of circumstances. That’s too unreliable an approach for me.

Another side-effect we don’t often talk about and isn’t always part of the ‘canon’ on what constitutes fallout from aversive methods is that of transfer behaviour. Say your dog is seeking attention, so it paws you. You punish it for pawing you. That basic desire hasn’t gone away, even if the behaviour has, and so it may be expressed in other ways. You might then find the dog jumping up. So you punish jumping up. Now the dog can’t get your attention through pawing you or jumping. One day it humps a cushion. You stop what you are doing and give it what it wants. Even if that is a good shouting at, your dog’s basic desire for your attention has been satisfied and your dog has learned a good way to get you behaving in a particular way. Emotions and functions will out. Whatever your dog feels like it needs to do, why the behaviour started in the first place, has not been addressed, and that emotion or need will find a way, somehow. Thus you end up like ‘whack-a-mole’ trying to nip a range of behaviours in the bud one after another.

These are all side-effects, consequences and fall out that trainers should be aware of when using punishment, aversives or coercion. Certainly, they are every single reason I have for not using aversives in my work. Not least that the dogs I work with have already had aversive behavioural modification which has been ineffective and has left the owner with a dog who has one or more of the behaviours outlined above. It hasn’t got rid of the problem and in fact, behaviour has deteriorated with one or more of the undesirable consequences outlined above. Generally speaking, this is the majority of my caseload. Behaviour was significantly unwanted to warrant an intervention. The intervention has caused problems of its own and the original behaviour has increased in intensity, duration or frequency.

Thus, the negative fallout of aversive, punitive or coercive methods is well established – certainly ‘force-free’ groups and forums are liberal in sharing the fallout of non R+ training methods. I believe that these side-effects should be shared with all owners who choose to go down the route of applying pressure, applying an aversive stimulus or using escape/avoidance training with their dog. You’ve got to know what the side-effects might be.

But then, I also believe that it shouldn’t take science to make it patently obvious why something is ethically and morally heinous. Animals are emotional beings. Punish an animal for fear or for hyperarousal and you will see that not only is it ethically unacceptable given many less aversive approaches available for every single situation, but it is also a pointless exercise. Punishing an emotion won’t stop the emotion. It will only increase it or suppress it. Not consequences I want.

But is positive reinforcement the panacea it is claimed to be, and is it entirely without fallout? Many trainers would have you believe that you can’t go wrong with positive reinforcement  – it’s safe in the hands of non-experts – and yet if you ask me, it is as alarming to consider R+ to be without drawbacks as it is to consider P+ or R- to be without drawbacks.

And if we don’t consider those drawbacks, all we are doing is sending our clients with their dogs right to the doorstep of “balanced” trainers, saying “well, I tried that positive reinforcement thing… and that didn’t work!”

If it’s frustrating for P+/R- trainers to use their methods without explaining the fallout, it’s no good entering into R+ training without being mindful of the fallout of that too. If we aren’t as clued up on the side effects of our methods as we should be, it will not only cost us clients who will then walk right over to ‘the dark side’ but it could also have a negative impact on their dogs and their behaviour.

In the next post, I’ll explore the potential fallout or side-effects of positive reinforcement, along with some ways to address those possible issues.