the role of punishment

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Dropping in to back up Gina, since her first warning went unheeded.  There is a link at the bottom of every page to the T&C and Rules & Conduct of this forum.  Please read them if you are in need of a reminder on the behaviour required here, but this constant deterioration of threads is going to cease, now.  No one is better than anybody else and demeaning another is an extremely poor way to prove a point.  I would especially like to point out that membership of this forum has always been and will always be subject to review if necessary, no one is exempt from that.  Please post bearing in mind that if your words are likely to contribute to a temporary or permanent suspension of your membership that you would do well to rephrase more politely or not post at all. 

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I didn't see Gina's post until after I posted my last post......they were just minutes apart.....

Dog_ma

I'm kind of struggling here, to understand why the emotional baggage around the word punishment is so strong despite the clear distinction between conventional everyday punishment and OC punishment. A mild aversive that produces less of a specific behavior - IS PUNISHMENT! I'm not creating the terms - dudes in white lab coats did. Punishment can be very mild. In my opinion, it should always be the mildest necessary.

Okay, I thought we were discussing punishment, applied directly by the owner, intended to stop a behaviour forever. I'm just going off the OP. I know that's not the only way to punish.

And I'll admit that I'm confused a little about these grey areas. Mild aversives that only reduce the likelihood of a behaviour when an animal doesn't really care about it. I feel like the level of motivation really needs to be taken into account. Some days an animal might be looking for an ear stroke and the next they might not want you within a 2 metre radius of them. It's hard for me to say whether an action that is rewarding one day and punishing the next depending purely on the animal's mood is either. I just kind of file those things under "signalling" or "communication". Sometimes I'm not sure if an action is decreasing the occurrence of a behaviour or increasing the occurrence of a simultaneous, incompatible behaviour. When an animal responds to an "ah" by moving away from an object, I find it hard to say sometimes whether it's because I've punished that behaviour with that sound or rewarded that response to that noise. And I kind of think that a punishment doesn't count for much within any definition if the animal didn't particularly want to do that anyway and is quite happy to do something else.

Anyway, I think it's these grey areas that we're quibbling over, but for this topic, I've been trying to keep to the definition as posted in the OP. And for the record, I think you often make a great deal of sense, Dog_ma, even if you do think I wildly overgeneralise with animal behaviour. Don't worry, just about everyone does! I tend to ignore the important differences because I'm so busy looking for patterns between species.  

Kim is my hero. Very eloquent.

All I can say is some of you seem to own very biddable, non-inventive dogs. I had one once who well, you stopped her from eating the shoe, and she'd go hang from the curtains; stop that, and she'd be the kitchen sink tossing dishes on to the floor; stop jumping on people, she'd play tug of war with their pant legs, and on and on and on, inventing new ways to "be bad". Punishment training was, well, a no-go with her.

mudpuppy

All I can say is some of you seem to own very biddable, non-inventive dogs. 

You spend a lot of time making judgments about dogs you've never met.

I currently have a very unbiddable hound dog, and I'm using punishment plus reinforcement of alternate behaviors.  

mudpuppy

I had one once who well, you stopped her from eating the shoe, and she'd go hang from the curtains; stop that, and she'd be the kitchen sink tossing dishes on to the floor; stop jumping on people, she'd play tug of war with their pant legs, and on and on and on, inventing new ways to "be bad".

Sounds to me like something may have been missing in the foundation of the relationship. In my opinion, a dog purposely seeking out bad behavior is a sign of something more than an "inventive" temperament.

FourIsCompany

mudpuppy

I had one once who well, you stopped her from eating the shoe, and she'd go hang from the curtains; stop that, and she'd be the kitchen sink tossing dishes on to the floor; stop jumping on people, she'd play tug of war with their pant legs, and on and on and on, inventing new ways to "be bad".

 

Sounds to me like something may have been missing in the foundation of the relationship. In my opinion, a dog purposely seeking out bad behavior is a sign of something more than an "inventive" temperament.

Some dogs just are who they are, despite a great relationship when the human is present;-)  And, dogs do not seek to be "bad" IMO.  But, they are often "inventive" to alleviate boredom, or because whatever they did helped reduce anxiety, or because chewing up the stuffie is just plain fun.  All of these things are just behavior, and, thus, can be modified.  In fairness to mudpuppy's comment, most of us with herding dogs DO have biddable dogs - that's what they were bred for!!  Maybe you should try owning a hound for a change, or, better yet, a bulldog.  Completely different in a lot of ways, yet the same in that we can use OC to change what we don't like in terms of behavior.  The question, as always, is whether to use punishment, and if so, how much and how severely to apply it.  Personally, if I can modify behavior without punishment, I do.
 

Corgis biddable??? HA!! And I don't got bored with GSD's because they were too biddable. As for mudpuppies example, I know full well what that's like and I do punishment, combined with reinforcement, combined with management of the nvironment.

FIC, a dog doesn't view shredding the couch as a bad thing to do. He's having a blast doing it. *We* ~ the humans ~ view it as a bad thing to do. It's not actually bad, it's undesirable. It's not a relationship issue. It's that the couch makes a *really* fun toy.

aren't corgis "biddable"? they are herding dogs. Never heard they were particularly difficult or wildly inventive at getting into trouble.

Maybe someone with basenjis or sighthounds could wander in and talk about their dogs and how they raise them.

mudpuppy

aren't corgis "biddable"? they are herding dogs. Never heard they were particularly difficult or wildly inventive at getting into trouble.

Maybe someone with basenjis or sighthounds could wander in and talk about their dogs and how they raise them.

mudpuppy

Maybe someone with basenjis or sighthounds could wander in and talk about their dogs and how they raise them.

*looks across room*

*puzzles over what appears to be a sighthound*

Eko's breeder had lovely, lovely dogs. And she used mild punishment, too. Nothing severe, because hounds will shut you out if you're a bully. But punishment all the same.

My corgi is very biddable. Actually, she's very biddable for certain people. For certain other people they may as well be asking a teapot to come. Penny is only biddable when you fully expect her to be. Those that don't really expect her to listen get ignored. As herding dogs go, I guess corgis aren't especially biddable, but then there's this Swedish Vallhund I know that doesn't know what the word means, and when you tell him he's a herding breed and should therefore be more concerned with how happy or unhappy you are with him he basically gives you the finger and heads off to go hunt lizards on his own. My corgi is quite the walk in the park compared to that particualr herder. Spitz herders are about the only kind of herders I could live with. Getting the finger from an animal does much for my personal development.  

I am convinced that my female german shepherd ONLY ate the couch because she and Thor had figured out that upholstered furniture is like a giant STUFFY when they ate the Lazboy!  All that lovely white cloudy stuff that is so much fun to pull out and spread all over the house.  And a pillowback sofa is sooooo like a giant stuffy.  I actually think she was looking for the squeaky!

When I give my dogs their stuffies its under very close scrutiny since some of them love to kill the poor things.  Tyler will carefully guard his and carry it and never take the first bite, Thor will carry his around for days before he gives in, Shadow and Theo are about the same, Thunder just decapitates the poor thing but Sheba?  Well, I watch her and I can SEE her exercising self control but she sooooo wants to bite into the stuffy and pull the squeaky out!  It's really quite interesting to watch her.  She tries so very hard to be gentle, but eventually the desire to get that squeaky out wins and she very carefully makes a surgeon straight incision down the belly and removes the squeaky.

That little stroll off topic actually DID have to do with them eating furniture.......

I honestly have always thought of punishment as rubbing the pups nose in a mistake or hitting him with a rolled up newspaper, or worse.  So if we are going by the literal definition of punishment, clearly I use it as well.  But, it's a benign punishment in the form of correct and redirect primarily.

Yes, speaking from experience, gsds are VERY biddable, but they are also a little too smart sometimes, and can sometimes out think the human!