Category: Puppy Stuff, Training People to Train Their Dogs ¤
  Author: Victoria Farrington ¤
   Title: A Very Good Demo of Why NOT to Punish ¤

	I don't (obviously) teach anyone how to train their dogs but I do
place foster dogs and I've found a really quick way to demonstrate to
people why they shouldn't punish their little terriers and terrier/mixes
is this:  I take a rolled up newspaper and slap it on the table.  WIthout
looking at my dogs.  This worked best when I had a funny critter nicknamed
Bloody Ankles.  He went beserk.  you could visibly see the adrenalin rush
that surged through his body.  His ears snapped to attention, he let out a
yelp and he came charging to get that offensive noise.  But Shiva will do
a similar version of this.  (Without harming my ankles.)  Then I rummage
around in my tupperware closet (please tell me other people have these.)
I open the door, tupperware rushes out to escape and I shout with
indignation.  My dogs roar over, again fully charged, ready for some kind
of action.
	Then I say, "Imagine that you're directing that to the DOG."
You've got a beast who's prepared for a fight and if you're going to do
something to that dog, anything can happen.
	I do think, as SHirley suggested, that a CP must cause a
physiological response.  Some dogs respond to pain or threat by what looks
like depression, or repression perhaps.  An actual shutting down.  Their
body droops or drops back, ears flatten, tail goes down, spine turns
concave.  Some dogs, however, deal with stress or threat by going full
throttle.  When Dash was a puppy, I used a rattle can to teach him the
boundaries of our unfenced field.  He did learn the boundaries but every
time the can was shaken, he tore around in circles, blowing off steam.
This was okay in this particular situation because he tore around the
field but it did occur to me at the time that if I were trying to punish
him for anything in a closer space, his spurt of activity might cause more
problems than it solved.  Or in this case, it could have backfired had he
he raced out of the yard with no thought but to burn off that surge of
adrenalin.  Often when I say "NO" in a stern voice (I try not to use
exclamation points unless I want the dog to return exclamation points), I
see the same burst of energy which can be very bad news if there's any
possibility the dog may turn that into aggressive action.  Once when I got
sharp with Shiva for tearing through my herb garden like a weed whacker,
she turned around and attacked my sister's dog.  She's even decided or
noticed that when Dash is being goofy about a not very important
boundary--between our property and that of an unoccupied summer home, I
get tense and so she rushes to grab Dash as soon as he returns to me.
(Fortunately, Dash likes nothing better than a bitch throwing a snitfit so
I think he actually returns faster because its fun to buzz by SHiva and
get her tearing after him.  He even seems to enjoy it that she's actually
MAD and so more is at stake than when she's playing.)
	And finally just because I'm too lazy to post numerous times and
am just lumping everything together I can possibly come up with on
punishment, what surprises me most about GW using a CP to get a fast down
is how easily this can be done with no CP or +P whatsoever.  Very fast
belly slams were actually what Dash and SHiva both learned a couple of
years ago at the first c/t seminar I attended, taught of course by Gary
WIlkes.  They learned this in a grassy spot beside a parking lot during a
break and SHiva was worried about the Great Danes cavorting beside us.
Nonetheless it took about 8 minutes.  I don't see the reason for using
even threat of a punishment if Ii can just as easily get the same response
without it.
	Victoria Farrington