Puppies & Punishment For Behavior Change
It’s November 28th, 2020, 10:30 PM. I’m in the kitchen with my housemates enjoying some chocolate. Emily comes upstairs and walks straight to me with the look of, “I don’t care what you’re doing, I get your attention right now.” She holds out her phone and shows me a picture of a puppy along with the information that she is the first person the author of the listing has responded to.
“How far away are they?” “Merced” “I guess we’re getting up early tomorrow.”
I’ve got pretty strong animal allergies. Hypoallergenic dogs were a hot commodity even before Covid came to town. So, we knew we had to act quickly if we wanted a real shot at getting an allergy-free dog. We weren’t aiming for a puppy, and, well, desperate times.
Fortunately, the pup did not shoot off any red flags when we met him for the first time. He was scared, crying a little bit and seemed sweet. As we engaged with him and brought a lot of energy his posture gradually opened up and he became playful with us. We closed the deal with the people from Craigslist and were the new owners of a 9-week-old puppy.
On our drive up our puppy education began. We bought and listened to the first half of The Art of Raising a Puppy while I scoured Google for things to look out for when considering getting a goldendoodle.
On our way home I was mentally reallocating my time away from my coaching training and toward an education on puppy training. Over the next month I read three dog training books and watched over 40 hours of trainer training videos - not just dog training videos, but training videos FOR the trainers. I was going deep, I was going meta. For those who are curious, I found this training by Ian Dunbar to be very interesting and helpful.
Our pup, Barlow, is now 6 months old and a freakin’ sweetheart. While he certainly would have been delightful outright, the attention that Emily and I (mainly her, she’s a rockstar) have put into raising him has definitely helped there be more joy and less suffering in all three of our lives.
When it comes to shaping behavior there’s basically praise, punishment and the absence of either. Praise is intended to make a behavior happen more often. Punishment is intended to make the behavior happen less often. In dog training you’ll find schools of thought ranging on how much of each you are at liberty to use. These literally go from only praise with no punishment to only punishment with no praise.
From my studies it seems that too much praise leads to your dog running your life and out alpha-ing you, while too much punishment leads to learned helplessness and a sad, quiet, skittish dog.
While both are important, I want to talk about punishment because I believe it is often misunderstood.
Consider a stereotypical punishment for a dog who pees inside. The owner, let’s call him Chaz, is walking about and finds a puddle in the living room. There’s no dog in sight so Chaz goes and finds them, drag them back to the puddle, push their face in near the pee and repeatedly say, “no” in a stern, nearly shouting voice. The assumption is that the unpleasant experience of being pushed about along with the trigger word, “no” and the context of pee would clearly let the dog know not to do this again.
To be most effective a punishment must have three key components. It must be 1. Effective
2. Immediate 3. Instructive
Effective In Ian’s words, “a punishment must cause the immediately preceding action to decrease in frequency such that it is less likely to occur in the future.” If the targeted behavior does not change and you continue the strategy then you are abusing your dog, not punishing them. It’s important to have a baseline on the behavior so you can know if the behavior is getting better or not.
If Chaz doesn’t observe any change in his dog's behavior around peeing inside then he may intuit that their punishment isn’t working. Unfortunately, it might lead to the punishment being amped up with a louder voice and more jostling. This would likely teach the dog to not let Chaz get within reach of them instead of not peeing inside.
Immediate The optimal time to provide feedback to a dog is within half a second from the behavior you want to impact. For both reinforcing with praise and discouraging with punishment, immediate feedback is key. The longer you wait to provide feedback the greater the praise or punishment needs to be to have the same impact on the dog. If it’s greater than 3 second late then you’re better off not doing anything, the moment is gone.
Back to Chaz, the don’t-pee-inside battle was already lost when he came across the pee in the living room with the dog gone. He’s better off just cleaning it up and limiting the dogs access to the living room until he has greater confidence in the pup.
Instructive To decrease the behavior that we do not want the dog to do we are best off giving the dog an alternative. Don’t pee there, pee here. Don’t chew on that, chew on this. Don’t sit on the couch, sit on this mat. If you give no alternative that the dog is not punished for (ideally they are praised for) then they are likely to do the original behavior again.
Chaz has learned a thing or two. He now keeps an eye on his pup when they’re in the living room. When he sees his dog squat ever-so-slightly he yells to startle the dog. He then picks the pup up and carries them outside, putting them down where he’d like them to pee and repeatedly says the word he wants to associate with eliminating (“potty,” “baño,” etc). After the dog does their business Chaz praises the dog lavishly.
Of course, punishment comes back around to praise. The most effective means of training incorporates both. The trick is to praise way more than you punish, think 9-to-1 praise-to-punish. When you do punish, do it in a way that’s instructive towards the behavior you want to praise.
Early in his pupdom I had Barlow in the living room with me. I was hoping to read (how naive I was) while keeping an eye on him. I sat in a chair and went about my business. Meanwhile, Barlow went about his business. He got into a potted plant and started tracking dirt around the floor, he jumped up on the couches, he poked his nose at the things on the coffee table. I was losing my cool a little as I tried to damage control one thing while he made mischief elsewhere.
Before this went on for too long I remembered Ian’s instruction about punishment and reinforcement. I put my book down and went and got a blanket that I put at the side of my chair. I sat him on the blanket and fed him a treat. He got up and onto the couch. I said “off” and coaxed him off the couch then fed him a treat. He put his forepaws on the coffee table, I said “off” and nudged him down. He put a single paw on the blanket beside me, I said, “Good boy!” and fed him a treat.
10 minutes later I was peacefully reading my book and occasionally petting Barlow who was comfortably sitting on his blanket and chewing on a raw hide. I was also giving him treats at random intervals.
I was recently at a dog park with Barlow. A couple was there with their dogs. Instead o
f kicking a tennis ball in a clear direction for their dogs to chase the guy flicked it at his unexpecting partner hitting her in the shoulder and startling her. She seemed shaken and, after a delay, let out a, “What’s wrong with you?!”
About five minutes I saw him try that stunt again. His technique was worse this time and he only hit her shoe. She shot him a glare with a sharp exhale.
Her attempts at punishing him seemed ineffective in changing his behavior.
Think about the last time you were mad. What did you do? Did you raise your voice and feel justified when you got a different, slightly complying (and ultimately corroding) response? Did you say, “it’s fine” and start to sulk and an hour later vent to your friend about how you’re not understood? Did you start shaming yourself by rapidly listing everything you’ve done “wrong” lately believing it’ll somehow get you to act differently next time?
Punishment must be effective, immediate and instructive
It must reduce the rate of occurrence, be delivered within 3 seconds (ideally 0.5s) and provide a positive alternative.
How about something like this: “When you said, ‘you never listen’ I felt sad and angry because I need collaboration in our relationship. Would you please try expressing yourself again about just the thing you’re currently upset about.” “I’m not comfortable with how this is going. Would you please take a step back and give me a second to breathe and think?” When noticing that you’re upset with yourself, stop what you’re doing, close your eyes and take four breaths that are three seconds in and six seconds out.
Barlow comes in with someone’s slipper. “Barlow, drop it. Drop it.” He drops the slipper. “Good boy!” Take the slipper, hold a toy just out of reach and throw it. Just a second. Please do this, not that. Thank you, I really appreciate it.
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