Anthropomorphizing Dogs and Dog-Human Relationships

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Anthropomorphizing Dogs and Dog-Human Relationships
Carrie

06-23-2006

Anthropomorphizing Dogs and Dog-Human Relationships

It is quite disturbing to me to think of all the abuse, mistreatment and confusing information which is doled out to many dogs for the reason that we, a “superior” and such intelligent species presume that another species must reflect our way of thinking. Dogs do not have the same complexity in their cognitive processing as we do. They have abilities which are much more complex than ours, such as their highly developed olfactory sense, their hearing along with other survival instincts; discernment of minute changes in their environment and subtle ways of communication. They do learn to make associations between cues and responses but do not understand language the way we do. Dogs are full of emotions, but because of their perception being different from ours, their emotions are not exactly the same. They do what they need to do to survive. All canines are opportunistic scavengers and hard wired to do what works to sustain them and their species. They do not possess the ability to process “right and wrong” in the moral sense that we do. They do not share our value system or have the same experiences or method of processing information that we do. It is a fallacy that dogs do things to please their owner. They are amoral. They do not have the ability or innate need to please someone else other than how it affects them. If pleasing their owner pleases them, then they’ll please their owner. But as far as caring about what their owner’s internal emotional state of mind is, unless it relates to them, they don’t. They’re selfish. They have to be. No species would survive, evolve and pass on their genes if this were not true. It's neither moral or amoral. It’s just how they are .

A common scenario with a lot of dog owners and traditional trainers is that they get a few or even several correct responses and they think their dog "knows" and is trained. Then their dog gives an incorrect response. “He knows. He’s just being stubborn or dominant,” hence, the collar correction or scolding. Imagine that you are taking piano lessons and you hit some incorrect notes after having gotten them right before. Is it going to make you hit those correct keys if you receive pain or get startled by your teacher? Of course not. You need more practice. When a dog gets some of his responses to your cue correct, but misses some, he needs more training. He is not being stubborn or dominant or needing an attitude adjustment.

Dogs learn by operant and classical conditioning as we do, receiving reinforcements for responses. Unlike us, dogs do not learn well by imitation or observation. Dogs do not intricately process future and past. If a dog is punished after the fact, that is abuse. Punishment for any reason is not needed to train a dog and can have some serious side effects. Dogs do not generalize well. If your dog sits at home when given a cue, but fails to sit in a crowded, hectic place, he is not being disobedient. He’s under trained in crowded, hectic places. The competing motivator is stronger in these distractions than the motivator supplied by the owner. If a dog is to be reliable to cues or skills he is taught, he must have received lots of reinforcement.

People tend to obsess over “pack theory” to explain why their dog doesn’t have reliable responses to cues. In fact, they use it to explain all kinds of behavior in a dog. “You must be the alpha in your pack.” Or "You need to show them who's boss." It gets thrown around an awful lot when owners don't want to find effective methods of training or they're just lazy and don't want to practice. They get emotional and cut to the chase, “dominance and stubbornness, no leadership.” That, to them justifies the use of aversive treatment. Again, the competing motivator, whatever is going on around him is stronger than what the trainer has in store for him.

Here’s some more nonsense: “Don’t let your dog go through doorways before you or he’s trying to exert dominance over you.” It's much more basic than that. The dog’s reason for wanting to go outside is that he’s a dog and there’s lots of fun stuff out there and he’s excited to go play? The lowliest dog in a hierarchy, on par with simple protoplasm can still disobey, jump up, rush through a doorway before its owner and not sit when told. Why is everyone so bent on finding answers which relate to all kinds of irrelevant sources, like pack theory or stubbornness?

Here's something else I hear a lot: “I want my dog to work for me, not for food.” So, praise is assumed to be an adequate motivator. Sure, being social and domestic creatures, dogs like interaction with their owners. But don’t they get any of that anyhow for free? I know mine do. So, in the absence of any interaction, praise is better than nothing. Praise also indicates to the traditionally, correction trained dog that an aversive is not likely to occur. That’s a relief. Praise and punishment at the same time rarely happens. So, praise is a marker or predictor of the unlikelihood of imminent punishment. It can also be a predictor or conditioned reinforcer of better things to come, food, if food rewards as a primary reinforcer are paired with praise. In that case, as a Pavlovian response, praise has some real meaning. Remember, dogs aren’t concerned with your state of mind other than how it affects them. Food generally has high value to a hunter-scavenger predator. Deprivation (Slightly hungry) will increase the value of the food reward. Some dogs love a special toy reserved for training and some playtime or a game of tug as an outlet for their prey drive. To increase the odds that a behavior will be repeated in the future, a reward that has high value to the dog needs to be given.

Instead of giving your dog his meal in a bowl in it’s entirety, save some or all to be used as reward for easier skills or behaviors and reserve tastier treats for training more difficult skills where the dog is getting a strong environmental motivator which is competing with you. Vary the motivator when you train or want to reinforce a behavior to help keep the dog interested, guessing and having fun. There is often the objection, “My dog will only work for treats if I use them for reward.” When you learn more about the science of opernant conditioning training, there are ways to prevent that. In short, using a variable reward schedule when appropriate will eliminate that concern. The particulars of this training method are beyond the scope of this article. Free feeding, making food available at all times is a waste of a valuable training tool. Dogs are designed and love to work for their food. Let that natural trait work for you and your dog.

Give your dog a reason to engage in behaviors you like. Give up the notion that you need to have domination, coercion or intimidation over your dog in order to have a good relationship and a well trained dog. A stronger bond comes from a dog working with his owner for something he likes, clear signals and an owner who understands how dogs learn. Operant and classical conditioning works on all dogs because its how canine minds, in fact all mammalian minds operate. There is a condition and there is a consequence.

Using pack theory and dominance to explain away ineffective training is incongruous because many of the behaviors which proponents of this philosophy of interacting with dogs will have you do are nothing more than operant conditioning. “Ignore the dog when he is too rowdy so that you are like the alpha wolf.” That’s simply not giving a reinforcer, your attention for an undesirable behavior. “Eat a cracker first before you feed your dog so you look more like an alpha since alphas eat first.” Is that not teaching a dog some manners by the simple act of reinforcing his waiting calmly by subsequently giving him his highly valued dinner? Your eating of something does not enhance the learning of this behavior. Incidentally, alpha wolves don't always eat first. Oh, and incidentally, dogs aren't even wolves. And last but not least, we're not wolves or dogs. And dogs know this. They discern their own species from humans during the imprinting period in their very early socialization.

We cannot fool our canine friends. Why make our relationship with them more complicated than need be? They’re not as sophisticated intellectually as we are, but they’re no dummies.

Dog owners and trainers would do well to put away for good these outdated traditional methods which show no understanding or compassion for dogs because they’re attributing human experience and human cognitive processing to dogs, or anthropomorphizing them. It’s time we get on the same page with our dogs.

Written and submitted by C.B.K. (Carrie)

Permission to reproduce provided credit is given to author.

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