Greatcompanionkennels En 29 267 Mobile 4 Great Companion Kennels KOMO-TV interviews me about Cesar Millan

I’ll make an attempt to explain the differences between the methods and add my own, personal, commentary on the subject. I’m doing do as a professional dog trainer who has used methods similar to Cesar’s since the early 1980s (well before I knew he existed). I was also very much in the dog training realm when the “new and improved” methods were first introduced to dog owners. I actually learned about the methods before they were applied to dogs. My first job out of college put me in contact with the head dolphin trainer at Brookfield Zoo near Chicago. I visited with the dolphins on several occasions and he explained the methods that they used for their aquatic mammal training program (which become “click treat” when applied to dogs).

I don’t want to speak for Cesar, so I won’t refer to “Cesar’s method”. I don’t want to speak for the lady on “It’s me or the dog”, especially since her methods are not “ALL positive” or “only click-treat”, but she certainly has a prevailing strategy that falls into the “new age” methodologies. So, I will refer to the two methods as “correction for compliance” or “incentive + ignore”. I know that neither titles are perfect for describing the methods, but I needed to separate them the best that I could.

The two basic premises of the “Incentive + Ignore” method are “offer incentives” for desired behaviors and “ignore bad behavior” and it will go away. The folks who use these methods use “scientific research” to make you think that they have some new-found data to support their dog training strategies. I will simply say that most of those folks are not scientist themselves, and their ability to interpret data is, at times, a bit off kilter, in my opinion. I say that as a scientist, myself; a person who has a degree in science and worked in the field (designing and statistically interpreting experiments in a highly reviewed field) for over twenty years. But, I also speak as a dog expert who does not rely on science to train dogs because training dogs is more an art as it is a science. The “new age” folks will criticize Cesar because he isn’t a scientist and doesn’t have a degree. I’m here to say, as a scientist, that you don’t need a degree to train dogs. You need skills (both innate and learned through experience). Some people are just good at training dogs in the same way that some people are just very good at playing the piano. There is an innate aptitude that enhances learned skills that are acquired through experience. Cesar obviously has an innate ability, which could also be called a gift.

Incentives work for any animal. However, the method leaves the decision about whether the behavior will be presented wholly to the animal (and how much value the incentive has over the animal at any given time). So, it ignores one of the most profound and intriguing elements of domestic dog – the fact that it is not just *any* species. It is a species designed by man, in man’s image, with a keen genetic-based desire to subordinate to a human authority figure – which is derived from their wolf ancestor’s genetic based need to subordinate to a wolf authority figure.

An incentive method clearly works to create behaviors that are especially challenging to “describe” to the animal. Wild species, like dolphins, bears and parrots that have no genetic code that supports subordination to a leader, are often best or only served with this method. Incentive based training is also very useful to teach dogs to perform complex and non-compliance / non-respect based tasks, such as climbing a ladder, jumping through a hoop, dancing on two legs.

The second aspect of the “Incentive + Ignore” method is the “ignore” part. This is the idea that if there is no incentive for the behavior it will go away. I don’t happen to think that all behaviors that are not rewarded completely extinguish because I believe “to experiment is to be intelligent and adaptive”. Sometimes, it is just worth trying a behavior again to see what happens, even if nothing has happened for a very long time. I see hummingbirds coming to an empty feeder months after I last filled it – “just incase” the status has changed. So, to rely on complete extinction of an unwanted behavior through the “zero reward” theory is to wait a very long time, at least for some behaviors.

The “ignore” method suggests that if the dog jumps up on you, so long as you wholly ignore it, the dog will find no value in the behavior and will stop. That has been shown in scientific experiments where the scientists can actually create a situation of “NO REWARD”. However, it’s very challenging for most dog owners to completely ignore the pain of the nails digging into their flesh repeatedly, or watching as their child is bullied or trampled. For most dog owners, it is impossible to ask guests to “just ignore” the dog when he jumps on you. So, there is very often a response that the dog can perceive – either from the person on whom he is jumping or the owner who is standing by wondering why her dog trainer would instruct her to let the dog damage friends and family members. The woman on “It’s Me Or The Dog” show often wears a calf-length rain coat when she arrives in the home. She turns her back to the jumping dog and instead of having the pooch jump on her front, he jumps on her back, apparently because she can be less damaged that way and the coat offers a bit of protection. She even attempted to employ the “ignore” method when a Siberian Husky began to hump her leg to no avail, so they took the dog to a veterinarian and got it an “injection” that would reduce his *Censored Word* urges, rather than simply address the behavior the way another dog would – by correcting the dog!

Along with the ignore aspect of the method, the “new age” trainers often offer the dog a treat when he STOPS jumping up. Where is the logic in that? The dog is being rewarded for “no behavior” or the “absence” of bad behavior. Huh? The dog jumps on someone. The dog is ignored. The dog looses interest. The dog gets off the person and then he hears, “Good Doggie!” and is given a treat for an absence of behavior. On “It’s Me Or The Dog”, I have seen this approach used several times. That’s just bizarre to me.

All that I can imagine is that the dog is offered a reward for focusing on a person with food, instead of any other behavior (including bad behavior like jumping). In my opinion, there has to be an actual behavior, not the absence of behavior that the dog pairs with the incentive. So, essentially, as long as the incentive maintains value in the dog’s mind, the dog simply becomes highly focused on the person with the food. When the dog looses interest in the food, he is just as likely to go and jump on a person, again, and that is EXACTLY what happens on the TV show.

To combat the failure in the “reward for the absence of bad behavior”, the woman asks the dog’s owner to get out some sauce pan lids and bang them when the dog begins to jump up. It seems to me that this attempt at a solution is a hybrid method – an effort at correcting the dog (using the sound as an aversive). The problem is the sound should be the “warning” signal that precedes the actual correction. But, there’s never an actual correction given. Since the sound alone doesn’t truly correct the dog, but is rather an annoyance, the dog soon learns to ignore that sound, as well. A correction truly CORRECTS the behavior. Since the sauce pan lids only interrupted the dog briefly, I put that in the “nagging” category. The “new age” dog training folks have a serious issue with correcting a dog, which to me, is the root cause of their failure.

In my opinion, the “Incentive + Ignore” method overlooks the fact that ALL animal species are hardwired to receive vital information about survival through pairing warning signals to negative consequences. A frog that chooses to eat a yellow and black striped wasp gets a bad sting. His nervous system is designed to learn through experience that a yellow-black striped patterned insect can result in pain. If he lives through the initial offense, he will avoid future stings based on that memory. Any animal can learn through this method. Social species, like dogs and humans, have created a sophisticated language of warning signals that precede the actual negative consequences to maintain social order while avoiding the need to physically harm one another.

In my opinion, the “Incentive + Ignore” method also fails to understand Domestic Dog as a very unique species. In fact, there is no other species as unique as Dog on the planet. Dog is not a dolphin. Dog was designed to live with humans and accept our societal rules, so long as we compromise and use some dog language to communicate our expectations.

The “correction for compliance” method is common in animal species that are social. Non-social species tend to react in fight or flight when they encounter a stressful situation. Social species look to the leadership of their society for cues on how to behave when encountering a challenging situation. The idea that all animal species have nervous systems that can pair a warning signal with a negative consequence is used in societies to provide rules about boundaries for behaviors that are required to maintain a health society. Social species create warning signals (dogs use grimaces, growls, body posture) as warning signals. The negative consequence is only required if the offending dog doesn’t heed the warning of a higher ranking individual or the leader. If a physical correction is required to back-up a warning, then it must be above the threshold to change the offending dog’s behavior.

In my opinion, compliance behaviors are best explained to a dog using the “warn-first then apply a negative consequence” method. That is because dogs are hard-wired to be social, to understand the importance of societal norms and to respect and have reverence for a leader. Dogs do not restrain each other and they do not use incentives to move individuals towards socially acceptable behavior. The correction for compliance method puts a dog into self-restraint mode, meaning the dog is in control of his own behavior based on his understanding of the consequences for offensive behavior. The most serious shortcoming in execution of this method is to fail to correct effectively – and thereby nag the dog, rather than truly correct it.

Ideally, a good dog trainer uses a combination of the methods – separating the processes based on the task. If the task is a “trick”, then the incentive method works very well. Tricks are behaviors that, if the dog fails to comply, are not serous, dangerous offenses. After the dog has been coached through the use of food or other lures to understand the expectations, one can put higher demands on the performance, if it is desired by the trainer. In that case, the dog would be asked to perform the task and if he didn’t, he might receive a correction for non-compliance. That sift from incentive based to compliance based is very effective when it is done correctly. I think that the “new age” trainers fail to realize this important jump from one method to the other, once the dog understands the expectations.

If the task is compliance / respect based, there is no need for incentives. I do not need to give incentives to get a dog to stop jumping up on people, pulling me, mouthing/nipping/biting or staying when told. The dog needs to know, in no uncertain terms, that the behavior is disrespectful and the trainer, as the pack leader, needs to provide canine-friendly feedback to that effect. Canine-friendly, in my opinion, uses methods that dogs apply to each other to set boundaries and limits. Dogs correct each other with bites and snaps only if a warning signal is not honored. So, the human needs to give a warning signal (usually a sound or a word) and then pair that with the consequence if the dog doesn’t back down and respect the boundary.