The Quadrants!

The Quadrants! For those of you who are not familiar with this term, it is used to describe four (not all) of the elements of operant conditioning, which explains how animals, including us, learn.

The quadrants referred to are positive reinforcement, positive punishment, negative reinforcement, and negative punishment. Go on to any dog training group and you will almost be guaranteed to find discussions (often very heated ones) on this topic. You may also see it described as a graphic with four boxes and the terms R+, P+, R-, and P-. I’m not sure who first came up with the term “quadrants”, although I’m pretty sure it wasn’t BF Skinner as I’m hard pressed to find reference to this word in the works of his I’ve looked at. It is a useful teaching aid for learning four (not all) of the aspects of operant learning, but I think it has its limitations and if we want to be better trainers and teachers, we need to understand it’s limitations, what it was designed for and how to think outside these four boxes. If you want to understand these terms, please Google “operant conditioning”. Look for an academic site, I’d link one here, but FB algorithms will kick in and this post might not be seen by many people if they do.

Trainers who train dogs with a progressive, positive mindset, often say they only use positive reinforcement training. While well intentioned, they are wrong. I include myself in this group and I design all of my training choices to weigh heavily in favour of positive reinforcement training, but the world isn’t under my control and other facts will influence the learning of the animals and humans I am working with. What I can state absolutely, is that I will never use certain training tools or intentionally use fear, intimidation, coercion, pain, or discomfort to change behaviour. Other trainers who are willing to use pain, coercion etc, freely admit that they dip in and out of the four quadrants whenever they feel they need to. I don’t hide my opinion on the use of all four quadrants, I think it is unnecessary and counter productive.

A couple of examples…

It’s a hot day and you are working outdoors. You get too hot and decide to take a break and go indoors where it is cooler. Are you adding coolness to your body (positive reinforcement) or are you removing the heat from the sun (negative reinforcement). The answer is both. Both contingencies are al play at the same time. Remember, the natural world doesn’t care about the quadrants, these contingencies are at play regardless of how we (humans) describe them. Does an atom care that it’s an atom or is that the world we have assigned to it to explain its relationship with the world? Similarly, if your dog moves away from a smell they don’t like, are they accessing clean, fresh air or escaping the rancid smell. Both.

Second one. Your dog is uncomfortable around other dogs. We can reinforce the behaviours of being calm around the other dog (positive reinforcement of other behaviours) or we can allow the dog to move away from the other dog if they get closer (Negative reinforcement of the moving away behaviours). Which one would they dog prefer, do you think? Which one is amore ethical option? Which one is less aversive for the dog? I’m very aware at this point that some (many) may jump on this and criticise me or take that I am condoning the use of negative reinforcement protocols. I am aiming to make the training protocol the least aversive, most positive experience I can for the dog. In this second example, I think it would be questionable ethically if I were to deliberately move the dog back to where they were uncomfortable in order to reinforce the calm behaviours by moving away. I’m not suggestion we do that. But there is every likelihood that they dog will have learned that, given similar conditions in the future, they can move away.

Good (ethical, progressive, positive) training is nuanced and needs knowledge of both the theory and how to apply it. There is a human element involved and we need to understand that these human factors, and all the judgements, prejudices, belief systems, world views etc which are part of the human condition, go along with training the animals in our care and influence them. The quadrants are the very start of that understanding and only a very small part at the start. I think these terms should be used only as the start of our knowledge and we should not limit ourselves to the expanse of operant learning by trying to explain everything in 4 boxes. The world, and our minds, are much bigger than that.

Lastly, I can never tell which posts people will find contentious and which ones won’t. I’ve been doing this long enough to realise that this one might, but I’m often surprised. If you are inclined to react immediately to this, please take a moment or an hour to review the information in this post. If you are unsure of any of the terms, please research them before commenting (from an academic source). The world is a very divided and partisan place at the moment, I don’t allow my page to further people being angry, cruel or unkind to each other, there’s already far too much of that as there is. If you really disagree with what I’ve said here, that’s totally cool, you are free not to express that disagreement emotionally on this page.

Love and peace.

Living wholeheartedly with your dog – part 1

Wholehearted

I’m currently reading “Daring Greatly” by Brene Brown. In the book, the author talks about wholehearted living, which is embracing vulnerability, being courageous and being resilient to shame.

Dr Brown states that there are ten guideposts to living wholeheartedly, which is the antidote to shame. These apply to our dogs as well.

Cultivating authenticity – letting go what other people think. Your life and journey with your dog are yours and your dogs. She is a member of your family and deserves to be treated as such. Many people who have had dogs before will have opinions on how you should live with your dog, how your dog should behave, how you should behave and treat your dog, where your dog should be allowed to go etc. Decide what you want for your dog and then train it.

Some people are crushed, truly crushed, when someone says or infers that they are not a good dog owner. Ask yourself – why do you value that person’s opinion? Why do you let what that person, who may or may not live with you tell you how you should interact with your dog if you are taking care of all your dogs needs?

Want to let your dog up on the bed? In the bedroom? On your lap? On your couch? Go for it. The only caveat I would suggest is that you and your dog are both getting your needs met. If you allow your dog up on the couch any time they want, it’s not fair to be angry with your dog when they have dirty paws and jump on your couch. A better way might be to let them up with permission and ensure that their feet are clean when they come in. If your dog is growling at you when they are on the couch and won’t let you on the couch, then that is certainly an issue; your dog is having a nice time but you are not getting to sit on your couch, which clearly isn’t right. Teach them the rules, it’s only fair.

When I first adopted Logan, I had everyone and their granny who had access to Facebook chiming with their opinion on what I should or should do with him, what he should or should be able to do with him. My response now is “and you are…?”

Who is that person who is a witness/voyeur to the snippets of our life I choose to share publicly, to tell me or anyone else what I should or shouldn’t do with him? How much do they really know about our life based on a few minutes of video I choose to share? My answer – no one who I’m interested in listening to. So try to apply the same to you and your dog. Someone tells you your dog needs to sit at the door before they are allowed out, ask why. Sit before they get their food? Why? Sit before crossing the road? Why?

The other side of this is taking advice of people you truly align with and trust. Taking counsel from a trusted advisor, whether paid or not, is very wise. We don’t know everything and must seek help when we need to. I did this with Logan and was fortunate to be able to call on many trainer and behaviour friends and colleagues who could give me help and advice.

The wisdom is knowing the difference.

Part 2 to come.

Quadrants schmadrants

Ah, the quadrants. The source of many, if not the majority of trainer wars on social media. Several months ago, I nearly caused a riot on my Facebook page with these six simple words

“The quadrants are not a thing”.

I had people unfriending me, calling me names (both in front of me and behind my back, adults, grown men and women), threatening to cancel coming to a couple of presentations I was doing the next month. It all got a bit out of hand. The point of the post was yes, to be inflammatory, but not just for the sake of being so. It was to provoke discussion. My position; overuse and over reliance on the term “quadrants” is limiting and fails our dogs.

Let me go back a stage. The following photographs are from a couple of books by two of the best minds in behaviour, Paul Chance and Susan Schneider. I have read both books, refer to them often and continue to digest them. Paul Chance’s book is a behaviour textbook, referred to in Universities (that’s the places where we teach accountants, engineers, doctors etc). Dr Susan Schneider’s book, although not a textbook, was over ten years in the making and has hundreds of citations. These are people we should be learning from.

I have had the pleasure and honour to have learned from Dr Susan G. Friedman on numerous occasions. Another brilliant mind in the field of learning, Dr Friedman’s advice is to learn behaviour from textbooks and then learn how to apply it from skilled technicians. She further advises not to do the bulk of our learning from opinion pieces (like this one, yes, I know). In doing so, we will excel. Dr Friedman has spent over 20 years working with the best animal trainers in the world and applying ABA to hundreds of species of animals.

So, back to the quadrants. The two authors mentioned, these photos are from their books

and

Look carefully. No mention of the term “quadrants”. Now, yes, Chance refers to positive and negative punishment in this index. No, still no mention of quadrants. From the photos, look at the other terms. How often do you ever hear anyone but the most advanced trainers, or trainers learning from them (like me) refer to these other terms? My bet is rarely, if ever. When we limit ourselves to discussion the “quadrants” and that alone, we ignore the whole breadth and depth and richness of behaviour analysis as a field of study and our dogs (and us) suffer for it as a result.

The next time you get involved in one of these car crash discussions on social media, ask if your opposite number knows what the matching law is. Or a discriminative stimulus. And ask if they further know how to apply it. And if you are reading this and don’t know, then I urge you to find out. If we are going in from the cold, are we seeking warmth or to escape the cold or both? If so, the negative reinforcement and positive reinforcement are at play at the same time. Do you know the difference? Is it always both or sometimes can it only be one? Find out, examine it, study it, think about it and discuss it with people who know more than you do.

Concentrating only on 4 possible outcomes of behaviour (while ignoring extinction) and failing to take into consideration antecedents (distant, intermediate and proximal) and the effects of classical conditioning makes us look foolish. We cannot pick and choose the science we like. Yes, aversive training methods like prong collars and shock collars work, that’s why they are used and continue to be used. But they come at a cost and nearly 100 years of research tells us so. If you revel in the use of all 4 quadrants, read a book on the effects of punishment on the individual. B.F. Skinner wrote all this stuff down.  He was also a man who, having researched this stuff, interacted and taught using positive reinforcement as the driving force. How do I know this? Because I have heard it from his daughter, Dr Julie Vargas, who spoke at the WOOF Training and Behaviour Conference this year.

Stop limiting yourself to discussion of graphic which was used to simplify the glorious study of behaviour as a starting point. Do you still want to be at that starting point a year, 2, 5 or 10 years after you started? I know I don’t and I know I’m not.

Love and peace and good training and learning.

Humility, progress and provocation

DEEP THOUGHTS (not really)

 

As a dog training community, whether online or in person, we have a number of objectives and interests. We have to educate the public and our clients as best we can and provide them with information which they can actually use. There is most likely a way to stay away from scientific jargon without dumbing down the process of training and why we train without corrections.

 

Then we have discussions to make us better ourselves. By having a better understanding of the science of dog training, keeping up to date with new research which comes out, examining whether things we did 5, 10 or 15 years ago are still valid, needs updating or needs thrown in the bin and to build a tribe of like minded individuals who can we can have these discussions with. This is a big ask and each of us are better at some elements than others but other than a few truly unique individuals (Dr Susan Friedman), none of us are better that all of them than everyone else.

 

Sometimes the two objectives above are at odds with each other, and that’s ok, we can continue to improve until they are not.

 

I would much rather spend the time I have available online discussion how to get better at positive, effective, ethical training with my peers, so I can provide better content and better training than to debate whether we should still be using aversive training methods with others. There are other people out there who are more willing and better able to do that than me.

 

Terms and themes which I think need discussing

 

– the need for our dogs to sit for everything

– the need for our dogs to walk on the left hand side

– the use of the terms quadrants, impulse control, arousal, drive and a few others.

 

My journey with the spectacular dog in the photo has made me consider loads of stuff which I thought was gospel. This can only be a good thing. The need for discussion of the list above has been inspired by Logan and many other great human teachers who I have been honoured to have learned and continue to learn from. The list is only my opinion, it is no less or no more valid than anyone else’s.

 

I hope the picture of his nibs made you smile.

 

Peace and love.

Logan – part 32 – May 16th 2019

Interested in Learning Dog Training with me?

 

I am inviting applications to mentor with me starting in 2019.

Email me – info@glasgowdogtrainer.co.uk

I will be covering all aspects of learning, training, dog behaviour and running a successful dog training business.

Open to all levels of experience and to anywhere in the world.

A question of ethics – part 1

I was at the office today (our local park) doing a consultation with a man and his Labrador, working on recall and loose lead walking (connection). We have a really nice community at the park on weekday mornings, the professional dog walkers, the power walkers without dogs, the recreational cyclists and the dog people walking their own dogs.

There is a fella who I see who has two GSDs who he has trained to a high level from the brief glimpses I get of him (I see him several times over the month). He appears to use positive trainng methods from what I can see. He uses food to reinforce the behaviour which he likes and I’ve never seen him physically correct his dogs. When he asks the dogs to do something though, he’s not really asking, he’s telling.

This fella knows I’m a dog trainer and from reading his body language (he never says hello to anyone etc) I get the impression that’s he is trying to show me how it’s really done. Today (and every other dog he sees me), he put his dogs in a sit stay in the middle of the path and walked away. There were other dogs and people around walking past his dogs. The dogs were transfixed by him and then he called them, they raced towards him and then held a heel position targeting his hands for about 50m or so. They were then reinforced with food. Impressive? Yes, maybe. Ethical? I’m not so sure. If this had been in competition for a dog sport, then yes, it’s impressive. If it had been in preparation for that dog sport competition, then yes, cool also. My issues is that it’s done for the benefit of all those watching and at the dogs’ expense to boot.

For me it would be far more impressive if his dogs were walking with him off lead, moving forward in front of him, sniffing, moving with him when he walked on and behaving in an appropriate social manner with dogs and people. But they’re not. The appear to be automatons, with little choice and not allow ot behave like dogs (I’ve never seen them sniff when out)

Training with positive methods isn’t enough. We need to train with an ethical mindset too. Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing.

Until next time, have a great Christmas.

John and the Glasgow Dog Trainer Team

Living with a dog in pain

Guest blog from Lindsay Docherty. Lindsay first came to me as a client a few years ago with Millie. Since then she has been studying both with the IMDT, and with Clare Russell and myself. She has been doing some work for me over the last few months.

 

Living with a dog in pain.

Living with a dog with a chronic pain condition can be difficult. There are two types of dogs, those who will suffer through the pain without any change in behaviour and those who suddenly feel under threat from their world.. The change in behaviour can range from a slight reluctance to perform tasks to the drastic who’s behaviour can change completely.

We currently have a dog who falls under the last category.

Millie is our 6 year old rescue dog. At the young age of 1 year old she had a bad fall and suffered internal injuries similar to those of a high speed impact in a car. Collapsed lung, bruised heart and a torn liver not to mention a huge amount of muscle damage.

Our happy friendly pup was now on a long journey of pain management and behaviour change. The changes didn’t happen over night. As her world suddenly became filled with danger and potential hurt to her she modified her behaviour to try and control it. Previously she was every dogs friend and used to love nothing more than a full on sparring session. This was now her idea of a nightmare. Her “friend” dogs were suddenly hurting her. In her mind it wasn’t that she was experiencing discomfort and the other dogs happened to be there it was the dogs themselves that were hurting her.

She’s now really sensitive to changes in her environment. A break in her routine unsettles her and can last for days.

People approaching her in the street spooks her. Visitors to the house is really difficult as she doesn’t want to be touched and that’s what most people want to do with a dog.

When travelling in the car she won’t lie down if she’s having bad pain day.

After a year and a half on and off medication and us making pretty much every training mistake you can during that time the pain had eased off enough to begin behaviour modification training.

Us learning the right approach to take and how to make her feel safe were the first steps.

She’s predictably unpredictable so if we work with the thinking that she’s going to react to everything we can set up the environment to help her make the right choice even in the toughest of situations.

 

Dogs 

As a puppy Millie was Mrs sociable though still a bit nervous around dogs that were quite full on.

After the fall the pain made her completely change in these situations and rather than removing herself she would lunge and bark and tried to get on top of the dogs that she was afraid of. In fight or flight terms she was definitely using the fight method to get the dogs to go away. Luckily she never progressed any further than a lunge and a bark.

Our initial goal was teaching her to remove herself from situations around other dogs that she previously would have reacted to and helping her when she couldn’t do it on her own.

Millie likes to control her own environment and the movement of dogs within it. We haven’t stopped her from doing this but instead heavily reinforced lower intensity behaviours. If she doesn’t want a young bouncy dog to jump on her that’s fair enough so strong eye contact with the dog or a low grumble are far better than a full on lunge, bark and pinning the dog to the ground.

We have to come up with a compromise with her where she can keep herself feeling in control and more importantly not be hurt but also that the other dogs we meet are kept safe.

We spent a long time teaching her avoidance before we let her start meeting other dogs. Only through persistence with the avoidance training and setting this up as the primary behaviour to perform around dogs were we sure that if she felt unsafe she would disengage and come to us for reinforcement for doing so rather than feeling she had to deal with the situation on her own.

If she isn’t happy with a dog’s presence and the dog doesn’t leave we ask her to come with us and we will take her away to a distance she feels safe whilst heavily reinforcing the moving away.

She’s now at the stage where she is able to make some pretty amazing choices in previously highly reactive situations. This can however change depending on the intensity of her pain from day to day.

If she’s having a bad day we take a few steps back and ask her what’s the best behaviour she can give us that day and work with that. Doing so she learns that we can ask her how she’s feeling that day and we won’t put pressure on her to give more than she can.

Something as simple as lying down in the front of car is too much for her some days. If we ask her to lie down and she doesn’t after a couple of requests we don’t get mad. She isn’t disobeying us she just simply can’t do it at that time.

As well as being on the initial stage of my dog trainer journey I am also a part time dog walker. Knowing Millie and how she feels about strange dogs I was able to introduce her to the new dogs whilst keeping her feeling safe around them and I’m happy to say that she now has a bunch of great K9 friends that she can run, play and wrestle with when we are out on our walks.

The first time she initiated play with one of the dogs I was I was in floods of tears whilst trying to video it! A real turning point for us as it had been 3 years since she had initiated play with a dog other than the other dog in our house Leo.

Living with a dog in pain isn’t easy. It’s a full time job especially if they are reactive. We are very lucky in that our good days are so good they make up for all the bad times. We love our girl, and by understanding her body language and what she needs from us to be successful, help to build the dog and owner bond every day.

Captain America and telling our dogs what to do.

 

I went to see Captain America: Civil War at the weekend at our local 3D IMAX (It was very entertaining, the usual great Marvel stuff). At the beginning of the film, there was an announcement

“PUT ON YOUR 3D GLASSESS NOW”

My very first reaction to this was “don’t tell me what to do”. Now, I get that “Please put on your 3D glasses to fully enjoy the IMAX 3D experience” is unecessarily wordy, however, I really do not like being told what to do. In my previous job, I had a supervisor who constantly told everyone what to do. He never asked. He was a truly horrible bully of a man. Some of my colleagues who could be pushed around were, they did their jobs and did as they were told but none of them liked him. Those of us who didn’t like being told what to do would do it but very often we would push back, in fact we pushed back at every available opportunity. We stuck it to him whenever we could. The more we pushed back, the more he told us what to do. He then left, and was replaced by a man whom I absolutely adored. Jimbo would ask you to do tasks, never tell you and would do so with the full knowledge that you would do it. He never asked you to do anything he wasn’t willing to do himself. The guys who could be pushed around relaxed and worked harder, and those of us who were slightly more hard headed worked even harder still. Productivity and morale soared. He was a true leader who brought out the best in his people.

What does this have to do with dog training? Some of our dogs can be told what to do. We can push them around, shout at them, correct them and basically bully them in to compliance. Then there are the dogs who will push back. The problem for these dogs is that when they push back, they almost always lose. We shout at them and correct them, and they growl. We give them a harder time and they snap at us. We push more. They then bite “out of the blue”. Then it’s off to the shelter, vet to be put to sleep or we sell them on gumtree/Craiglist. The solution for all these dogs, whether the soft ones or the hard ones is to explain the rules in a way they understand, set up the environment so they can easily do the things we want them to to and so it’s difficult for them to the wrong thing and motivate them to do what we want them to do. If it works for humans, it can and does work for dogs.

If some of us don’t like being told what to do, is it not reasonable to conclude some of our dogs may feel the same way?

Why we need to challenge what our trainers tell us.

There has been enough coverage of the incident featured on Cesar 911 recently where Simon the French Bulldog cross, who had previously killed pigs, was allowed to be in an enclosed area off lead with a restrained pig. Some great trainers have successfully used social media to highlight the issue and it has been rightfully reported to law enforcment in the US.

What I’d like to comment on is how we can blindly follow some trainers due to the cult of personality. I have learned from many great trainers over the years. What’s great about them is that they actively encourage us to think and to challenge their ideas. That is what scientific progress is about. Trainers whose methods were very progressive 25 years ago because they didn’t use choke chains are now seen as very dated because they use psychological intimidation instead. Techniques which cause frustration are (or should be) seen as unnecessary and counter-productive. I don’t agree with everything all of them have taught me, and if I was to ask them, they’d be delighted at that as it shows I’m challenging them and thinking for myself.

Here’s the “however”. I saw a social media post from a “pack leader” trainer defending Cesar’s actions. Any reasonable person looking at the Simon and the pig scenario objectively would see that letting a pig killing dog off lead in the same area as a restrained pig is not a good idea. If you were t ask a 7 year old they could tell you that. But we have blind faith from some trainers who can’t see anything wrong with what happened. This is wrong in itself. As trainers, and owners, interested in the welfare of our dogs, we should question everything all the time. Only by doing that will we continue to learn and improve our dogs’ lives.