{"id":612,"date":"2011-11-09T09:08:47","date_gmt":"2011-11-08T22:38:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/?p=612"},"modified":"2021-08-02T14:43:06","modified_gmt":"2021-08-02T04:13:06","slug":"mcgreevy-on-punishing-dogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/dog-behaviour\/mcgreevy-on-punishing-dogs\/","title":{"rendered":"McGreevy on Punishing Dogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is part of the McGreevy seminar series. Click here for the index<\/a>.<\/small><\/small><\/small><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Again, this article refers to operant conditioning principles.\u00a0 I suggest anyone without prior knowledge of operant conditioning to refer to Crystal at Reactive Champion\u2019s post on operant conditioning<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Punishment is anything that reduces the frequency of behaviour.\u00a0 Positive punishment is when something bad is added (e.g. rattling a can of stones if a dog barks), and negative punishment is when something good is removed (e.g. when your puppy mouths you and you exit the room).<\/p>\n

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RuthlessPhotos.com<\/p><\/div>\n

These are both called punishments as they reduce the frequency of behaviour.\u00a0 Negative reinforcement is related, as this involves removing something bad to act as a reward (e.g. a dog who doesn\u2019t like being confined could be rewarded for calm quite behaviour in that confine by being released from that confine).<\/p>\n

However, punishment in dog training is often only referring to an aversive introduced to suppress behaviour.<\/p>\n

McGreevy did not advocate the use of punishment when training dogs.\u00a0 He felt that punishment (or causing dogs to feel threatened, pained, uncomfortable, disappointed, or fearful) was simply \u2018not good\u2019 for dogs.\u00a0 Furthermore, punishments can sometimes have long-term consequences, as dogs are often sensitive.\u00a0 (He summarised it as, \u201cIt\u2019s hard to unteach fear.\u201d)\u00a0 Dogs can also associate some of their emotions from punishments with people, which can be undesirable.<\/p>\n

Punishment, however, is unavoidable.\u00a0 McGreevy explained that putting a dog on a collar almost always is negative punishment (taking the dog away from good things), but trainers can still seek to use as little punishment as possible.\u00a0 Punishment does not have to be abusive, it is just feedback to help a dog understand that some behaviour is unproductive.\u00a0 Mild punishment (like a no reward marker<\/a>) can be effective in reducing behaviours, but it is also risky as it can lower motivation.<\/p>\n

Punishment should be used as little as possible, or else the dog may develop learned helplessness<\/a>.\u00a0 He described punishment as being \u2018a step towards habituation<\/a>\u2019.\u00a0 Punishment, when used, often leads to the need for more punishment.\u00a0 Additionally, use of positive punishment for anxiety-related behaviours could escalate the animal\u2019s distress.<\/p>\n

McGreevy rejected the use of check chains, calling them frustrating, painful, and dangerous.\u00a0 He congratulated the dog community for largely rejecting their use.<\/p>\n

Overall, McGreevy did not have anything revolutionary to saying about punishments, but I hope this still provides some interesting thoughts regarding dog training.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Further reading: Ian Dunbar on Punishment<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This post is part of the McGreevy seminar series. Click here for the index<\/a>.<\/small><\/small><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

McGreevy did not advocate punishment in dog training, and explained why.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[253,12,164,11,232,219,252],"class_list":["post-612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dog-behaviour","tag-aversive","tag-dog","tag-dog-training","tag-dogs","tag-mcgreevy","tag-paul-mcgreevy","tag-punishment"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4892,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions\/4892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}