06/08/2021
Yesterday I came across this terrible and terribly callous Op-Ed from the Wall Street Journal by Mark Naida. Not only does the author spread misinformation about dog training and behavior, but he gleefully encourages others to follow his lead.
The resulting harm from such bad advice can be profound. Below I unpack some of the author’s points. For those hitting a paywall, the full text of the article is in the comments.
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WSJ: “The sticky note on the door jamb did us in. ‘Your dog has been barking since 10:55 a.m. I can hear it through the walls.’ My wife and I had taken a short trip to the grocery store and left our Irish setter, Charley, alone in her cage. She barked wildly in our absence. Charley’s bad behavior has added a lot of stress to our lives. By the time the note appeared, we were sick of being pulled down the street during walks and barked at during video calls. Dogs are fun to have and dote on, but we weren’t enjoying ours much, especially because we felt we couldn’t leave her alone.
So we went nuclear. We bought a prong collar and an e-collar, considered forbidden tools by most dog trainers and pet lovers.”
🔹 This is a telling passage void of any compassion or acknowledgement that his dog is a sentient being who may be experiencing real anxiety and stress when separated. Dogs are “fun to have” until you realize they have needs and feelings. A real inconvenience it seems.
WSJ: “People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ description of the prong collar captures the popular sentiment: ‘Prong collars are designed to punish dogs for pulling by inflicting pain and discomfort. They can cause serious physical and emotional damage to dogs and should never be used.’ In practice, the prongs tighten around the dog’s neck when they pull at the leash, giving the animal a clear incentive to walk by your side. If it really hurt, my dog, who is a bit of a sissy despite being an athletic 45 pounds, would yelp. She hasn’t yet.”
🔹 This argument that an aversive tool, such as a prong collar, doesn’t hurt is as common as it is misguided. And here’s why:
🔹 First, we don’t get to decide how something feels to someone else, especially an animal who can’t communicate their pain scale. Yelping is one indicator of potential pain, but its absence doesn’t indicate lack of pain. Dogs with severe injuries and health issues may never vocalize.
🔹 Second, what the author describes here is a negative reinforcement contingency. The “incentive” is the relief from an aversive stimulus—pressure from the collar—that when removed makes the walking by his side behavior stronger. In other words, the stimulus has to be aversive enough for the dog to work to avoid it. If the stimulus was benign, it wouldn’t change behavior.
🔹 Third, physical pain is not the only criteria for harm. Anyone who has experienced coercion understands this well. Threat of pain or threat of an aversive will cause escape avoidance behaviors. Behaving to avoid an aversive is not a pleasant way to live and comes with documented fallout.
🔹 Finally, it is the learner and only the learner who decides what’s rewarding or aversive. The change in future behavior determines whether something functions as a reinforcer or punisher. What we think about how something feels is irrelevant.
WSJ: “We haven’t used the shock feature yet. We set it to beep once and vibrate gently when Charley barks, and that seems to have done the trick. The vibration grabs her attention and provides an emotional reset. But if she starts to ignore that correction, we can always try the low-level shock.”
🔹 “Grabs her attention” and “emotional reset” are meaningless euphemisms that tell us nothing about the mechanism by which behavior is actually changed. Behavior is changed through *consequences*. Whether a beep or a “gentle” vibration, if it changes behavior, it’s aversive.
🔹 The last sentence in that paragraph speaks to one of the well-documented byproducts of using punishment to change behavior: the need to increase the intensity of the aversive stimulus over time.
WSJ: “For most dog trainers these days, the only acceptable way to train a dog is through positive reinforcement: Reward the dog for good behavior through treats, and teach good behaviors like sitting that replace bad ones like jumping on guests. Proponents think a spritz of water on the muzzle is cruel and ineffective, a smack with a rolled-up newspaper downright abusive. In theory, it sounds nice and humane. In practice, it’s a slow method. Estimates for having a well-behaved dog using this method run about 18 months.”
🔹 What Mr. Naida lacks in evidence he sure makes up for in smugness. Where does this 18-month figure come from and who defines a “well-behaved” dog? A dog who is vocalizing when left alone is not poorly behaved, they’re suffering.
🔹 If treating separation anxiety with humane, evidence-based methods takes time it’s because treating any disorder of this magnitude takes time. Teaching other skills, including what to do while walking on a leash, without compulsion is not a “slow method”.
🔹 You know what’s slow? Taking an aversive collar off a dog and finding out that in the absence of a threat of an aversive the dog has no skills and having to start from scratch. THAT’S slow.
WSJ: “Halfway there, I realized I didn’t have the patience. And despite the guilt I felt at resorting to ‘torture,’ the reduction in stress from having a quiet, easy-to-walk dog has been worth it.”
🔹 Here we see that Mr. Naida values and appreciates the benefits of stress reduction, a luxury he won’t afford to his dog.
WSJ: “Treating dogs 'humanely' is a goal that doesn’t fit their social behavior. Take any puppy to a dog park and it will run around, barking at other dogs to play. Older dogs will get fed up and lunge, nip or bark at the puppy to get it to calm down. Yet humans should avoid using force whenever possible?”
🔹 And we couldn’t do without the good old “dogs do it to each other so we should do it to them” argument. Except, no, dogs don’t do it to each other. Dogs don’t habitually use force with each other and adult dogs don’t habitually use force with puppies.
🔹 This shows a profound lack of understanding of how dogs operate as a species, their natural behaviors (spoiler alert: barking is normal communication) and intraspecies communication.
🔹 And even if they did use force with each other, as animals with bigger brains and opposable thumbs, we should be embarrassed to use this as a justification for compulsion. Maybe the author wants to mimic other dog behaviors, such as sniffing buttholes as a greeting, while he’s at it?
WSJ: “Dog owners who, like me, have found themselves at their wit’s end should feel free to show their pets a little tough love.”
🔹 Feeling frustrated with, embarrassed by, or upset about behavior of others is normal and understandable. We’ve all been there. Using this as an excuse to compel behavior no matter the impact it has on the other individual is not. We can and should do better.
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Exhausted, I gave in and tried a prong collar. I’m glad I did.
