Crime and Punishment

In my training and in my life with dogs, I prefer to avoid the use of aversives and physical punishment -- choke chains, collar pops, whacks on the nose with a rolled up newspaper, e-collars, beatings, that sort of thing. The reason, and this neatly ties back into my last post, is that in order for punishment to be most effective, the initial punishment needs to be pretty intense. Initial intense punishment increases the effectiveness of later, mild punishment. Initial mild punishment habituates an animal to a punisher and decreases the the effectiveness of later, more intense punishment.

What a dog might consider mild or intense can be very much a matter of personality, and discovering it can involve trial and error. Tuni is a very sensitive, anxiety-prone little dog. Even the slightest bit of tension in my body language causes her to slink around with her tail tucked and to show dramatic appeasement gestures, even though I have never so much as popped her collar. Sometimes I do not even realize that I am feeling stressed until I look at Tuni and see her curled up, with her tail tucked. I am sure that if she went into a shelter, people would assume that she was severely beaten on a daily basis. Nah, she's just absurdly sensitive, and shuts down if you look at her funny. Tuni is so sensitive that correction-based training would probably ruin her.

Polly is a lot more resilient, but still, she is pretty sensitive and she will respond to a verbal correction. She would never even consider breaking the rules, anyway. Polly loves the rules. Polly lives for the rules. Following! Enforcing! Making up new ones for everyone else to follow! Polly does fine with corrections, but at the same time, she doesn't really need them.

Finley, on the other hand. He is a whole different sort of dog. He is somehow hard-headed AND squishy marshmallow soft and completely trusting. He is not going to be cowed by someone raising their voice. If they are raising their voice, it's got to mean they want to play with him! Right? RIGHT!!! If they are waving their arms in the air and yelling, they must REALLY want to play!!!

A few weeks after we brought Finley home, we accidentally triggered a big fear in him. My husband was changing his clothes after work, and removed his belt. Finley, who does not tend to be fearful or reactive, took one look at him, tucked his tail as far as it could go, FLEW over the bed, and hid in our son's room. He wouldn't go near my husband for a week. He wouldn't come back upstairs for several weeks. He is still cautious around my husband, especially if Sean is holding something in his hands. Interestingly, he is not threatened at all by me holding objects, even if I pretend that I'm going to hit him with them. But if I hand the objects over to Sean, Fin runs away. Obviously the beatings he received were severe enough to leave an impression. Sean has never laid a hand on Fin, but after the belt incident, Fin sees him as That Guy Who Hurts Dogs and he doesn't trust Sean anymore.

I think the only way to use positive punishment (physical punishment, raised voice, whatever) effectively on this particular dog would be to seriously hurt him first. I am not willing to sacrifice my relationship with any dog to that extent.

Unfortunately, he is still something of an overgrown puppy and he's still got some poor puppyish manners and sometimes when I tell him to stop doing something and do something else, he just... doesn't stop doing it to do that other thing. I know, I know! He doesn't have enough training yet! He can't hold a sit-stay for twenty minutes when there are cats running past him and he's bored! It's not a realistic expectation! If he's chasing cats all over the place, it means he needs more training and more exercise!

But sometimes I feel like I am the only one who can't tell him to knock it the heck off! If Sean gives Fin an Elvis curl of the lip, Fin cowers and runs off, because Sean is That Guy Who Hurts Dogs. If The Bitches tell him to knock it off, he turns tail and apologizes -- because they'll knock him down and bite him otherwise! I'm not biting anyone and I could quite happily live my whole entire life without ever hitting anyone with a belt, thank you very much.

If the result of that unwillingness is that I have a giant-headed 51 lb dog who completely trusts me and thinks he is a lap dog and is annoyingly persistent and occasionally bugs the crap out of me, well... I can live with that. Even if it does mean that every time I sit at my computer desk he comes over and tries to climb into my lap and sends my chair spinning in a circle and I have to stand up and turn my back to make him quit climbing on me. :)