A theme that comes up a lot when clients start learning about how to better communicate with their dogs is: “I don’t want to punish my dog for doing something wrong”. My answer to that is “don’t punish your dog. Instead teach them pathways to behaviors that you do agree with.” In the human world, words matter. Fully grasping that punishment is understood as ‘inflicting a penalty as retribution for an offense’ will make anyone with knowledge of dog psychology know that punishing a dog doesn’t work because dogs rarely correlate that retribution to the said act of transgression. Dogs operate in an action – reaction model. If you punish your dog for peeing in the house, the dog will most likely not correlate peeing in the entire house as a transgression. It will simply not pee in the spot where one punished it. However if we humans change our intention; our goal; our modus operandi from punishing a dog after the fact to teaching them better behaviors, say, where we want them to pee, then both the dog and us will be successful in learning something new. The dog will understand where it is ok to relieve herself and the human will learn that, with our furry friends, being proactive rather than reactive has multiple benefits in strengthening our bonds and in curbing behaviors that we disagree with.
Both humans and dogs are social mammals that learn from their peers. However only one punishes its own. Dogs do teach and learn from each other. However since punishment inherently means one consciously inflicting a sanction as retribution for an act, it is safe to say that dogs do not punish each other, since a dog’s mind does not work in payback model. In dog psychology when one member does something unwanted they will get corrected. Either by pressure (physical or spacial) or by the pack making it more uncomfortable for the dog to continue doing the unwanted behavior than by doing what the pack prefers. There is no punishment involved, since dogs do not work with retribution, just action – reaction. Mutual learning and teaching. A partnership in creating better and more social behaviors. Sure that takes time, but doesn’t every relationship take time in order to become more cohesive? Don’t we, humans, take time to learn better behaviors. Psychologists will tell you that intimidation or punishment rarely works in the teaching of better behaviors in humans, so why do we think it will work on dogs?
Changing the intention when training from punishing a mistake to creating habits that guide to better behaviors is a liberating feeling. It even potentially removes the conflict between behaviorists and force free trainers. If your priority is to teach, then punishing a dog feels almost medieval. However, believing that one will achieve any of level of success in shaping behavior without having to set up rules and boundaries is somewhat naive. Returning to how we humans teach our own – with consistency, patience and time. Loads and loads of time. The easiest way to abandon the word punishing from training is to compare how long it took us to learn new behaviors to how long it takes a dog. You can potty train a dog in less then two weeks. How long did it take us to learn that? Compassion is the name of the game and understanding that the rules and boundaries set by us with our dogs only serve to strengthen our bonds. Two species working together to create a better pack.
We can disagree with a behavior without being disagreeable about it. Just one more lesson that dogs have taught me. Punishment is never the answer, since one is being reactive instead of proactive. However if one wishes to learn how to teach a dog, to be open to seeing how incredible they are at teaching each other without making one another wrong, then by all means learn about Dog Psychology. Since then we can fully see how great they are at shaping each other’s behaviors. Correcting unwanted behaviors takes longer than shaping wanted ones. Nevertheless we can correct unwanted behaviors with grace, knowing that our dogs are not doing those on purpose. Acknowledging that they need more direction than what we have given so far. Punishment will not make up for that.
