Now we come to the “balanced trainer” label. We don’t think we could comply with this definition because anyone who has ever put a leash and any type of collar or harness on a dog has used “physical force” (no matter how slight) to control the dog, and if we turn our dog’s head so we can look in her ear we are apparently using “physical molding”. "No Shock, No Pain, No Choke, No Fear, No Physical Force, No physical Molding, No Compulsion Based Methods are employed to train or care for a pet”. Some of the “force free” folks have defined their term – “Force free” is another label applied to trainers. A head collar can be used to negatively reinforce NOT pulling on the leash OR to positively punish pulling on the leash OR viewed as a response prevention tool. Many “positive trainers” we know also use head collars. Negative punishment is almost always the other side of that coin. If “all positive” is supposed to mean ONLY the use of positive reinforcement, that doesn’t seem likely. “All positive” could mean the person uses positive reinforcement and positive punishment. Without either observing the trainer, or asking her what she actually does, that label is open to interpretation, much like the label “stubborn”. Trainers may be labeled by themselves or others as an “all positive trainer”. Trainers, behaviorists, and behavior consultants also have labels assigned to them without first hand observations of what they do. In that case, it’s simply a case of the motivation to bark being much higher than the motivation to stop. That’s why “stubborn” requires a behavioral description – perhaps the dog continues to bark while his owner shouts “NO”. Dogs labeled as “stubborn” are often in reality confused about what is expected of them, and rather than risking a behavior response that could result in punishment, they instead choose not to respond at all. When we jump immediately to interpretations without first carefully describing what the dog is doing we are more likely to mis-understand why the dog is behaving as he is, or attribute motivations to behavior that aren’t accurate. For example, describing a dog as “stubborn” is an anthropomorphic interpretation of his behavior and doesn’t really give us any information about what the dog is doing.Įven more behaviorally useful terms such as “fearful” or “defensive” require descriptions of the context, the dog’s body postures and other behaviors to really be sure those interpretations are correct. Over the years we’ve written many articles about the importance of describing what dogs DO rather than – or at least BEFORE – assigning interpretive labels to their behavior.
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