Don’t get me wrong. I’m not being rude. I probably say No or Eh ! 20 times a day. Lol. But it’s easier than getting off my lazy but and directing him to something better or interacting directly. But I’ve done my time, I still am...so the occasional No from me or anyone isn’t a big deal, as long as you know the difference. I think also with a well bonded pet/owner the dog is reading your body more than listening to the words. But hand signals and body language is a whole different topic.
I've gone through all the peer-reviewed publications that I can find, including all those cited by Pippa and those articles cited in those papers. The two best that I can find 1) a paper about ecollars, where they authors monitor 2 groups of dogs being trained (with and without ecollars) for signs of problematic behaviour. They see problematic behaviour with the group that is ecollar trained and no problems with the control group. However, the control group is, in the words of the authors, is treated very roughly by the trainers. The second paper is a survey of dogs brought to a behaviourist. The dogs are split into two groups (those with and without past aggression towards their owners). Dogs with a past aggression, are found to occasionally act aggressively when verbally reprimanded. Those without past aggression are found not to when verbally reprimanded. That's all the actual literature that exists. That's it. A book generally does not count. What's nice about authoring a book instead of a peer reviewed paper, is that you can just say whatever you please. I know this, because I've written book chapters and lots of peer reviewed papers. I also review a lot of peer reviewed papers. Oh, please cite the research you refer to regarding 'escalation'. It makes no sense to me that this would be true.
You're mincing words here. She could also have said "it generally is never the road to escalating aversizes". Why didn't she say that? She chose her words carefully, as she did throughout the document. The conditional is used because there is no evidence to support the statement. Yet the goal of the statement is to bring the reader to the conclusion that the statement is valid. Like I said, its not her best document.
I have witnessed a handler who said no to his GSD over the course of a basic obedience class.. He got louder and louder but the dog continued to jump up and pull him. Before the class had finished the handler started to hit his dog with the lead using it as a whip. Admittedly, not a controlled experiment. But it is limited evidence for Pippa's statement that punishment can result in an escalation of increasing aversives. The reason for such is not hard to explain--the application of the aversive no failed to reduce the behaviour. And the dog became desensitised to the word. In frustration the handler resorted to a more severe aversive. I would conjecture that my example can be repeated by dog trainer after dog trainer. When I read Pippa's piece, the statement about aversives resonated with me. Observation with a widely known theoretical narrative sitting in the shadows meant, at least to me, that she was entitled to use a conditional statement. And entitled to frame the case in the fashion she chose.
Because there's so little high quality data in the dog world, you're often left with only anecdotal evidence. However, your example is confusing correlation with causation. Your 'trainer' didn't hit his dog because he said the word 'no'. A dog will growl and bite, but the dog doesn't bit BECAUSE he growled...that's why its not wise to punish a dog for growling, its the warning you get before the dog bites, not the cause of it. Pippa implies that saying 'no' will lead to an uncontrollable slippery slope to escalating punishment. Again, tens of millions of parents (of dogs and kids) say 'no' all the time with no accidental escalation. "no" is not a 'gateway word' to worse things. I have little kids, so I know how you teach a little kid to not hit other kids. You teach them to verbalize their feelings, instead of acting them out physically. We (humans) don't hit each other because we are able to express ourselves verbally by staying 'no', 'stop', or whatever. Making verbally negative statements does not lead to physically violence, its the CURE for it. Its how you empower little kids (and adults) to NOT use physical force when they are upset. If you tell the average dog owner on the street that they can't say 'no' or express a negative thought with their dog, then you actually take away the basic tool that humans (and only humans) have to avoid expressing themselves with physical actions. My guess is that if the average dog owner on the street suddenly could no longer yell out 'no' or 'bad dog' they would probably end up doing something physical instead. Physical punishment is proven to have short and long term negative effects on dogs, and you can visually see this effect on a dog in real time. Say 'no' to a dog has no proven negative effect, and indeed many published papers actively indicate that it doesn't. If there were papers showing that saying 'no' did have a negative effect on dogs, I would love to know about them, as I would then consider altering my approach. I'm open to whatever, but it needs to be supported by evidence and/or make sense.
Maybe @pippa@labforumHQ would like to say something about the article she wrote, herself.... Watch any dog training video you like which uses aversives and you too will see it. A dog is doing a sit stay with a choke chain on. The dog moves. The handler jerks the leash slightly. The dog moves again, the handler jerks the leash MORE - because the dog moved again. If the dog moves a third time, the leash jerk will be even GREATER. It is a known fact that aversives are escalated in this way by the vast majority of people who use them. A dog is eating trash out of a can. The owner says 'NO!' from their chair. The dog ignores the owner and continues to eat trash. The owner leaps up and scruffs the dog to drag them away from the can. It happens every day, everywhere you look. And the majority of these punishers are preceded by the word 'no'. Which is how the word itself comes to be a punisher. I've already referred you to Exel-erated Learning by Pamela Reid. P 119: "The dog owner uses a mild punisher at first and when that isn't effective, the level is gradually escalated over time. Each escalation produces a short-term suppression of the response and this reinforces the owner's behaviour to continue with the punishment." This is so likely to occur that Steven Lindsay (in one of the most popular seminal books on dog training which covers 3 volumes) has to warn against it and advise the use of a stronger punisher to begin with: https://books.google.je/books?id=zZcMxLKpM0UC&pg=PT469&lpg=PT469&dq=escalation+of+punisher+results+in+habituation+research&source=bl&ots=r2if-Ws8RR&sig=ACfU3U2JKzoC8r4G8pE5eGLvf0KSGiQLQQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwib6NLJxKLhAhUETBoKHdVWA1MQ6AEwAHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=escalation of punisher results in habituation research&f=false And here's another article about saying no: https://barksfromtheguild.com/2017/10/10/just-say-no-to-saying-no-2/ As for verbalising feelings: Dogs can't verbalise feelings or understand our own verbalisation of feelings. They are dogs. They don't speak English. They respond to previously trained verbal cues, which are just auditory sounds. Sounds are neutral unless they have been conditioned and trained. 'No' means nothing unless it is associated with an aversive. You could teach a dog that "no' means a treat is coming and it could function as a clicker, if you wanted to. The word 'no' only means anything because it is typically followed by punishment or an aversive. That is - an escalated punisher. As for the assumption that making verbal statements does not lead to physical violence, I will have to hugely disagree - gangs, street violence, and verbal 'disrespect' often and frequently escalates to physical violence in many sectors of society. Shouting at someone in road rage can result in someone walking over and punching you in the face. And so on, forevermore. Verbal violence often precedes physical violence. But all that is irrelevant anyway because dogs do not understand any language. They understand sounds as auditory cues. Relating to a dog as a person is behind many misunderstandings of canine behaviour. I'm pretty sure I'm not attempting to use the word no as a punisher, it's more a spontaneous outburst of disapproval/disgust/ disappointment depending on the situation The DOG decides what is a punisher, not the person. Whether something is a punishment is decided by the effect it has on the DOG'S behaviour. If you say 'no' and the dog stops what they are doing, then that 'no' was a punisher. If your dog leaps up at someone and you say NO, and the dog jumps off, then your 'NO' was a punisher. Whatever you wanted it to be, is irrelevant. Unless you want to be inadvertently punishing a dog, it's really best not to say it... Although I fully accept it can be difficult in the spur of the moment when taken by surprise!
Saying 'no' to a dog has no connection with a choke chain. Physical aversives have been shown to have a negative effect both physically and mentally on a dog, while saying 'no' has never been shown to have a negative effect on the health of a dog. Indeed, that same published data that shows that physical aversives have a negative effect strongly suggest that saying 'no' doesn't. That is the published data, the same data often cited on this forum. If there is some published data which shows otherwise, please cite it as I would be very interested to read it. The other literature you cite are merely blog posts or books, with no citations or published data to support them. It just their opinions. "As for verbalising feelings: Dogs can't verbalise feelings or understand our own verbalisation of feelings. They are dogs. They don't speak English. They respond to previously trained verbal cues, which are just auditory sounds. Sounds are neutral unless they have been conditioned and trained. 'No' means nothing unless it is associated with an aversive. You could teach a dog that "no' means a treat is coming and it could function as a clicker, if you wanted to. The word 'no' only means anything because it is typically followed by punishment or an aversive. That is - an escalated punisher." There's a lot to unpack in the above, and its a bit off topic, assuming the topic is the welfare of the dog. "As for the assumption that making verbal statements does not lead to physical violence, I will have to hugely disagree - gangs, street violence, and verbal 'disrespect' often and frequently escalates to physical violence in many sectors of society. Shouting at someone in road rage can result in someone walking over and punching you in the face. And so on, forevermore. Verbal violence often precedes physical violence. But all that is irrelevant anyway because dogs do not understand any language. They understand sounds as auditory cues. Relating to a dog as a person is behind many misunderstandings of canine behaviour." The above is completely incorrect on all kinds of levels. The idea that communication leads to violence and so should be avoided is just absurd...and I don't see what gang wars have to do with anything, sorry.
Really interesting discussion. In my defence I want to be clear than when I say 'no' it is in an exasperated/disappointed tone not that awful 'cross voice' tone. He clearly doesn't see it as a punishment because it is ineffective. It's ineffective because it's not associated with anything more aversive hence my original query- could I train him to do something when people say 'no'. I'm thinking back to a few situations where other people have done the whole 'cross voice' routine, trying to help me when Loki's behaviour was much worse. For examplee one friend ( who firmly believes even her ferrets can be trained to understand the word 'no') snapped a firm 'no' at him when he tried to take sticks off her she was gathering for kindling. It was utterly useless and I was hugely relieved that he did immediately respond when I said 'leave it'. I guess the solution has to be to continue to work on prevention ( I could easily have predicted how interested be in someone collecting sticks and distracted him) and to not worry so much about what other people think of me and my training. Sorry if I'm rambling... I'm kind of thinking aloud.
Not sure what that means? If peer-reviewed scientific studies don't support your claims, then you can't state that they do. That is the real world... "but when a mild punisher doesn't work, people move up the scale. PLENTY of research to support that." As stated by Jo Lauren...I would much like to read the published data supporting such a statement. Teachers across the world every day teach millions of children every day, and tell them no all the time, and never beat the kids. I don't see how there could be any actually data supporting such a statement. If you know of some, please share it. If there is plenty of research supporting this, then please share it. In the world I live in, no one committed to avoiding physical punishments is going to suddenly start physically punishing their dogs because they say 'no' now and then.
@alsbos There is a rule of law preventing teachers from physically abusing their charges. That used not be the case. But things have changed. Change in the case of humans' treatment of dogs and the rule of law has been very limited. Your continuing application of the argument that plenty of teachers say no but do not escalate to harsher punishment is therefore irrelevant. I don't claim that all teachers who did say no in the past resorted to harsher punishment. Manifestly some did. And legal measures had to be put in place to protect the children from the knaves. Let's stick to handlers and dogs. And here is a question and a modest plea. Why do you think some dog owners turn to harsher and harsher positive punishment? Put forward an explanation that offers some insight to something we have observed. Try to engage with the issue at hand rather than telling us what is wrong with our arguments.
Because they, a priori, never made a conscious decision not to escalate. People can believe whatever, the question is, is the statement made in the article supported by published research. If not, then no one should say that it is. There are many topics, that if a dog trainer tells me, I'm not going to request published literature about. For instance, if a trainer tells me how to clip a dogs nails, I'm not going to inquire about a scientific publication proving the value of their technique! But when you enter a world of statistics, behavioural sciences, animal health, and other topics with hard to quantify measures and high variances...in these cases you need to look at published studies. Hip dysplasia is a good example of a topic where you shouldn't be making statements unless they are directly supported by literature. Statements that ecollar use has long term negative consequences in a percentage of dogs, again requires a published paper. And of course, statements that saying 'no' to a dog is punishment, and such punishments lead to long term negative consequences for dogs, again, these are statement that require data and publications to support them.
Ruth, it just sounds like sometimes you are taken by surprise and respond like you would to a person - which probably everyone does, sometimes, even those of us who aspire not to(!). But there is a big difference between 1) deliberately and intentionally using the word 'no' in an attempt to get the dog not to do something, and 2) accidentally having a 'no' slip out of your mouth because your brain isn't engaged in dog-training mode when something unexpected happens. The latter, I think we all do sometimes and it's best to recognise it as non-ideal and work at trying not to do it whilst not beating ourselves up too much. The former, is really a poor understanding of how dogs learn and think. Sorry, you're just simply wrong there. Saying 'no' to a dog (when using it as 1) above) is an aversive. A choke chain is an aversive. Therefore they both fall under the same category of learning theory - positive punishment. Therefore they have a connection with each other. ALL AVERSIVES have been shown to have a detrimental effect on the learning relationship between dog and handler, not just physical aversives. Please show me research showing that the findings apply only to physical aversives, if you're going to make a statement like that. I think you'll find that the three volumes of Steven Lindsay's (which are required reading on every behavioural degree level course I know of) are extremely well-referenced with pages of references at the end of every chapter. You might want to buy the books so you can see that for yourself. I have given you the link to them. You can't repeatedly say there is no evidence or research and then dismiss evidence or research when it is presented to you, just because you haven't read it. Is it really? From my experience almost every physical fight I've witnessed on a night out has started verbally. I don't think I've ever seen someone just punch another person, without any verbal exchanges beforehand. Even the law recognises this, and so we punish inciting hatred - even verbally - and we distinguish between attacks which are provoked verbally and those which are unprovoked, saving the more severe penalties for the latter. All communication is not 'good' and does not automatically reduce the risk of violence. It's the words you choose and use, not the fact that you are using words...it is in 'what' you are communicating. But as I said, all this is irrelevant to dog training for the reasons I explained above which you didn't respond to. (The fact that 'no' can be conditioned to be a positive marker.)
I was looking a copy of the Readers Digest this morning. The advice given to puppy owners re toilet training is "be firm". No mention of be rewarding. So if the puppy has an accident, it is possible that the puppy owner thinks I haven't been firm enough. I had better ramp up the firmness. And to some firmness can mean punishment. I dont think every dog owner sets out to apply harsher and harsher punishment. But with the woeful advice appearing in popular magazines it is easy to see how one segment of the dog owning population applies can escalate harsher punishment. I spoke recently to a puppy owner who had been advised by her vet to hold the puppy's muzzle shut to stop the puppy from mouthing the owners. Again woeful advice. With so much poor advice out there in the community ii is not surprising that some dog owners resort to physical abuse. And yet I suspect they would not have set out to be physically abusive.
I downloaded the book. Nothing in the book supports any of your statements. The author states that a dog can become desensitised to punishments, and thus if you start with a weak punishment, and gradually increase the punishment, that the punishment may not be as effective as if you punish severely the first time. This statement by the author, does not support your statement at all. It does not in any way imply that the dog's owner will slowly increase their willingness to exact stronger punishments. Lindsay says the same thing as Reid. He also states exactly what I've stated in this thread, that the owner/trainer needs to decide a priori what their 'red line' is. Again, nothing in the book states that trainers will cross this red-line due to saying 'no'. Indeed neither reference you provided has ANYTHING to do with saying 'no'. Neither reference states that 'no' is an aversive, or mentions the word 'no' as a punishment. Neither reference you provided suggests that saying 'no' could be bad for the dog in any way.
If you don't want people to hit their dogs, I would suggest you instruct people not to hit their dogs. This 'no' stuff has nothing to do with anything.
It does, actually. I have directly quoted from two books now, saying exactly that. Even the Kindle version of the book costs £78.80 and the equivalent in $. That would be quite some commitment to win an argument, to spend that much downloading a book. That's because it's such a basic principle, it is taken as read. And yes, volume 1 of Lindsay does indeed cover this. You seem to be missing a very fundamental part of things. Rule 101 is that THE DOG DECIDES WHAT IS PUNISHING. You don't get to decide that. It's not up to you. If the dog finds you saying 'sausages' to be punishing, then the word 'sausages' is a punisher. THE DOG DECIDES. Not you. You will never find a book which categorically states that the word 'no' is a punisher, because you can actually condition the word 'no' to function as a click... or as praise. If I said 'no' and gave a dog a treat, the dog would pretty quickly LIKE the word no. But that's not how we are talking about using it. We are talking about using it in a way which stops behaviour the dog is doing. If you do SOMETHING or say SOMETHING to a dog, and the dog STOPS WHAT THEY ARE DOING in response to that, you have just PUNISHED the dog. It really doesn't matter what your intentions are. That is what punishment is, in terms of the 4 quadrants of learning theory. I'm done with this discussion now. I've presented the science, directly quoted and referenced. You pretend it doesn't say what it actually does. You are arguing about a subject you clearly know nothing about - and are not interested in learning about. And you are arguing about it with two practising dog trainers. I find that kind of arrogant, but - whatever. There are two very clear points, both of which are supported by endless science from countless directions and are really taken-as-read by people knowledgeable about learning theory: The word "no", used in a way which has the effect of stopping a dog from doing something, is a positive punishment or aversive. That's what positive punishment is: It stops behaviour. If there is behaviour occurring and you say 'no' and behaviour stops occurring, then positive punishment has taken place. MUST HAVE taken place. You may not like that. You may not want to think you are punishing your dog. But science doesn't care about what you like or don't like. That's why it is science. Aversives (which, as we've discussed in 1, actually include the word 'no' when it functions in this way) get escalated. I've quoted you directly from two books on this issue. I've explained using practical examples. And no, I don't believe you paid £78 to download a book, but that's another subject.
This has zero to do with pride. It's about whether the word 'no' is a harmful to dogs, and if there is scientific evidence to support this statement.
Why do you want to propagate something which isn't supported by data? Perhaps this is a pet peeve of mine, but internet rumours just being propagated forever is not good for anyone or any cause in the long run. No reason to get all personal about how I got a book? I'm a professional researcher and work for a large research organization, I have full access to most publications and books. I publish numerous articles per year, and review many each year for publication on behalf of the editors. Reading papers and making a judgment of whether the claims are supported by the data is something I do professionally. I also have a decent bkg in statistics, although its not the basis of my formal education. I assure you, the conversation on this thread are quite pleasant compared to the how people usefully write reviews on scientific articles for peer-reviewed journals. It's data, and has to be parsed. And the books do not say what you are thinking. Both Lindsay and Reid state that owners won't have the 'courage' to punish their dogs harshly enough, and need an instructor to show them how to get it done...Reid literally says this (my pdf copy refuses to copy and paste here). Regardless, these statements have no citations anyways. My guess is that Lindsay doesn't consider "no" a punishment, because it doesn't fit the dictionary definition of a punishment, and he probably considers it 'bridging'. From his book. "HOW TO USE TIME-OUT Bridging The effective use of TO requires that the behavior modifier adhere closely to several procedural constraints. Foremost among these considerations is the need for the TO to be well timed and bridged with the occurrence of the unwanted behavior. For TO to be effective, a direct connection must be established and maintained between the occurrence of the target behavior and the TO consequence. This is accomplished by immediately following the unwanted behavior with a conditioned punisher (e.g., “Enough!—Time-out”), seizing the leash firmly, and posthaste hauling the dog off to the TO room. These closely connected events are necessary to form an adequate connection or bridge between the unwanted behavior and the TO consequence." Assuming the word 'no' and 'enough' are really used in similar manners, then Lindsay doesn't consider 'no' as a punishment, but the 'bridge' between the action and the punishment (the time out). But regardless, we are still back to the original issue, which isn't if 'no' is a punishment or even useful. Is saying 'no' bad for the welfare of the dog? Which is still not supported by anything said in Lindsay's book, or Reids. Lindsay likens punishment to 'polishing a stone' and claims that its GOOD for the dog... I'm not saying I agree with that, but he certainly doesn't support the point that anything which lessens a certain behaviour is bad for the dog. Whether 'no' is classified as a punishment, a bridge, or just plain meaningless to the dog, it doesn't really change a complete lack of any evidence that it's somehow bad for the dog. As an aside, I think Lindsay (I quoted him above) would call 'no' a bridge, and he using the term 'conditional punisher', which if it matters, is not 'punishment' in his book. I don't think how you classify 'no' is meaningful though. It can be a punishment or not, doesn't matter. It still doesn't harm the dog (or at least there is no evidence that it does...and people have published work which shows this). I'm not pretending, the authors are explaining that if you start with weak punishments and slowly increase the magnitude, that the dogs will become used to the punishments and they won't work. Neither author thinks or says that owners won't be able to control themselves and will escalate against their better judgement. Your second sentence is a logical fallacy. And odd. I'm not interested in learning? Therefore I read a hundred pages of material you suggested? Can't say that makes sense Not agreeing with you, because the things you say are not supported by any publications, is not me being mean or prideful, or anything else of a personal nature. Don't confuse these things.
