Patricia McConnell Re-Homes One of Her Dogs

Lee Charles Kelley

I'm running a little late so I haven't read your entire posts on this, but I just wanted to point out that Jaak Panksepp has done some interesting work showing that young animals learn more impulse control by engaging in rough-and-tumble outdoor play (a bottom-up process) than they do through structured learning (top down). And that structured learning can impede or interfere with the brain's natural developmental processes, while free play has the opposite effect.

 

Maybe that's why Erik's self control training held? I mostly used tug games to teach it. 

Hi, Pwca,

Unfortunately, unless your neighbor has given you the responsibility for changing the dog's behavior, there's not much you can do.

And since dogs are capable of seeing very large objects or beings, like people and cars, as prey, size doesn't matter.

LCK

spiritdogs

Anyway, that's how I see it.  In this case, pretty close to how I see it, too.

 

Well, what can I say? You're right. I seem to have accidentally made a pretty good argument that behavioral science wasn't necessarily "to blame" in this case, but perhaps certain misguided "applications" of it could have been. (Though without access to all the data, who can say for sure?)

However, I still think the heart of the problem -- at least as it plays out on a general basis in the minds of +R trainers across the country -- boils down to the difference in thinking of "rewards" for good behavior as external objects, events, or markers, rather than seeing that the reduction of a dog's internal tension and stress is what really makes a dog tend to gravitate more toward certain behaviors instead of those that don't successfully do that.

LCK

PS: I'm glad you liked the "Pack Leader or Predator" article. 

PPS: I called McConnell, as you suggested, and left a message. I also emailed her. But I haven't heard back yet.

PPPS: I went back to my original post and changed the header to "Patricia McConnell Re-Homes One of Her Dogs."

Well, I have read all 5 pages of this newly renamed thread where, once again, LCK blusters with attacks on a professional with higher credentials than himself, asserting the supremacy of his professed philosophy of Natural Dog Training founded by Kevin Behan.

Recently, I read Patricia McConnell's _ For the Love of a Dog _ and enjoyed its many anecdotes of her training work interspersed with the latest in cognitive science.  I read her more training-specific books a few years back with similar enjoyment. 

Dr. McConnell understands dog cognition at a level few trainers can duplicate.

I also recently read Caesar Milan's _ Be the Pack Leader _ and watched lots of his shows on DVD.  We also saw some of his shows years ago.  His dominance is not oppressive.

I was amazed at how Milan’s description of canine energy, group consciousness (a pack), getting bad memories/behavior out the same way it went in, living in the moment, pure emotionality, be the focus of the dog’s attention, etc. all sounds the same as what Behan describes as the essence of NDT.

Why do you protest Milan, LCK?  What is different in your theories of animal cognition. 

For those interested in the philosophical underpinnings of LCK’s dog training philosophy, I encourage you to read this post by Kevin Behan on his NDT site:

http://naturaldogtraining.com/articles/why-dogs-arent-stumped-by-cars/

You may ignore its title,  "Why Dogs Aren’t Stumped By Cars" - it is essentially a  "Summary of the Theory of Natural Dog Training"

What exactly does it have in common with modern cognitive science, physiology, or …

LCK, you are way out of line attacking professionals like the above, as well as Beckoff, Coren, Hauser, etc.  You got squat in your defense.

 

Gee, this thread was just charging right along with Lee demonstrating how Natural Dog Training is vastly superior to Trish and Caesar’s handling methods and behavior philosophies…

Lee, I guess I’m kinda’ wonderin’ what happened – you’re not answering questions about Natural Dog Training.  Correct me if I am mistaken, but it’s only the dogs that NDT says are unconscious and incapable of thought, right, not the NDT trainers too?  

Surely both dog and trainer are not mental equals under the ‘NDT natural networked quantum consciousness’.  I mean, you ‘seemed’ to be consciously thinking before now.

Hey Burl, I read the article "Why dogs are not stumped by cars." And I found it to be a fanciful construct of circular logic based on nothing but analogy and metaphor. Not proven, but not unproven, either, simply because their is no logistical or experimental verification or link to anything one can clinically show. It's like believing the sun is blue simply because someone said it is, regardless of any evidence, experimental or anecdotal to the contrary.

And it reminds me of both Einstein's theories of relativity and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in Quantum Mechanics. Theories that explained one or two things, kind of, but not very well, and left plenty else unanswered.

As I said before, while the tension and release might be applicable from a certain perspective, it is still a reward, if only to state that the release of tension is a "reward."

And whether or not Patricia handled things well at all times or not, I don't think that any of this serves as a final indictment against +R training nor does it automatically prove that LCK's NDT is any more accurate or a necessarily better way of viewing dog behavior.

That being said, there is plenty of instinctual behavior that we cannot erase, only sublimate. It as been one of my pet theories that we do not eradicate resource guarding behavior, we sublimate it through training. The dog does what we want because thats how he gains accesses to resources. The dog is the ultimate capitalist and we strive to be the golden goose.

 Resource guarding is a survival instinct and without it, a canid in the wild would not survive. Therefore, we shall not be rid of it in our dogs. But, we can use it to our mutual advantage.

And trust, and you, too, LCK, mine is not always a popular theory, either. Especially the part about dogs being capitalist. That hurts a lot of feelings.

 

 As I said before, while the tension and release might be applicable from a certain perspective, it is still a reward, if only to state that the release of tension is a "reward."

 

I guess in many ways that this is sort of R-. if you must.. Nothing despairs me more that hearing trainers have a good old slag at behavourism. I am not a behavourist much at all, but it is like damming Newton. (The bloke who did a fair bit of it before Einstein). 

 

With the tools available at the time, The concept of systemetising  reward and punishment seemed fair enough. At a high level of abstraction , it makes sense and is backed up with reasonable data. If you asked me, i am not going to shift from it for teaching Joe Average. There are just far to many caveats to teach many of the tools that i use such as Play /Prey drive, the activation of seeking behaviour, social rewards etc.

I commend Trish McConnel for making a wise decision. i have enjoyed her works over the years. I think that the saddest stuff i have seen over the years is good dogs and good people who hang on to each other even though they are really badly mismatched. It is a human conceit often to choose dogs that bolster our own self image , such as young boys wanting race cars. I commend people that let go off dogs that they can not manage. One of the members of my family is like that. A bostourous energetic OTT male poodle is no darling for an elderly couple, but fits right in with us. We think he is wonderful. Our older dog does too. He gets to do a lot of doggy things. He strokes my ego by doing well at tracking and obedience. We all win.

 

 

 

 

When we first brought dogs home 11 years ago, we read some books, including Trish and Kevin (Caesar’s vids came later).  I was captivated by these furry subjects and really wanted to understand what their experience is like.  Ron2, like your hunch of their capitalist ways, I also wondered if we were just being used and seen merely as providers of shelter and food, not the object of their ‘love’, and like we were easily replaceable.  This still haunts me, especially as I read more and more books on their behavior.

I choose to believe (like philosophers David Hume and A. N. Whitehead said, that dogs share similarly structured nervous systems and brains) that analogous to us, dogs experience Darwin’s 6 basic emotions, as well as altruism, compassion, and reasoning.  It is what they don’t share - the rationalistic capacity for duplicity and the anxiety born of awareness of our mortality – that helps attract us to them.  

My interest in philosophy and animal cognition recently led me back to Behan’s website. I had liked Kevin’s take on dog energy and got involved with trying to help Kevin clarify what ron2 quite accurately described as

“…fanciful construct of circular logic based on nothing but analogy and metaphor. Not proven, but not unproven, either, simply because their is no logistical or experimental verification or link to anything one can clinically show. It's like believing the sun is blue simply because someone said it is, regardless of any evidence, experimental or anecdotal to the contrary.”

After seeing all the contradictory metaphors and explanatory scenarios, and spending quite some time urging Kevin to express himself in the accepted normal terminology of physiology and cognitive science, it became apparent that indeed, he and a few followers (most notably LCK) actually do “believ the sun is blue simply because [he] said it is.”  

With a coincidental issue we had with Peanut and my coming to this forum, we learned about NILIF and were further led to read Trish and CM’s 2007 books and watch CM’s vids. What really hit me was just how little difference there is between Caesar’s take on dog energy and behavior and Kevin’s.  I could not see the difference between the two, to the extreme extent that the title for Kevin’s new book comes straight from the pages of Caesar’s _ Be the Pack Leader _ book.

Further, I totally agree with ron2 that

“while the tension and release might be applicable from a certain perspective, it is still a reward, if only to state that the release of tension is a "reward."

And whether or not Patricia handled things well at all times or not, I don't think that any of this serves as a final indictment against +R training nor does it automatically prove that LCK's NDT is any more accurate or a necessarily better way of viewing dog behavior.”

poodleOwned

As I said before, while the tension and release might be applicable from a certain perspective, it is still a reward, if only to state that the release of tension is a "reward." I guess in many ways that this is sort of R-. if you must.. Nothing despairs me more that hearing trainers have a good old slag at behavourism. I am not a behavourist much at all, but it is like damming Newton. (The bloke who did a fair bit of it before Einstein). 

With the tools available at the time, The concept of systemetising  reward and punishment seemed fair enough. At a high level of abstraction , it makes sense and is backed up with reasonable data.

 

Hi PoodleOwned,

Thanks for your comments.

You're right that the neo-Freudian model I use -- i.e., of releasing internal tension -- would (or could) be categorized as -R -- the removal of an unpleasant stimulus. However, new research done by neuroscientists -- where they actually measure what's going on in the brains of their test subjects on a neuronal level -- suggests (and quite strongly) that animals don't learn through "the law of consequences," or through cause-and-effect (which are the foundations of behavioral science), but through paying attention to shifting patterns in their environments.

I explain a bit more about this in my most recent article for PsychologyToday.com: "Toward a Unified Dog Theory."

Here's a snippet or two from the article:

For instance, in his paper "Dopamine and Reward: Comment on Hernandez et al. (2006)," Neuroscientist Randy Gallistel of Rutgers writes, "In the monkey, dopamine neurons do not fire in response to an expected reward, only in response to an unexpected or uncertain one, and, most distressingly of all, to the omission of an expected one." [emphasis mine.]

So missing out on a reward is pleasurable? How could that be?

In another article, "Deconstructing the Law of Effect," Gallistel poses the problem of learning from an information theory perspective, contrasting Edward Thorndike's model, which operates as a feedback system, and a feedforward model based on Claude Shannon's information theory.

It's well-known that shaping animal behavior via operant or classical conditioning  requires a certain amount of time and repetition. But in the feedforward model learning can take place instantly, in real time.

Why the difference? And is it important?

I think so. Which is more adaptive, being able to learn a new behavior on the fly, in the heat of the moment, or waiting for more and more repetitions of the exact same experience to set a new behavior in place?

In Thorndike's model, the main focus is on targeting which events in a stream seem to create changes in behavior. But according to information theory, the intervals between events, when nothing is happening, also carry information, sometimes even more than is carried during the US (unconditioned stimulus). This would explain why the monkey's brains were producing dopamine when the animals detected a big change in the pattern of reward, i.e., no reward at all!

We're now discovering that the real purpose of dopamine is to help motivate us to gather new information about the outside world quickly and efficiently. In fact dopamine is released during negative experiences as well as positive ones. (The puppy who gets his nose scratched by the cat doesn't need further lessons to reinforce the "no-chasing-the-cat" rule; he learns that instantaneously, with a single swipe of the cat's paw.)

This adds further importance to the idea that learning is not as much about pairing behaviors with their consequences as it is about paying close attention to salient changes in our environment: the bigger the changes, the more dopamine is released, and, therefore, the deeper the learning.

Randy Gallistel again: "...behavior is not the result of a learning process that selects behaviors on the basis of their consequences ... both the appearance of ‘conditioned' responses and their relative strengths may depend simply on perceived patterns of reward without regard to the behavior that produced those rewards." ("The Rat Approximates an Ideal Detector of Changes in Rates of Reward: Implications for the Law of Effect," Journal of Experimental Psychology: 2001, 27, 354-372.)

Cheers!

LCK

 

 

I'm beginning to see some of your reasoning, LCK. And, touche'. Even though the decades of research viewing things as punishment and reward show what appears to be a clear link, one can simply say, "is that really so?" However, that question does not serve as a instance of falsifying the behaviorist approach using that terminology. Sabe? I draw a parallel to that with the "difference" between Newton and Einstein. Einstein hasn't explained motion or gravity any differently than Newton. Newton's method is still practical at most velocities we deal with and in fact is necessary in accident scene investigation. That is, contrary to Einstein's supposition that velocities are non-additive, they are, indeed, additive. So much so, in fact, that the new radars police have can determine your vehicle's speed even if the police car is also moving, because of using algorithms involving additive (by implication, also subtractive). Additive velocities are necessary in fixed aperture radar mapping (how we can determine subterranean structure, as well as the ocean floor topology.) In fact, Einstein proved himself wrong in the non-additive statement when he dealt with sub-atomic physics collisions. The results had to be graphed and could only be done so and reflect the results by using standard analytical geometry, which uses orthogonal axes, which reflects the additive nature of vectors in creating a sum total. And I have digressed somewhat in order to point out that Einstein wasn't more accurate and some of his tangents ran up against the harsh wall of reality. Math was his weak point. His grades were poor at university. The only degree he had was an honorary one from Princeton University, where he is still deified. Even if Einstein used topology to track particle physics, velocities would still be additive because topology follows the same rules as any other descriptive geometry.

 So, swapping tension and release for reward doesn't make it so. And could the paper you qouted be making too much hay out of dopamine levels? I'm sure high dope levels are present during pain and stress, too, as a survival mechanism, in order to limit the shock value of the stress. In fact, some people report being numb in the face of a great stressor. But I don't dispute, at present, that some learning takes place during dopamine overdose.

But I don't think the dopamine is the key to the learning, per se. Changes in environment can be brought about by the subject, such as the rat that learns to press a lever to get a treat. He changed his environment. His action brought him food, a reward that leads to survival. I'm not sure there is any animal that seeks pain or does not seek reward and I realize you could say that I am stuck with this terminology. Then again, the most obvious explanation is usually the closest to reality. When you hear hoofbeats, you expect horses, not zebras. 9 times out of 10, it was horses.

Nor am I trying to defend reward and punishment terminology. But I would not abandon it simply because a new word comes a long. Also, I'm not so sure that your theory offers a new paradigm. I still see to many parallels to reward/punishment, in which case, we may be simply bandying about with semantics.

Lee Charles Kelley

Randy Gallistel again: "...behavior is not the result of a learning process that selects behaviors on the basis of their consequences ... both the appearance of ‘conditioned' responses and their relative strengths may depend simply on perceived patterns of reward without regard to the behavior that produced those rewards." ("The Rat Approximates an Ideal Detector of Changes in Rates of Reward: Implications for the Law of Effect," Journal of Experimental Psychology: 2001, 27, 354-372.)

Cheers!

LCK

If animals are without thought and communication, what is the need of learning? While it may be that dopamine is present during learning, it does not invalidate the reward aspect. Whether the dopamine effects are rewarding or not. In fact, dopamine may be a chemical present during learning, whether in response to a punishment or a reward but it's presence does not invalidate the reward/punishment description. Again, I think a whole vest was made from one button.

Nor does this theory adequately explain the complicated behaviors that working dogs exhibit. Specifically, K-9, SAR, cadaver dogs, dogs that have a wide vocabulary of objects they can retrieve. And another fly in the ointment of "dogs have not ToM" in NDT is the Dobie, (I don't have the video link, at present) that had a plethora of stuffed toys and would arrange them in geometric patterns, as well as placing them in positions meaningful to humans, such as one stuffed doll hugging another.

"If animals are without thought and communication, what is the need of learning?"

How could you train a mindless dog?  Mindless dogs is scientifically preposterous, to say the very least. Animals evolved to better adapt to their changing environment by perceptually taking it in and learning how best to make use of this sense-derived info.  If you deny this fact of any animal, say any mammal, you must do it for all mammals.  I only grant unconscious mindlessness to those who so claim it for themselves. 

 

 

I think dogs have minds. I also think their instinctual search for resources and their autonomic guarding of those resources is what made them trainable. And even if training is without a specific food treat, such as in K-9 training where the dog is "rewarded" with tug on a rolled up towel, it is still rewarding to the dog, even if it's a release of tension involving play drive, though I'm not sure the tension is reduced. Many a dog seems to "ramp up" the longer and harder you play tug. My brother-in-law has a Blue Merle Aussie that lives to herd and cut. Even a small beach ball. She will herd it and cut it from the herd of obstacles in the yard and then hold it in one spot until you come over and do whatever ranchers do to beach balls. She will do this over and over again, past the point of exhaustion. We had to caution our nephew to let her rest.

Or, as Anne has said, dogs do what works.

And the exhibition of autonomic or unthinking environmental responses is not proof that dogs don't think, though I am not suggesting that a dog is composing the Magna Carta, either. Though I wonder what my dog is trying to say with his vocalisations when he sees the dark-haired woman on the Progressive Insurance ads. It's not guarding or herding behavior.

Hi LCK

 

This is a little late too :) I respect what Panksepp has to say, and find his viewpoint rational and well supported , and also honest and sceintifically sound. I guess that you could say that i like what he has to say :)) In fact i would have to claim him as a strong influence on my training methods.

 In his chapter in Affective Neuroscience on RAT play  he is very careful  about where research might head and certainly i can't find where he may have said what you have stated him to have said. Have i missed something or has he published something else of late?

 I always note that he makes his comments across all mammal species including humans.

 

 

 Temple Grandin and how one can think w/o language

 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5165123