Form Your Own Opinion… A page reader sent me this link (thank you Andrew) and I listened to it and thought that my page readers might benefit from hearing my comments on this…… wgnradio/2014/11/16/electronic-shock-collars-are-they-good-or-bad-for-your-pet/ This is a story where a particular residents group are offering dog owners free use of anti-bark collars to address their dog’s nuisance barking problems. It is also worth noting that the group that are offering these anti-bark collars to residents meet with the residents first and assess the suitability of the Anti-bark collars for that particular dogs situation. This is done to ensure that the Anti-bark collars are only used on dogs that will respond well to them. When the link opens for you move the slider up to the 5:00 minute mark as that is where the advertisements and promos finish and the real content starts. Please listen to the conversation and then read my comments below… 5:00 Start 7:55 “It gives the dog a shock correction afterwards.” This statement is totally incorrect. Anti-bark collars give the correction DURING the barking, not after it. Whilst the difference may seem slight to the layman, most people with a knowledge of canine behavioral psychology know that an aversive delivered after an event is often not linked to the event… 8:55 “Taking the dog inside is the first step in this management problem.” If you decide to just manage a problem behavior rather than resolve it, then the above statement may seem correct to you…. But if you are a trainer of an average skill level then that statement will seem quite silly…. Why would you want to just manage a behavior problem when you can solve it? The difference between Veterinary Behaviorists and a good dog trainer is that Vet Behaviorist wants to just ‘manage’ a behavior and trainers want to ‘solve’ it. Managing a behavior takes a lot of time requiring repeated consultations with your Vet Behaviorist and probably the inclusion of some behavior altering drug therapy as well….. and all of this costing you a medical specialists rate….. or you can engage the services of a canine professional who will resolve the behavior issue, usually within the time frame of a single visit and for a fraction of the cost of a Veterinary Behaviorist. You do the math :) 9:40 “Leaving a dog out in a backyard, and some dogs are stolen as well, is just not a good idea.” I had to listen to this twice to be sure of what I was hearing…….. this lady is advocating keeping dogs inside your house as opposed to out in the back yard…. Seriously??? Oh well I guess those behaviorists want to generate more work for themselves and confining a dog inside a house is a damned good way to do that. I appreciate that within the American culture it is more acceptable to keep your dogs inside the house, and in relation to small or toy breeds I do not have a problem with this…. But the concept of keeping a full sized dog such as a German Shepherd, Rotweiller or Pitbul inside a house just leaves me gobsmacked. Whilst I do not have an issue with domesticating the dog, in fact I am damned grateful that we have done it…. but expecting the dog to live indoors with us is to deny it the right to be a dog and do what dogs do. We are already shrinking the dog’s territory when we place it in our yards, but to then shrink its environment 4 times more and expect it to be able to be a dog living within an enclosed box really is selfish stupidity on our part. 10:47 “It’s so important for people to understand that punishment does nothing other than cause more fear, and punishment suppresses behavior, it doesn’t change behavior it just buries it.” Well admittedly this statement was not from the Vet Behaviourist but just from a member of the public who called in to the radio show, so it is not surprising that this statement has more errors in it than what the behaviourist has said….. but sadly the behaviourist agrees with her :( The phrase “punishment does nothing other than cause more fear” is a layman’s way of saying ‘aversives cause avoidance’ which is EXACTLY what we DO want to achieve when we are aiming to extinguish an unwanted behavior in a dog…. we want the dog to show avoidance of that behavior….. to choose not to do it again. When the dog avoids the behavior that is paired with the punishment (aversive) then it also avoids the fear associated with doing that behavior…….. so the avoidance cause by pairing the aversive with the unwanted behavior enables the dog to avoid the fear by avoiding the behavior…… which is a win/win situation for both us and the dog. To say that “it (punishment) doesn’t change behavior it just buries it” is both a direct contradiction and a lack of understanding of canine behavior modification. If pairing an unwanted behavior with an aversive causes the dog to ‘bury’ (suppress) the unwanted behavior then we are able to promote an alternate and acceptable behavior and that ‘buried’ behavior will stay buried. With both the host of this radio show Steve Dale, the Veterinary Behaviorist Sara Bennett and the caller all appeared to be terrified of actually extinguishing an unwanted behavior and only being able to ‘manage’ it by bringing the dog inside. It kind of makes me suspect that they may all be just positive-only trainers at heart. It was interesting to hear the loss of momentum in their argument when their final caller stated that she had a major problem with excessive barking and that an anti-barking collar solved it for her and that she was happy with the outcome and that now she doesn’t have any problems. The only comeback the Vet Behaviorist could move forward with was that there are other methods that are more ‘humane’. Now let me translate this for you…. ‘more humane’ equals a lot slower and a lot less efficient and less effective….. but the dog will feel a lot better about it while you have to do a lot more work over a greater period of time. The behaviourists ideology and behavior protocols are in accordance with Steven Lindsay’s LIMA (Least Intrusive Minimally Aversive) training protocol that basically says that when we have a choice of training approaches to employ that we should always use the technique that is least intrusive to the animal and is minimally aversive, ie to use no more force on the animal than is absolutely necessary. The problem occurs when you employ the least aversive method on the dog it is quite often the least effective and whilst it may initially appear to solve the problem, because a minimalist approach was applied (minimally aversive) the behavior change does not last long and quickly collapses under duress, distraction or when re-stimulated by the original trigger event. So while ethically this would appear ideal, practically it is far from an ideal solution. I operate my training protocols under another later set of ethical protocols again from Steven Lindsay but this is not the LIMA protocol but rather LIEBI (Least Intrusive Effective Behavior Intervention) where it is up to the experience and understanding of the trainer to identify the method that intersects the least intrusive approach with the most effective approach.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 06:09:43 +0000
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