Does owning a pair of shoes makes you a shoemaker? You know the answer to the question! Does “owning/adopting” a dog make you an expert in [all things] dog??? I will let you chew on this one for a bit.
The truth is that there is a myriad of information out there about any topic you might think of and the worlds of dog behavior & training are no different! There is an industry joke that goes something like this: Ask a room full of trainers the same question and you will get all different answers! And this is the “professional group” …
How then, can one separate truth from fiction when it comes to the “real” nature of dogs? And what is the benefit of really learning about them?
I would argue that learning about dogs would benefit both parties.
I was telling my brother just the other day about how sometimes it is relatively easy to help someone with a situation with their dog. It is all a matter of having an understanding of how dogs “function.” If one understands what makes them “tick” it is waaaayyyy easier to get results: The life of the dog improves and the problem for the owner is minimized or gone altogether.
And there are those times, of course, where the solution is not that simple. In part because dogs are complex individuals and their relationship with us humans is also at times very complex.
The real value I think lays in acknowledging that learning about dogs requires rigorous study. Thanks to the close relationship that we have established with dogs there is a lot of information about who they really are as a species and yet… there is so much that is still a mystery.
Jean Donaldson, a professional dog trainer for more than three decades and the person that I had the honor of studying under at the San Francisco SPCA Academy for Dog Trainers, has made her life’s passion (my words) to learn about dogs from a scientific perspective. I came across and re-read this article of hers where she comments upon some of the “myths” that have colored our lives with our canine companions. Perhaps your favorite one made the list – read on!
1) Dogs are natural pack-animals with a clear social order.
This one busts coming out of the gate as free-ranging dogs (pariahs, semi-feral populations, dingoes, etc.) don't form packs. As someone who spent years solemnly repeating that 'dogs were pack animals', it was sobering to find out that dogs form loose, amorphous, transitory associations with other dogs.
2) If you let dogs exit doorways ahead of you, you're letting them be dominant.
There is not only no evidence for this, there is no evidence that the behaviour of going through a doorway has any social significance whatsoever. In order to lend this idea any plausibility, it would need to rule-out that rapid doorway exit is not simply a function of their motivation to get to whatever is on the other side combined with their higher ambulation speed.
3) In multi-dog households, "support the hierarchy" by giving presumed dominant animals patting, treats, etc., first, before giving the same attention to presumed subordinate animals.
There is no evidence that this has any impact on inter-dog relations, or any type of aggression. In fact, if one dog were roughing up another, the laws governing Pavlovian conditioning would dictate an opposite tack:
Teach aggressive dogs that other dogs receiving scarce resources predicts that they are about to receive some. If so practised, the tough-dog develops a happy-emotional response to other dogs getting stuff - a helpful piece of training, indeed. No valuable conditioning effects are achieved by giving the presumed higher-ranking dog goodies first.
4) Dogs have an innate desire to please.
This concept has never been operationally defined, let alone tested. A vast preponderance of evidence, however, suggests that dogs, like all properly functioning animals, are motivated by food, water, sex, and like many animals, by play and access to bonded relationships, especially after an absence.
They're also, like all animals, motivated by fear and pain, and these are the inevitable tools of those who eschew the use of food, play, etc., however much they cloak their coercion and collar-tightening in desire to please rhetoric.
5) Rewards are bribes and thus compromise relationships.
Related to 4), the idea that behaviour should just, in the words of Susan Friedman, Ph.D., "flow like a fountain" without need of consequences, is opposed by more than 60 years of unequivocal evidence that behaviour is, again to quote Friedman, "a tool to produce consequences." Another problem is that bribes are given before behaviour, and rewards are given after. And, a mountain of evidence from decades of research in pure and applied settings has demonstrated over and over that positive reinforcement - i.e., rewards - make relationships better, never worse.
6) If you pat your dog when he's afraid, you're rewarding the fear.
Fear is an emotional state - a reaction to the presence or anticipation of something highly aversive. It is not an attempt at manipulation. If terrorists enter a bank and order everybody down on the floor, the people will exhibit fearful behaviour. If I then give a bank customer on the floor a compliment, 20 bucks or chocolates, is this going to make them more afraid of terrorists next time? It's stunningly narcissistic to imagine that a dogs fearful behaviour is somehow directed at us (along with his enthusiastic door-dashing).
7) Punish dogs for growling or else they'll become aggressive.
Ian Dunbar calls this "removing the ticker from the time bomb." Dogs growl because something upsetting them is too close. If you punish them for informing us of this, they are still upset but now not letting us know, thus allowing scary things to get closer and possibly end up bitten. Much better to make the dog comfortable around what he's growling at so he's not motivated to make it go away.
8) Playing tug makes dogs aggressive.
There is no evidence that this is so. The only study ever done, by Borchelt and Goodloe, found no correlation between playing tug and the incidence of aggression directed at either family members or strangers.
Tug is, in fact, a cooperative behaviour directed at simulated prey: the toy.
9) If you give dogs chew-toys, they'll learn to chew everything.
This is a Pandora's box type of argument that, once again, has zero evidence to support it. Dogs are excellent discriminators and readily learn with minimal training to distinguish their toys from forbidden items. The argument is also logically flawed as chewing is a 'hydraulic' behaviour that waxes and wanes, depending on satiation/deprivation, as does drinking, eating and sex.
Dogs without chew objects are like zoo animals in barren cages. Unless there is good compensation with other enrichment activities, there is a welfare issue here.
10) You can't modify 'genetic' behavior.
All behaviour - and I mean all - is a product of a complex interplay between genes and the environment. And while some behaviours require less learning than others, or no learning at all, their modifiability varies as much as does the modifiability of behaviours that are primarily learned.
The truth is that there is a myriad of information out there about any topic you might think of and the worlds of dog behavior & training are no different! There is an industry joke that goes something like this: Ask a room full of trainers the same question and you will get all different answers! And this is the “professional group” …
How then, can one separate truth from fiction when it comes to the “real” nature of dogs? And what is the benefit of really learning about them?
I would argue that learning about dogs would benefit both parties.
I was telling my brother just the other day about how sometimes it is relatively easy to help someone with a situation with their dog. It is all a matter of having an understanding of how dogs “function.” If one understands what makes them “tick” it is waaaayyyy easier to get results: The life of the dog improves and the problem for the owner is minimized or gone altogether.
And there are those times, of course, where the solution is not that simple. In part because dogs are complex individuals and their relationship with us humans is also at times very complex.
The real value I think lays in acknowledging that learning about dogs requires rigorous study. Thanks to the close relationship that we have established with dogs there is a lot of information about who they really are as a species and yet… there is so much that is still a mystery.
Jean Donaldson, a professional dog trainer for more than three decades and the person that I had the honor of studying under at the San Francisco SPCA Academy for Dog Trainers, has made her life’s passion (my words) to learn about dogs from a scientific perspective. I came across and re-read this article of hers where she comments upon some of the “myths” that have colored our lives with our canine companions. Perhaps your favorite one made the list – read on!
1) Dogs are natural pack-animals with a clear social order.
This one busts coming out of the gate as free-ranging dogs (pariahs, semi-feral populations, dingoes, etc.) don't form packs. As someone who spent years solemnly repeating that 'dogs were pack animals', it was sobering to find out that dogs form loose, amorphous, transitory associations with other dogs.
2) If you let dogs exit doorways ahead of you, you're letting them be dominant.
There is not only no evidence for this, there is no evidence that the behaviour of going through a doorway has any social significance whatsoever. In order to lend this idea any plausibility, it would need to rule-out that rapid doorway exit is not simply a function of their motivation to get to whatever is on the other side combined with their higher ambulation speed.
3) In multi-dog households, "support the hierarchy" by giving presumed dominant animals patting, treats, etc., first, before giving the same attention to presumed subordinate animals.
There is no evidence that this has any impact on inter-dog relations, or any type of aggression. In fact, if one dog were roughing up another, the laws governing Pavlovian conditioning would dictate an opposite tack:
Teach aggressive dogs that other dogs receiving scarce resources predicts that they are about to receive some. If so practised, the tough-dog develops a happy-emotional response to other dogs getting stuff - a helpful piece of training, indeed. No valuable conditioning effects are achieved by giving the presumed higher-ranking dog goodies first.
4) Dogs have an innate desire to please.
This concept has never been operationally defined, let alone tested. A vast preponderance of evidence, however, suggests that dogs, like all properly functioning animals, are motivated by food, water, sex, and like many animals, by play and access to bonded relationships, especially after an absence.
They're also, like all animals, motivated by fear and pain, and these are the inevitable tools of those who eschew the use of food, play, etc., however much they cloak their coercion and collar-tightening in desire to please rhetoric.
5) Rewards are bribes and thus compromise relationships.
Related to 4), the idea that behaviour should just, in the words of Susan Friedman, Ph.D., "flow like a fountain" without need of consequences, is opposed by more than 60 years of unequivocal evidence that behaviour is, again to quote Friedman, "a tool to produce consequences." Another problem is that bribes are given before behaviour, and rewards are given after. And, a mountain of evidence from decades of research in pure and applied settings has demonstrated over and over that positive reinforcement - i.e., rewards - make relationships better, never worse.
6) If you pat your dog when he's afraid, you're rewarding the fear.
Fear is an emotional state - a reaction to the presence or anticipation of something highly aversive. It is not an attempt at manipulation. If terrorists enter a bank and order everybody down on the floor, the people will exhibit fearful behaviour. If I then give a bank customer on the floor a compliment, 20 bucks or chocolates, is this going to make them more afraid of terrorists next time? It's stunningly narcissistic to imagine that a dogs fearful behaviour is somehow directed at us (along with his enthusiastic door-dashing).
7) Punish dogs for growling or else they'll become aggressive.
Ian Dunbar calls this "removing the ticker from the time bomb." Dogs growl because something upsetting them is too close. If you punish them for informing us of this, they are still upset but now not letting us know, thus allowing scary things to get closer and possibly end up bitten. Much better to make the dog comfortable around what he's growling at so he's not motivated to make it go away.
8) Playing tug makes dogs aggressive.
There is no evidence that this is so. The only study ever done, by Borchelt and Goodloe, found no correlation between playing tug and the incidence of aggression directed at either family members or strangers.
Tug is, in fact, a cooperative behaviour directed at simulated prey: the toy.
9) If you give dogs chew-toys, they'll learn to chew everything.
This is a Pandora's box type of argument that, once again, has zero evidence to support it. Dogs are excellent discriminators and readily learn with minimal training to distinguish their toys from forbidden items. The argument is also logically flawed as chewing is a 'hydraulic' behaviour that waxes and wanes, depending on satiation/deprivation, as does drinking, eating and sex.
Dogs without chew objects are like zoo animals in barren cages. Unless there is good compensation with other enrichment activities, there is a welfare issue here.
10) You can't modify 'genetic' behavior.
All behaviour - and I mean all - is a product of a complex interplay between genes and the environment. And while some behaviours require less learning than others, or no learning at all, their modifiability varies as much as does the modifiability of behaviours that are primarily learned.
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