에피소드 68: Will Bangura

reactivity, phobias, obsessive-compulsive behavior, extreme hyperactivity, and more. He has helped more than 24,000 sub-dogs. Will, appreciate you coming to the podcast. Welcome. And let's start, let's start simple. How would you define your approach in a couple of sentences? Well, yeah, that's difficult, a couple sentences. Let me just give a little background, too, for anybody else that's listening. I started training dogs back in 1975. I was nine years old. My dad was a police officer. He bred and trained German Shepherds, mainly in AKC obedience matches, a little bit of Schutzen back in the day when it was called Schutzen. And that's where I got started training dogs. Every Wednesday night in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where I'm from, we went down to the North Shore German Shepherd Dog Training Club, the AKC Dog Training Club. And back then, everything was pretty much compulsion-based. You know, everything we did was pretty much keeler-based. So, Bill Keeler, Kohler, some people say Kohler. I know, I can never say the name. I always say keeler. But that's where I got my start was, you know, with the keeler method. As I, you know, back then, I don't remember even praising the dog. I don't remember giving him food rewards, anything like that. As I got into training professionally starting in the early 90s, I was adding positive reinforcement with the use of prong collars, choke collars. Back in the late 90s, early 2000s, I started working with e-collars. Tony Drugman was a e-collar trainer here in Phoenix. I was very close to Fred Hassan. Then I became very close to Fred Hassan. I spent a lot of time studying with Fred, how to use the e-collar. After Robin McFarlane and Fred were together for a while, they had their split. Then I spent some time studying with Robin, using a remote collar. And for most of my career, I've been a balanced trainer. And for most of my career, I really prided myself on the fact that I was really good at using aversives, that I was really skilled with using pressure with dogs without having the fallout, without having them suffer what every total positive reinforcement force-free trainer would say that we were doing. And I spent most of my balance training career when it came to total positive reinforcement and force-free training, trying to debunk the force-free trainers, trying to debunk the total positive reinforcement trainers. I was saying things that I hear all the time from the balanced training community today.

That corrections are necessary. Aversives are necessary. Positive reinforcement is great for teaching a dog a new behavior. I remember parroting this over and over again. However, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. There's going to be a distraction in the environment, a competing motivator, if you will, that's going to have more value to the dog than whatever cookie or treat that you have in your hand. And the dog's going to look, you know, maybe it's a rabbit. Maybe it's a squirrel. And the dog looks at you with your cookie and says, hey, that's great. That's worth five bucks. But you know what? The squirrel is worth a hundred bucks. See ya. I'm out of here. Right, right. And, you know, having been, having done this for a very long time, you know, there were times when I had a lot of trainers at one point. I had 14 trainers working for me. Right now I don't have any, and I won't. It'll just be me. But, you know, more recently, I'd say five, seven years ago when I had a couple of trainers for me and mentoring them. And they're young, you know, in their 20s. You're still in Arizona. Sorry to interrupt, right? Yeah, I'm still in Arizona. So, you know, I, we would have discussions and I would say to them that, you know, we talk about tools. We would talk about the industry, whether the industry was going to end up being regulated. Was it going to be licensure, you know, things like that. And I said, you know, I don't know if there's ever going to be ban on these tools in the U.S. I said, quite frankly, probably the U.S. might be the last place that has a ban. You know, it's not like Europe. You know, we love our guns. We love our freedom. We love our tools. I said, however, I do think that at some point in time, if you stay in this field, I don't think it'll affect me, but I sing this to my younger, you know, trainers that are mentoring. I think there's going to come a time when you're going to have to be certified and you're probably going to have to be licensed to train. And it's probably a good idea for you to look into certification and look into the positive reinforcement, more force-free approaches. And if there comes a time when you do have to be certified, if you do have to be licensed, and if they do ban or restrict your use of tools, what are you going to do? Excuse me. What are you going to do? What can you do without these tools? Okay. Now, that being said, I thought it would be hypocritical for me to ask them to do that and me not follow suit.

So I started looking at the certifications that were out there that I, for decades, just said it was all BS and, you know, who cares? You know, so you take a multiple choice test, big freaking deal. What does that prove? That proves nothing. Proves that you can answer some questions on a test. Very true. I went through and I got all the information from the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers for their Certified Professional Dog Trainer Knowledge Assessed. Went and looked at that, looked at the behavior consultant testing. Also, the International Association for Animal Behavior Consultants, which I also was certified through them, which I gave that up because of a dispute that I had with them about a supplement that I created that they felt was outside of my scope as a behavior consultant that somehow I wasn't, they felt wasn't qualified to recommend supplements or to create a supplement. And I thought that was ridiculous. But as I started going through the material and I realized, you know, there was an awful lot about positive reinforcement that I didn't know. An awful lot about positive reinforcement. You know, I'm thinking positive reinforcement just about rewarding a dog when they do something right. And I know that you know this because you are very knowledgeable that there's a lot to positive reinforcement besides just giving food rewards. I, through most of my career, I was kind of the go-to guy to deal with the dogs that nobody else wanted to deal with, the dogs that were very high drive, the dogs that, you know, not only had very high prey drive, but like to chase after things. The aggressive dogs, the aggressive dogs, dogs with severe bite histories, dogs, you know, homes that had intra-dog aggression, severe intra-dog aggression, where they were really hurting one another. They're having to go to the emergency vet and get stitched up and stapled and tubes in them. And one of the things that I always prided myself was how quickly I could change the dog's behavior. And I felt I was, you know, really good with an e-collar, that I could do some amazing things very quickly with an e-collar. And I got more involved in it. And as I went through the certification process, you know, you might be aware that there is a code of conduct. Yeah, I'm quite familiar with everything. And that you've got to sign a declaration basically that you're not going to use aversives. Correct. All right. And so I said, okay, I'm going to take on this venture of not using aversives.

And because most of the work I do is with dogs that have aggression issues and reactivity issues, it now became a matter of, all right, I'm no longer, quote unquote, correcting the aggression, which today I look at it as, no, I was never correcting the aggression. In most cases, I was punishing fear because those dogs and most aggression is based in fear. Once in a while, you'll get a true case of dominance aggression. But most of the dogs, their aggression is fear-based, it's defensive aggression. And it wasn't until I started getting into the little nuances of counter conditioning, desensitization, differential reinforcement, arranging the antecedents, environmental management. And seeing what I was able to do with that approach versus just punishing the aggression or using negative reinforcement to get a dog to do other operant behaviors, focused healing, focused looking at me. You know, avoid the other dogs if you're a reactive dog. You know, we can walk by all these dogs with the e-collar, they're focused on me, everything looks good. The problem was that suppressed the outward behavior and aversives can work. And if you're really good at it, if you're good at using an aversive, yeah, you can shut down that behavior. The problem is, is that it comes back because you didn't change the underlying emotional state that drives that behavior. And one of the things that I argued about and what I still hear today, obviously, from balanced trainers is that, you know, one of the biggest things that they'll say is, well, you'll euthanize a dog for aggression versus correct the dog. And quite frankly, when I look at it today and I see the effects of, you know, it's one thing to be a really experienced trainer, behavior consultant, somebody pro that works with dogs and you really know what you're doing. Now, the other thing that's important here, 99.999% of the dogs I work with are companion dogs, pet dogs. So I'm not working with sport dogs. Okay, very different. You know, what we can, and I've, look, I've had Malinois. I did personal protection training. I never competed in protection sports, but I did personal protection training. I had, you know, high drive shepherds, Malinois, you know, that were beasts and, you know, there were fun dogs and there's a lot you can do. Those dogs can handle a lot of pressure. Things that pet dogs would never, never be able to handle. You know this, there's a lot of trainers out there and there's a lot of bad trainers. There's a lot of average trainers.

Well, if you're working with pet dogs and you're using aversives and you're average, you're going to mess up a lot of dogs. Now, if you're not a professional trainer, you're Joe Six Pack and you're one of the 200,000 to 500,000 individuals that's buying an e-collar out of a pet store. They're definitely screwing up dogs and causing harm with good intention. And just like for the many decades, I had all the best of intention. I believe that most trainers have good intentions. I believe that most people that work with dogs have good intentions. But I didn't know what I didn't know. I, you know, I, I repeated a lot of things that I heard in the balance training community arguing against force-free and total positive reinforcement folks. But then when you cross over and you actually have to do it. Now, I know that you and I disagree on some of the science that's out there, some of the studies that are out there. And that's okay because there's never going to be a perfect study that's out there. But I do believe that there's an overall scientific consensus. Is everybody in agreement? No, but I believe there's an overall consensus that for the most part, if you're looking at dogs across the board, that there is a much greater risk. And it happens often when we're talking about pet dogs. And it happens a lot when we're talking about professionals using aversives, but it happens even more when we're talking about non-professionals using aversives that are trying to use aversives to correct serious behavior problems like reactivity and aggression, thinking that things are going really well because they might shut that behavior down quickly, only to find that it comes back and it comes back worse, only to find out that it increases the anxiety. I get calls every day today that I'm force-free, that I'm total positive reinforcement from people that have taken their dogs to really well-known balanced trainers for aggression issues, reactivity issues that use aversive tools or balanced trainers. They use, you know, positive reinforcement as well. But I hear it every single day. The dog, it's worse. The e-collar screwed up the dog. The prong collar screwed up the dog. The training made it worse. Now, I didn't get, I didn't hear that stuff from the people I was working with when I was using those tools, but, you know, I think about it. If I'm the consumer and I choose Trainer A and Trainer A's method and things go south, I'm probably not going to be calling back Trainer A or another trainer like Trainer A that uses Trainer A's methods. I'm probably going to be looking for somebody else.

And I think that happens probably a lot. I mean, I don't know for sure, but I think that happens a lot. That, you know, unless we ourselves are following up with our clients long term, especially when we're talking about things like severe reactivity and aggression, do we really know what our true outcomes were when it comes to the work that we did? Now, I know that was long-winded. You asked me to say a little bit. No, no, no. But I felt it was important to give a little bit of background because, you know, I'm not like some 20 or 30-something-year-old force-free trainer that, you know, went to Gene Donaldson Academy and has never picked up a prong collar or any collar, never worked with a real case of aggression type of thing. So, you know, I come at everything that I do and I come from comes from that perspective. Yeah, I like that. No, and that was a very, very good beginning for no question. All right. So, just to mention that, you know, like the examples that you were giving as far as people being failed by the balance trainers, of course, there is people being failed by the force-free trainers. Otherwise, they wouldn't go there. You know, that's kind of given, right? Absolutely. Yeah. I agree. I guess, all right. So, if I understand correctly, you believe that every behavior can be shaped purely through some positive reinforcement schedules with no need of any aversive experience, right? Yeah. My belief is this, that there's only one legitimate use of an aversive, and that is when you are surprised and it's a dangerous situation and you've got to do what you have to do to protect the dog or a person or what have you. But then that's information when that happens that says, hey, I've got more work to do. I've got training to do. And if I've got a problem in this specific area where I couldn't manage and control my dog, it's not that the positive reinforcement doesn't work. It means that I've not done enough work with that. And then the approach that I'm going to take is, okay, I'm going to do everything in my power to avoid the triggers. Not that that fixes the problem at all. Correct. But it's the first step because I can't have the dog continuing to rehearse those behaviors. They get more and more conditioned, more and more habituated. Not just the outward behavior, but the underlying conditioned emotional response. And that makes it more and more difficult for me to be able to modify that behavior. Yeah. Yeah. Understandable. Yeah. That, that, that's, I like, I like. And there's the component here. And I, and I get that some people, you know, like even the certification council for professional

dog trainers says, we're not a welfare organization, you know, cause they've opened the door to allow for aversives. Um, and I get that, but where I'm at today. Okay. Animal welfare is very important to me. And I just don't think because I don't feel that it's necessary. And I've not found over the last, I don't know, six, seven years that I've been fully crossed over as a force free trainer that I don't use aversives. I've not encountered a case where I needed to use an aversive to modify a behavior. Um, now I could, but then I'd be violating my, you know, code of conduct and then the profession I've made to, Hey, I'm going to do this force free, you know, and, and I'll tell you, you know, there were times when I found myself, especially early on being a little frustrating. Cause I'm like, man, I know I can make things happen faster in some respects, but that is kind of a myth for me in a little ways, because when I say faster, yeah, suppress behavior faster. But as far as having real permanence and reliability of change, especially when it comes to aggression and, and, and pet dogs with aggression, cause that's where I come from. Those are the people I work with. Suppression doesn't change things forever. It puts the dog in a pressure cooker. Okay. And eventually that dog snaps, not every dog, but a lot of them do. Um, and, and so really, if you really want to get to the bottom of it, you got to change the way the dog feels if the dog doesn't view a trigger as a threat, they're not going into fight or flight. There's no function. There's no purpose for that behavior. There's no need for it. And so for me, it's all about changing that underlying emotional state. And when you do that, the behavior melts away and, and I don't need to use aversives to do that. Counter conditioning and desensitization works fantastic. And there's all kinds of different protocols that come underneath that big umbrella of counter conditioning and desensitization. All right. Let me, um, um, I mean, these are very good, good. I, I, I like already where we're going with this. I think it's going to be a very cool conversation. Um, one of the claims, and I think it's also your, one of your claims as well from, from kind of checking your stuff and, and so on. And it's not just your, it's just, uh, the, um, you know, the, the first three or all positive trainers. One, one of them is that punishment creates fear and ruins the relationship, right? Now, my question, uh, are you saying that all punishment causes fear or only the poor use of punishment causes fear?

I believe that there is a way to use punishment effectively without it causing fear, increasing anxiety and having fallout. I think that there are a lot of variables that make it very difficult for that to be the case. Number one, I think you have to be an extremely good trainer. I think your timing has to be impeccable. I think you need to be able to read canine body language really well. I think that when you use punishment, um, it's gotta be in a very controlled way so that you can, um, um, control for variables like superstitious associations. Um, I think a lot of people, you know, misunderstand punishment. For example, punishment has to be in my opinion and what I know, not just by my opinion and my experience, but also from, you know, my, my education and knowledge is that I've got to be 100% consistent. My timing's got to be impeccable and the punishment's got to be very harsh. And I don't know a lot of trainers from even professional trainers that are that good at that. And I certainly don't know hardly any non-professional trainers that are good at that. And so there's a very, very high risk, especially again, when I'm talking about pet dogs, there's a very high risk that using punishment will increase anxiety and, uh, potentially also lead to aggression. Can it be done without that happening? Yeah. But there's a lot of variables, you know, genetics is a big factor, you know, temperament's a big factor, you know, as well as, you know, not just the factors about the, uh, the teacher or the trainer, but you know, the learner as well. I caught on a word that you used and I kind of want you to elaborate a little bit. Why, why do you say that punishment in order to work, to be successful has to be harsh? I think that it's easy for a dog to get desensitized. You know, I've, I think I've listened to, um, and I agreed with you and it's interesting because, um, you know, I've trained both ways. I don't think that you're a big proponent of low level e-collar training. Am I correct? Very true. Yeah. And, and so from that perspective, I think that, and I did a lot of, you know, and this kind of, uh, trainers that do, I don't align with. Yeah. And, and, and, you know, I, one of the things that, uh, I learned, one of the things I learned about that was from you and I, and I agreed with you, you know, after actually doing a lot of very, uh, low level e-collar training for decades is that, um, yeah, you know, punishment and using aversives, you know, they, they need to be kind of separated there and that, that low level, um, can really desensitize the dog and then it could be more and more, you

know, ineffective. Yeah. So I see, I see. Definitely see, see where you're coming from, but maybe, maybe we can replace the word harsh because I don't think it fits right. I think it, it kind of hits the wrong way. What would, what would you use? I, I, I would say that the punishment has to have all the components to succeed and to out, outweigh the desire of whatever that is, but. It's got to be painful enough for the dog. Correct. I'm pleasant enough for the dog that the dog wants to give up the behavior. Which harsh doesn't really represent that, right? I mean, we can, I, I can just snap my fingers and say knock it off, right? Okay. Let, let's move on. Uh, let me ask you if, if fear is always a bad thing, how do you explain the survival learning in, I mean, really in every species? Well, yeah. Yeah. And, and I realized that, you know, there are aversives in the environment, right? In nature, there are aversives. Based on, I mean, specifically the, because when we say the fear is always bad, right? Well, I didn't say that fear is always bad. Okay. But what I don't want to do is I don't want to intentionally create fear. And especially when I feel that it's not necessary to modify behavior, I'm going to do everything in my power to not intentionally induce discomfort, to not intentionally induce fear or intentionally induce pain or intimidation, especially when it's not necessary. Um, and because it does have that risk. Correct. Correct. Okay. Um, I know somewhere as I was, you know, again, checking things out, um, my name came about and my example of mother correcting a puppy. And that's a actually classic example, right? It's not like something I came up with, but, but when a mother corrects her puppy, is she creating fear or clarity in your opinion? Yeah. I think it can be both. Mm-hmm. And I think that it may be clarity and it may not be clarity. You know, um, I don't depend on dogs to, to train dogs. Um, I think that, um, we have a much higher order of reasoning and the ability to do things more efficiently and more effectively, um, without causing welfare issues. Um, I think many times when, you know, we see a mother dog, you use the word correct, um, the puppy, is it, is she correcting the puppy or is she pissed off because the puppy's being obnoxious and, and, you know, she's, uh, responding to her own trigger. Is she really trying to teach? I don't know. Or is she, or is she reacting? I think, um, yeah, I mean, in my opinion. I mean, learning happens regardless, right? And, and we know because Skinner told us that, that, that, I'm sorry, go ahead.

No, my, my, my argument there is that clarity, Trump said, because, um, puppies don't run around from moms and they don't get like all spooked when mom shows up or anything like that. That's right. Sometimes there is, there is clarity of, of, but I wouldn't say that's, I wouldn't say that's a, I wouldn't say that's a universal. There are logical cases where moms, uh, like for example, I have a, I mean, I've been breeding dogs for, yeah, really four years now. Um, I bred probably, not probably because I did a podcast recently about thousand, three hundred puppies. That's a lot, a lot of puppies. It is. And it's not a puppy meal. I mean, they have the best facility and the best care and, and we do a lot. When I was working at guide dogs, I also was very much involved with the breeding. And that's another thing is we had really high quality breeders and breeders that were very responsible. And I'm again, focusing more on the pet dog community. Um, we wouldn't have nearly the problems that we have with dogs today. Uh, yeah, but again, back, back to the clarity, it's, it's basically mom definitely sets certain boundaries and keeps puppies from becoming pests and chaotic and fighting with each other if you want, or, or pushing and developing, uh, certain things. I mean, that, that's everywhere in, in, in, in ethology, evolutionary cycle. I mean, we need that. We need that upbringing to hopefully get raised, right? The reason I was bringing that there is pathological example is like I have a female right now that there's like, you know, nine puppies. And, and, and, and by the time they were, let's say 10 weeks, uh, 10 days old, she decided that she will discipline them, put whatever word you want there for it, as they would be eight weeks and they would actually understand what she's trying to do. Um, and we ended up really separating her and bringing her in true supervision, making sure that she, she's a good mom and she feeds. Um, so of, of course those happen. Um, so if, if dogs can learn through discomfort in nature without the trauma, the fallouts, why would it be impossible in dog training? I'm not saying it's not impossible. I'm saying that there, I didn't say it's impossible, but I do think, and we do see it. I mean, the scientific literature that's out there isn't being falsified. There are plenty of dogs that as a result of being trained with aversives, there's been psychological damage to those dogs. There's been increased anxiety. There's been increased fear. There's been increased aggression. And I think that it's harder for, especially a world renowned skilled trainer like yourself

to maybe hold, take real hold of that. If you're far removed from the pet dog companion dog community. Because again, I think there's things that are very different. You can put an awful lot of pressure on well-bred working dogs. Not that I would do that today, you know, but I, I understand that, you know, they, they can handle that where, you know, not even close to that kind of pressure. You know, a lot of pet dogs would just completely fall apart. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and not all moms correcting their puppies have that. It's not always benign. There's lots of other dogs that are correcting puppies that, you know, the puppies are traumatized by it. And there's lots of moms that are messed up that are correcting their puppies too. Yeah. That's why we call it pathological. Yeah. I mean, I, many, many people out there think of me as a sport dog trainer and a Malinois person and so on. I, I've had a really successful pet training business since early nineties and I always do. And I, at this point in my career, what is interesting is the cream of the extreme cases. That's the only time that I personally would take a dog that I will work with myself because it just challenges me and I, I don't know the outcome, but, but it's, it's worth. Other than that, my employees take care of that. But I, I do have a, you know, very good grasp of, of everything that's happening out there and as far as the pet side of training as well. So, um, so like, let's say if a dog, if a dog stops chasing cars after one correction and ends up being alive because of that, was that fear or safety? Well, again, like I said, in an emergency situation, you've got to do what you've got to do to protect the dog, right? You don't want the dog getting hit by a car. But again, that would be information for me to say that, well, in that context, apparently my dog is not off leash reliable. If I couldn't call the dog back and it wanted to chase after the car. So number one, I'm going to make sure that my dog's on a leash and I'm going to be doing all kinds of work. Okay. To help desensitize the dog. The problem is, is that it can be done just fine with positive reinforcement. You've got to follow the right protocols. When, when Clive, when did the study on chasing and he cited my positive reinforcement guide on how to stop chasing, what I was disappointed was he didn't follow any of the protocols. That was not a good, that was not a good design study. The way that the positive reinforcement was done to try to stop dogs, um, from chasing is, doesn't even come close to what best practices are industry standards for force-free positive

reinforcement training. And then you kicked out a bunch of the dogs in the e-collar group. So, you know, the study, I don't know if you've read my critique of the wind study, but, uh, it was a pretty poor study. So, yeah. Let's go a little bit further in that. Tell, tell me, tell, tell me more about this. Uh, what, what would be the protocol that you would do? Because as far as I understand the study here, I'm going to be working with the dog at a distance. Okay. From cars, joggers, bicyclists, whatever the dog likes to chase after. Okay. If I've got to have, you know, somebody running around with a rabbit on a, on a flirt pole or whatever, you know, I'm going to do what I got to do. But the thing is, is the dog going to chase when it's too close? Yeah. Because it's over threshold at that point. Right. I've got to get that dog focused and giving up wanting to chase at a distance first where the dog can handle that and using positive reinforcement for different behaviors that are getting reinforced while that's happening. And gradually, systematically over time, I can bring that dog closer and closer and closer and closer to the trigger. Okay. Okay. But most of the time what happens is whether it be just your normal pet guardian or whether it be a professional trainer, they set the dog up for failure. Okay. Here's a trigger. They're too close. The dog takes the break. And then what do you got to do now? You know, either something bad happens or you've got to use punishment to stop it. Right. Because in that situation, we set the dog up for failure. We've got to, you know, it takes time to do it with positive reinforcement. All right. Yes. Definitely. Aversive punishment can work fast. I'll never say that punishment doesn't work. It doesn't always work the way we want it to if we don't apply it really well. But it certainly can work. We know, you know, when Skinner mapped out operant conditioning, he said, hey, this is the way learning happens. So we obviously know that those things work. But even Skinner himself, through most of his career, argued against the use of punishment. Oh, 100%. Yeah. 100%. And, you know, that's kind of where I am today is that, you know, it's really not necessary. And again, unless it's an emergency situation, I've not had any balance trainer yet that I've asked been able to come up with when, I said, when other than an emergency, when is it necessary? When, I mean, what can't you train other than an emergency? What behavior can't you train or modify that you feel that you have to use an aversive punishment? Right. Okay. Yeah. Unless it's an emergency. So I'll give you my take here.

So when we're talking, you basically, and you already defined it as desentization, and you briefly explained the protocol. I think that protocol is very sound. I think that protocol is nowadays very well understood for trainers that have paid attention and have tried to understand and see what they can do. But I have the problems with this, and let me kind of go a little bit, and I'll let you, I'll be interested to hear what you say. Okay. But desentization, to me, only works when we're dealing with a conditioned emotional response, something that has been learned, like fear of, I don't know, a stranger or something. It relies on keeping the dog below the threshold, just as you were explaining, until the, well, how would you say, the nervous system basically kind of recalibrates, right? And, but when the behavior is instinctual and biologically prepared, like, you know, any prey drive, defense, territorial aggression, and combine that with a strong reinforcement history, let's say the dog is already, you know, killed five, six squirrels and two birds, desentization will fail. And I will explain why. Those reactions aren't fragile kind of learned fears. They are hardwired motivational systems that have been rewarded over and over and over again. So it is, in my opinion, and not just my opinion, but like all the books and studies, that those reactions aren't fragile learned fears. They are hardwired motivational systems. They've been rewarded. And we cannot desentize a dog out of what his nervous system is genetically programmed to do. And it finds it inherently satisfying, inherently reinforcing. In those cases, only, again, what I know that works and what papers and research prove to work, including the study that you were talking about, Clives, only proper contingency control, meaning introducing consequences and challenging and channeling the drive of the dog productively can change the behavior. The idea that you can fix chasing squirrels with, again, the intention to kill through gradual exposure, to me, misunderstands how predatory behavior works. Once the speed of motion, you know, like, let's say you were, at one place you were talking about, okay, well, we're going to work with a bicycle or a car or whatever, right?

Once that bicycle motion crosses that threshold that activates the dog's prey motor pattern, game's over. The chase itself becomes the reinforcer. Now, the trainer can go back just a step below that trigger, and it's going to appear that it's successful again. But the moment that movement reaches that level, the problem is there. It never went away. I was going to say, you've got, there's a couple things, you know, and it can be done with drives, just like anything else. And you're right, you do got to keep the dog below threshold. And it's going to take work. This is not something that's going to happen overnight. It's not something that's easy. You know, you're going to be, you know, needing to do controlled, not just desensitization, but counter conditioning, because there's got to be a reinforcer as well, okay? Not just for giving up chasing, but for doing something else that I want the dog to do, all right? But I'm going to start at a distance with that trigger moving really slow. And then we're going to get closer and closer. And then we're going to back up again. And then we're going to start moving faster and get closer and closer. So it's a very, and you know this, it's excessive approximation. It's gradual, systematic desensitization. And you can modify the behavior because based on what you're saying, if it is just something that, you know, if we were to say that all things that are intrinsically motivated by very strong drive, like prey drive and things that have very strong reinforcement histories, can't be modified with positive reinforcement, we could say the same thing. Then we could argue the same thing. Well, it's not going to be modified with punishment either. Punishment will control the contingency for sure. Right. And with the dog, like you're discussing, I think the important thing to understand is if we know we've got a dog with that problem, you know, then if we were to control it with, say an e-collar or punishment or something like that, right? It would be more efficient to do it with an e-collar than a prong collar, right? Because you don't necessarily have a long line on the dog. But I'm still then putting the dog in a situation, right? Where I'm technically, potentially setting that dog up for failure. And that could mean the dog gets killed, right? Because if I'm just relying on my e-collar, maybe the dog will respond and stop. Maybe the dog won't. Maybe the dog will run faster. Yeah. So, if I've got a problem dog like that, I'm going to make sure that that dog is safe. I'm going to make sure that the dog can't escape the house, get over the walls, get underneath the fences.

You know, I'm going to make sure I've got a long line on my dog, something like that. Right. Until I've done the work. Various management. Correct, correct. Yeah, I'm going to do that. But again, like what? Or, or, or I could use the electronic collar and I could punish my dog. I don't feel that's fair to the dog if I haven't, you know, if I'm not willing to do the work just because it's easy. And, you know, to punish the dog with an e-collar because it doesn't take, you know, much for anybody. And that's the problem too with the tool is that, yeah, it can work and it can work fast and it can seem easy, right? But then you've got 200,000 to 500,000 non-trainers buying e-collars every year without any instruction, using it on dogs and their timing is horrible and they're messing these dogs up. Sure, sure. But I think you're, I just want to make sure that you are not missing my argument and what I'm trying to say here because it is, it is actually very essential when we're talking about the synthesization and when it can work and when it fails. It clearly can fail. It can. And that again is, as we get closer and closer and once that premodern pattern, that predatory behavior is triggered from, let's say from, let's just imaginary put numbers here. So we go from one to ten and let's say seven is the threshold when the dog's blood pressure goes up, it skips a beat and it says, I'm on that whatever that is, squirrel, whatever it is, right? So we can go one, two, three, four, depending how much time you want to spend and how much work you want to do. All that time, it's not preparing the dog for the number seven when the natural instinct to kill and chase that whole prey motor pattern that it's baked in the DNA kicks in. Yeah, because the training wasn't done at that point. You're still in training. Of course that's going to happen because it's a conditioning process and you're still conditioning at that point. Right, right, right. So tell me how you go from everything works up to six and seven is where it brings down. Well, seven just means that I'm, seven, if I'm at seven, How do you recover from seven? How do I recover from seven? No, how you recover, but how do you overcome the problem with seven? Well, if I'm at seven and the dog wants to chase, if their prey drive is kicked in, okay, then my contingency and how I've attempted to try to control and set up that training session, I've made some errors. I've gotten too close too soon to the trigger with the dog. The trigger might've been moving too fast too soon. The alternative behavior that I need the dog to do, I might not have conditioned that enough.

My reinforcer for that alternative behavior might not have been high enough. So again, every, what we might call failure or what a lot of people would say, the dog being disobedient is not disobedience. It's the dog giving me information. It's communication. And it's feedback for me to say, hey, you know what? I need to dial things back a little bit. I need to spend more time at a little bit further distance or maybe more slowly moving closer or more slowly bringing the speed of the trigger up. Okay. And granted, this is, and that's why I say, and can every force-free, positive reinforcement trainer be really fantastic at doing this and having great success? No. Just like we talked about, not every e-collar or trainer that uses aversives is going to be successful. In the greater sense, I totally agree with you. For sure. That's true. However, as far as we're talking the synthesization and the way I try to explain it, that reaches level seven, the hard-wire motivational system, premodal pattern kicks in. You go back to six and it's beautiful simply because it's not triggered. You basically are saying, and it's not just you, this is a concept in the force-free world that I personally have a problem and that's why we're talking, that you can, with the synthesization, basically overcome instinctual and biologically prepared behaviors like the prey drive and defense and territorial aggression. Let me give you a different example. Another one that I have heard you and, of course, again, this is across the board. Everybody does things like that. Trust me, when I told you I've been breeding dogs for 40 years, I have done everything that was being suggested over the years. And I have the opportunity to kind of play around with things like this. So, a different problem but still genetically baked is the noise sensitivity. And one reason why, like let's say, let's say when I used to work at guide dogs and I hope they still have this practice because it's incredibly telling. so, there is the breeding program, puppies get evaluated, they go to the 4-H homes, they get raised, time to come back for real training now, formal training. The very, very, very first thing that we will do, we will get that whole badge of dogs being 20, 30, whatever the number is, and we will get every person that we can from the staff to take one dog, spread out on the property, and shoot a gun bunch of times. Every dog that said, I don't want to stay here, they get rejected for the program and rightfully so. And then the 4-H home has the opportunity to take the dog back because really nothing wrong is, nothing wrong for the dog to just be afraid of loud noises. However, every single program that has serious agenda

evaluates noise sensitivity. You have it in every single one. And the reason being is because it's innate, because it's impulsive. You respond and you are not in control. So when somebody says that you can play the tapes and you can do this gradual descentization, you have to understand that there are levels of the severity of a problem, just as I was telling you with the dog that's already killed five squirrels, or even if he didn't kill but clearly has that intention, it's not just play hopping butterfly towards the squirrel. Those tapes, those gradual moments of descentization, they work for the moment and only for the moment. When a dog has a serious problem with noise sensitivity, when they get startled by noise, a few things can happen, again, depending on the severity. One, they will recover very quickly, just like people will, whoa, oh, okay. Or, they will be bothered, or they will really be concerned and worried and shut down. and there would be, typically there is not really a fight response unless you really create a situation to have that, but there is a very strong flight response and that noise overrides any trainability at that point. And no descentization has ever solved that problem yet. I've got clients that, many clients that I've worked with that have dogs, pet dogs with very severe noise sensitivities. One lady that comes to mind, her name is Lisa, and she's got a dog named Josie, and she's, I don't know if she's in Alabama or Arkansas, she's one of the people I work with virtually, and she lives near an artillery range. And the dog had severe sound sensitivities and fears to the sound of the artillery, to fireworks, thunder, you name it. And this was a dog that was extremely severe. And, you know, granted, and we did, and we wanted to play sounds at low volumes and things of that nature, but, you know, you can't just call up the army and say, hey, can you do me a favor? While we're working with this dog for the next three months, can you guys just not have any artillery exercises going on, right? So, a couple things. One, and again, this is not always the most convenient thing to do, right? So, we had to desensitize and counter-condition the dog to wear noise-canceling headphones. This is a dog that also, for a short while, was on some medication as well to help bring down some of that anxiety so that we could actually do the work of counter-conditioning and desensitization. And one of the things I also tell folks is that, you know, when we're using recorded sounds, it's hard as we start doing the counter-conditioning and desensitization to get to a level that matches reality in the real world.

You know, like I tell my clients, look, if you don't have surround sound, a good stereo system that eventually can be cranked up really loud and be almost, almost the way it sounds in the real world, it's not going to happen, number one. But there are things, you know, and I know that I think you're pretty much against medication. I'm not against medication, I'm against the overuse of it. You said it right, pretty much, which doesn't exclude them completely. But I've seen medication do some amazing things, I've also seen some regular veterinarians, and I get all the respect for vets, they get the hardest job in the world working with so many different species and problems, but, you know, they don't, regular vets don't have much education in vet school when it comes to psychopharmacology. So a lot of them are rolling the dice, and a lot of the medications that I see them prescribed, there's a lot of emphasis on, you know, trazodone and gabapentin, and those things are sedating, and I find that a lot of anxious dogs that start feeling some sedation get more anxious, and it makes things worse, as opposed to some of the SSRIs, which, if they start them at a very low dose, there's not that sedation factor, and if they titrate them up, you know, slowly, there's not that sedation, factor. So what do you think the SSRI does at that moment? What is the intention to do? We don't really understand the mechanism behind it. We know that they work. We thought serotonin was a big deal. I don't know that that's, I mean, we know that we're modulating serotonin, but there's other things going on. We don't have that figured out. My wife's a psychiatric nurse practitioner, and we have this discussion all the time. Unfortunately, we don't, you know, we don't have good diagnostic stuff when it comes to the brain being an organ of the body. Yeah, we have good diagnostics on other organs of the body, but I think just because in human psychiatry, you know, when we take a look at people with mental illness, for so long there's been this stigma, and it's been about, you know, a character issue rather than, you know, there's a medical component to their behavior. And let's face it, people with mental illness, they don't have a lot of money, they don't have people lobbying in Congress, so there's not a lot of money put into that part of healthcare, like heart disease or something like that. But I think as we, in the future, understand the brain better, I think as we have better imaging, better diagnostics, that we'll have a better understanding on how these things work. Right now, we know that, you know, these medications can work, they don't work for every dog, not every medication is going to work with every dog, not every dose is going to work with every dog. There are some dogs that I find that it helps a lot,

but there are some dogs that helps a little, and there are some dogs that makes it worse, you know, there's no, I wish there was an easy way to say, yep, that dog needs meds, and we know that's going to work. Do you think there is a chemical imbalance in the brain? I mean, I obviously think there's something, there's something, I know they call it a chemical imbalance, I think we don't know, I think that was the theory, I think that was the theory, but I don't know that we know, I don't know that we know, I don't think that, I think the jury's still out, I don't think we've got enough good science. but again, But my point was about the sound sensitivity. I've had good success with dogs with severe sound sensitivities. It's in, the work is inconvenient, you know, counter conditioning and desensitization is inconvenient, you know, and, you know, the balance trainers would like to say, you know, well, if you're so good at what you do, show your work. Well, do you know how boring counter conditioning and desensitization? Nobody's doing videos on counter conditioning and desensitization. It's the most boring thing in the world. It is boring. Good counter conditioning and desensitization is boring. There's nothing exciting about it. Right, and it's time consuming. But again, we can pretty much move on. I guess what we disagree on here is that you are claiming or your argument is that you can through desensitization and counter conditioning you can change instinctual and biologically prepared dog. I mean, I think not to anthropomorphize but if we take a look at human beings and we take a look that, you know, we biologically have a fear of reptiles and there are some people that, you know, whatever it is, they have an extreme fear, perhaps a phobia of reptiles and we know through counter conditioning and desensitization with people who have a nervous system pretty much identical to a dog and we've had plenty of great success, you know, helping people with their phobias that were instinctual, had a component I should say. I don't know, I like to say things have components. I don't like to say it's all this or all that. So what I'm saying, yeah, I agree with you. I mean, as a side note, in part of my life I actually spent a few years of learning, I'm like a certified hypnotherapist and like all sorts of things of that nature and... Ericksonian? What kind of... Yeah. And... I'm very big in Ericksonian. Yeah. Hypnotic language. Okay. So, I mean, so in that way we understand what is possible. However, again... And if, you know, with him, you know, he was aligned, well, not him, but was a bandler and grinder with neuro-linguistic programming who kind of modeled... I did that too. Yeah. And so, you know, some of the phobia cures with NLP, right? Swish technique and some of the other things. There's a lot

of interesting stuff with NLP. However, again, there is the levels. Just like in martial arts, you have a white belt and you have a blue and so on. And because we can fix all the way to the limits to where instincts kick in, where that pre-modal pattern or where that instinctual, knowing sensitivity, it's not a... it's not conscious. You are reacting and then you are thinking, why did you react? This is... There is no research that has overcome this problem yet. And if it is, I would really like to see it because I spend a lot of time in this. Well, I'm trying to understand what you're saying because... So what I'm saying is, if, let's say, we have a dog that unexpected, sudden, loud noise comes in a situation when it's not expected again. I know you like to talk about antecedents and conditioning and this and say, all that is all good, but you throw the dog out of that and you present that noise, if we're talking noise, that it's clearly sudden, unexpected, and loud enough that triggers those genetic instincts. We are helpless. Yeah. In that situation, I agree, you're helpless. The challenge becomes, and this is always a huge challenge, you know, and that is how do you effectively and efficiently avoid the triggers while you're doing the work? And that can be a huge challenge. You know, I've got clients that have dogs that are dog-aggressive people-aggressive and, you know, they're living in an apartment complex with 500 units, okay? And they need to avoid people and dogs except under very controlled training situations until the work is done and they can have, you know, more real-world scenario. And it's a pain. It's a challenge. And just like what I was saying with Josie, that dog with the pet guardian Lisa in Alabama that had the sound sensitivities because of the artillery range, that dog was very severe and we couldn't get that dog below threshold. So, yeah, there would be a lot of surprises that would make it so that we couldn't do the work. So, we had to do two things in that situation. One was, like I said, counter conditioning and desensitizing, noise-canceling headphones to bring the sound down, also adding some medication, eventually the medication, the dog was weaned off and eventually the dog didn't have to wear the noise-canceling headphones and now artillery can boom and bang and the dog's okay. Was it easy? No. Was it a big challenge to be able to avoid the triggers? Yeah, it was. You know, I mean, most people aren't going to necessarily, you know, it's a big task. Okay, I got to put my dog on medication, I got to desensitize my dog to noise-canceling headphones, oh my God. Yeah, it's a lot of obligations and a lot of time consuming, yeah, it's a lot of effort for the But it can be done. My point is, though, it can be done, you know, granted, can I fix everything, cure everything? No.

Can I make most everything a hell of a lot better? Yeah. Is there going to be some dogs we're not going to cure? Yeah. That's kind of where we, you know, there is a point where we very much align of the process of decentization and how, you know, that we can definitely fix a lot of things just by being smart and create a good design, write a good prescription, protection, and hoping that the owner will also understand and take the responsibility and take the time. However, once again, my big issue, and I think we leave that alone from here, is that there is a point, there is really a clear point break where from there on, in my opinion, the trainer becomes unethical and starts to sell snake coil. And this can be because of lack of understanding and knowledge or simply, you know, making money from, you know, business. okay, I think... Give me an example, because I'm losing you a little bit about the unethical... Well, I mean, as I said, like, we can... That we're saying we can fix everything? Or what? No, we cannot fix everything. That's my problem. And you're saying that when there is the high-wired motivational systems when we're talking about predatory stuff, or when we're talking about sudden loud noises, or, I mean, we can go on with many examples, but I don't want to kind of water down the conversation. Sure. It's just that there is a point where, in plain language, instincts kick in and override any training and any conditioning and incisition that has gone up to that moment. And the moment we go a little bit back, the success is there, which kind of fools many trainers that they just need to do more work, not recognizing that there is that breakpoint where nothing besides contingency control, consequences. And when I'm saying contingency control and consequences, that's not all. Of course, that would work in conjunction with channeling the drive and some differential reinforcement and offering some alternatives and so on and so on. But the contingency control is essential from that point on when we're talking about these kind of cases when we get to that place. Let me ask you about this. There is another famous one where aversives damage the bond between dog and the owner or the trainer or so on. What if if that was true then why do the police dogs and the sport dogs that do protection or whatever that are using the experience pressure or aversives frequently, daily if you want, whatever. But they still work joyfully and they trust the handlers completely. Well, again, I think we've got to compare apples to apples, not apples to oranges. and when we're talking about dogs that are so,

that the controlled breeding of those dogs for specific drives and temperaments and their ability to handle pressure is very, very different. And, again, those dogs are being trained by professionals. professionals, the vast majority of pet dogs are not being trained by professionals. They're being trained by their own pet guardians that have dogs that aren't well bred like that to handle pressure. And they don't have the skills that trainers have and the timing. And they are, with painful, uncomfortable, poorly timed corrections, punishing the dog, and the dogs know, well, this is coming from my people. And, yeah, that trust, that bond, that relationship does start to deteriorate. Now, does every dog that somebody uses punishment with doesn't happen? No, of course not. And, again, I think it's important that, and this is where I think, those of us that are trainers that have used aversives or still use aversives and are skilled at using pressure with dogs that can handle pressure, we tend to make that our model of the world more than looking at the big picture of just all the dogs that are out there. okay. And, so I think when I take a look at the big picture, you know, I agree with the studies when they say that, that happens. I also know that there are professional trainers that are very skilled with using pressure and there are dogs out there that are really well bred to handle pressure and it's a different ball game and we can get different results there. but I've also watched dogs that were well bred and I've watched trainers that were professionals using these tools for a long time that aren't at the top of their level and they, I've watched them do things to their own dogs that have harmed their relationship. Oh, no question. And the dog, you know, a lot of times, you know, looks very bouncy, very animated and stuff, but yet you can take a look if you're really good at canine body language, you can see an awful lot of stress and you can't just count it off as, oh, it's arousal, you know. So what would the relationship be like if the aversives weren't used also? You know, that's another question that we can't answer. Are we comparing, taking a look at, well, what's the relationship? Um, but I think my biggest thing is, you know, there's a reason why, you know, 15, 20 countries out there have banned e-collars. There's a reason why 5, 10 countries out there ban prong collars, right? They're not all nuts. There's some real stuff going on there. And they're looking out for the common interest of the general public, which is going to be your pet dogs. So I get it. Okay, we will get definitely going to, hopefully, you have time and I do want to hit on the studies and the bans, 100%. You know, talking about the, you know, comparing the well-bred working dogs versus extremely shy and fragile whatever dog that we picked

up from the shelter and or a rescue and so on. Everybody, and I know you've heard me saying this and I know you kind of try to counter it, but everybody is biologically prepared, right? To aversives and, like, just silly examples, you know, when you, if I'm going to teach a little kid to do jiu-jitsu, I'm not going to just break his arms or whatever, but I will show him the discomfort and I will teach him and, and once again, there are levels and you have to do the right thing with the right dog instead of assuming that you're going to use whatever the electric collar and you're going to max it on a dog that clearly doesn't require that. Now, I definitely would agree with part of your argument as far as the education and, you know, that people do stupid things and my dilemma with that is that people will always do stupid things and thank God we have laws and we see them work, but you can, you can strip a person, you can not let them have anything and they still will be bad people and I don't think we argue with that. As far as the bands, just a really quick one before I, because I have so many interesting questions here, but the bands, when they took place, you would think that nobody now in Europe uses electric colors and that's very misleading. I'm sure they do behind the closed doors. Correct. In fact, the sales continue to be higher and higher with every year. It's just they're taboo under closed doors and now we actually, even I would be very concerned because there is no right education, there is no right environment where to learn, so you're even more prompt to do stupid things because there is nowhere to do. But aversives damage the bond. they can, I'm not saying they do, they can. Correct. Now, can trust exist without quality and accountability. I think that's a really interesting one. Well, first of all, we can't really measure trust when it comes to a dog and their trust in their handler, their pet guardian, I don't think. because... But like your side of the, you know, always would say that you're breaking the trust, right? It's one of the biggest slogans, correct? That's kind of why I'm saying the relationship the bond, the trust, the type of thing, the relationship, you know, as far as how... Can trust exist without clarity and accountability? I think, and I get what you're saying, you know, and things need to be clear, and I think there's that myth out there that positive reinforcement training without the use of aversives is permissive, that we let dogs get away with bad behavior, that we don't set boundaries, which isn't true, which is that, you know, we don't set our dogs up for failure so that we can then just punish them to teach them that way, we want to set them up

for success and we want to do it in a way that is the most ethical, the most humane, and has the greatest welfare for dogs. you know, I love my dogs. They're sentient beings. And when there was a time, you know, not that long ago where I didn't care or didn't think much about whether or not some discomfort was good or bad or harmful to them. But today I feel differently. And again, it comes down to the fact that I've yet to find anything that needs to have punishment in order to teach. Again, very different than an emergency situation. averses happen in emergency situations because you're in an emergency situation. Yeah, I accept that. I like that for sure. But I don't know. We've talked a little bit about the noise sensitivities. We talked about the biological instincts and drive and chasing and prey and those type of things. And I do think both of those things can be modified and helped to a great degree, not necessarily cured for every dog 100% without the use of aversives. And some dogs, I think it can be turned around completely without the use of aversives. Cool. Isn't trust earned through consistent outcomes, not just comforting, not just baby? I think predictability maybe. We know that dogs are going comfortable. consistent outcomes, right? Yeah. Would you trust a human who never told you that you were doing something wrong? You can tell me that I'm doing something wrong, but you don't have to use discomfort, pain, or intimidation in order to communicate to me. That's the difference. Granted, we can teach that way. My point is that there's, and I know this sounds like a tree hugger, but there's a gentler, kinder, nicer way to be able to teach. Okay. You know, like in my classes, when I, you know I have school for trainers too. Right. And one of the things, whenever we are going over shaping, and you know, just this, I always give a kind of silly example, and the example is like if you have a, like let's say I give you some Bulgarian car, there is no Bulgarian cars, by the way, we never make cars, but let's say there is one, and we go to a gas station and I tell you, Will, I'm going to give you 5,000 right now in cash, if you within 45 seconds find where, how to open the tank, so we can fill up the car. And then I watch you struggle, but I also watch you, that you're really, really, really wanting to succeed. And, however, you're stuck at the back with the spare tire, and I say, Will, knock it off, it's that way, and I just do the, hey, it's that way. Would you like that or no? Why not use successive approximation with free shaping with positive reinforcement and then the dog doesn't have to struggle? No, I'm talking about you and the car and the example that I gave you. You have 45 seconds and you're really struggling.

You want the money. If it's me, I would say, thank you. Thank you, Will. I'm on it. Yeah, but dogs aren't using that kind of reasoning though. They're not using that kind of reasoning. Everything is associative in terms of them and operant. They're learning. It's consequences and associations. Correct. Which brings clarity and can diminish frustration, right? But the point is that I can create, as long as I'm making good, clear, black and white cause and effect associations. And as long as I'm reinforcing the right behaviors in order to shape things, I can be very clear with the dog. The dog doesn't have to be frustrated. Now, if I'm trying to go from zero to 100 with a dog, then the dog's going to be frustrated. I used to have, when I had a lot of trainers working for me, one of the things that I always used to do is I would give the trainer a dog and I would tell them to do something impossible that I knew that couldn't be done with the dog. Not because I wanted them to do it. I wanted to see, are they going to push this dog to do something that really can't be done? Are they going to keep doing the same thing over and over again? Or are they going to start making adjustments? Or are they even going to say, hey, you know what, this is ridiculous? Because I wanted to get rid of some of that ego that can happen with trainers. And that was one of the first things that I looked for. Yeah, they're just going to keep pushing and pushing and wanting to go this direction and thinking, you know, you've got to make that happen. Instead of breaking things down into small little pieces where there can be success. And quite frankly, that's going to build more agency, more confidence, and more of an operant dog, more of an active learner, than somebody who, you know, is always having to take cues from me. Right. So, so basically, like, and you correct or edit it as you like, but you're basically kind of saying the dog always learn better through free choice and positive reinforcement. now, I mean, I got to keep thinking, you know, as far as free choice, I'm not going to put the dog in a situation where it's going to be in danger, you know, but yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, I know you don't like errorless learning and all that good stuff, but, you know, try to make it as easy as possible for the dog to succeed. That actually helps me because it makes my work go faster, too. So, if dogs, if we prefer to always take that approach, if that's true, why do wild animals use force, restraint, hierarchy across the board, in every single natural system? What, what? Well, they're, all right, I personally believe that no animal goes into fight or flight and uses force unless they feel that there's a threat. And my whole thing is there's not a threat when I'm training an animal. And there doesn't need to be a threat. And I don't need to be a threat. And, yeah,

I can train with pain. And I don't mean that, like, abuse, okay? You get the idea. But I also don't have to. And the fact that I don't have to, and I can get the results, why would I? Why would I choose to use pain? Why would I choose to use anything that would cause discomfort if I don't need to? And, again, I've not found a situation yet, or a case or a dog, since I've crossed over, that I've needed to. And when I ask other trainers, all they can tell me is these surprise situations, which I agree. Hey, if it's a surprise, it's a surprise. You've got to do what you got to do. You've got to keep the dog safe. But that's information that tells me, you know what, there's more training to be done. And just using an aversive, doesn't necessarily fix their problem. I might be stuck with having to have that e-collar on the dog for the rest of its life. Why do you think we have to, where we're forced, we're obligated to put seatbelts, we follow laws, there are consequences for sure in human society, if positive reinforcement alone is good enough? Nobody said that negative reinforcement or that positive punishment doesn't teach and doesn't instruct. Nobody's saying that it doesn't do that. But the thing is, it's very different when you've got independent humans running around that were not there to police every single minute of the day, versus a dog. And with a dog, you know, they, first of all, we bring them into our world. There's a whole other host of things that we could talk about when it comes to breeding and genetics and how there's this huge mismatch in a lot of dogs and their homes, environments, and their people. And the thing that they don't want to do is exactly what they were bred to do. Okay? You know, from an ethological perspective, that's a problem. But just because we can, just because we do learn from pain doesn't mean that we have to teach that way or that we should teach that way. And I think that when we can teach in a way that doesn't cause discomfort, I think it's better for everybody involved. And I haven't found anything yet where the behavior has to have an aversive in order to train it in or to modify it out, except for an emergency situation. So I just find that there's no need to do it. And now, granted, everybody has their choice. They have their option. you know, I don't think it's fair to at all. Okay, I get the point with the emergency situation and dangers and other life or whatever that is, right? But, so your position is that reality, how the whole planet functions and abides by certain law, should change to fit a philosophy and not the other way around. Why do you think Skinner was opposed to aversives? Skinner was opposed to aversives. aversives. It is very clear. I've spent enormous time on this and I have talked to some of the best students of his that are now retired professors and he didn't reject

punishment. He did not believe that punishment he didn't reject it on moral grounds, on ethical grounds. He rejected it because he believed that it doesn't work or that it doesn't last or that it's going to counterattack or that it's going to, you know, he did not understand punishment if you want to go that route, which was proven later on. You don't think he understood punishment? 100%. That's unarguable. I mean, we can, I'll get to this, for sure, that's an interesting conversation also to have. They were, you know, I mean, just because we are talking, but I do want to... difference between suppression and real lasting change. No, no, no, no. We will disagree greatly on this and that's kind of where... You familiar with Project Pigeon? That's how, you know, the famous... coercion and it's follow-up. Okay. Yeah. I mean, that's the extreme taken from that, but basically, Murray-Siedman, basically, you know, there is a... First of all, there is a difference between functional punishment and universal suppression, and they cannot be mixed. And Siedman and, you know, the... Whatever the book was, coercion, and it fell out, you know, in his work on aversive control, described universal suppression. He did not explain functional punishment. But let's move on, and I definitely would love to go more into punishment, for sure. I mean, we are on punishment, and definitely want to touch base on Skinner's ideas, because I think, not I think, it's certain, it's obvious that the force-free community, as a whole, is a product of that way of thinking. One of the claims punishment doesn't teach, it only suppresses, right? If punishment only suppresses, how do animals learn avoidance and control through it? it? If punishment only suppresses, how do animals learn avoidance and control through it? Give me an example. Well, when we say that punishment suppresses behavior, and then when we take it all the way to, as Murray Sidman says, it's universal suppression, to where it's like, I ask you not to chew on the shoe in the kitchen, but now you don't want to even come to the house. That is universal suppression. That's a misguided, misused form of punishment. That's not what you would call functional punishment. punishment. So, if, like, the idea in the narrative of the ideology is that punishment suppresses behaviors, but if punishment only suppresses, why do animals learn to avoid and control their behavior through it? Do you understand what I'm saying? Yeah,

I think from my perspective, in terms of just my own work with dogs, I think there is some legitimacy to that when we're talking about more, perhaps, nuisance behaviors. But I think when we're talking about behaviors that are really strongly rooted in that underlying conditioned emotional response, I think it's different. I don't know if that makes sense, if you understand what I'm trying to say. Because I think in some, you don't have this, if the behavior is not driven by this underlying anxiety, stress, fear, behavior, I think we're looking at two things that are quite a bit different as well. And, you know, obviously, you know, I'm force free, I'm positive reinforcement, I use aversives today, but if I were to go back to use aversives, it wouldn't be for the dogs that were aggressive and reactive, it would be for obedience training, basic foundational commands, nuisance behaviors, those type of things. Okay. And I think maybe that's why I don't think there is that avoidance and that control long term when we're talking about those one set of behaviors. What I mean by avoidance is that they actually are learning to avoid, right? If they're suppressed, they would be blocked of doing anything, it's going to go sideways. Are you aware of the punishment? They learn how to avoid the punishment. And control behavior through it. Yeah, because that's what turns off the punishment. You're aware of the two factor theory, right? The moray or moror it's the two factor theory of avoidance learning where the behavior is maintained by fear reduction and negative reinforcement. That's how you maintain the behavior. That was the I mean it's like 1940 something study and basically in a nutshell the once the dog learns the avoidance persist because the dog keeps escaping the feeling of fear and condition emotional response. So extinction really doesn't happen. They mean it's they function, right? You just said extinction doesn't happen. right. They continue to like the avoidance behaviors persist. Like the experiment and let me see if I can not butcher the whole thing now but like the first part is like just a pure classical conditioning situation where a neutral cue is paired with an avarsif and it becomes a condition punisher that elicits among any other things fear. And now the operant side of that experiment was that the behaviors that remove or prevent the fear eliciting cue become negatively reinforced

and they terminate that conditioned fear state if you want. The fear state of the aversive or the fear of once they respond they respond due to conditioned fear response but once they respond then it's gone. and it doesn't go away it's there. It's something to look into because I will put some links in the comments or the description for sure because it's actually quite interesting and important because later on there was a whole different study Ledeau Ledeau is the name of the guy and it's current and it's a present like it's you know he did bunch of things but it's the current understanding of everybody and the core claim of Ledeau was that I was going to say the dog but they of course do it with rats and I will explain why with rats but there is a threat circuit and not necessarily fear so the core claim that he makes is that after learning makes the situation predictable and controllable the rat stops freezing and instead performs a simple instrumental avoidance responses what is interesting to know about rats and the geniuses of what he did is that when let's say you put it in a Skinner book whatever and you put some electricity they respond just like any living thing will respond with a little jump and you know discomfort and immediately after they will freeze it's a very innate evolutionary response in rodents because if they move their you know predators get them so that freeze response is extremely important but it also it is based on fear only fear nothing else and what he found in the studies that they put the same conditions like imagine you know the box that they can go away and you know and there is the queue and so on basically the the rats they end up going in through this what he calls man he he has a really good names for this and I'm a little bit off guard here it's not a loop but it's a again it's an instrumental avoidance response they basically they're moving away they're responding and they're not freezing anymore which shows that they're just responding and the fear now it's not there anymore why because they have the solution and once they have there is a solution to the problem there is no reason for fear no more

you're just knowing how to control the situation there is no reason for anything to be afraid of well predictability and control I think are important for decreasing that fear I don't know that we can definitively say that it completely negates it well what he basically showed is that you don't need fear to manage the situation because once that the animal can predict and control that freezing drops out and just basically the action policy takes over and that's it and you can in fact what they were doing in their experiments is they would watch and eventually they would just kind of okay well it's time to go to lunch break and the rat it continues to do because it's negative reinforcement and they're convinced that they're avoiding right however the fear responses the signals of fear are out the door this is incredibly important conversation yeah I'd have to look at the study yes it's incredibly important and you know not sure why studies like that are not covered in the well in in the places where you have taken time and I don't want to say that it's nonsense but it's definitely very much one sided what you have studied it's kind of it's specializing and really really mastering certain skills but it's still in that I don't think anybody I don't think that we discount that because you know if you've taken the time to study and learn we understand that predictability and control and aversives if aversives are being used are very important okay one of the things that we do understand is that very few people are good about using aversives in a way that allow for predictability and control now you at your level of skill and experience may be a very different thing than some other trainers but there's plenty of them out there that they're just flying by the seat of their pants rather than designing good training programs and thinking about the learner they're more interested and you know allowing you to get these results and you know that there's this huge dopamine hit when you're working with an animal especially you know if you can use an aversive and get something to happen very quickly that's a very powerful reinforcer for the trainer who's using the aversive yeah and again I understand the position it just I don't think we discount though the fact that you're talking about this study if I looked at the study I would say yeah this is a real thing this is something that that can happen the problem is is that we're crossing our fingers and hoping that everybody can make that happen when it when it that's not reality but as a as a advocates of positive reinforcement only you present the situation in a very misleading way you're not saying well you're saying that okay well he's now sitting

because he's afraid and what that study shows is that you have passed that there is no fear involved because you're in control of the situation it's a very very valid study and it's very very important well until until the distraction comes and somebody says turn up the e-collar no we we can I mean we can sidetrack like this in many ways as I said your community presents that fear once it's there it's basically it's basically that two factor theory that once it's there the reason the rat is responding or the dog is responding is because of the fear and it's been clearly demonstrated that that is not the case there is the learning curve that fear is a factor but it does not stay there that's what I'm trying to say let me let me go let me go here if let's say the dog and this is again like I can throw a personal experience but let's say if the dog learns not to run into the street because of past correction or whatever you want to call it is that suppression or learning safety it can be both okay if suppression saves life why is that a bad outcome it's not a bad outcome when it's in an emergency situation if that's how you choose to teach it from the start I think there's a better way to do it that you don't have to use the aversive to teach typically you would you know one of the again the big things and it goes all the way back to Skinner since we mentioned his name and of course we have to mention his name when we were talking about punishment one of his big claims at the time was that punishment one of the bad side effects is that causes counter attack basically using aversives leads to aggression right this is a very common it can I'm not going to say that it does in every case because that are you are you in that case referring to the stimulus itself or to poor timing and excessive intensity well I think all those things are factors and that's why I think there are lots of different variables lots of different factors when using an aversive especially again with a pet dog and even a pet dog that isn't real stable doesn't have good nerves and the temperament is messed up and maybe some bad genetics there's lots of different variables there and very few individuals have what it takes to account for all those variables and do things just right with the use of aversive to avoid the potential for the fallout which those things don't happen okay typically when using positive reinforcement listen well I I mean of course I cannot disagree that to use punishment you need to understand you need knowledge there's no question about that but I also would argue

that if somebody can understand a very complicated differential reinforcement program or decentization as we were talking with the critical nuances and details because without them we agree it's not going to happen what makes you think that they're not capable to do that and to educate them instead of say you don't do that ever because it's bad and because has the big fallouts and with consciously knowing that humans will do it why would you not teach them how because the problem is it's an unregulated industry so I have no I have no assurances as Joe consumer out there with my pet dog no matter who I choose I have no protections no consumer protection like I do when I select a doctor you know when I find a doctor I know that they had standardized formal education I know they had to sit in front of the board and prove that they knew their stuff I know that they have to have continuing education to keep current on the latest and greatest science-based evidence practices and if they are somebody who isn't that skilled if they are doing things that you know are aversive so to speak and causing problems that there is some governance there's some disciplinary action that can be taken you know to help get that person back on that doctor back on track or if that doctor is going to be doing things that are going to be causing harm to take away that license we don't have that you know we don't have that in the dog training world so it's this huge crapshoot and and while maybe I could trust you with my pet dog doing those things there's a whole bunch of people out there that I can't and my point is this when we can teach things without the use of aversives why why why would we why would we do it with it and you know you're talking about why not teach the force free community how to be extremely skilled with with aversives well why not teach the balanced community that you don't need to use aversives so we go both ways I hear what you're saying in a perfect world we'd all have incredible skills I spend a great deal of my time learning and if I was to collect CEUs from webinars and conferences and things like that everybody's not you no the reason what I'm going with is actually a different point that I want to make it's basically the whole force free community wise bluntly that certain things are having huge fallouts no matter what and that positive reinforcement works and they do so without the education in aversives I agree the one thing I will tell you is that anybody that did not start training dogs where they were using aversives if they are coming into the industry and they're going through say the well-known dog training schools for positive reinforcement you know what they are they're not other than theoretically

teaching negative reinforcement positive punishment there's no hands on skills so no they're not and they don't have that and you know I guess it would be like if oh goodness gracious you know it would be like an old medical treatment that was effective but maybe had more side effects right and we've got a new medical treatment that can be effective but it has less side effects why would we go with the old treatment no we wouldn't I mean we shouldn't we shouldn't right unless we believe in you know mythology I think too you know a lot of and I'll agree you know there's a lot of very black and white all or nothing statements made on both sides the force free community it happens a lot and it shouldn't because there's always exceptions to the rule and the same thing in the balance side of things and part of the problem is that we are not talking to each other well exactly and that's why I wanted to talk because you and Cabral a while back were like none of the force free trainers want to talk to us I understand why they don't understand the use of force I think from conversation like this we all walk out with something to think about and the audience does the same let me ask you if aversives are inherently causing aggression why are I don't think they inherently cause aggression aggression I think that the improper use of it certainly can and I think there's a lot of improper use of it and so that is why we see that a lot in the studies and I think a lot of the improper use is because there's a lot of regular pet dog owners that are using aversives and it scares me because with social media and you know you got 30 second you know video clips of you know let me show you this dog who's aggressive and just out of control and then 30 seconds later I'm going to show you this dog appears to be calm cool and collected and we used an e-collar so now me as just a typical dog owner I go to PetSmart and I go buy an electronic talking about those things happen quite a bit all right and so I think that the balance training community doesn't look at it that way and I think the force free community a lot of them because they've never trained a dog using an aversive okay many of them some have don't know that yeah it can be successful I think in the you know what you're saying I think in the balance community is a little bit weirder than the force free I don't know I think both sides are weird I think we're both weird yes but you have more of a unified front and the balance community has incredible internal conflicts and I'm for sure part of the problem and I like it that way because I like to talk to people and I like to challenge ideas and so on but when we're talking about studies like can you name one

control study where properly applied aversive caused long term aggression in training dogs proper long term I don't know do we even have a study like that I can't think of one do you know of one where so there are studies but because most of the stuff that shows the fallout are survey studies and those aren't good studies but the word properly here is a key word and that's the hard thing how do you define that studies are tough they're very difficult in studies it's actually and again that's been since since the beginning a passion of mine and the studies that the positive the always points out to I think the biggest one in the forestry community would be taking a look at the studies where the training methods were compared and the ones that compared the positive reinforcement to the e-collar training where the e-collar trainers were selected by the e-collar manufacturers I think that's the big one that the forestry community likes to hold on to because it shows that there was no advantages according to the study with the use of the e-collar and I believe the study showed that the positive reinforcement group there was less latency and they responded faster or more often on the first cue before before we we dig into the studies because I do want to I think it's important to but a kind of different question still wouldn't lack of clear boundaries also create frustration and aggression absolutely right so one of the like like if you go into the science like the this is you know a cornerstone if you want in in the force free community and and you know we are evidence based and you are stuck in medieval ages I mean I'm paraphrasing but you know the cliche slogans we follow science and you use outdated methods and I was there but now I know better science means something is testable and repeatable correct science is you know as far as how I would describe it would be you know yeah having a hypothesis right and designing a study and testing that hypothesis having and we gotta be able to repeat it yeah and it's gotta be repeatable yeah then why don't these studies include dogs with serious aggression or some real world stakes well you know studies of animals are tough just to be able to just get through the committee to even to be able to do them is tough you know we're

dealing with there's always going to be studies on both sides there's always going to be outliers right there's always going to be a study that's going to show that you know aversives you know didn't cause fallout here but we have to take a look at that looks like what we're having this conversation well what makes that so right we talked about timing we talked about predictability we talked about control we talked about reading yeah contingency body language you know and then when it goes wrong we need to understand what were the things that caused it to go wrong and I think again most people unfortunately want to take a look at things and it's either black or white all bad all good all right and not looking at the big picture you know and you know I can sit here and say yeah that you can use aversives and it can be done in a way theoretically and not just theoretically but in a practical sense where the dog can learn and it's not just suppression and there's not fallout but you got to be really skilled you got to be really skilled and you got to have and you got to and it depends what kind of dog you're working with and again where I think I come from and where I think a lot of the force-free community come from is that we're looking well beyond professional trainers working with dogs and we're looking at lay people and if there's a lot of trainers out there that are making big mistakes and you know there are on both sides there's definitely lots of lay people making lots of mistakes yeah no question no question there's a huge welfare risk when it comes to aversives more so than you know just training with positive reinforcement and I know also there are dogs that have been failed with positive reinforcement I get it and it's not that that doesn't work it's just like you know for a trainer to say punishment doesn't work is ridiculous we know punishment works okay and I'm not saying it doesn't work we've been through it you know you know where I come from but we're not as a industry talking about the nuances we're just making these big black and white statements this is bad this is good and this is my argument and frustration if you want with where we are today where we all are today you know just always pulling the rug in every direction I think most people working with dogs have good intentions and that's why it's unfortunate that we're not having these conversations and I think maybe you thought that we were going to have this heated discussion and I knew we wouldn't no I absolutely am not here to point a finger or I told you so or like I think I really believe in talking to each other and the moment we shut this off I actually as soon as it's ready I will watch it myself because I know as I'm having the podcast is one thing but listening to it's a different thing and I know it's going to be takeaways and I very much appreciate it the biggest argument

and frustration as I said is humans and any anybody on our planet we have certain laws we are pre-programmed it's in it's baked in the DNA trying to convince somebody that punishment or aversives or negative reinforcement doesn't have place or it's not going to work or something's going to work better it will never get accepted I think this is probably the most dangerous proposition somebody makes and this is my frustration because humans intuitively at some point will resort to doing something and they will not have the understanding and education how to do it just as I was giving you the example of okay well let's ban the electric colors in Europe I just had like a couple of days ago one of the owners of one of the companies and he just came with some other friend it wasn't like I invited him or anything but I used the opportunity just like I've done with everybody that owns electric color companies the sales are going up they're not going down that tells you that people are not giving up they're just hiding and that becomes dangerous makes you feel really good on the surface of things I have a problem with that yeah you know I I I've got kind of mixed feelings you know and you know that you know I don't think that there's the necessity for it but I do agree with you that I think bands don't stop tool bands I don't believe stop people from wanting to use force with their dogs okay a lot of force free trainers would probably be surprised to hear me say this because they haven't used the tools but I think an e-collar is much more humane than a prong collar and I think a lot of force free trainers would be surprised by that it still comes down to how you use anything sure it comes down to how you use it but it comes down to how you use it and I just think there's a lot of people that granted you have experience and knowledge there is definitely a place for one tool versus another and you can clearly pick which one when I guess one of the like the force free camp seems to be failing in convincing the rest of the world besides just the aversives are bad and there is lifelong whatever and just the scarecrow kind of strategies and pointing to science studies which again I'm just about to go into but why not demonstrate life with dogs but not the dogs that are just low stake obedience drills and you know I told you I follow up everybody that I feel that it's important and

I would sign up to some big big event and there will be a video and I'm like okay let's see I'm like okay that's not like where you are talking about aggression and when I start to think about a serious problem you basically given up already I want to so basically you're saying that you know like a lot of the force free trainers will be talking about they've got really mild aggression where they might think it's severe or not even showing you know like instead of you know like we have the smartphones and that's an extremely good one nobody forced us to jump on everybody to jump on smartphones I mean there were the guys still flipping and whatever but it wasn't for too long every single person today unless you're a criminal and you need to at least try to be out of track right everybody has a smartphone why because it demonstrated what it can do it wasn't based on a ban it wasn't based on oh you guys are medieval or you're you know ! hey this is it and this is what you can do watch it I'm not just telling you what you can do you watch it well if you're referring to like trainers force free trainers you know creating videos of their work like I said no no not at all I'm talking about the most legit webinars and conferences and presentations of the cream of the community and I don't want to put it all down because there are takeaways there is no question that there are takeaways but if you want to convince me to have a smartphone you gotta be able to show me what it can do and in those events I don't see it and a lot of the I'll be very honest with you and you know and I'll probably take a lot of heat for this in the force free community but when it comes to some of the very severe cases I don't see lots of good examples of good work at conferences and webinars and things of that nature even with the individuals that are put upon a pretty high pedestal when it comes to they're supposed to be the force free aggression experts and again talking about the other side the balance people and the before and after videos as you're mentioning that's nonsense too that's like clickbaits and likes and subscribes and I think we are growing out of that that's not going to go for too long I also think that just talking and telling me that it works also will wear out it actually is already ! and this is where I'm really like I really like what we're doing right now I don't know where I'm going with this I don't think you know but we're clearly thinking about dog training and welfare and how we can be better and trust me if I know that there

is a better way I mean I have accolades nobody in the states has but if I know that there is somebody in Madagascar that has something to tell me I don't care what kind of what camp they're in what like I will buy the ticket and I will go and I'm not an exception that's kind of what I'm trying to say yeah just like you know how again the problem with just throwing the baby with the water and everything it's like corrections whatever you want to call it are never ethical that's another big you know slogan so allowing a dog to continue a behavior that leads to death is that ethical just as you said we need to take care there is pros and cons there is cost and benefit like if I need to amputate my toe on the foot because of gangrina and not to lose my life I would say fuck it do it which was a situation that's not even a joke I was very close to that I was playing barefoot soccer with one of my dogs and I make it miss the ball however she grabs and punctures me and breaks my toe and that's where it became scary because with the puncture the broken bone and the bone getting infected that was going to be a big issue I've been bitten many times in my life I know I've taken also courses of this so I don't need to pay emergency room I can take care of myself for the most part but two days later I'm like I need to go like I need to go at least get an x-ray because this is not right the moment I go they're like you're staying or you probably at best you're going to lose your foot and you know just what I mean by there's cost and benefit in everything and we a lot of times just pull the rug in our advantage just because our narrative is better than yours or something and I'm talking both sides I'm really talking both sides honestly talking both sides if a single fair correction prevails a lifetime I think we agree there is no it definitely would reflect more compassion if life matters I have again seen it to where we would say and that's a it's kind of soft spot and it's almost you know it's not controversial but you also kind of hinted on it I mean it lingers all the time when people from different point of view would talk and the balance trainer would say well you will euthanize a dog before you try a verse and tell me about that well yeah I mean I used to say that too to the balance training community believing that and I think when I hear that

statement what comes to mind is a dog with severe aggression right typically and where if I thought that suppression if I thought that aversives were really all that needed to happen to turn that dog around then I might be happy with that except for the fact that again that is a behavior that typically is rooted in anxiety fear stress that dog is those outward behaviors are driven by their underlying emotional state I need to change an underlying emotional state to really get that dog to not view that trigger as a threat and then the behavior goes away and I don't have to use aversives to do that and I do that day in and day out with very severely aggressive dogs and I'm having success without using aversives for those type of things and I don't know that every positive reinforcement force free trainer I don't know what their success rate is or how severe the aggression cases are that they're taking on they're a pretty tight knit community I think maybe I'm involved in the community I don't know that I'm as tight knit with that community as all the people that maybe started out force free that aren't crossover trainers so I don't know what everybody else is doing so to speak or how severe their cases are I most cases for me you know if things aren't working out it's usually a bad environmental situation like if you know we've got an aggression case and it's not going to be something that you're going to cure you can make it a whole lot better but you know let's say I'm walking into a home and I've got a single mom with three little kids and you know and things are chaotic I'm in that house and things are nuts and I'm like there's just no way one of these kids is going to get hurt I have clients bring up conversations of euthanizing their dog and I try not to tell them one way or another yeah you should yeah you shouldn't you know I try to be a consultant to them and to tell them you know I usually will say to somebody well that's an option and I'll tell people you know most people if they're looking at that option they typically want to feel comfortable and confident that they have done everything that they possibly can do and I've even had discussions with people because I don't use negative reinforcement and I don't use positive punishment these days and so if things aren't going well in a case like that you know I'll bring up you know there are other options and you know because they'll even assume what about an e-collar and I'll say well let me explain how they work let me explain the pros and the cons you know and they make the

decision now I've not had anybody say yeah I want to go with the e-collar and if I did I have to say well I've got unfortunately a good point but it's a tough situation very much the you know the force free camp will say you know you're quick to you know run to the correction quick to run to the punishment the balance trading camp says well you'll euthanize the dog before you'll give them a correction that that's tough and that's a really emotional decision for any pet parent to have to make with their pet so it's tough it's a very emotional argument and yeah I get it what kills me more than that is because sometimes those decisions are a little bit easier to make let's say you've got an 80 year old woman who has a probably the wrong dog very energetic large breed dog high prey drive likes to chase you know good dog friendly dog stuff like that she wants to take you know she wants to go for a walk and walks are very very difficult and maybe doing all the in-depth positive reinforcement work is a lot of work for this person and maybe they won't put that effort in and then they don't get what they want with that dog where yeah maybe this is a dog that you could teach somebody to use a prong collar or teach somebody to use an e-collar and maybe they could have success with that you know and again just as you said with medication you can you can mediate the situation you can kind of stabilize the situation and then move into the direction that it feels right and productive yeah it's always interesting if there was aggression I wouldn't be saying you know well maybe this person could benefit from this tool but you know again we talked a little bit earlier about if I were going to use a versus for something I'd tend to use it more for nuisance behaviors and foundational obedience commands rather than certainly I wouldn't I definitely absolutely wouldn't use it for a like what is your experience and what did I teach you in the places that you studied what's the correlation between college or are you talking about I'm talking about the behavior you know all the little the names that you have behind you know it was a lot of just a lot of positive reinforcement differential reinforcement counter conditioning pre-mect principle desensitization extinction you know all the basic stuff and not to not to cover a whole other part of learning I think it's shameful they covered the theory of it but nobody that I know of is doing hands-on with use of aversives and positive reinforcement I know how they covered the theory because again like I know like I know exactly the programs you're taking I know I I mean I didn't go to like Karen prior academy I didn't go to Gene Donaldson school or any of those things you know anything that I did you know because I had been in the field for so long before like the certified animal behavior you know the international care behavior yeah it's it's definitely we cannot argue that it's ideology rigid it totally definitely right

because they're out of the UK and they're big time you know force free yeah and they're all about welfare and that's kind of again my concern and frustration is like if you if you really are animal behaviorist international can an animal behaviorist organization you cannot be ideology rigid you just cannot be it's a shame and the studies and everything that it's taught it's always the ones that somehow contribute to the narrative of the ideology the other studies are never ever mentioned like and even even for example you mentioned Clive study and you said that you wrote a rebuttal which I really want to look into because again I'm that kind of guy that's always interested also I have yeah you can get a preprint I didn't I didn't get it published in peer review because I'm not going to spend the two grand to do it but you did take the time to read that one and to actually give your opinion on it yeah I probably wouldn't except for the fact that he cited my guide my positive reinforcement guide on stopping chasing behavior yeah the thing is that they had they were limited in how much time there was you know every study if it's going to be a legit study there has to be parameters and so if the force free will take a month to do whatever differential reinforcement programming then it's unfair for the electric collar group just to go called turkey and shock dogs right so these are things that has to be under consideration however in the long as far as the study was there were two positive groups not one but two against the force free against the shock group and the one was to go that route of descent ization and that's what I meant by they were complying to the moment when they were triggered now we can argue that there was not enough time but there was not enough time for anybody and this is when we need to think about cost and effective and how much a person sometimes where they really stand are they I'm going to just take that dog to the shelter or euthanize it tomorrow because I need something to happen today or am I going to take that there is so many toss ups and so many angles to look at everything however regardless of the comparison of the force free and the shock group what came clearly apparent is that after the first session for the most dogs in the shock group they gave up the idea of chasing which I would expect to happen right now what is more important is that besides the very temporary negative effects at the moment of the experience there was nothing else those dogs were bored to death for the next seven days they were trying to

bring sticks to the people they were just trying like why are you ignoring me can we do something here well you know it's to show if you want to see it this way it's to show that all this roller coaster of bad disastrous side effects are not there of course it has to be done in a certain way now the reason I brought this one but do you know which studies started the whole ban and the whole idea that aversives are bad well there's a lot of studies I don't spend my days and nights digging through and memorizing studies but there's so many of them I will tell you I have them all but I will tell you why it's important because if we have to argue about and have a debate or say that science says and we point to studies then we have to know the studies and most people that say science says and they make reference to the studies they have not taken the time to educate themselves that's a common human error in everything we do you know I mean you can have a nowadays you can have a meme that's going to come on Instagram and you have I don't know some legendary philosopher and then some quote and you think that this quote is legit just because it's next to the picture to this person and nobody ever checks it it's ridiculous where we are however if we talk about science based and what is referred to science based it gets very shaky the very first study was Matthias Schilder and Joan Van De Borg it was 2003 that study got reference this is the most reference study in the whole force free community and because it's so highly referenced nobody even checks it's just it's you know like you need to do you know the one with the 32 German shepherd police dogs correct that was basically I can tell you it's dogs what they did they just observed it's not even the guy even Schilder himself admitted later that the evidence was misused and what they did they observed the dogs during the time when they get corrected for behaviors so you will have that kind of response it's natural to have that kind of response but you know measuring acute response to punishment doesn't equal measuring or coming to conclusions about measuring chronic welfare there you need to actually if you really wanted to you need to take the time to see what happens next there was no randomization there was no baseline there was no statistic control I mean when you don't have a baseline of temperament assessment or much controls what kind of what are we talking when you are doing a study

I can go on I mean maybe this is some other different podcast but I have this like I have them all of them for example the one with Dr. Mills you know and Cooper and Daniel Mills 2014 and then China did it in 20 and she did it basically from watching the videos and she made another paper based on that I mean there is so many flows and so many question marks in there so many that it's a shame to even present it as a science says and first off the groups the different groups of dogs were trained in different seasons in different locations that means you know like I mean if you train a dog in 80 degrees versus 50 degrees there is already different body functioning I I I I try to I try to talk to him several times and I was talking to him actually I have some emails some correspondence but when he come down to me and him talking this way he never accepted it because he knows very well that I'm going to challenge him and the best thing about science when you come up with something is like hey challenge me let me see if it's legit let me see if I can defend it however it's not that he just not giving presentation or not teaching or anything he just refuses to be challenged but in his bubble he's very eager to speak and present very eager I have seen I have talked to like I have talked to people pretty much with all the studies I have found a way to find people that have been participating in the studies like the one with Schiedler and the one in Holland the very first one it's a very famous person and I don't want to say he she but it was presenting and he has a very influential work and stuff never wanted to like in a private conversation there was a lot to tell me but would never have the courage to come forward and I understand that with Daniel Mill's study they were comparing predatory instincts and controlling predatory behaviors chasing sheep well besides what I was pointing on I have like five pages of flows of that study but one really serious one is if you're going to be evaluating training approach on controlling predator instincts then there has to be some chase there has to be some open space and some freedom are you talking about the China Mills Cooper 2020 efficacy of dog training with and without the remote collar so basically she doubled down on the videotapes

and made another paper of the original study I'm talking about the original study which she talks also about the same study but no no that's the Dutch people okay the Cooper and Daniel Mills made the study in 2014 that the response group the group without the e-collar responded faster correct correct shorter latencies yeah yeah it's all nonsense because the dogs were on leash they never even tested recalls but more over the sheep like you would have two sheep in a 10 by 10 playpen you cannot even evaluate predatory instincts with a not moving animal forget about what animal what are you selecting as far as the intensity like I can tell you the study that Clive did the dogs that got selected they ended up with I believe 20 or 19 dogs out of 60 and the reason the main reason was because the dogs that were just hoping and wanting to play they were not of interest we really try to focus on the dogs that are very that they have a very different purpose when they are chasing and this is very easy to see so there were two days prior to the study to begin to actually select the dogs yeah I mean anyway my point is that the studies that everybody in the force free community references and I'm willing to talk to anybody that is willing to talk to me about it and just in the same way as you and I are talking and hopefully somebody eventually will want to so far it has not happened let's get to the point where we basically the reason well I guess the real reason is the one that we're talking about and I really enjoy it but but on the surface it was the jackpot post that I made and I was surprised and maybe I didn't well I know I did a good job of explaining myself because I after reading so many posts I'm like man am I not explaining myself well or do people really don't understand what it is are they being just fed that kool-aid for so long that it's just how it is and so where do we disagree well Clive's friend Erica Troybrocker she's not necessarily her friend I know they've done studies together but anyway she did a study 2022 give the dog a big bone magnitude but not delivery method of food impacts preference and reinforcer efficacy now here's the thing that you know and again this is where things have to come out of being black and white and we got to get into little nuances okay because you talk about a jackpot to different people and different people have different ideas some people say well jackpot is high value versus low value some people say no jackpot is the amount of

food that you give okay and then there's the thing that you were talking about which is this surprise jackpot okay and my thing is that a jackpot and that's not the word that's used really in learning and psychology it would be yeah jackpot is never used yeah it's magnitude of reinforcer I think is the term that they use or reinforcement magnitude and primarily what the studies show isn't I found the one with Breubrocker that shows amount or there was one other study where rats ran they could get six pellets or one pellet and there was one where the six pellet rats were running faster but then there was another study where they put out a bowl of kibble versus a piece of kibble and there was no difference in that one it seems like the literature pretty much shows that high value food reward as a jackpot versus amount has some benefit and can increase frequency duration and decrease latency and also more prone to extinction when using high value food rewards as a jackpot but I think the other thing too that I found that was missing is that and this goes to begin back to predictability and control okay I think the best use of a jackpot the dog has to know what it is why it's being given okay and that's something that needs to be classically conditioned and there should be a marker for that jackpot reward and I think when done that way it has a much different effect so yeah and that that's where but for a surprise jackpot no that's this is where the confusion comes it's not necessarily the the the whole idea right throwing out the the baby with the bathwater thing yeah the whole idea that was proposed about jackpot has flaws and nobody argues that if I have different quantity or different quality the dog's gonna choose the better if it doesn't it will correct itself and it will do it but there is no question that they they can do that but this is a you know like if you give a chicken versus a really dry pet smart biscuit yeah the one is way more motivating to do than the other but that has nothing to do with jackpot yeah because I think the way that prior was talking about jackpot and I don't know 100% I could be wrong so any Karen prior devotees if I get this wrong don't beat me up but you know I think jackpot for her was you know high volume no of a food yeah no so that's kind of and let me let me go with this a little bit and and then ask me questions but jackpots don't teach the dogs to do better they teach them to want it more they basically have more motivation so the precision the improved response that's not accomplished and never was accomplished

by jackpot the immediacy there is this thing about immediacy not evaluation the dogs learn through temporal proximity not the reflective analysis and the shorter the gap between the action and the consequence the stronger the association everybody agrees that's what immediacy means the dog experiences I did this and this immediately happened it's a it's a very straightforward simple cause and effect loop and it's totally grounded on sensory feedback sight sound whatever touch but what it's not it's not in reasoning or comparison and this is the point of a jackpot it's the evaluation and the evaluation how this one versus this one that's a cognitive step it's beyond learning it requires the brain to recall a previous outcome but not just that but actually compare it with the current one and infer why the different bring different outcomes and this this is an abstract thought this has zero to do with associative learning exactly so that's why I say a marker needs to be associated with that jackpot that the dog can think I got chicken instead of whatever because and this is important because my seat was faster or more precise or overall better than the one I did before we are projecting human logic onto an animal that operates on sensory timing and not mental comparison it's impossible for them to do the dog's brain isn't asking why was the reward different there is no question that it's registering a reward happened and it was a really good one and I did the sit but the neutral circuits driving the behavior are you know the prediction error loops and they don't interpret the sides or meaning of the outcome and basically if I believe as a trainer that because I did more and better in whatever way on that execution of the sit and I did an average reinforcing on the one that was an average the dog cannot put the two together and say I will do that better the next time where we get confused is that the dog gets excited but this is in the moment this is of course normal now I'm not talking the average sit that we give some treat that the dog doesn't like of course they're not going to go anywhere but they continue to you know they're motivated they still do the sit it's just the concept of the jackpot that emphasizes that behavior is better than that one and that's why you got the jackpot whatever that means for anybody dogs cannot do that and you as the trainer would have to have a

really keen eye and your criteria would have to be very specific and you'd have to keep jackpotting on that specific criteria and I believe that you'd have to have a marker for that so that it could be predictable and you'd have to be very consistent and then it could be beneficial but I think without that just giving that surprise handful of food the dog can't figure it out again it's I still will disagree even with that because it's not necessarily the I'm not talking about surprise I can talk about consistency of always rewarding the better one with more and better and the other one so so but you mentioned the important word that actually makes the difference that eventually if you are trained and I meaning you I meaning everybody just conversational but if you ever improve the behavior and you locked it to your acceptance as that's the ideal behavior that happens by raising criteria and raising criteria has a very certain steps how to do there is an element of extinction which creates some extinction bursts and so on there is some withholding of the reinforcement where you get more explicit behavior so on and so on that paradigm has nothing to do with jackpots however I believe that a lot of trainers eventually even subconsciously end up doing something with raising the criteria and upping the demands of what they expect but they give the benefit also on the jackpots and that's misleading there is no one there is actually very few studies I mean I believe three and they're like one studies with two dogs another one I mean they're as sketchy as they can be but also there is a very good reason why the you know all the big books never talk about jackpot in that sense that's a human thing do you get what I'm saying no I do get what you're saying and again I think you can make it clear for the dog but it takes planning it takes work it takes consistency in order for you know the dog to explain planning consistency because I'm I'm afraid that when somebody starts to talk that way it just becomes a word salad so if I precondition a dog to a we'll call it a jackpot marker if you will okay and let's say that that you know I'm saying yes for my regular marker bingo for my jackpot marker right and I precondition bingo means I'm getting not just more but higher value because we know the real term for jackpot is magnitude of reinforcement and we know that what really matters is I have to stop you here because it's not again it has not much to do with like we cannot just evaluate the magnitude the magnitude can evaluate again I get more excited when I get this versus when I get this right no and I get that my point is though if I want to refine a behavior if I want to get a dog that you know has a straight let's say you know straight sit versus a crooked sit because I don't want to get you know knocked off a half point on a sit

so you know I could yes and reward my dog on the straight sit or on the crooked sit right but on every time that there is a straight sit I could go ahead and jackpot my dog with with bingo and if I'm consistent with that and the dog understands bingo what it predicts and it gets more I think that can change and shape the behavior a little bit right but that's the human thinking behind the process no it's associative learning this is this is clearly associated I'm creating a very black and white cause and effect association when you sit straight I get bingo bingo you get high value handful of food rewards but without that understanding and without the criteria without the consistency it becomes meaningless yeah with the consistency and everything that you're saying the one is still a very abstract thought to a dog it's no question there is no question this is not associative learning and we know very well that dogs are incapable of reasoning and thinking in abstract terms as we do so you don't think a dog can learn that when I sit straight I hear bingo and I get a higher value food reward and more of it than when I sit crooked and I hear yes and I get one piece of kibble yeah that's exactly what I'm saying all the research and all my experience of training dogs in the pet world in police world in guide dogs in high level competition has not shown me that and I have played with that as well we again confusing motivation and getting excited about the reward to comparing the current response with the one in the past and making that decision that this is why I'm getting the reward there is zero evidence to that anywhere well it's something that's a conditioning process it's an abstract thought then this is the problem because for us it's so in our face it's all like of course it has to work but we have that part of our brain that can make that happen we can think that way I understand what you're saying I still believe that when it's done correctly and when it's done through good old classical conditioning so you're saying that they can think abstract that's no because this is not abstract thinking associative learning is not abstract thinking but it's not associative learning sure it is if I've got a marker that I'm using consistently for one particular behavior versus a different one and the dog there's the magnitude of reinforcement for one behavior that's associative learning that's classical conditioning bingo means I'm getting something bigger and better yes means I'm getting one piece of kibble I'm very consistently only marking bingo and giving the high value large amount of food reward when I get the straight sit that dog's going to figure out it's very black and white it's very associated yes there's an operant component to it because there's there's obviously a consequence but it's both operant and classical let me try in another way yeah let's let's take a gardener that has

a bunch of pots and plants and the one plant gets all the nutrition and the sun and everything but the other one still gets enough to continue on and this is the point why it's not going to work there is no reason for the dog to change its mind and it cannot think in that abstract way unless we raise the criteria as I said and we use a very different strategy how to improve on the behavior but that whole thought it's just something to think of I guess the criteria is very simple this is a very simple criteria but for us when the sit is square and straight you're getting five pieces of ham when the sit is crooked you're getting one piece of kibble and when you sit square and straight you're getting the marker word bingo which I've preconditioned to the high value food reward and the multiple high value food reward the dog we know we do know that dogs will work for a better reward we know that they'll want to gravitate towards a better when we can make it very clear to them and it doesn't happen immediately it's not like the dog the first time I do it gets it but that's why it's conditioning but we can condition the dog to understand aha it's the straight sit that gets the bingo that gets the hand and that's the I mean we will clearly disagree but hopefully hopefully understand what I'm saying because that aha moment cannot happen because study that you want to send me or put in the link below that yeah yeah of course of course I will but again but again the studies that I'm going to point you to they're attempts to to actually prove that it's working and the outcomes were just baseless nothing well there was 2025 oh no maybe it was printed in 2020 there are 2020 and whatever like it's not it's not but Shah Shahan Timothy Shahan like like none of these books ever will ever talk about this because we recognize that dogs are limited and not limited they're just incapable of thinking and making this kind of abstract I did this because of this the only way again to increase I'm talking about a pattern you know dogs are very pick up patterns you're still feeding you're still rewarding that sit the average still rewarding the sit but the dog prefers one reward over the other yeah and this is why I mean there is an immediacy ! versus evaluation immediacy means oh wow I got a big one oh I got a normal one but the evaluation is impossible the other critical element in using this is making sure the dog doesn't get satiated as well no there is there are a lot of problems with jackpot I mean for one the you know rewarding this one with an average reward and this one with big one it will not make them evaluate why that happened but what it will do is it will create some frustration and some inconsistency of expectations which will in the long run will actually disrupt the learning well that's why I said you gotta have a marker so that there isn't that frustration so that it becomes

very clear with the dog yes but it's still immediacy versus the ability to evaluate and compare and improve because of something to think of yeah something to think of it's just that it's not and again as I watch through this afterward you get a different perspective like you were saying as well man what did you think what did you expect anyway I hope you weren't expecting fighting no I wasn't expecting fighting because that's just not who I am and I've watched you talk with other people you're not and doing this it's way more valuable for me and hopefully for you than going over on Facebook on posts and it's just as good as the social media is man it's so dangerous you want to talk about so dangerous modifying behaviors and what social media is doing to us and then you have all the bots all the bots that jump in the conversation anyway I would love to have you back again man yeah I appreciate it it's been a good conversation I know again it's not about me convincing you or you convincing me it's about having the opportunity to talk to each other and I think it's super important for us to do and as I said I know I'm gonna walk out and I'm gonna be for the next few days you know you're heading to Europe is that what you're doing yeah I'm going to Europe I'm going to a competition with my dog nice I don't even know what day it is you know the dog training Friday is today so I'm going I'm leaving Monday that's kind of why I was rushing you and I'm like man it's either now or two months later and who knows where we're gonna be two months later it was just organic to make the conversation you know so really thank you appreciate you you as well have a good trip in Europe and look forward to doing it again I think we will man thank you so much I think