Why we need "no" in our toolbox

The other day I experienced the worst plane trip of my life. I was seated in front of Damien the Hellspawn who screamed non-stop for two full hours. Was Damien the Hellspawn a wee little baby unable to clear his ears? No. Damien the Hellspawn was a child whose parents had no tools to tell him to shut the hell up!

They were desperate (the parents) to shut this little hellion up, I could tell because they kept attempting to negotiate with him, "do you want a cracker?", "Do you want to sit with mommy?" to which Damien, in between Hell-shrieks would gasp out the word, "No".

These parents had no tools. They had been told that to tell their little Hellspawn "no", or to enforce the "no" with something more than references of future losses (they actually threatened to not take him on vacation anymore! Vacation! What need or understanding has a 4 year old of vacation?!?). They were trapped in a parenting hell created to minimized negative reinforcement in child-rearing. I, of course, would have hauled the child into the bathroom and threatened him with physical harm, which may be one of the reasons I do not have children.

This got me to thinking about what we do to our dogs when we take away our tools for negative reinforcement.  These parents may have deeply desired euthanizing, or at minimum, dumping at the nearest shelter their Hellspawn, but luckily for Damien there is parental attachment, and barring that, laws, to prevent them from simply dumping him and getting a better child. No such safety net exists for our dogs.

I am not going to tell anyone that the way that they choose to train their dog is wrong (unless they're flat-out unfair and abusive), and I know that there are people capable of training creatures like Damien the Hellspawn without the use of violence whether implied or real. Good for them, the world is no doubt a better place for the lessons they can teach us all.

However, the shaming of people who do not adhere to the positive-only crowd is a problem and it is something that needs to be exorcised from training discussions as being unproductive and dangerous. Positive-only sounds wonderful. It sounds happy and fluffy and friendly. Who doesn't want to be happy and fluffy and friendly with their dogs? After all, aren't our dogs our companions?

I love my dogs, they are wonderful members of my family, and much of their training is positive; not due to any philosophical adherence, but because dogs instinctively want to please and it's easy. I am no dog trainer, but I have a deeply rooted understanding of animal psychology and cause and effect from years of training horses and working in veterinary hospitals. I can tell you with absolute authority that your dog will only listen to you for as long as there is something in it for them. If you want to test that sentence out try calling your dog off a squirrel sometime. I'm sure that there are excellent positive-only folks who can call a high drive dog off a rabbit, but I can't, nor can most people.

Most people, by the way, are the people who own dogs and give up dogs to shelters and who get sucked into fuzzy sounding ideas like positive-only. These are the people who are hearing that telling your dog "no!"  is tantamount to animal abuse, and that you should never ever use physical force on a dog, and you should never use anything but a flat collar on a dog, and you should never, never, NEVER!!!

And so they never, because they were told they should never, but they're not dog trainers, they're just people, and their dog isn't easy, and their timing isn't good, and one thing leads to another and the dog ends up at the shelter; the people get a new puppy, and the whole sad episode repeats. The good news, of course, is that their dog was trained using positive reinforcement only. yay!!

Well, I do. My dogs know "no!" and if they put their teeth on me when I'm pulling a sticker out of their paw they get a little thump on the nose with my fingers. If they are down at the chicken coop and begin acting like barbarians they are told to go home, and that is reinforced with hand waving and thrown dirt if necessary. There are positive-only folks who would paint these actions as dog abuse, and that is where I have a real issue.

You want to try training your dogs a different way? Be my guest. I came out of the equine world where no two trainers ever had the same solutions to a problem. If you're smart about that, you find out that there are different solutions and as long as they are all fair and respectful of the horse, then good on you! Keep trying until you get it right, was my mantra. I rode a lot of different horses, and what worked on one didn't work on another. Every time I spoke with another trainer I listened for their solutions and I gave myself more tools.

Tools solve problems. No two animals are the same. No one ever told me that I could only use half my tools; that I had to accomplish the same tasks with one hand behind my back. That is what we're doing, not to trainers, who will do what they want regardless of public opinion, but to everyday pet owners.  That's unfair.

We need to provide pet owners with more, not fewer, tools, to help them retain relationships with their dogs. We need to allow pet owners to know that they have options in dog training and that those options are different, not abuse. We need to stop taking tools away from people and instead provide people with lots of different tools that are all fair to their dogs, and fair to the owners. Because, while positive-only is fair to dogs; in the hands of a lot of every day people it is not fair to them, and these people end up with dysfunctional dogs who cannot move to the next apartment with them, or don't like the new baby, or one of a thousand different excuses to "we just didn't get along."

If you can train your dog using positive reinforcement only, I commend you, but don't pretend that you have all the answers, because you can't. None of us does.

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