The Problem With Purely R+ Dog Training Activists

There is a saying: “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

If all you have is R+ (purely positive reinforcement) dog training, then every problem looks like it requires an R+ solution. 

All these proclaimed R+ dog trainers might learn a lesson from The Grinch: “Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before… Maybe Christmas, (he thought) doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps… means a little bit more.” 

Maybe there is a lot more to dog training than R+.

Let’s talk science, since that term is tossed around so frivolously by the “purely positive”, so-called “R+” activists. 

Why do trained dogs that have been properly corrected by a good dog trainer, using an aversive tool such as a leash and collar, not show persistent fear? Because the startling effect of the correction undergoes extinction, and what is left over is a durable avoidance of the initial consequence. Just like your parents corrected you if you tried to run into the street, are you now afraid of being around traffic and walking on the sidewalk? No. And your dog isn’t afraid of walking along the sidewalk, either, even though your dog had been corrected previously for lunging at a passing car, bicycle or jogger. 

Seligman’s (one of the primary authors of the book, “Learned Helplessness”) scientific experiments proved this outcome. There was a way to traumatize a dog, which he explained; good dog trainers don’t do those types of things to a dog. Seligman didn’t, however, say that once an avoidance response was learned that the aversive experience of the correction wouldn’t fade away. 

Furthermore, significant scientific experiments by those who tried to adhere to the concepts of the 4 Quadrants of Learning, found out that it just wasn’t enough. Breland and Breland, in their famous paper called “The Misbehavior of Organisms”, stated: “These egregious failures came as a rather considerable shock to us, for there was nothing in our background in behaviorism to prepare us for such gross inabilities to predict and control the behavior of animals with which we had been working for years. The examples listed we feel represent a clear and utter failure of conditioning theory. They are far from what one would normally expect on the basis of the theory alone. Furthermore, they are definite, observable; the diagnosis of theory failure does not depend on subtle statistical interpretations or on semantic legerdemain-the animal simply does not do what he has been conditioned to do.” This was a refutation of B. F. Skinner (who wrote The Behavior of Organisms) and the other radical behaviorists. By the early 1960’s, this school thought was found to have numerous holes and problems. Yet, we have people who claim to know the “science” who haven’t actually read, or understood, the science.

It is time for the R+, purely positive”, advocates to face the actual science experiments that have already been done on this topic, and stop promoting a false solution to the public and dog training community. 

If you truly believe in science, you will change what you are saying and doing,

Plan accordingly.