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Punishment is not a dirty word
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Photo: "Hadley" and "Bill"
The use of “Punishment” in dog training is an extremely controversial and misunderstood subject. In the past, punishment and praise were all that was used to train dogs. As a result, many dogs were labeled “untrainable” because they could not respond well to these force-based methods. Then, in the early 90s, came the revolution in dog training, and people moved towards better, reward based methods. However, for many trainers this meant eliminating ALL previous methods, the good and the bad alike. In reality, there is a place for the use of punishment in training, but it needs to be clearly understood and skillfully applied.
The confusion starts with the definition of “punishment”. Unfortunately, even dog trainers have trouble agreeing on our vocabulary and meanings, and this adds greatly to the pet owner's confusion. In the Wikipedia dictionary of psychological terms, it states “In psychology, punishment is the reduction of a behavior via a stimulus which is applied ("positive punishment") or removed ("negative punishment").The definition requires that punishment is only determined after the fact by the reduction in behavior; if the offending behavior of the subject does not decrease then it is not considered punishment. ...an aversive that does not decrease behavior is not a punishment.”
In simpler terms, this means that A PUNISHMENT IS ANYTHING YOUR DOG DISLIKES SO MUCH THAT SHE WILL CHANGE HER BEHAVIOR IN ORDER TO AVOID BEING PUNISHED AGAIN.
So what does a dog consider to be punishing? Since what we are looking for is a reduction in the “bad” behavior, a successful punishment can be as simple and painless as not giving the dog a treat if he does not Sit when told to. Being denied the treat is so unpleasant for most dogs, that they will change the “bad behavior” of Not Sitting to avoid the punishment! Voila! You can successfully punish a dog just by denying the reward!
This system of reward being given or denied is what is meant by “positive reinforcement training”. (The psychological terms for it are “positive reinforcement” and “negative punishment”. Look for a future article to discuss these and other murky terms!)
For some dogs, however, merely denying the reward is not sufficient motivation to eliminate a behavior. These dogs may need a more aversive stimulus. Wikipedia again “In psychology, aversives are unpleasant stimuli that induce changes in behavior through punishment; by applying an aversive immediately following a behavior, the likelihood of the behavior occurring in the future is reduced. Aversives can vary from being slightly unpleasant or irritating (such as a disliked color) to physically damaging (such as an electric shock). It is not the level of unpleasantness, but rather the effectiveness the unpleasant event has on changing behavior that defines the aversive.”
For dogs, there are several useful punishment tools, such as squirt bottles, shake cans, etc which can eliminate the bad behavior. When choosing a punishment tool, it is important to accurately asses the individual dog. Most dogs find being squirted in the face or on the back of the ears to be punishing, however, some dogs find this only annoying and some dogs consider being squirted to be a fun game!
Quite often the person does something as a “punishment” which the dog only finds unpleasant. This may lead to an endless cycle of “bad” behavior-unpleasant thing-brief pause-repetition of “bad” behavior…the person is frustrated, the dog is annoyed, no one is happy. The key to using aversives to eliminate behavior is that the aversive must be punishing in the dog’s opinion.
Most behaviors which your dog exhibits and which you dislike should not be punished with anything more aversive than denying the reward. Instead, the dog should be Prevented from doing things the wrong way, Guided into doing things the right way and Rewarded for getting things right. There are, however, a few behaviors which are acceptable to punish and a few which need to be punished. In the case of the behaviors which are acceptable to punish, you could also solve the problem through Prevention – Guidance – Reward, but more aversive punishment may be added to speed the process, especially where safety is an issue. In both cases, it is vital that the dog is also (preferably before being punished) taught an alternative, rewardable way to behave. Without an alternative behavior strategy in place, the old “bad” behavior is very likely to resurface eventually.
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