Punishment, Dominance and Milan...

To all of you enlightened dog trainers and owners out there who wouldn't dream of using punishment as your chief training tool, and who wouldn't even consider throwing your dog against a wall or pinning it to the floor, I implore you to sign this petition from COAPE, the Centre of Applied Pet Ethology, against these methods as there is no place for them in modern dog training:
'Say NO! To punitive training, dog whispering and outdated behaviour therapy' petition.

To those of you who still consider that there is a place in training for these methods, and that dogs are trying to 'dominate' us all the time and that we have to be 'pack leaders' by enforcing our 'dominance' over our dogs, I ask you to please open your eyes to the possibility that not everything you see on TV is right, and that there is a whole wealth of research that proves that these methods are ineffective, outdated, and really should have passed out of use by now (and probably would have if it hadn't been down to a TV company looking to make a quick buck off of some charismatic unknown man with no scientific background in training or behaviour).

Lets start with the 'Pack Theory' idea that seems to be the underlying basis for the methods used by most of these 'dog whisperers'. Their stance is that dogs form packs with 'alpha leaders' and that our dogs are in a constant battle of wills with us to become the 'alpha' and that we therefore need to assert our 'dominance' over our dogs. This idea is all based on the commonly known 'fact' that wolves form packs with an alpha pair and that there are constant battles for dominance from within the pack. Well, I'm afraid to say that this has been proven wrong time and again by observations of wild wolf groups. The world-renowned wolf expert David L Mech has spent decades observing wild wolves and maintains that they do not form large 'packs', but instead run in family groups consisting of the parents and offspring. The parents could be considered 'pack leaders' in the same way that any parent figure could be considered the 'leader' of a family, but they do not need to assert their 'dominance' over their offspring. Appeasement signals are used to avoid conflict and violent incidences are rare. Battles for supremacy do not occur as the juvenile offspring will move off to form their own family groups when they reach the appropriate age.

The other problem with applying this 'pack theory' to our dogs is that, even if you assumed for the minute that it applied to wolves (which it doesn't), our dogs are not wolves. So applying the same idea does not seem logical. Even more illogical is the idea that, even if our dogs are forming 'packs' with rigid hierarchies within our households (which they're not), we would be part of that 'pack' - why?! They're dogs, we're humans, we're two completely separate species, and our dogs know that. They don't think we're wolves in disguise. So trying to apply the same hierarchy 'logic' and insert ourselves into it is ridiculous. And what would being 'dominant' over us achieve for our dogs?! We're the ones with the opposable thumbs, we control the can opener and stock the freezer. We control their access to all resources. We are 'leaders' of a sort by dint that we do control all the resources - we don't need to 'dominate' our dogs to be in charge. I don't dominate my dogs, and they don't try to dominate me. We work together in a partnership - my dogs do as I've asked because I have made it worth their while, they comply without fear or 'defiance'. I would never want my dogs to have to fear me - what sort of a relationship is that?! The ideas of 'dominance' and 'submission' are very human ideas.

The most worrying thing about the whole 'dominance' concept is that its founder, Konrad Lorenz, developed it from Nazi ideology. He didn't ever study any wild wolves or real dogs, he just decided that that's how things were, and later 'experts' adopted it and interpreted what they saw to make it fit into this model. Their observations were angled to try to make them fit into this preconceived idea that they had. Hardly very scientific. There is no scientific research to back up this theory, but plenty of research to discredit it.

Secondly, the use of 'punishment' to alter behaviour. A huge amount of money and research has gone into the areas of learning, reinforcement and punishment, and a huge amount is known now about how best animals learn and how to most effectively alter behaviour. And punishment never comes out as the method of choice. Yet all of the methods used by a certain 'dog whisperer' involve punishment - rarely does he use praise or positive reinforcement. He doesn't look at trying to alter an undesirable behaviour by teaching an alternative acceptable behaviour - instead he waits for the dog to 'commit the crime' and then punishes it. Punishment rarely teaches our dogs what we want them to learn. For punishment to be effective it has to happen during or immediately after the act (and I mean 'immediately', like within seconds, not several minutes later), and we are rarely quick enough. Mis-timed punishment does not punish the intended behaviour, but will instead be punishing something else, often something we didn't intend to punish (e.g. dog wees on carpet, we call dog to us and then punish, we have just successfully punished the recall and not the weeing on the carpet). This is just one of the many unwanted side-effects that punishment can have. It can destroy relationships between people and dogs. But most importantly, punishment may teach the dog that we don't want him to do something - BUT IT TEACHES HIM ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT WHAT WE WOULD LIKE HIM TO DO INSTEAD! We have given him no information about what the correct alternative response was, and so have not taught him what to do in that situation in the future. Punishment at best suppresses a behaviour for a short time, but does nothing to teach a longer term 'correct' behaviour, and the 'problem' behaviour will likely reoccur in the future.

And how anyone who has watched this clip can in any way think this is acceptable, or who can find a way to justify it, really isn't human. And certainly has no understanding of dog training or learning theory. But then neither does the man holding the end of the leash.


For those who would like to read a little more on these subjects, try these links:

The COAPE offical Statement about their petition
Dr Yin's article on 'The Dominance Controversy and Cesar Milan
The American Veterinary Society for Animal Behaviour make a stand
The myth of pack theory by American training expert Kathy Sdao
K9 Obedience's stance on Cesar Milan
An article on why punishment doesn't work
'The Eight Ways of Changing Behaviour' by Karen Pryor