u/swearwoofs

Please review the updated rules regarding posts that are specifically intended to call out an individual or organization for animal abuse. (Comments remain largely unrestricted in this regard.)

While call-out posts are permitted, they are now subject to stricter standards due to the seriousness of alleging animal abuse. Such posts must present a clear, evidence-based argument rather than a personal rant or attack against trainers or organizations you disagree with.

The purpose of this subreddit is to foster good-faith debate. Discussions about animal training ethics are welcome, and criticism of specific trainers or training methods is encouraged. However, if you are accusing a specific person or organization of animal abuse, your post must be structured as a formal debate proposition with clearly stated premises and a conclusion, supported by relevant evidence such as screenshots, videos, news reports, or other credible sources.

Finally, it's important to distinguish between criticizing a training method as abusive and labeling a specific individual or organization as an animal abuser. The former is a discussion about ideas and practices; the latter is a serious factual allegation that requires a much higher standard of evidence.

Some very important quotations from the scientific literature in regards to the effects of punishment:

“Punishment can reduce a behavior’s frequency below its operant level to a zero level of occurrence. If such complete response suppression is produced, it is clear that the behavior will not recover unless a special effort is made to reestablish it.” Dr. Ron Van Houten: The Effects of Punishment on Human Behavior, Axelrod and Apsche, Academic Press, 1983, Chpt 2, pg 32

"One possible side effect of punishment is the production of emotional reactions. Several researchers have demonstrated that punishment with electric shock does not produce lasting emotional results. (Hearst, 1965; Hunt & Brady, 1955) Further, as Azrin and Holz (1966) have pointed out, gross observation seems to indicate that no chronic emotional maladjustment is engendered by a child's having been burned by touching a radiator or having skinned a knew by falling off a bike. It is fortunate that punishment does not produce strong lasting emotional effects under most circumstances since it would be impossible to eliminate punishment from the natural environment. Although it is true that emotional behaviors are frequently observed following punishment, it is also true that these effects are usually short lived."

“Subsequent research has shown that the conclusions drawn from this early work on punishment were erroneous. For example, the comparison Estes made of contingent and non-contingent shock punishment was restricted to a period of less than an hour. Later studies obtained very similar results during the first hour; however, after that time, the responding recovered substantially during non-contingent punishment but not during immediate punishment (Azrin, 1956). In regard to the question of whether the effects of punishment are permanent, numerous studies have demonstrated that punishment at high intensities can produce complete suppression with no sign of recovery. (Appel, 1961; Azrin, 1956, 1960, Boe & Church, 1967; Masserman, 1946) “

Another important note is that it was the injection of non-contingent shock that made punishment appear to be dysfunctional. You can read about this in Van Houten’s reference to Estes and Fixed Rate Punishment by Azrin, Holz and Hake, JEAB, 1963.

(shout out to ncbi, APA PsycNet, and gary wilks for making it easy to cite these quotations ✊️ if anyone wants to cross reference, that is where i pulled them from)

Asking for evidence is apparently "character assassination".

"IPG" is also hilariously bad.

Counter-conditioning for a behavior deals with changing emotions, which presumes the dog is in a negative emotional state (like fear/anxiety).

But what about behaviors stemming from over-arousal or aggression? Do you use counter-conditioning for that as well or something else? How can you tell if you are actually changing the underlying emotions VS simply reinforcing alternative/incompatible behaviors?

Since there's no real data out there, I'm looking to see what the average duration for dogs put on SSRIs is. If you're a trainer and you wean them off before training, how long have they been on SSRIs?

Thank you in advance to everyone who participates!

View Poll

Why are many FF trainers against evaluations for behavioral cases? From what I can tell, but correct me if I'm wrong, the main reason is because they think allowing the dog to perform the behavior is harmful to the dog?

If you're a FF trainer who is pro-evaluations for behavioral cases, what do your evaluations encompass?