02/22/2022
The wire mother experiment and it’s relation to dog training.
This was an experiment done by Harry Harlow and was a study done to test an animals desire for affection.
In this experiment young monkeys where taken from their birth mothers and placed in a room with two artificial mothers.
One was a wire mother that gave food while the other was a cloth mother that had no food to offer.
The study showed that the baby monkey spent most of its time with the cloth mother except at times where the baby was hungry and looking for food.
This study showed that animals will seek out and desire relationships over food and only seek out food when the need arises.
So why is it that so many dog trainers use food as their sole source of reinforcement?
I see it time and time again and find it very sad, trainers and owners using the dogs food as a sole means to change behavior in the animal.
They are wire mothers…
There’s nothing wrong with incorporating food in training, but never at the expense of the relationship.
If you want to see true behavior change in your dog you need to work on the relationship first.
Be the cloth mother for your dogs.
