Like statistics, science can either be a helpful tool in the right setting, or a tool of manipulation. Scientists and veterinarians are not God and are not ordained with skills beyond their training set by divine intervention. Some veterinarians are occasionally wrong in their diagnosis. Like a veterinarian that "diagnosed" a client's dog with "rage syndrome". Rage syndrome is not the result of predictable circumstances, but is the result of a seizure like disorder which may have a trigger (light ET) such as epilepsy. The "scientific" diagnosis was to put this dog down, because behavior is not affected by age or discomfort either, according to their now FIRED veterinarian..
So they found a trainer. I suggested that in addition to training, after observing their dog, they find another vet. Teeth infection, ear infection, and bladder infection had made Hannah decreasingly patient with her aging sister (they had lived together since puppies until their then 8 years of age). Also Kate had known hip problems. Hannah used to jump on Kate to play, and this had become painful to Kate in old age. Normally bomb proof Kate would snark at her sister, and the more "dominant" dog who had no training, Hannah sought to teach her a lesson.
Three weeks later the girls went home. Six months later with frequent contact and assignments, the girls were harmonious in the house again and the owners sent pictures with the girls out, wine in the owners hands, guests there, and smiles all around. It's been three years now, and the girls and family are living happily ever after.
Science is used as some fancy term, as if we are talking rocket science here. The meanings of facial expressions in dogs and body language is, of course useful to the trainer. You can major in the minors though, if you don't learn to take the dog into account as a whole of what they are telling you. This may be skewed if they are a different breed, worked in a different purpose, or were not socialized around other dogs. These signals can become confusing if you use this as your total understanding of behavior, which is why it's somewhat frustrating that the "academics" out there are not necessarily the best and brightest minds in dog training. In other words, they don't necessarily do anything all that worth while with the actual dogs and training. However, they think they should talk on it, rather than stick to their specialty or admit that perhaps they are out of their element when talking about the real living thing that is in front of them, and is not a theory. It would be rare to find one where you can bring a dog to work with, they are either not there in attendance or provided for you.
Science also takes credit for positive training. Positive training is both a part of "traditional training" and "balanced training". Motivation has also always been a part. The big "gift" of science has been "clicker" training. The traditional clicker was "good boy". There has been no "new aged" and "enlightened" modifications in training, only stealing, re labeling, branding, and marketing for trainers who at first sought only to differentiate themselves from the rest of the market. This has later become a very ugly trend that is now pushing not only the ban of equipment, the ban of breeds, the euthanasia of dogs with very easily fixed behavior problems, and the push for training to now only be "prescribed" by phds. In other words; veterinarians, biologists, or behaviorists only will be able to tell you how to train your dog.
So they found a trainer. I suggested that in addition to training, after observing their dog, they find another vet. Teeth infection, ear infection, and bladder infection had made Hannah decreasingly patient with her aging sister (they had lived together since puppies until their then 8 years of age). Also Kate had known hip problems. Hannah used to jump on Kate to play, and this had become painful to Kate in old age. Normally bomb proof Kate would snark at her sister, and the more "dominant" dog who had no training, Hannah sought to teach her a lesson.
Three weeks later the girls went home. Six months later with frequent contact and assignments, the girls were harmonious in the house again and the owners sent pictures with the girls out, wine in the owners hands, guests there, and smiles all around. It's been three years now, and the girls and family are living happily ever after.
Science is used as some fancy term, as if we are talking rocket science here. The meanings of facial expressions in dogs and body language is, of course useful to the trainer. You can major in the minors though, if you don't learn to take the dog into account as a whole of what they are telling you. This may be skewed if they are a different breed, worked in a different purpose, or were not socialized around other dogs. These signals can become confusing if you use this as your total understanding of behavior, which is why it's somewhat frustrating that the "academics" out there are not necessarily the best and brightest minds in dog training. In other words, they don't necessarily do anything all that worth while with the actual dogs and training. However, they think they should talk on it, rather than stick to their specialty or admit that perhaps they are out of their element when talking about the real living thing that is in front of them, and is not a theory. It would be rare to find one where you can bring a dog to work with, they are either not there in attendance or provided for you.
Science also takes credit for positive training. Positive training is both a part of "traditional training" and "balanced training". Motivation has also always been a part. The big "gift" of science has been "clicker" training. The traditional clicker was "good boy". There has been no "new aged" and "enlightened" modifications in training, only stealing, re labeling, branding, and marketing for trainers who at first sought only to differentiate themselves from the rest of the market. This has later become a very ugly trend that is now pushing not only the ban of equipment, the ban of breeds, the euthanasia of dogs with very easily fixed behavior problems, and the push for training to now only be "prescribed" by phds. In other words; veterinarians, biologists, or behaviorists only will be able to tell you how to train your dog.
We could talk about Skinner vs Pavlov. Operant conditioning vs Classical conditioning dog training 101. It's not terribly complicated science as science goes. You can add something to increase behavior. You can withdraw something to increase behavior. You can add something to decrease behavior. You can withdraw something to decrease behavior. These are the basics of a training plan. 1) Positive Reinforcement 2) Negative Reinforcement 3) Positive Punishment and 4) Negative Punishment. Some trainers wish to train primarily or only (and this is a challenge) with Positive Reinforcement or one quadrant of learning. Which is fine, right up until the point that you need to debase others in order to justify that decision.
In the meantime, newbie trainers can get sucked into the void and drink the Koolaide early on for the cult like sect. Luckily, most people that e-mail me with questions on who to see and where to go for seminars, are already aware of what is out there. They also have limited funds to spend on their education. If they want to find the animal rights activists and purely positive politic dog trainer fanatics, they only need go as far as their computer. That is pretty easy to do. By the time they realize they are not seeing what they want to, results by any method, they start looking around and wondering where the trainers are that produce results. Well the answer is, unfortunately, most of them do not live in New England. They live in Maryland, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, and due to the cult like climate here, rarely bother to come up this way. Even the closed minded cult like trainers neither live around here or come here that often.
How did it get like this? Money. There is lots of money to be made if you are good at branding something. Petco and Petsmart has figured this out. All in one shopping includes pet food, toys, leashes, collars, e-collars (they sell but don't agree with???), metal training collars, veterinarian services, and grooming. Tufts veterinarian behaviorists have figured out ways to get trainers to refer to them, and not follow up on what happened because they "know better" and their is (sound of heavenly music) science involved. There are also drugs involved. Vets are so fed up with trying to explain to some that they have a perfectly normal dog, prescriptions are written out for problems such as crate training or separation anxiety or simply being a dog that is not being exercised enough. Some of these are worked on very "scientifically" by the use of fax only evaluation, rather than go through the necessity of actually seeing the dog or what is going on.
And how easy is it to brand "fun"? It's not that traditional training isn't or can't be positive and fun, it's that a fanatical group figured out how to pull language away to put themselves up as the "new age" authority, simply by playing with marketing. The trainers who were simply training dogs were not concerned THEN with this trend. However, it has morphed now into an all out attack against dogs basically.
Am I saying all positive trainers are evil or incredibly naive? No, but I am saying that I can spot nonsense when I read and see it from the sect of cult like fanatics. Like a trainer that says she respects traditional trainers, and then writes that she does positive reinforcement only because when "you know better you do better." (k-9solutionsdogtraininginc.blogspot.com) Or when Truly Dog Friendly claims not be an organization or one that bans tools, when all you have to do is see the list of members and the articles that they promote banning tools. That if you have a niche market or talent, you normally don't need to convince people to follow your way only be debasing other methods or trying to ban training tools. There are clicker trainers or rewards based trainers out there that do not have a need to do this. I will see them, and not the ones that align themselves with such fanatical groups as Truly Dog Friendly or the No Shock Collar Coalition (http://www.trulydogfriendly.com/blog/?page_id=2 scroll down).
In the meantime, newbie trainers can get sucked into the void and drink the Koolaide early on for the cult like sect. Luckily, most people that e-mail me with questions on who to see and where to go for seminars, are already aware of what is out there. They also have limited funds to spend on their education. If they want to find the animal rights activists and purely positive politic dog trainer fanatics, they only need go as far as their computer. That is pretty easy to do. By the time they realize they are not seeing what they want to, results by any method, they start looking around and wondering where the trainers are that produce results. Well the answer is, unfortunately, most of them do not live in New England. They live in Maryland, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, and due to the cult like climate here, rarely bother to come up this way. Even the closed minded cult like trainers neither live around here or come here that often.
How did it get like this? Money. There is lots of money to be made if you are good at branding something. Petco and Petsmart has figured this out. All in one shopping includes pet food, toys, leashes, collars, e-collars (they sell but don't agree with???), metal training collars, veterinarian services, and grooming. Tufts veterinarian behaviorists have figured out ways to get trainers to refer to them, and not follow up on what happened because they "know better" and their is (sound of heavenly music) science involved. There are also drugs involved. Vets are so fed up with trying to explain to some that they have a perfectly normal dog, prescriptions are written out for problems such as crate training or separation anxiety or simply being a dog that is not being exercised enough. Some of these are worked on very "scientifically" by the use of fax only evaluation, rather than go through the necessity of actually seeing the dog or what is going on.
And how easy is it to brand "fun"? It's not that traditional training isn't or can't be positive and fun, it's that a fanatical group figured out how to pull language away to put themselves up as the "new age" authority, simply by playing with marketing. The trainers who were simply training dogs were not concerned THEN with this trend. However, it has morphed now into an all out attack against dogs basically.
Am I saying all positive trainers are evil or incredibly naive? No, but I am saying that I can spot nonsense when I read and see it from the sect of cult like fanatics. Like a trainer that says she respects traditional trainers, and then writes that she does positive reinforcement only because when "you know better you do better." (k-9solutionsdogtraininginc.blogspot.com) Or when Truly Dog Friendly claims not be an organization or one that bans tools, when all you have to do is see the list of members and the articles that they promote banning tools. That if you have a niche market or talent, you normally don't need to convince people to follow your way only be debasing other methods or trying to ban training tools. There are clicker trainers or rewards based trainers out there that do not have a need to do this. I will see them, and not the ones that align themselves with such fanatical groups as Truly Dog Friendly or the No Shock Collar Coalition (http://www.trulydogfriendly.com/blog/?page_id=2 scroll down).
Professional organizations such as APDT, Association of Pet Dog Trainers, like the money and enthusiasm of the "fun" way to train as well. However, they don't so much like loosing results orientated dog trainers that may be using equipment the cult like sect would like to ban. Their "educational" contribution to this in the past has been to squelch all open communication about the election process, the tools in question, yet try to appease each side. This finally came to a head when Truly Dog Friendly organization (though they claim not to be) tried to seed their members through campaigning outside of APDT into the BOD. In the meantime, the training discussions in the APDT could only therefore be at the very basic levels of dog training and nothing else. IACP, International Association of Canine Professionals, had spun off from them previously to be open to all methods and members unless they were actively seeking to promote the banning of tools.
