How Balanced Dog Training Fails

Michael Baugh CDBC CPDT-KSA

Balanced trainers pride themselves on using a mix of positive reinforcement dog training and, when needed, punishment. They might use food and praise or even clicker training. They might also use choke collars, prong collars, or even shock collars. At first glance it sounds pretty good. Let’s use all the tools and techniques available to us. And if the dog does well with positive reinforcement we don’t have to resort to the nasty stuff. Fair enough. Right?

Honestly, I can see the appeal. But I see the trap doors and trip wires, too.

The truth is all dogs do well with positive reinforcement training. We know this because it’s the natural way all organisms learn. No one invented this. We discovered it. It’s a law of nature like gravity. You don’t have to believe in gravity. It just is. You don’t have to believe in positive reinforcement either. It simply is and it doesn’t fail (just like nothing ever falls up). Balanced trainers rest on some binary thinking that seems intuitive. If the dog fails, then we resort to pain or intimidation (the euphamism they often use is “pressure.”) But, here’s the flaw in their logic.  Our dogs don’t fail. Nature has already hard-wired them to learn this way. So, where’s the failure? Why do we so easily reach for the leash correction or the shock collar?

Here’s what I’ve learned. Positive reinforcement is easy for our dogs. It’s hard for us. Don’t misunderstand. The ideas are straightforward and clear. And even the mechanics of doing positive reinforcement dog training are fairly easy. Some of us just have a hard time wrapping our brains around it. We humans are bombarded with punishment and the threat of punishment all day everyday. I can understand how we could see punishment-based dog training as a viable option (or perhaps the only option). Even dog trainers dedicated to teaching with positive reinforcement struggle. We learn and re-learn year-after-year. We need reminding because positive reinforcement doesn’t come naturally to some of us. We know it works. Yes. We can see it working, of course. And yet, we remain blind. A balanced trainer is simply this: a positive reinforcement trainer who lost sight.

Positive reinforcement training teaches our dogs what to do. It’s proactive. Come. Sit. Lie down. Stay. Punishment is reactive. And here’s how else balanced dog training fails. Punishment doesn’t really teach our dog what we think it does. It doesn’t teach him what not-to-do. When the scale tumbles toward using pain and intimidation in training we are tumbling with it into some treacherous territory. Here’s what we’ve learned over the past century about what punishment really teaches.

Escape. We and our dogs retreat from things that are painful or scary. This is as natural as positive reinforcement, but it’s much less precise. A dog escaping a shock by running back to his human can masquerade as good training. But, we are teaching the dog more about what he’s running from than what he’s running to. Don’t count on any lasting dog-human bonding here. There’s also the very real danger of the punishment getting hitched up with other triggers in the environment. Think of ripples in a pond. The shock is scary. Run. But what else is associated with the shock? A bird? A cracking twig? That guy over there? Lot’s of things can start to spook our dog now. Anything can predict a shock and lead to a terrified bolting dog.  Plus, we are sliding dangerously close to Escape’s more troubling cousin.

Avoidance. Sometimes we just shut down. We’re done. I’ve met dogs trained on shock collar fence systems who won’t leave their back porch. I’ve met dogs for whom walks are so punishing they are afraid to go out at all. I’ve met dogs who hide and cower and won’t do anything. Of course, this common effect of punishment doesn’t look like training at all. The dogs get slapped with labels like “stubborn” or even “dominant” when in fact they are just terrified of what could be. It’s sad but not as dangerous as what could come next.

Counter Coercion. That’s the technical term for pushing back. We do it. Some dogs do it. There are plenty of studies now that link painful training with owner-directed aggression. I suspect that the ripple effect of punishment is what leads to dogs lashing out at less culpable targets as well. Violence begets violence. It’s a mnemonic we know well but too often forget when we think of our dogs. And too many dogs end up paying for our forgetfulness with their lives.

I sometimes wonder what life would be like if we constantly supported and encouraged each other’s best behavior choices. And then in the next thought, what if we could start doing that even just a little. What if, instead of crashing into a punishing day, we tilted into the nature of our better angels. What if we could tip the scale all the way to a lighter, more joyful, more natural kind of being – with our dogs and with each other?  What if our lives, in this one beautiful way, were delightfully out of balance?

Michael Baugh teaches dog training in Houston TX. He specializes in fearful and aggressive dog training.

How to Choose a Dog Trainer – The Most Important Factor

Michael Baugh CDBC CPDT-KSA

We love our dogs. We want nothing but the best for them. And, when their behavior is troubling or even dangerous we want competent professional help.

The trouble is dog training is an unregulated profession. Lots of professions require state licenses, including exterminators, hair and nail professionals, plumbers and electricians, and veterinarians and vet techs (of course). Dog training is not on the list in any U.S. state.

We are self-regulated. Anyone can call himself or herself a dog trainer. So, what should you look for when choosing a trainer or dog behavior consultant? What’s the most important factor?

Education is certainly very important. Competent dog behavior professionals invest a lot of time and money into learning their profession. The very best engage in hours of continuing education every year. They focus on learning Applied Behavior Analysis, best practices for teaching humans and dogs, as well as dog handling skills.

Experience is great, so long as the trainer is practicing sound techniques backed by reliable behavior science. Anyone can do things wrong for a long time. Quality experience requires learning the profession well and putting it into practice effectively year after year.

Credentialing is essential. Excellent dog trainers and dog behavior consultants look to their peers for standards of excellence and accountably. This is different than winning ribbons at dog shows. While that may prove a trainer can effectively teach a number of skills to his own dog, it does not speak to how he teaches his human clients with a variety of dog behavior issues. Professional certification, however, requires that the dog behavior professional prove his or her breadth and depth of knowledge and skills. The two most honored certifications are the Certified Professional Dog Trainer (CPDT) and the Certified Dog Behavior Consultant (CDBC). Each is rigorous in its requirements to achieve and maintain.

Education, experience and credentials are all important. But, none is as key as this last factor when choosing a dog trainer or dog behavior consultant.

Transparency. Your trainer or behavior consultant should be able to answer your questions before you hire him or her. How will you treat my dog if he does something wrong? Challenge him or her to be specific. What will you do when my dog does something correctly? What training tools do you use? And yes, what is your education, experience, and what credentials have you earned? Look for clarity in the answers, offered freely and without hesitation. Qualified dog behavior professionals should have web sites rich with information and modest in their promises. Sure, a bit of marking is fine. But, we all know what it means if something sounds too good to be true. Look for authenticity. Behavior consultants and trainers who value transparency will post videos of their work. They will seek and share feedback from clients. They will write blogs about their cases; publish their knowledge; put themselves out there to see.

Excellent trainers and behavior consultants celebrate positive reinforcement learning. They are eager to teach it to you. Beware the trainer who wants to take your dog away and won’t disclose what happens behind their closed doors. Remember transparency. The dog trainer you are looking for has nothing to hide.

Michael Baugh teaches dog training in Houston TX. He specializes in fearful and aggressive dog training.

Related video: The World Dog Trainers’ Transparency Challenge

 

 

Inside Michael’s Dogs – How We Survived 2020

Michael Baugh, Houston dog trainer
My last in-home client in March 2020

Michael Baugh CDBC CPDT-KSA

I saw my last in-person client on March 18th 2020. A week later my partner, Tim, and I had a hard talk about how long we could keep Michael’s Dogs afloat. Could we keep it afloat, period? Were we built to survive a pandemic? After all, in-home dog training and behavior consulting is close-contact work. It’s house-to-house work, in the living room work, passing treats and handing off the leash work. In other words, it’s potentially dangerous work.

My Dad was an entrepreneur. He was a child of the depression who reinvented himself more times than I can count – from hard times to good times to the best of times. He passed away in 2014. And, in those early days of April 2020 I missed him desperately. I pulled from memories and stories he shared through the years looking for inspiration – for advice – for answers. What would Dad do?

Victoria Thibodeaux had joined me in the group in January. It was just the two of us then. We talked every day that Spring. I told her that my dad had taught me that when the business is slow you work on the business. So, Victoria and I worked on the business and we worked hard – trying out ideas, taking on projects, pushing the company hard into the waves that

Jack Baugh 1924-2014

threatened to sink us. We launched online classes, including Puppy Socialization in a Time of Social Distancing and a prep course for clients working with aggressive dogs. And we started using Zoom for Live Video Consultations.

All the while, there was a voice in my heart (perhaps it was Dad) leading us back again and again to our core values. Our mission is to help people who are suffering with their dogs. The world was changing, yes. But, the mission wasn’t.

KTRH News Story: Dog Training As a Small Business – Reimagined

I’d done online dog behavior consolations before. Victoria and I literally transitioned to doing them exclusively overnight. The first one was March 19th 2020. As of this writing we’ve done over a thousand Zoom consultations and resolved scores of complicated cases start-to-finish. We’ve had clients in Houston, of course. But, our service area quickly became all of Southeast Texas and beyond. We’ve helped families with their dogs in Austin, San Antonio, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Seattle, Rural Missouri, Suburban Washington D.C., and more.

Of course, we weren’t the only ones. This was an industry-wide shift. The International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants (IAABC) launched a campaign to provide behavior consultants with useful resources for making the transition to online work. The Association of Professional Dog Trainers (APDT) and The Pet Professional Guild (PPG) followed with similar efforts.

I won’t say that the pandemic has been a  good thing for any of us. As the months added up, so too did the friends, clients, and colleagues who fell ill. My niece, an intensive care nurse, got a bad case of Covid and spent a night in the hospital herself (she’s recovered). Another dear friend in the dog community has permanent complications. We’ve all suffered in some way, even if only from the isolation and the drudgery of it. But I will say this: our mission to help people and their dogs has seen us through even the hardest days.

Victoria Thibodeaux and Freddie. I haven’t seen them since March.

Some folks were hesitant about doing the training online at first. But, we’ve learned that the benefits of online dog training are actually greater than we’d imagined. We’ve been able to help more people and dogs than I ever thought possible (twice as many clients in 2020 than we helped the year before). To meet that need we added two additional certified dog behavior professionals, Erin Richardson CPDT-KA and Jeannie Seuffert CDBC, as well as an assistant, Everett Lowenstein. Hard as this year has been, it has also been the most thrilling and fulfilling year of my professional life.

Do we miss seeing our clients in person? Yes, of course. We especially miss that close contact with dogs (even the ones who appear they want to hurt us at first – haha). And, yes, we will return to that work as soon as we can. Our plan is to start seeing clients in their homes again as soon as each of us is vaccinated. But we won’t just go back to “business as usual.” This pandemic has taught us too much for that. We will continue to offer live video consulting online even after the pandemic. As I sometimes like to say, it’s not an either-or proposition. It’s a yes-and one. The benefit for clients of online dog behavior consulting is just too great to abandon it. We’ll be able to help people far beyond our boundaries, as we are now. And we’ll be able to help our local clients and their dogs more efficiently with a combination of online and in-person options.

We have learned so much these past few months. Personally, I have learned how important human connections really are both personally and professionally. I think we can all relate to that. There was a real fear that physical distancing and isolation would break those connections. But, here’s the most beautiful thing I’ve learned. Humans always find a way. We’ve been able to connect in new ways. We’ve forged new relationships. We have held close the connections that mattered most to us. And, we’ve grown even closer to the people we love.

Because that’s what we do. Turn into the storm, head high above the water, towards the rising sun and the new year ahead.

 

Michael Baugh teaches dog training in Houston, TX. He specializes in aggressive dog training.