Training Without Conflict® 팟캐스트 에피소드 10: Simon Gadbois

and I strongly believe that to really understand behavior and that's my bias I have to admit all these perspectives are important because they're not competing with each other they actually complete each other and I find that a little bit unfortunate that I think a lot of people in the dog world see ethology as the opposite of psychology or you know the the the good old nature nurture debate kind of thing which you know in science now we don't even think is a debate at all actually it's but it was a quite fierce debate at some point back in time correct yeah before I would say before the 70s that was you know the the big war between ethology and psychology was about nature and nurture but then both groups both groups kind of realized they were both wrong and both right about some stuff right and it's really Robert Hind and and honestly I have to say here for full disclosure he's part of my academic genealogy

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radical behaviorism comes from. I have nothing against behaviorism, if it's what we call operational behaviorism, which means that it's a behaviorism that's open to talking about emotions, for instance, and the brain, you know, cognitive processes. But the radical behaviorism that that really, you know, wants to avoid any of those concepts is more popular than I think it should be right now. I just don't get it. Yeah, I have to agree with you. I mean, I travel, even with COVID, I travel quite a bit. Somehow I find ways and I teach and I have a school and it's what you're saying is spot on, like, for whatever reason, somehow that type of radical behaviorism has stuck very, very strongly in the dog training world. And it almost doesn't even matter. Well, we know there are so many different ideologies and camps, if you want to call them this way, but it really doesn't even matter. One will pick up one side and another extreme and so on. But ultimately, they'll somehow go back to radical behaviorism. And after, again, just as you said, so many years, we know better right now. I mean, we have evidence and it's so much more interesting, actually. Well, yeah. And, you know, I think one of the reasons is that if you really focus just on conditioning to explain, well, actually, that's the thing. I think it's the pragmatic or the practical appeal of conditioning that that makes people say, okay, that's all I need. Right. And it's true, if you're a dog trainer, and a lot of the work we do in my lab here, the main tools in the toolbox are obviously from basic conditioning principles to train our animals animals to do what we want them to do. The problem becomes, when you claim that that's all you need, correct, to explain animal behavior. And that's where the academic world has gone way beyond that kind of thinking. And for me, since we were talking about my background earlier, I spent some years studying wolves, for instance, and but before that, I had worked with rats in some kind of neuropharmacology kind of stuff, I had worked with pigeons and in spatial learning. And I was kind of a behaviorist, maybe not radical, but at least operational or, you know, more more relaxed type of behaviors. Dr. Justin Marchegiani And I remember the very first day that I spent watching, observing some of the wolves I was going to work with for almost 10 years at that point. I just said, at one point, wow, this is all limbic. And what I meant by this is that when I was watching them interacting with each other, Dr. Justin Marchegiani There was not much that conditioning and a pure radical behaviorist

perspective could have explained. It was raw emotions. The limbic system was almost behind everything that I was seeing. There was not much even cortical in the in terms of let's say social cognition, for instance. And I'm not saying that they're brainless animals. On the contrary, I think they're really smart animals, no doubt about it. They have very great both instrumental and social intelligence. But, you know, if you reduce yourself to basic conditioning principles to explain animal behavior of any species, you're missing a lot, a lot. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Right. And you, man, there's so many interesting topics. Hopefully, we can touch everywhere because I really would love to. You're based in Canada. And that's kind of probably where the... Are you born in Canada? Or, yeah, so that's probably, I mean, it's easy to... Well, not easy, but you have an easier access to study wolves and to probably... Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah, it's true in a sense. Yeah, because it's part of the culture, in a sense, too. I mean, they are in most... Well, actually, I was going to say in most provinces, not really, but they are in... No, actually, they are in most provinces. Interestingly, I'm actually in a province where there are no wolves. In fact, the Maritimes, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince of Rhode Island, there are no wolves. In fact, they're not even in Newfoundland, I believe. Dr. Justin Marchegiani But otherwise, you're right. You know, it's... The wolf is an animal that is part of our... Yeah, it's part of our culture. It used to be the case in the US as well, especially the western part of the US. Actually, at one point, almost everywhere on the continent, but certainly, it is still part of the culture of some of the northern states, like Minnesota, Michigan, the world. But yes, it's a little bit different here for the access. As I say this, there's probably more wolf researchers in the US than Canada overall. It's probably a question of, obviously, our right population. We're a 10th of your population in the US, so that probably explains part of it, but I don't know. In fact, a lot of the wolf researchers that are Americans come here to study wolves, right? David Meach studied wolves on El Smeer Island here in Canada. So... Dr. David Meach I really tried to have him at some point on the podcast, and he agreed, but then, I guess, just the agency he's working for still, it's not... I guess he's not allowed to yet. So, but I... Yeah, there was something to do with his job that he was not allowed to.

Do you ever think of going back to wolves? I mean, I know it's a completely different lifestyle, and it's just not a... Yeah, no, actually. I'll tell you two reasons. You're right. The practicalities of it, especially since I have kids, you know, this is like months and months away. It's very demanding in terms of the field work, the time, and... Yeah, no, not really. The other factor, I have to say, is that when I stopped, I was actually relieved, because as much as I like wolves, they're not necessarily my most favorite canids. I worked also with foxes and coyotes, and I absolutely love coyotes. Actually, I think coyotes are fascinating. But the problem with wolves was kind of some kind of aversive conditioning, in the sense that the humans that work with wolves are really difficult to deal with. And so, I think, in the sense of... There's a lot of big egos. And I think it's in part... There's two things there. I think there is the fact that it's a limited resource. You know, it's like you pointed out, it's hard to get the funding, it's hard to get access to them. There's a lot of competition. So there's that aspect of it. And the other one is, I think, it's what I call a high profile species. I was at a conference as a graduate student in 1996. And we ended up being a group of people that we were all complaining as students about the politics of research. And we noticed that we had one thing in common, all of us at that table, is that we were all studying high profile species. So primates, cetaceans like whales or dolphins, wolves, right? And I think there's something to that, unfortunately. Those species are kind of magnets for, you know, people that are there for the wrong reasons, basically. More for the attention of the species they're studying and not really for the passion of it. And I remember when I ended the wolf research, I remember thinking, I'll just go study chipmunks. Because I think chipmunk people are nice to each other, right? I mean, nobody competes for chipmunks. Everybody's happy to work with chipmunks. Why does that remind me of dog training communities? Well, there's that too. So then, where are you right now in terms of what is super interesting? What are you into right now? Yeah. So in 2007, we had the Wolf Research Center here attached to the Lausie University that facilitated a lot of the wolf research. And there were some great people that worked here like Fred Errington, John Fentress, Peter McLeod. But the center closed. A lot of those people retired. So I had to reinvent myself a little bit. So I worked a little bit on coyotes for a while.

But then I started actually developing a research program with wildlife conservation canines. And basically, this is kind of what we've been doing in the last, let's say, 12 years, almost 15 years at some level. And it's to study applied areas of dog olfaction. The two main ones that we've done over the years are biomedical applications, mostly for detection of hypoglycemia in children. And so I've done a lot of research in the last year, and I've done a lot of research in the last year. And I've done a lot of research recently with Laura, Laura, my graduate student. Of böylece böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle owls get contaminated by lead yeah oh wow so what kind of what what kind of dogs do you uh how how is the selection and where what what how how do you get there yeah so the way the way it works here is that we uh we work with volunteers from the community so we don't have a kennel uh it's people that volunteer the dogs to work with us um and some of the the projects that are within those areas that i mentioned are methodological things like we've looked at different things over the years like um different training methods for instance uh now we're getting into uh dogs that are assigned trackers over over goal trackers for instance in training and how that may be relevant to uh some of the the skills especially for a biomedical alert uh but we basically get whatever people volunteer so for a while uh i would say 90 to 95 percent of the dogs we were getting were uh border collies because interesting border collie uh owners are desperate to find a job for their dogs yeah uh and we we went with it because i mean border collies are weird uh they're it's a bit all or none with them uh they're either a bit too uh adhd they don't really focus or they require a lot of work or there's some kind of neurotic behavior or being in the way some kind of ocd like behavior by the way i don't typically like using these labels for dogs but i think no no i i totally understand what yeah absolutely but when you get a border collie to first of all understand that they have a nose because a lot of them learn to use their nose here uh even the owners will say i don't know what you did to my dog but he sniffs everything now um when they get the idea that they have a nose what's remarkable with them is their work ethics again another term that's very vague but i think we all understand what what it means the only issue sometimes is they may some of them may get bored with time the repetitiveness of

what we do in the lab but again a lot of them will just go like yeah no i mean this is my job this is what i do and i will do it perfectly for as long as you want me to do it so for many many years we were mostly a border collie lab it's only in the last five years with my new graduate student that we kind of uh opened up to other breeds with some interesting successes uh uh uh so yeah we're a little bit less uh focused on border collies but i would say it's still about 70 75 of the dogs we get here but it's still probably interesting to work with other breeds just to to experience the the difference and what what takes you right yes and and you know i i had a border collie at the time when we started uh so i was a little bit biased towards that breed anyway uh but in the meantime i got a um uh a red uh uh golden retriever so this is not your regular um you know uh teddy bear uh fluffy uh uh couch potato golden retriever these are uh very slim very slender a very active uh working breed uh in fact the one i have uh is much more intense than any border collie i've ever had so uh and they have a magnificent nose this is why i realized when i got iv six years ago yeah okay there are some noses that are better than others no doubt about it and they're definitely also one of the breeds that it's so highly in tune into working with the human that it it's they love they love to please right they'll do anything to please you so it's almost annoying sometimes how much they they they love people i i i remember working at in the early 90s at guide dogs for the blinding in california and at the time i don't know what they have now but at the time we did have labs goldens and some shepherds we were starting to get away from shepherds just because they were they were excellent to work with but the the people that were coming to get dogs they were just not physically capable to to go with that pace so although like some of my favorite dogs that i worked with were goldens and some of the most ridiculous memories that i have are still with goldens because i would work a dog and granted it's kind in the middle of the training and it's serious work of course we're right about to approach the curb the dog has to pay attention and next thing you know there is somebody just around the person that walks by they have to greet them and with with a full blast wiggle and bow and like just just check out like in an instant to where it makes you laugh so much so yeah it's very i mean they're cool dogs um um tell me i'm interested in how what would you how do you what do they get paid like when with the

detection work how what is the reward normally how so in in the lab conditions that that that we have because a lot of the work we do here is is not uh actually including for the biomedical stuff is not really um it's not with the people being around so it's with samples of breath for instance we just want to demonstrate that from breath they can detect just by scent different states um either in hypoglycemia or stress um so they they basically sniff vials that are in uh special containers and uh we um we we we used a clicker um i don't know why some people started saying that i was against a clicker i was never against a clicker uh i i think it's a great great way to uh uh train dogs um and uh we as a primary reinforcer we use uh um special treats actually it's a mixed bag literally of different uh value of treats you know from regular kibbles to um uh to more exciting ones uh just aligning here with the risko and wagner model you know that the how surprising the unconditioned stimulus is is actually a good idea so uh yeah the reinforcer basically is uh we have a secondary and primary reinforcer and that's how we've been training as i say that uh we have we assess all of our dogs initially to see what they respond to the best so over the years we've had a few dogs that don't tolerate the clicker for some reason so they we we used only primary reinforcers we have a few dogs also that respond very well to play better actually than food as a reinforcer and uh with those dogs play was used but as you know play as a reinforcer can be a little bit problematic if you don't have a very good discipline you know in making the play about very short uh especially some of those breeds like uh those red uh uh golden retrievers that will you know they get into play and then you can't snap snap them out of it that easily um but we we have the policy in my lab to adjust to the dog not force the dog to adjust to our ways of doing things which is so typical for us for majority of trainers it's like we we learn a way or we get excited about a way and and we almost forget that to pay attention to the dog and see maybe that's not the best way for that one dog yeah and it's it's also a little bit difficult honestly uh you know when we started working on this kind of stuff 15 years ago publishing some of our research was difficult because we would uh as you're supposed to do we would acknowledge that you know this dog was trained this way and this dog trained this way and this dog trained this way if you send this to psychology journals uh you know that read mostly about pigeons and rats being

trained always exactly the same way usually by computers uh on top of it it doesn't go well back then at least there was a lot of pushback like no no no you have to train the dogs all the same way otherwise you're comparing oranges and apples and i would say well not necessarily they were trained to a criterion that's all what matters how we got there is in the applied world of training at least kind of a detail correct which which kind of goes to to what you're teaching right now learning and motivation you know like if that's the motivation that really if that's what motivates you it will be ah you see it will be almost shame to to push it away and try to motivate it with other means it's very interesting you know we i actually what i fight against often are students that are you know are coming from the you know very uh very formal research methods kind of perspective i used to teach that course here actually so i understand exactly how they think about these things but i'm the one that have to remind them yes but this dog is not responding to this right now really well and we're losing him so what are we going to do are we going to continue to try to shove down their throat this kind of method that it clearly don't handle well or are we going to try to see what gets that dog to tick right to to react properly to right and and usually the common sense gets them to say sure we'll adapt to the dog but it's funny how the the go-to thing is well this is how we do things you know and then we we they want to apply that method to all dogs all the time and it would be beautiful if it was working but it often doesn't yeah in my opinion motivation trumps everything um like when when i teach and where i go and i also have i have a school for dog trainers i just started like about two years ago it's an online school and then um they come for certification and we do some hands-on and do this kind of zoom calls and one of the big things that i really really insist and keep repeating uh is that motivation is priority finding motivation maintaining motivation that it's a it's a healthy motivation because you can have a you know you can have some dogs can go way crazy to where they cannot really function and then it becomes counterproductive but getting like in my opinion most dog training even even today revolves around how we're gonna accomplish a behavior how we're gonna mark certain things and when we're gonna reward böyle böyle böyle it's it's a fairly simple thing unless we are talking you know there is always some complex and some challenging behaviors to teach and to to create some

real ability and so on but bottom line it always comes down to how bad do you want to do it and why do you want to do it is it because you're afraid to do it not afraid not to do it or is it because yeah there's so many nuances of motivation correct but it really comes down to because if if there is motivation and if the trainer understands that how how crucial it is you may not be the best trainer but you have a dog that's willing to go on and figure it out for you lack of handling skills just because you've tapped the right motivation of the dog correct absolutely and and two things here i won't comment on one one is i think we have to get off this idea that there's no breed differences i know this is very trendy right now and some people are pushing this idea but it makes no sense even from a biological perspective if you understand how artificial selection works um you know if we've managed to create different phenotypes based on morphology so size etc etc it behavior is a phenotype too so obviously there are trends at least within breeds that differentiate border call these let's say from uh saint bernard's no doubt about it um and it drives me nuts that some people to see this based on whatever kind of principle in part actually motivated i i think by uh breed specific legislations but that's another problem um i think that acknowledging as breed differences in in behavior and behavioral profile is is not it doesn't necessarily have to go with that issue that's a completely different one um so you know when i was working with border collies i remember some people uh were talking to me about their dogs and we would have conversations about how to train them and they would say things like i don't know well you've never trained a malinois have you and then i would i would see the trap coming and thinking oh boy okay yeah you're right i haven't so yeah the i know this is a different reality so then we would talk about you know the the quirks of malinois which i i know you know quite well uh and uh you know over the years i i discovered that yeah indeed um obviously there's always individual differences even even within breeds and i've seen it quite often actually with border collies um but there are some huge differences now that i'm also more open to uh uh hunting breeds uh which i wasn't initially um i just discovered a completely different world especially for the wildlife conservation canine stuff stuff that we do where i'm starting to see now you know we've created all of those hunting breeds uh for very very specific purposes sometimes half of the work is

done there just in terms of the selective breeding that was done and i never really took advantage of it uh and now i see that i should have um you know there's some hunting breeds that we've used that were complete disasters but when you look at what they were bred to do then you realize yeah what was i thinking um so you know that's that's one part that the breed the breed part the the other one is what you say about motivation resonates with me very well because i think that again this is an effect of behaviorism radical behaviorism they never wanted to talk about what we call hypothetical constructs right like cognition like uh emotions and motivation was one of them the problem with this is that this has excluded all of the new modern theories on motivation and learning that are all about what we call incentive learning or incentive motivation and it's a beautiful world because in all of those theories and there's so many people involved in this uh bearage pancsep valen uh dickinson uh schultz etc etc what they're basically telling us is that we can motivate we can sorry we can uh learn or teach or train motivation we're missing a huge tool in the toolbox which is this idea that motivation is something that we can actually transform as trainers we have the ability to actually transform and direct motivation it's not just about the intrinsic motivations of some individuals it's also that you can teach them to become motivated by some things in a way we already do it with the clicker i mean it's a great example of how you're basically telling them that the clicker is announcing the potential at least of a reinforcement and that's a lot of the magic of the clicker it taps right into the motivational system of the dogs this has been really well demonstrated with rats with humans uh even one study by burns i believe on neuroimaging uh is showing that indeed some of the parts of the brain that are known to facilitate learning get activated by uh conditioned stimuli uh such as the clicker for instance or even praise for that matter that matter works as well well just to interrupt well i will we'll go back to this but since we we're right on it i i want to ask your position on this because i i go back and forth and i mean i do have an opinion um condition reinforcer is it like there is a notion that that i tend to subscribe to more and and that is that it's not necessarily a condition reinforcer but it's like a sign post like a like a um you know it tells you what happens but it's a signal more than than actual having having its own

properties do you understand what i'm saying i think what you're talking about is the difference between uh uh uh let's say the clicker as a secondary reinforcer or condition reinforcer and a clicker as a marker is that possible that that's what you're no no just just the fact that as a conditional reinforcer does does what are the basically what are the reinforcing properties of the clicker or are is it really just the primary reinforcer and the clicker or the clicker or the clicker signals you know just just like a sign that says there's gonna come a right turn but nothing further than like that that sign that says right turn doesn't necessarily have any reinforcing properties so that's a böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle this uh i've been dragged in some of those debates with dog trainers in the past what's really interesting about this is that uh i think what part of the answer is it depends uh it depends how you use the clicker it depends what your goals are and i think this is where a lot of that discussion and it took me too many years to understand this are are going in the wrong directions a lot of the time and we talk past each other uh one of the ideas for instance is that the clicker predicts uh that a primary reinforcer is coming the key word is predict and the question is often does it mean to predict at 100 this is the whole idea about a one-to-one ratio between you know the the the clicking and then delivering the kibble for it yes yeah um and it's really interesting because if you look at that literature it's not black and white at all not at all like a lot of people are actually saying it is it is not it doesn't matter if it's rats or other species it's not at all black and white and there are a lot of theories that are relevant to this to this idea and again it's it goes back to it depends what you're trying to do like like ultimately for a dog trainer it it really bottom line it does make a difference and now looking at from what kind of glasses we put on we can probably start looking at it as well it is a condition enforcement noise a signal or not you know but but the bottom line for the dog trainer uh you you do need it definitely uh um dogs are looking for those you know so oh thank you yeah well so you know part of that debate also is as to do with um if you if you are um okay with the concept in part at least of intermittent reinforcement which is another thing that now is vilified a lot in animal training for reasons i don't

understand and it's really interesting because a lot of the people that are against uh are actually skinnerians which is fascinating because uh much of skinner's phd thesis and the content of his book the behavioral organisms is actually on intermittent reinforcement so the fact that they they turn against it fascinates me especially when you look at what intermittent reinforcement is supposed to do what the point of uh of it is which is to often increase the responding but also a huge resistance to extinction which by the way is often a huge problem with uh medical alert dogs that stop working or stop responding after a while and the main solution if not the only solution to prevent this with these dogs is to make sure that they are on intermittent reinforcement because a lot of the stopping of responding that occurs in these dogs is because people don't keep the contingency and it's also a very rare event so two things going on it doesn't happen very often that you'll have a hypoglycemic crisis or that you will have a panic attack um so the behavior has a tendency to extinguish number one number two again um uh when people are going through the event and the dog responds properly they often are too busy dealing with their blood uh uh sugar levels or or their panic attack that they don't actually reinforce the dog so obviously after a while the dog stops responding it's like well okay i don't see the point of this and they they stop doing it this is a real very well known problem uh with people that have those dogs or training those dogs although nobody really is talking about it openly is that you need a lot of maintenance training to keep those dogs doing their job reliably after a while you're guessing you're hoping they're doing it you're hoping they're paying attention but it's not guaranteed and it's interesting because you go back to the rationale of intermittent reinforcement and boom then you realize that the whole point of it was precisely to deal with these kinds of situations and yet a large number of dog trainers are against it because they will say for instance that it frustrates the dog thing is if you are implementing intermittent reinforcement and you see frustration in a dog you're doing it the wrong way true that's what we teach there are students that that uh shape pigeons uh and do that work with with rats in skinner boxes you're going too fast that's well known uh even skinner was clear about this if if you if you change the schedule and you increase the time between you know when you you uh the good behavior and the reinforcement

uh or the ratio uh you have to do it very very progressively and what most people do including my students they go way too fast uh they go from 100 uh to uh you know 50 and then they wonder why the dog is frustrated but that's because any dog would go like what the heck is going on here this you know you used to give me a pickle every time uh so that would be las vegas casino everybody breaking the machines the machines and agree um you know what i think with this is that the the um like from my experience um there is i i i do see how some trainers in some situations may insist on continuous schedule and and that would be very different what what what we are demanding and so for example like if and and i do a lot of high level competitions so there is behaviors that are what i call high maintenance and a little bit um almost requiring something above the natural response and in those i find that because it's so demanding that continuous schedule is uh it has some uh special value because it kind of i made it you know that question mark and um but then again like when we when we do intermittent it's it's very important because it's like yeah not right now but i'm a player i don't quit so that they both have the interesting values i i completely agree and and it goes back to this idea it depends what you're trying to do right um um and the the the theory behind behind intermittent reinforcement let's say from a um from a neuroscience perspective is that now we know from the neuroscience of learning that it's not really the reinforcer that's the key as it is consumed it's the ex the expectation or the anticipation of the reinforcer that gets the learning to work so intermittent reinforcement addresses this in part if it's relevant to what you're trying to do where you get the animal a little bit on its tippy toes right uh and and you can see it actually with rats when you can you put them on some schedules where the the rate of responding will increase if that's what you're trying to do intermittent reinforcement works works really well especially if it's fixed fixed fixed ratios i believe yeah as we can get the rat going like this um and and your your analogy uh uh maybe accidental about about uh las vegas uh and gambling is totally right right because the the people that program those gambling machines especially the slot machines know exactly those rules exactly they don't want you to get angry they want you to keep plugging and at the same time they don't i mean they know you're not going to have the payoff every time they

want you to have a high response rate they know exactly when to you know deliver the the reinforcer and uh and it gets literally people addicted now i'm not a proponent of the idea that dog training is about getting a dog addicted to anything i don't think that's the point um uh but to go back to the link between primary and secondary reinforcer i think you know part of the the idea there also and i got myself in in apparently in trouble with this with um uh with a known dog trainer a number of years ago at a conference um i had pointed out that actually theoretically when you do clicker training you're basically doing pure classical conditioning initially where you just pair the click with the food click food click food the dog acquires this and it there is a literature on this in fact it's in most of the textbooks that actually in a sense the clicker by itself has acquired a reinforcing value and removing uh not all the time but removing occasionally even if it's accidentally the delivery of the primary should not affect learning if you remove it completely eventually that will break but uh this idea that you must always click and always follow with with the primary there's actually no uh strong data for that if you if you stop completely just use the clicker on it's by itself eventually maybe but i say maybe only because you know a lot of what we do especially in the the kind of uh agility and and more complex kind of competition stuff that you do some of the the stuff i do uh in the field as well um you know dogs can't care less if i'm clicking or not uh they are so self-reinforced by the work that they do uh you know i sometimes i have my beautiful fantastic liver treats in the field and i want to you know we just found a turtle i'm all excited and uh they look at me it's like i don't have the time for this i need to go back and find another turtle i love it i love it that's that's the ultimate that's the ultimate training like all like really ultimately what we want to accomplish is exactly what you just said it's like you me and my dog we're gonna go and do the thing that you and i love doing and all this blocks they were just blocks they yes we had to be precise as we had to do but there is a point in time where like i again like i go so much and people think oh my god he must be so spot on with every single time that something happens there is a reaction and there is always acknowledgement and i they get so surprised oh you didn't you didn't mark you didn't release you didn't it's like guys i have

worked with this dog for five years like i can i mean the the clever hand story i mean we don't need nothing anymore we we are just looking at each other and i can tell him to come to me probably in 50 different ways it's it there is a point where that basic language should flourish and then and then we just get to enjoy what we like doing if assuming again that motivation we have tapped into the right motivation where i kind of wanted to go back there um um one of the interesting things for me when i train and it doesn't matter if it's detection because i also go and do a lot of detection for for military and and around the world or or search and rescue whatever it is but there will be dogs that will come that will be from different breeds selected genetically to do a specific job and if we as trainers put them all in that same loop and say okay well that's the reward that's the reinforcer that's the instead of trying to find what is genetically reinforcing to that breed because if we if we can figure it out that genetic program this is what i'm made to do i don't know why i'm getting so hyped up about it but that's what it takes me and next thing you know if we find that that always like i really like this guy i don't know why but he is tapping into something that nobody else touches in me right and and um when when when we start to look into okay that let's say okay so border collie i mean yes we can give it the toy yes we can give it the food but ultimately the whole reward can go a little bit into some stalking some backing up some forward some okay grab the ball now to where all those things they go that selection gets into play and when that happens that's the the most brilliant stuff like if uh and i'm sure you know like um um chaser and and john and unfortunately i never got to meet him but i talked to quite a few people that knew him at the time and every time i watched some of the videos ultimately the way that dog responded was not necessarily well he liked to play he liked to play but also he tapped into the typical border collie genetic makeup it's like no that's how we're gonna play you're gonna just talk it you're gonna chase you're gonna back up you're gonna you know then you have a different type of dog that maybe it needs to search a little bit or maybe it's a one of the bully breeds that they just enjoy to hold on to something for a long time so if we start to look into what you like and apply it in the training it changes everything but i i want to go back a little bit you

mentioned the the goal and sign tracking and and something with the detection and another like like just just give me a little bit more there because you said you you're doing a little bit more into sign tracking or i don't know if i i missed it a little bit yeah so first of all a lot of what you talked about there i think for me is this idea that you know you can teach motivation i think the idea is to develop intrinsic motivation in dogs that that's the you know a very important thing and i think that's what we do as trainers in a way is we we get them to like what they're doing and sometimes they will do it for free if they really get into it and that's the beauty of it like you said it's uh and a lot of the time you're right about that too it's to bring to them more natural behaviors you know um one thing we've noticed in my lab here is that we do uh we do medical detection with you know uh um kind of a sterile lab you know a floor that's washed every day with you know like glass vials and stainless steel containers and that kind of stuff and it's really boring for dogs and a lot of the time when we see their performance with tongue go down especially dogs that have had experience in the field and then uh what we'll often do is we'll start burying those samples into a a container that has uh wood um wood pellets for wood stoves and then suddenly the behavior comes back and it's kind of intuitive because and the performance goes back too and it's kind of intuitive because it's a more contaminated environment but the thing is they can root they can dig you know it's that and they bring all those it's that prediction error that the brain makes it's like whoops let me pay attention yeah exactly and and you activate the whole brain it becomes a fully uh motor kind of behavior and and uh you know yeah i mean the idea is again you engage more parts of the brain and that that facilitates everything so we've noticed that a long time ago that that performance goes up but again publishing those papers is really hard into the biomedical stuff because they will say well we have contamination well anyway going back to design tracking um so some of the conversations i was having with with some colleagues about for instance the uh efficacy of the uh uh uh the clicker for instance on its own uh or occasionally on its own i should say not not i'm saying that it should always keep its uh its strength on its own after being paired but um we we realized after a while that it was a huge literature in rats uh about sign trackers versus goal trackers and this

is the idea that every rat out there falls into one of three categories actually sign trackers goal trackers and the ones somewhere in between and the idea actually interestingly is that sign trackers they're sign tracking rats are much more likely to pay attention to condition stimuli that are around them in the environment they're also the ones that get a like it's a genetic trait for addiction correct exactly and and that's where that literature is going now with the theories by barrage for instance i'm a big fan of barrage uh as some uh some people know um but there's others too tommy uh humans etc it's the demonstrated in humans actually that it's a big predictor actually of addiction well people that are sign trackers the theory says are more likely to become addicted uh and for longer as böyle Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast

use of the condition reinforcers actually come partially from their experience with their own breed. And I have no problem seeing that some breeds would be much more goal tracking than sign tracking, for instance. And so that's one of the things that we're doing in the next year, actually, is explore this at the individual and breed level as well. Wow, that would be so interesting. Yeah, and it would make sense. It would actually be a full convergence with both the human and the rat literature on this, actually. It seems to me that it just makes sense. And a lot of the old stuff of Ahrens and Shoemaker that showed that some breeds like Bortocolis, for instance, and I believe Malinois as well, are higher in dopamine levels in terms of basal activity of the dopaminergic system, would go actually towards this idea that these would have to be sign trackers based on the neuroscience that we know about dopaminergic activity and sign tracking. So it's an intriguing idea, but I think it's one that makes a lot of sense at the end of the day that we are thinking basically is where I'm going with this of assessing our dogs here now, not just for their nose, their trainability, their motivation, but also trying to determine if they're sign trackers or goal trackers. Oh, for sure. Yeah, 100%. I mean, if you actually understand that there are two different ways to look at things and find out which one, changing everything, right? And what about the duration of sessions? What is an average session for a season dog, like a normal session? How long would it normally go for? Yeah, so we don't really push it here. I mean, so we will have a dog come two or three times a week to the lab. No more than that. We've noticed that sometimes even for some dogs, three times a week is pushing it a little bit. I think it goes towards the repetitiveness of the lab tasks, at least they have to do here. And then the other one is going to be doing it. Now, as I say that some dogs could probably come every day and it would be fine. But anyway, so on average is two to three times and the sessions during during a day are typically three about two to three, sometimes four sessions in a period of about two hours and each session as 10 trials. So it's not a lot. But, you know, a dog will come here for typically two hours. And depending on how well they're doing that day, how motivated they are, they will do between, yeah, two and four sessions, usually on average, I think three. And like I said, it's only 10 trials. So they take about 10 minutes each.

So they spend actually more time socializing with the people in the lab and having a nap under the table or having a little walk around campus than they actually do working. Which again, you know, especially since these are not competition dogs, they're pets, right, is what has been optimal for us so far. Now, again, we've had some border collies here that the whole time that the students are actually, you know, having a tea or something between sessions, they're at the door of the experimental room just waiting. Can I come in? Yeah, I'm ready. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go back to work. Obviously, we have those dogs. But yeah, so we don't we don't push it. We're not in a rush. And we certainly don't want to lose our dogs. I mean, we've seen this, unfortunately, more often, especially with the lab stuff, not the field stuff, the field stuff, you typically, you can't stop them. But with the lab stuff, I would say about half of our dogs with time will eventually kind of let you know, you know what, I've been doing this for a year or two now. It's kind of boring. It's always the same thing. So then we, we will get them into a different experiment. So it's a different setup, or it's a different way of doing things, or it's a different order. Or sometimes they are excused. Right, right, right. You know, of course, I mean, boredom and habituation, this is a, you know, the repetitiveness of doing things. It's, it's for us and dogs and rats and everybody probably, to some extent. I mean, yeah, keeping, keeping that type of motivation that it's a, I think we don't have enough, at least I don't know of enough of research done on specifically maintaining, like, like just preventing boredom. It's, it's with everything we do. Like this is probably the, the, even, even when you have talent for something, you, you still have, depending how things are presented and how things move forward. You can hit that point of, okay, I'm, I'm just done with this. We've had dogs that we gave a break, a break to for a year, for instance, and that sometimes work, you know, it is funny because when they come back after a year of taking a break, we call it a sabbatical, they, they often show up at the, the, the lab at the door, like super excited. Oh, I haven't seen you for a year. This is amazing. And, and sometimes we, we can get them back for another year of, you know, being part of a few experiments. But yeah, that's the unpredictable part of all of this. And this is why, unfortunately,

I'm moving away now from the biomedical stuff. Laura actually will be my last student on biomedical projects because what's happening now, unfortunately, for a lot of the diagnostic or alert work, the electronic nose companies are catching up on the dogs. And they're right about this is do you don't have to worry about motivation with a machine. They'll do their work, push the button and they'll do it. I mean, they can fail the same way that dogs will fail as well occasionally. But I don't give to the biomedical stuff a lot of life, maybe another decade, 10 years from now, I think that electronic noses will do the coded detection in airports, for instance, will detect blood glucose levels from breath easily. Will detect anxiety also probably are depending panic attacks from, from breath and stuff like that. I think we're probably just about max a decade away from this. So that's why I'm going back to the wildlife conservation stuff. I'm an ethologist at heart. Anyway, I work with all those other species, birds, reptiles, etc. So for me, the dog is a research assistant in the field. And again, I've never seen a dog losing motivation in the field. It's a very lab specific kind of thing that happens, you know, because the lab is so predictable, right? So when say necessarily boring, but yeah, it's predictable. It's always the same thing. You make me sniff those, those vials that have snipped 100 times, you know, it's, it's always the same order for the last three months. Do you, do you ever go, do you ever get the dogs in the lab, but actually don't do detection, but just, just have some other activities to where they, they're like, well, this is... Yeah, I know where you're going with this. Yeah, we, we, yes, we, it's not very practical to do, but we, we've done it with some dogs. Right. Uh, sometimes it takes time away from other dogs to, to come in to do work, but we try at least to make the experience of coming to the lab interesting, but you know what? This is dangerous because we, we, we decided with some of the dogs that were losing a little bit of motivation that maybe we would have play time with them at some time. Right. But then what happens is that the play time that we had overshadowed the work, and it was even harder to get them into the experimental room. Even if we had associated the associate, the experimental room with play. In fact, that was even worse, uh, because they were like, oh, we're here to play. No, no, no. We're here to work. No, no. We're here to work. Now, again, with some dogs work is play. So there's no problem,

but it's that 15% or 20% that sometime realize that, you know what, no, this is, this is really work. Yeah. And we never pushed the dogs. I mean, from an ethics point of view, you know, when we have a dog that loses motivation, we tell the owners and we say, you know what, maybe it's time for a break or, you know, your dog is not enjoying this anymore. So there's no point. We stopped. So we never force, force the dogs to it, but we'll always try a few things. Um, but we've realized that often it backfires to try to make things, you know, to associate the lab with, with really more fun. Like just a little bit too higher of arousal and, and, and cannot really get into. Yeah. So we have to be very careful with that. It has worked with some dogs, but with others, it made it much worse where they would, uh, it would say, sure, let's play. That's a great play stuff. I see my friends once or twice a week and we play, but, uh, yeah, they, they, they would not even walk into the experimental room. And it probably also will depend on the level of just understanding as, as we, we mentioned very briefly in the beginning of the conversation of, of it's not just play, doesn't just mean let's just go crazy. There's still gotta be some rules. There's still gotta be some, uh, goals and objectives and boundaries. And, and I think that will play a role. And also if, um, like we, we have, it's a, I mean, it's a, you know, problem with competition dogs as well. Once you, you start from a little puppy and you just keep working on something that is still the same. Um, and what at least I, I do a lot of times is I always keep in mind that boredom will be an enemy. Eventually it will become a problem. And I would go sometimes to places and the dog is just like with your dogs coming to the lab, my dog going to a, like a stadium. The moment they see the stadium, it's like, okay, this is showtime. And I would go some quite actually more often. I would go places to a, you know, and, and other trainers will be like, Oh, let's watch him, how he trains, pick up on some things. Right. And, but I don't train. I just kind of ask maybe one or two things from my dog. And then we just go into, uh, just having fun for the next 10 minutes and walk away. And that the trainers strangely, they're like, Oh, he just didn't want to show us how he trains. Not understanding that all I'm doing is making sure that my dog goes every time with that excitement of, this is going to be a cool thing. It's not a chore. It's not a, yes, there will be whenever there is

an element, whenever we say, okay, let's interrupt the play and let's do something. Yes. There is some compliance. There is some obligation, but I want you to want it. Otherwise there is no point. Who cares if you can do it, but you're pushed into it. That's not the point of dog training. Yeah. And, and, you know, with the dogs that we were talking about at the beginning that, that are not, uh, you know, sensitive to food as a reinforcer and work better for play, uh, when we do that between trials, we, that has to be very disciplined. So for instance, uh, we have a dog, uh, you know, gets the click. That was good response. Then we have the ball. We throw the ball once brings the ball. It goes back into the bag. And now it's time for the next trial. Yeah. The students have a really hard time keeping that, that, uh, that discipline because you, you basically have to train the dog to understand that play about is going to be 10 seconds at most. And you know, it's one throw of the ball or the Kong and that's it. And then you go back to work if you want to continue. Um, and that's easier said than done. I have to say play and I think Ken Ramirez said that before, uh, at least I was told that it can be problematic that way to, you know, to get a dog to, to get off the, the, the play the play mode you really have to be clear that you know there's a temporal boundary to this you know that play about is going to be 10 seconds then we're back to work and um but so far with the dogs that respond to play most of them we've managed to train to understand that you know the the playabout is short if you want to play more go to the next trial and you know give a go direct response and you'll be all good so with play like my i i'm probably one of the biggest proponents on on play as a motivation um like i can never say never but i really do not use food as a reinforcer my my all of my training is play based um and i divide it on like we have play as an activity and these are just terms that i use for for my own people when i teach uh when we have play as an activity but we have play as a game which means it's a it's a structure there is an objective like like just like when you play basketball there you have to have the hoops you have to have the and you don't just grab the ball and run there is rules there is penalties there's this it's a very structured game and if i teach the dog assuming again how we were talking about genetic predispositions what what do you like and i in if i can inject some of those genetic

instincts or or whatever we want to call it into the game but we still have an objective we have rules we have uh penalties for breaking rules but it's a it's a very structured game and i can show the dog that they're really good at that game but not so good to where they feel that they are so superior that there is no challenge anymore there is no competition anymore there is nothing that you know but the game is always this is the interesting part right any time any game that we want to go and watch it's always we don't know exactly and that's where i like in a very early age with really with every dog that i do i i i'm not preoccupied with teaching a sit and down and you know kind of all the classical looting things and and but i just go into play and teaching a game because i find that if i teach the dog a game before they even know sit we in that struggle for me to explain what the game is about and that they're good but not so superior when that happens i actually have so much going on from that point as far as like i've accomplished a different level of cooperation like i mean you you know like you can we can look at just wolves or any dogs you know you can have the strong dog the weak little dog but if both want to play the bigger dog will never just slam him to the ground and get the stick and go away because then that's the end of the game he has to level up and make the game interesting and i spend that that's kind of it always been my go-to way of maintaining motivation and and and then talking about behavior problems talking about all sorts of things you know like if if that dog understands how to play a certain game and he knows the rules and he knows that he's good at it i always give these analogies of um you know like you can have a little kid from from europe that plays soccer and we can throw him in brazil all by himself in the soccer field and within five minutes he's accepted and they are doing something together and and you can totally manipulate control and self-confidence through play which you cannot really do um i mean you could but it's almost very artificial if you try to do it in a different way i mean that's kind of what games are about it's all about it's all about if you're good your self-confidence is if if you can outsmart then you have strategies then you have to understand that you have to restrict yourself from breaking rules and so on there's just so much more i don't even know how i went there right now and why i went there but um i i really don't know what i was talking about

böyle Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast the stopping rule basically is that okay that play bout is done uh but i mean you have to realize too that the stuff we do in the in the lab when we do a session of let's say 10 trials for a scent detection uh it's pretty quick right so i mean i don't have a lot of time to uh playing it distracts the dog too and uh so in the field i'm much more likely to use play um there's more degree of freedom there's more space there's etc etc and uh but but uh you know going back to the motivation part of things play is very powerful for dogs to respond to it as a reinforcer there's no doubt about it and another thing that we've noticed over the years is based on the reaction of the students often when a dog suddenly has a decrease in performance uh and this is something

that happens in the lab the first uh the first instinct of the students is to go back uh so it they they they go right away into the baby step kind of thinking and if it's too hard just make it easier and then the dog will come back it almost never works what usually works is what i tell them to do which is no make the task harder and usually it's amazing and those students never believe it until they see it that's when the performance comes back that goes towards that boredom comment that you made earlier i think a lot of the time we underestimate our dogs and we we get them to do things that you know they're ready to go further yeah it it works a lot with sun detection for for us uh i usually tell the student yeah this is this is too easy uh and and the game is over then right if it's you you always write and you know that you'll have this 90 95 100 of the time okay you get the kibble but but there's that other dimension of the task that is completely gone and so we then we dilute the odor or we we do something to make the task harder and then suddenly the performance goes back up and you also see that the dog is more engaged the tail's going a little bit more the sniffing becomes even more you know and there you go yes and it's not so much it's not some it doesn't necessarily even need to be harder task as long as we trick the brain to where it's like oh this is not what i know yeah you you change well yeah exactly changing the game and again this for a researcher is a nightmare because if you try to write a paper where you say we have to do this with this dog and you know and then they will be all over you on this we do it anyway but um but yeah no absolutely it's the understanding i think that you know uh if you go back to the rascola and wagner model actually it's a right it's indeed this idea that uh and as we know actually it goes beyond rascola and wagner it's not just the the the us it's also the cs that's important in all of this like pierce and all and all of the others mcintosh as well uh a lot of these great models that were developed in the 70s and 80s basically showed that the worst thing you can do is make things way too predictable yes yes so we we go back to what i was saying about do you need to always pair the cs with the us a lot of people actually uh throw at me risk on and wagner uh to make their point and i always find that funny because if you actually look carefully at what happened after risk command wagner first of all risk carla himself um admitted that his model was not very predictive of everything in classical conditioning it had some

flaws changes theory actually uh or you know uh helped to uh uh identify some of the issues with it and then as wagner of risk carla and wagner that developed his whole model uh and uh my favorite is probably pierce and all that developed a model that actually showed that interestingly um that predictiveness is precisely the problem and they have this great experiment i think it's k and pierce actually um showing that actually uh uh a 50 pairing of the cs with the us is actually working better than a 100 pairing so going back to this idea do you always need to pair the cs with the us uh on a one-to-one-to-one ratio actually the answer is according to that model no uh it's uh and it goes back to this idea that anything even in classical conditioning is going to eventually get predictable and predictable is boring right it's basically what those models are uh you know eventually uh uh saying and that's kind of where the i don't know why why i mean you probably have noticed this too but the the dopamine word is big in the last few years in dog training and a lot of times it's i i don't think people even understand what how to what it is about and how to do and i'm almost afraid to even talk to you about it because like you you know so you you can put it so much better than me but uh i mean it's always the search for something new that's what really triggers dopamine it's the moment you have it it's done game is over like you're just like i if i win a world champion tomorrow how long it's gonna last a day a week and and then there's gotta be a new a new chase and that's that's what dopamine does it's it's it's thrives on chasing the the that knew something that you cannot something that it's yeah and and that's these incentive uh motivation uh models i was talking about it's it's exactly what where neuroscience is at right now um i you know i'm a little bit responsible for putting that dopamine thing out there and i kind of regret the way that i initially talked about it i think that's comes from uh sparks 2014 or one of those conferences and um um you know if if i had to go back i would introduce the concept differently the mistake i made at the time was to try to explain this from a neuroscience perspective and what i've been doing in the last year or two is to go back to the learning theory models that were making exactly the same point without the neuroscience um and uh yeah it's it's the last three or four presentations uh or webinars i've given actually and that it those models are either forgotten or just not known and i don't understand because there's even some young

faculty that that engage in this debate that don't seem to know about these models um but anyway they they are they are quite powerful because again it's this idea that you can teach you can condition motivation which is very powerful if you think about it wow and it goes exactly towards what you're saying which is basically you're not learning if you're bored and you're not learning if you're not anticipating something that's potentially exciting uh doesn't matter if it's food play or something else or even praise right and even i mean to go even further the brain doesn't even ultimately it doesn't even make difference in in is a negative is a positive reinforcement it's it's it has to intrigue the brain that that's really the bottom line somehow yeah it's you know i you have to be a little bit careful about you know like how if if you start using aversives and and stuff like that but again i mean on that debate which is another one i i think we've lost a little bit our common sense here the way we discuss about these things in all black or white but um but in a sense if you do work with the anticipation of just of reward of the spatial of a reinforcer you don't even have to think about using anything um aversive or punishers um but again if you establish just a very very boring and extremely predictable link between uh um you know the the the the the the condition reinforcer and and uh the primary or or you know whatever how you reinforce your animal then then yeah then then you need to be much more creative and it's this idea that how do you engage that brain again that's not understood right and we go back to we go back to intermittent reinforcement the idea also that if you don't know that you will get reinforced it doesn't mean that it's punishment um right if you don't get reinforced it doesn't mean that it's punishment it means actually for a dog that's well engaged in the task what's next let's get to the next trial so i can get a chance to get reinforced you know people often tell me aren't the dogs that uh are not reinforced every time getting angry at you barking biting that kind of stuff no and the ones that do usually it's only because the student went a bit too fast again going back to this idea that you can't go super extreme on this and if they do it's because they They haven't developed yet what I would call this, you know, incentive motivation. They haven't developed yet this intrinsic motivation. And that's because you didn't do it right or you went too fast. I know that you, like who you are is from everything that I've read.

And by the way, the way I got introduced to you and then once I read this one article, then I kind of went into search and listened to a bunch of podcasts and some presentations and so on. But there was, what was it? There was that one, Fifty Shades of Grey, Misuse of Misunderstanding and Misinformation of the Concept of Dominance and Punishment. And I am, like, if there is three things that I am really about, that's play. All reinforcement and all varieties of punishment. And genetics. Like, I've been breeding Malinos for, since 89. And I've done so many. And, like, pretty much any little research that came out, I was able to just do it myself with my own dogs to see if, like, you know, like the military neuro, like early, like all the little tests, even including back to going back to, was it Faffenberg or who was in the, saying how they did selection with the guide dogs and 50% increased the rate of success. And then I ended up working there. And I'm, like, wow, it's still 50% chance of succession. Nothing has changed, regardless of all the tests that the volunteers still are doing. And these kind of things are always puzzling me and very, very interesting about. But what I, like, I know you are big on force, well, force-free, stress-free, fear-free, all that concept. Right? And I really want to get a little bit to hear what your opinion is on, like, what I'm thinking. Because we, just kind of like how you talk in some of your articles, like, oh, yeah, we know punishment works. I mean, but do we need to use it? Is it ethically and morally and so on? And then we talk about negative reinforcement. And I always think, and I always, when I use, like, I, like, for example, if we play, let's say we play that game of hot hands, right? That would be a game of negative reinforcement. And there is a very cool incentive. And when done properly, there is no necessarily fear. There's actually, I mean, we play it all the time as kids. At least back in Europe, that was, you know, one game that kids play. Even with a two-year-old, you're playing such a game. And there is, we know, and for some reason we avoid talking about it. But we know that avoiding something unpleasant is more important than getting something pleasant. We know that it's fundamentally, at least in our planet, if it's not the most fundamental law biological, that you avoid something unpleasant and you approach something pleasant. So this is here. It's here. It's so deeply programmed billions of years to the single cell organism, correct? Like, it's, I don't think we need to learn it.

I think this is something that we know very well how to respond. Now, can it be done wrong? No question about that. But it's here. And in my opinion, it's here to stay. And it can be, it can be dangerous or it can be highly beneficial. And I always hope that one day I can make, I can, like I could send you videos, for example, of dogs that I train, that I have trained from puppies in a dog train through positive reinforcement and a dog train through negative reinforcement, to a year old, now knowing a bunch of commands and have super cool motivation. And both dogs will be off leash, off training colors, off anything. There will be no difference in the way they will perform or in the way they feel their emotional states. Because it's, they both have the willingness to play. They both have the willingness and the confidence to succeed. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that there is, people will do that. Just like dogs will do that. I mean, dogs play with each other, right? When we, like at least my understanding, when I look at two dogs kind of chasing and biting each other, to me, that is a negative reinforcement game. To, to a, a very skillful and very, it's actually a lot of fun game because it's kind of like playing some martial arts in a way. Do you, do you, can you see it like this? Two dogs playing as a, a negative reinforcement kind of game or, or. My, my thinking about this is that I think we, in this conversation of the quadrant and, you know, this over emphasis on the positive reinforcement. I, I think we, we derail completely sometime in the nineties, maybe early 2000 about this by, by first of all, misinterpreting a little bit what the quadrant is saying, which is basically that in a way, any life, life is about the balance between all, all four. The contrast often between all four is often what's important, but the ethics of modern dog training is focusing on only positive reinforcement, which by the way, is not actually, uh, the way that we conceptualize it as humans necessarily, uh, appetitive or positive. I mean, positive in this sense here that it's seen positively by the dogs. We decided it is right. We don't ask the dog because you know, the quadrant, what we forget is that it's all about the perception of the dog of what they think is, uh, uh, punishment or, uh, or reinforcement. So I've seen dog trainers, um, in French, we say, uh, that, uh, that, that can't give up with the clicker or whatever, you know, and they persist and they persist trying, uh, with positive reinforcement when actually just one, one, no, right.

Would have stopped the behavior, but there's this allergy now of, uh, this aversion in dog trainers to ever say no to a dog. No, you don't say no to a dog. It's punishment. Well, wait a minute, actually, is it, I mean, first of all, you could make the argument as conditioned inhibition. You don't actually have to go this far. Uh, it's just a way of saying you're not going to get reinforced right now. So in a sense, it can be a non-reward marker in some cases, right. That doesn't remove, uh, that doesn't remove the whole controversy around it. But, you know, one of the point I was making in that article that you've mentioned 51 shades of gray was to say that, well, you know, we don't have to see a discriminative stimulus or a non-reward marker as, uh, as something bad. If, first of all, it's not necessarily a conditioned punisher, but the way that people define saying no to a dog, they define it as a conditioned punisher. That's not what I was talking about. Um, okay. So there's a lot, lot around there here that, you know, again, it's what is aversive to a dog? That's the first question that we have to ask ourselves. You know, if we go with, uh, uh, negative, uh, reinforcement, it depends. What is the initial state of the dog? If, if the, the, the state that you, you, you get them out of is extremely aversive, then I'm against. Correct. Uh, negative, uh, reinforcement. But, uh, if it's just a question that the dog likes to be off the leash when they get to a certain area where it's off leash and that's seen as a reinforcement or great, that's, that's no big deal. I mean, you still have to walk from your house to that location anyway, with the dog on leash. Um, what I'm saying here is that actually, I think we, we apply negative reinforcement and punishment daily with our dogs a lot more than we think. Right. And we drive ourselves nuts in trying to avoid it at all costs in training. When we still use it more than we think we're not even aware of it. Yes. Part. And part of that problem, I think also is another thing I talk about a lot in terms of the psychology and the neuroscience of this concept, which is resilience. It's this idea that we're in a culture right now where we've accepted this strange idea that with our kids and our pets, we should protect them from any form of stress of life. The problem with that is that anybody in psychology and neuroscience would tell you that that's not how you train resilience. Resilience is not something that you will develop if you're always kept away from stress or anxiety.

So that means that stress immunization is something that like the immune system is developed through being challenged. So I'm not saying you should use punishment to train your dogs or any kind of reversives or anything stressful. I'm saying this idea that we must at all costs only give them things that they see as positive or appetitive is actually potentially misguided. I think that a dog needs to experience the normal stress of life, not extreme, the normal stress of life. So that's, you know, that's a lot here conceptually to think about. But I think we are kind of in the middle of a pendulum movement from, you know, the 80s where punishment was used quite a bit. Of böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle I parallel this with the kind of relationship I want to develop with my kids. So I'd rather have a good positive relationship with my kids based, yeah, mostly on reinforcement. But I would delude myself to think I never say no to my kids. Obviously, I do. And, you know, the danger here is how are you translating or moving this into dog training. So I'm not pro punishment. It's not what I'm saying. But at the same time, I do not I'm not against informing a dog politely, nicely of a wrong decision. In other words, you know, in the discrimination tasks that we do here

with biomedical samples, when the dog gives the right response, they hear the click, they get the kibble or short clabe out. But if they get it wrong, they get thank you. And that's simply a way of saying you failed this trial. So walk out of the room and then let's go for the next one and it takes five seconds. Yeah, which is what we what I talk about normally when I teach. It's understanding the progression is reinforcing and knowing how to manipulate progression of the event. And if you if if you can show that that progression can stop. It's super powerful. Yeah. And the thing we never see a dog. I mean, sometimes they'll go out. Oh, you could see this. Oh, I missed that one. But what they do then is they run out of the room because they can't wait to get into the next trial. Right. And again, it takes about five seconds. By the time the door is open again, it can go to the next trial that the system just has the one of the two or three assistants just needs to have the time to to switch the, you know, play with their random order of the targets in the lineup or the two way of C that we do whatever. But that's the idea is that it's it doesn't have to be seen as a punishing event or an aversive one. It can actually contribute more to OK, OK, you have another chance now. Let's you didn't get this one. Let's go and get the next one. Right. You keep it positive. Some people say, why don't you redirect the dog towards the right answer? Well, we do this initially in the initial training. You say, oh, no, but look, that's that's the one. Look, look, look at that sniff. Oh, yeah. There you go. Good dog. And then we, you know, we do what we call an error correction. Basically, we say, OK, you got that one. But after a while, you have to stop doing this because then if you if you if you keep doing this, they will know that any trial that they do, they will eventually have the right answer and it stopped working and they don't make any effort anymore. So they do have to experience that. Whoops. That wasn't it. No, thank you. Let's try again. But you would not believe the number of dark trainers that have told me, no, you can't do that. That's not ethical. That's that's just a a verse of training. Like, well, yes, it becomes very, very strange. Like it's a it's a difficult place where we are. I always hope that somehow and I don't put myself because I'm I, I, I don't even know where I belong. I, I just train dogs and whatever. Whomever is in front of me. Bottom line is that that dog is emotionally stable and motivated to do things with me.

And when you said earlier, by the way that I said punishment works, let's be clear for people that did not read 51 Shades of Grey. What I was saying is it works, but potentially with consequences. I mean, it's right. So when people say punishment doesn't work, no, no, no, no, it actually works. But there are side effects of it that you don't want if you want that stable, positive relationship with your dog, right? Or with your children. As I use that analogy, sometimes I don't want to be the the naggy parents that always says no. And you know, no, I mean, there's ways to build a constructive relationship based on positive reinforcement, mostly that will actually work. But you know, it's, it's a weird conversation because I often talk to dog trainers where I realized that, that even we have weird perceptions of what we think punishment is. I'll give you an example. For instance, they'll say, they'll say, well, when the dog gives the wrong answer, instead of saying no, or no, thank you, why don't you? Why don't you just ignore? This to me is fantastic that they don't even see that actually ignoring is often worse. The only time that I got a dog barking at me, or even sometimes trying to snap at me was when I would not give it the information. So they seek information. They'd rather know that no, that was wrong. Then me just doing as if nothing happened and get them out of the room, they go like, what the heck what's going on here? So I don't see it as punishment when you say or a non reward marker, even although I guess that word could mean that in a sense, I see it as giving feedback. You say yes, good dog. Yeah, fantastic. It was great. Or no, thank you. Thank you. No, that was not it. Let's try again. Right. And you can keep it positive. It's just a way of saying, all right, you're not getting reinforced on that trial. No big deal. Let's go to the next one right away. So but if I play devil's advocate here, emotionally speaking, devil's advocate here, he's not going to be a dog. He's not going to be a dog. He's not going to be a dog. He's not going to be a dog. He's not going to be a dog. He's not going to be a dog. He's not going to be a dog. And that kind of goes back to what you just said very just a while back. A lot of trainers that are considering themselves force free, but they fail to teach something correctly. And there is a struggle. And there is no physical punishment used. But mentally, and very visible, you see that the dog is in a bad emotional state because he or she understands that they need to do something.

They are trying. It's not leading anywhere. And now they're becoming kind of suppressed and experiencing very similar event on on a as far as the brain is concerned. Like if I have one of a kind of simple example that I talk about, obviously with my accent, you know, I'm from Eastern Europe. So let's say we we go back to Bulgaria and we go to a gas station and I have this really funky car. And I say, Simo, I'm going to give you 5000 euros if you can fill it up in two minutes. And now you have to find where the tank is, right? And you have completely super motivated to find it. Now I can let you struggle or I can say no, that's a wrong idea. You're going to the spare tire. There will be element of aversion that will actually, at least if it happens to me, I will be grateful because you are helping me to get unstuck from somewhere instead of leaving me alone to figure it out. Does that make sense? I used a very similar analogy when I was at a conference in Erice, a toadog, I think it was called, where I said, I should look at the way I see it is this. You get in a cab and you're telling the taxi driver that actually doesn't know the city at all to go to the airport. So tell me which one will get faster to the airport? The situation where you say only yes, when the taxi driver makes the right turn, or the one where you say yes or no before they engage in a wrong turn? Or after the wrong turn? I think it's clear that the one where you indicated you gave the feedback, positive or negative, will get to the airport faster than the one where you just give one type of feedback. And in other words, yes, it not getting information. And that's a cognitive theory, obviously, is is potentially extremely, extremely frustrating. There's another dimension to this that a lot of dog trainers don't realize is if you look at the work of psychologists that work with kids. So my wife works with with children in hospital setting, also in kind of procedural issues where they have to go through some very difficult procedures, sometimes that come with pain. And those kids will, you know, kick the nurses and spit at the doctors and that kind of stuff. And and her job as a psychologist is to walk in and try to change that situation. She points out to me that people that work in pediatric health psychology actually know that sometimes persisting with positive reinforcement in those situations will take extremely long, will be extremely frustrating, and may not work at all. And then the ethics of this is after an hour

or two of trying to get the kid to accept the procedure, they're still super stressed, and they end up having to strap them down. When actually, if you had just walked into the room, let them play with an iPad for five minutes, and then say, Okay, if you want to play more with this, you will have to do the procedure. And then if they don't comply, you walk out with the iPad, which is basically negative punishment, correct. But then the procedure happens. Of course, böylece böylece böylece böylece böylece böylece böylece böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle böyle minutes instead of spending two hours persisting with positive reinforcement to no avail including the stress and the resistance and the back and forth so this idea that positive reinforcement reinforcement is always non-aversive is wrong correct it it's not necessarily true especially not in the way that it may prolong the period of stress and sometimes a uh yeah a an aversive relatively aversive intervention is ethically desirable because you reduce that stress to again five or ten minutes as opposed to an hour or more now again when when i say this i sound like i'm pro-punishment and i'm not i'm not but we have to realize that there are some situations where uh we have to think about the ethics of it i mean i think we always need to think of the ethics and you know what is kind of in a lot of way it's unfortunate and sad that that word is packed with so much confusion and and immediately brings uh uh just it's it's not a like it's very difficult to talk about it um when when we try to talk about punishment especially in dog training and and with kids just as you said it this is a very very big problem um and somewhere it went wrong and i don't think anybody knows exactly where it went wrong well you know part of the being wrong look if you if you really believe in this concept that you never say no to a dog that means you probably believe to the idea or often anyway you never say no to a kid well look at what kind of generation we've created we are dealing with that generation now that was never told no for anything and then we complain that they're entitled well where do you think that's coming from obviously they are entitled and they feel entitled because we never told them no uh so i mean it's again life is not that simple life is not all rosy

it's not just white or black uh it's not even black and white it's shades of gray and that's the whole point uh it's complicated you may want to avoid the extremes but the idea is that yeah it's not just one-dimensional there's many different factors in all of this it's not as simple as some people want it to be unfortunately yes and there is i mean really ultimately there is cost and benefit at all the time and like like with the example you gave me with your wife and the kids um i think one of the big difference that we don't like to talk about between dogs and kids it's super obvious and like we we can really say hey you're not gonna get the ipad unless like we can instruct it becomes a little bit more interesting the approach when somebody has a little well not a little but some serious uh uh mental disabilities then then the approach is not so straightforward because at that point negative punishment not necessarily makes sense the way uh um you and i can make sense of and when we bring it back to dogs for dogs i personally believe that they are way more easy to understand and respond to that simple biological fundamental thing of i will approach something that i like and i will avoid something that i don't and and somehow that went wrong in terms of dog trainers start to do stupid mean things to dogs to where it just you you either have to call somebody and take the dogs away or you have to walk away or or something because it's just it's heartbreaking to to even listen to hear it what's going on but that's not like like we're just bouncing from one extreme to another hoping that there can be a solution and if we talk i mean if we talk about differential reinforcement ultimately differential reinforcement like just like if it's impossible which actually i want to talk to you about this i want to ask you uh um what punishment based training means because i i never get to understand when somebody says that but i never get the chance to ask what that means but but let's say just because i think it's very difficult to teach new behaviors and try entirely through punishment it's just i don't see how but it can be also very difficult to suppress uh undesired old behavior in entirely through uh reinforcement of incomparable behaviors and if if reinforcement of the undesired behavior cannot be completely uh um eliminated then what do we do then then what's going to happen is likely it will continue to to be there and now we will have the the new behaviors the differential reinforcement behaviors

and ultimately we will have a uh concurrent schedule of reinforcement with depending uh which behavior is available you know what i'm saying and so in this situation some form of punishment see i i even hesitate to say it because it's just it's such a word that it's packed negatively but to me the best formula would be to to be able to suppress the unwanted behavior and use all the cool differential reinforcement to to redirect well you know and so i i don't have situations where i would go there in what i do but i here's the thing the the like i said earlier i think you know a huge part of the the problem is we we've uh in french we we talk about that but we we've gone crazy about the the concept punishment as well uh which is the idea that there's mild punishments and there's not so mild punishments obviously uh yeah i i get what you're saying i guess i'm not sure i i mean i don't i guess like my my thing is why do we not talk about like trainers scientists why do we not why can we not have the conversation yeah well i think that it's it's it's it's it's it's in part because we're dealing also here's the thing i think we're dealing with for instance people that use shock collars okay um this is not a method i like personally um in the 80s when i first started training uh i used it once and uh i i realized it was not at all working and and back then by the way the the positive um training uh you know ideology didn't didn't really what was not around uh at all in fact i learned this from military people actually so anyway um but you know again i realized this is not the kind of relationship i want with my dog so i walked away from that completely um so uh i don't know i i i was going to go with something here i'm not sure i want to go there which is the idea that again a lot of people think they're not using ever punishment but they do actually in some ways uh and i was also going to make comments about the the you know what what again what kind of quote-unquote punishment you use and is it actually punishment or is it extinction for instance right i mean there's different ways of stopping our behavior um it doesn't always require uh uh punishment per se there's conditioned inhibition that's you know purely classical conditioning there's anyway there's all kinds of different ways of approaching it correct um but again i mean i think we just have to bring it back to the quality of the relationship that that we have with our dogs and i think that's you know i i think one that is positive and by positive i mean

uh you know happy uh there's no resentment there's no uh you know there's desire to play there's there's affection there is uh there's good communication this is what we should strive for basically um um and anything that's aversive to a dog well it will happen anyway even with the you know they're all positive people uh but question is is to try to minimize that as much as we can um and yeah yeah hey listen i kind of have to go that's fine we've been like i mean mine we we did like a a marathon like i i truly appreciate like this was a very very cool conversation simon thank you like that that was very very cool conversation i know like you just said it and now realize man we've been talking for a long time yeah a little bit over two hours i think thank you so much it's fun i would not do it if it wasn't fun so i do it because it's fun it's played for me very nice thank you and have fun training tonight

böyle Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Infrast Thank you.