The shadowy truth lurking behind claims of "positive reinforcement" training
The shadowy truth lurking behind claims of "positive reinforcement" training
& Two Important Screening Questions to ask your prospective trainer
Written by Brie Blakeman, CPDT-KA
March 29th, 2022
For wellness Wednesday we’re going to discuss Seven Red Flags to look out for when trying to choose a trainer, as well as TWO CRUCIAL screening questions you should ask any prospective trainer. There are a lot fancy sounding gadgets and training systems out there promoting quick fix “technology” boasted to be humane and positive. The appeal is that these systems often claim that they can change your dog’s behavior overnight, without hardly any work from you at all.
Self proclaimed “dog trainers” who have zero credentials, and promote the harmful use of dated training mythologies, regularly use science based training verbiage to appear more current than they actually are! In my mind, doing this is the equivalent of running a con, but in an unregulated industry there isn’t much anyone can do about this. For example, TV personality Cesar Millan, who has zero training credentials and no true education on animal behavior & welfare, claims that his newest product the Halo Collar uses “positive reinforcement”….
Directly on the Halo website (which I refuse to link to avoid sending SEO traffic their way) they claim…
“Through positive reinforcement and proven built-in training by Cesar, the collar safely secures your dog wherever you go - even in remote locations.”
If you go on to look at how the collar works you will see that hidden under the fancy though vague copy, this collar is a shock collar that pairs with your phone. All of it’s beeps, buzzes, and whistles are warnings that if your dog doesn’t do what you want it to do in that moment, they will get shocked. Is the collar effective at achieving the end result? Probably, yes! But is the collar achieving this through positive reinforcement? NOPE! Is this a humane and ethical training option for your dog? NOPE!
To be clear, Positive reinforcement is a scientific technology. It is as much of a law of learning theory as gravity is a law of physics. Just because someone is giving a dog treats, or clicking a clicker does NOT mean they are using positive reinforcement. Those are just the most commonly used tools to positively reinforce behavior.
In operant conditioning, positive reinforcement involves the addition of a reinforcing stimulus following a behavior that makes it more likely that the behavior will occur again in the future. When a favorable outcome, event, or reward occurs after an action, that particular response or behavior will be strengthened.
What this Halo collar does is use both Positive Punishment & Negative Reinforcement to stop or stun the animals behavior. The whistle stops the dog from running forward, because if they don’t they will get shocked. The shock only stops if they start moving towards their human. When the “reward” is the end of a negative outcome like this, it is known as Negative Reinforcement. With both these methods the teaching style is, “perform the behavior I want or something you find extremely painful, and unpleasant will happen.” It’s coercive and compulsive training.
Leveraging your dogs discomfort, fear, and vulnerability just so you can achieve a “quick fix” in behavior change is not only unethical, but for most dogs, comes with extreme behavior fallout, and long term trauma. The use of punishment focused training also frequently only works up front, and doesn’t last as the animal shuts down or even becomes desensitized to the pain. This is why you see many shock collar fans start to put shock collars on the groin of dogs. The dog has stopped responding to shocks on the neck (learned helplessness), so the only option left is to put it on it’s penis. This is because the dog hasn’t actually LEARNED anything. They don’t really know what you want them to do and they’re often frozen in fear at doing the WRONG thing too. Their only motivation to performing behaviors is to avoid something terrible. I don’t think that most people would find this style of training appealing if it wasn’t packaged nicely under a beautiful bow of savvy marketing & good copy writing.
The word Positive Reinforcement has unfortunately become a buzz word in the world of aversive training in a grand effort to appear up to date and current on human training practices. Aversive focused trainers arae desperate to not go out of business and in an unregulated industry where just anyone can call themselves a trainer, there isn’t anything we can do about this other than protect ourselves with knowledge. It is no longer safe to go to a trainers website, see the words “positive reinforcement” or “reward based training” and trust that they are educated in and using human training practices.
Here are 7 major red flags to look for when shopping for a trainer:
The use of any of these words…
Alpha, Dominance,
Pack/ Pack leader
Command instead of Cue
Talk of corrections.
OBEDIENCE. (unless it’s literally the sport competition obedience which has nothing to do with pet dog training)
Overuse of the world “tool” especially in conjunction with talk of correcting bad behavior.
Promise of instant results or guaranteed results
Any vague mention of eventually transitioning your dog to a set of “tools” to strengthen their “positive reinforcement” training.
Promoting “healthy hybrid of traditional and contemporary dog training” or “balanced training”
Strict rules and regulations about what you can and cannot do with your dog. General inflexibility or consideration of the human equation of the picture.
There isn’t one “tool” for every dog. Or “every dog learns differently”
Claiming that their trainers are “certified professionals” but without any of the following certifications listed
CPDT-KA, KPA, IAABC-ADT, CBCC-KA, CBDC are the only legit certifications someone can get.
If you don’t see these RUN (unless it is a trainer working towards their hours under the direct supervision of someone holding one or more of the above titles)
Two must ask screening questions to propose to any prospective trainer you may hire:
So that’s a lot of stuff to wade through! Sometimes just knowing the right questions to ask can save you a lot of time and cost. We recently had a new client ask us the following two screening questions and we thought they were SO BRILLIANT. We ended up posting our responses to their questions on our website because we thought they were so helpful and important for everyone to have access to.
The questions were:
What do Noble Woof Trainers do when a dog responds correctly to a request?
We use marker training to capture the correct response to the request. A marker is always followed with reinforcement that the dog desires. Most commonly we reinforce desired behaviors with treats, toys, praise and/or access to the environment. We focus on using an "errorless learning" pedagogy. This means that we strive to set the animal up to be "right" every step of the way. We believe that if we are doing our best, the dog does not have to make errors to learn what we want them to learn. This creates a dog who is confident in the classroom and LOVES it too.
What do Noble Woof Trainers do when a dog responds incorrectly to a request?
Though we aim for an errorless learning experience for the dog, often times us humans are ALSO learning, and mistakes are bound to happen. We don't think this is a big deal and we do not recommend punishing a dog in any way or form for making what we may perceive to be an error. We also don't believe in punishing or shaming our human learners when they make errors. Mistakes are just information about what we could do better to set our dogs and each other up to succeed.
We believe that when the animal responds incorrectly to a cue, the following things could be at play.
We increased the difficulty of the skill too soon
We increased distraction in the environment too soon/ asked for too challenging of a skill given the environmental distractions present
We lumped together to many "steps" in the learning process and the dog isn't actually clear on what is expected
The dog does not find the reward to be "reinforcing" aka "it's not worth it."
The dog is stressed, anxious or experiencing an underlying medical issues such as chronic pain
The dogs core needs aren't being met
So when a dog responds “incorrectly” we go back to the drawing board and assess what of the above items might be at play. What can we do to help them succeed next time? Approaching behavior this way allows us to be active participants in every aspect of our dogs learning journey, and also hold us accountable.
So, screen your trainers. If you don’t want your relationship with your dog to be that of captor and captive, then choose a trainer who trains humane and has the credentials to prove it.
This free blog took anywhere from 2-10 hours hours to write not including all the existing video and graphics. Graphics and video can take anywhere from 2-10 hours hours to create each. If you found this free content helpful, please consider leaving us a tip to keep programming like this coming!