Vorher-Nachher-Bilder*
Today I walked with Bunny through the Squirrel Park. It’s just a couple of hundred metres of woodland, along a little burn, with a few paths meandering through the trees. The snowdrops are still out, the birds are getting active. And a bunch of grey squirrels, still easy to spot while the ground is barren and the trees are bald. The moment we enter the woods my dog is alert, erect ears, stiff posture, a hunter in the forest, rushing forward, all senses focused on the trees. The moment he spots the squirrel on the ground he goes, and runs hard into the five metre long leash. Way too hard for my liking, and I take him out of the woods and regroup at the side of the park.
Five minutes later I walk with him the same stretch of path again, and this time he stays at me side, still curious about the environment, but not pulling and not jumping. The squirrels are still around, birds are as well, the trees are teeming with movement. Plus, there are now two other dogs running through the trees. The environment is the same, or even more complicated, but my dog is calm.
What happened between those two sequences? Not much. I spent around ten minutes walking erratically around the edges of the park, going in circles, back and forth, without saying much. Just asking my dog to follow along. Initially he pushes forward, but then I suddenly turn, he walks to the end of the leash, then turns and goes along with me. Until he eventually pays more attention to me than to the environment, which will be rewarded with more freedom and the occasional treat. It’s a very simple game, introducing randomness into the walk, nothing else. Gradually we work our way closer to the middle of the park.
For the record, some people would call this ‘aversive’ training or ‘punishment’, and I’m okay with that. It is probably confusing to him, but very far from being painful. And the simple fact is that he wants to explore the park, and he knows that he can only do this by walking with me. That’s the whole point. This obviously only works when he has a chance to relax and think, and that’s why we start from the outside, not when he is in hunting mode.
If I would have made a video of the first and second walk through Squirrel Park, I could have put it on youtube and claimed that my training has made a radical difference to this dog, that his entire behaviour is now changed, that his life is now in order, and that he has overcome his obsessive need to hunt squirrels. This is a lie of course. Tomorrow, when we walk through Squirrel Park again, he will again be inclined to chase them. And if not tomorrow, then the next week. I haven’t changed my dog. He has learned that in this moment jumping and pulling is not getting him anywhere. But there can be no illusions, the allure of the hunt is so strong that it will not go away magically, in five minutes. (Now, mind you, doing the same exercise every day, over months, in different environments, that’s a different ballgame.)
If you obsessively watch dog training videos, like me, you see a lot of this Before-After stuff. Dog before: a monster. Dog after: a calm soft puppy. More often than not you don’t get to see what’s in between. More often than not it’s not just a few sudden turns. More often than not the in-between-stuff is not just creating confusion for the dog, but also pain and fear. But the result is impressive, within five minutes the dog has changed. Hey-ho.
It’s a very seductive con game. It made me think, for years, that I’m doing something wrong. That maybe, ultimately, the solution is in switching to harsh methods, because, see, the problem disappears, just like that. And isn’t a bit of pain a reasonable price to pay for this? It helps the dog, after all! Before-After videos are a salespitch for the struggling dog owner. Maybe five minutes of punishment are actually good for the dog, if he has a much better life afterwards? If his problems go away?
But obviously dogs don’t change magically within five minutes. As far as I know, Bunny had never encountered a squirrel before his third year. Years of rehearsed behaviour do not just go away in five minutes, or more precisely, the underlying reasons for this behaviour don’t go away. You can suppress them for a while, but the thing is still there. And guess what, if you suppress it with pain and fear and discomfort, this is what you will have to do for the forseeable future, whenever you get in this situation. It will be pain and more pain, from now on, if you decide to go down that path. If you fall for the Before-After trick. And if it’s not pain, it’s the threat of pain. This other imaginary dog, the one that is following nicely on the lead exists only because of the threat and the fear and the prong collar. Do you really prefer to have that fearful, threatened dog?
And having realised that this is a long-term process, that there is no magic switch, it seems far easier to decide that we go the gentle route, the path that changes behaviour through rewards and trust and teamwork. It is still going to take long, but through the process you are building a relationship, rather than destroying it.
Once you start looking into it, punishment is a complicated process, and it is rather difficult to really change people, or dogs, this way. On the other hand, rewards are everywhere. Walking through the woods is a reward. Getting to sniff squirrel trees is a reward. Watching dogs is a reward. Everything the dog wants is a reward, and the world is full with things he wants. If I train with rewards, I can give him access to all the good things in life. The environment itself becomes the reinforcement and I am just the facilitator. I really like that.
*”Vorher-Nachher-Bilder” (translated before-after pictures) is a song by Jens Friebe.
