How do you tell if something is too punishing?

I naturally want to use the least amount of punishment possible. I don't seek out ways to punish my dogs. And I will always opt for using reward and/or redirection if I think it will be effective. I think that's my criteria. Effectiveness. Except in emergency situations, if the dog is doing something I want to stop, the first thing I do is think: What is going to be the most effective way to deal with this? What's causing this behavior? What's driving him (or her) to do this? Can I reduce that motivator? Is there something I can do differently that would take the motivation away? I analyze the heck out of the situation and come up with a plan. Most likely, it's going to contain some positive punishment because that is the most effective way to stop a behavior, but I always couple the punishment with redirection and reward, which I try to make much bigger than the punishment.

If the animal cringes or gives me a "don't hurt me" look, I have failed. Miserably.

And all 4 of my dogs are different. Cara doesn't need punishment. She only needs to be told what to do. Jaia, on the other end of the spectrum, is a wild man. He's in it for Jaia. I use more punishment with him than all the others combined. But he's hardly aware of it. He ADORES me and the feeling's mutual. He has NEVER given me a "don't hurt me" look or cringed. That's for babies, as far as he's concerned. He knows when I tell him not to do something that I'm going to communicate what TO do and there's a reward in it for him.

So, how do you decide if a punishment is to be used or not on a particular dog and a particular situation? Assuming that punishment in this thread is used in the OC sense with the definition being anything that reduces the likelihood of a behaviour being repeated in the future.

I personally think the only situation in which punishment is your best option is when the dog is engaging in some kind of self-rewarding behavior, and your efforts to stop the behavior by other means have failed, and in that situation you should try quite hard to arrange for the punishment to come from the environment (i.e. a booby trap or a remote collar) rather than from you.  If you must resort to punishment you want to use something aversive enough to stop the behavior dead forever within two to three applications- which means it has to be pretty aversive, and it has to be applied with perfect timing, and you don't want your dog to associate the event with you at all. Examples: using a non-bark collar to stop barking; using a booby-trap to stop garbage raiding or counter surfing.

Hi Corvus,

I honestly think that this question is about as subjective as are opinions on things such as abortion, religious beliefs, as well as politics. I think that the answer will vary from person to person.

Still, I think some rather obvious ones come to mind: If the way one routinely treats their dogs results in a very fearful and/or distrustful dog towards people in general, then the way the dog has been treated has gone too far. If sombody kicks their dog hard enough to cause the dog to squeel, then that form of punishment has gone too far. If a person routinely takes a broomstick and swats their dog, then that has gone too far as well. In general, if anyone acts out of anger or frustration towards their dogs in a rather routine or sometimes isolated fashion, then they have gone overboard.

But as I have stated, all of these things that I say are still completely subjective. Perhaps it would be useful to apply some sort of averaging or distribution curve towards peoples own behaviors to set up some sort of range of what is considered to be acceptable punishment versus extreme punishment. I think that if you survey a hundred people and that half of them consider a leash pop to be overboard while the other 50% to be an OK form of punishment, then there is no concensus. If however, 80% of the people consider leash pops to be a violent act of punishment, then perhaps it could be said that it, the leash pop, has gone too far in terms of being too punishing for the dog. In this kind of study, however, it would be important to take peoples opinions from a lot of sources because if you sample just one, for example, message board that is polarized towards a positive training aspect only, then you will have a polarized answer. I also think that no matter where you look across the full spectrum, you will always find extremists - The ones that fall into the two diminishing outer regions of the statistical bell curve.

So I'm sorry if I can not give you a concrete and absolute answer because I believe the answer is very much relative to peoples own characters, beliefs, life experiences which shape their own unique behavior, thoughts, and expressions. I can only give my own subjective feelings whether an act is too punishing or not by what I feel.

First of all, I think punishment needs to be based on what that particular can take. I have a 4 yr old poodle, a 2 year old pit bull mix, and a 7 week old husky mix.

Bear- 4 yr old poodle. I pretty much can not use punishments with him. I adopted him from a shelter when he was 1 yr old. He, obviously, had a past history of abuse. Because of this any type of loud noise or threatening gesture has his cowering in a corner. I will tell you, of all my dogs, he is the least trained. Too much attention makes him nervous which makes it difficult to perform any training. Literally all I have been able to do is housebreak him and get him to sit. For fear of damaging him further I have pretty much given that up. He gets love and affection as much as possible and thats about all. So for him ANY type of punishment would be too punishing.

Taz- pit mix. I found him in a Wal-Mart when he was 8 weeks old. I attended puppy classes with him and learned clicker training. He did recieve punishments in the form of verbal correction, leash pops, ignoring him, and physical moving him. When he was a puppy he wore his leash around the house and I held on to him...this allowed me to be with him at all times and be aware of what he was doing. If he was doing something I did not like..such as chewing the coffee table he was given a leash pop to get his attention, he was told "NO", and he was given something he could chew on and he was rewarded for chewing on his toys. If this was unsuccessful a few times, as in he continued to chew the table the process was repeated and this time he was physically moved away from the table and rewarded when he chew his toy. Taz never cowered or was afraid of me due to his punishments. Punishments were never issued with anger and never intended to physically hurt him. IMO the difference between Bear and Taz is that Taz has never known violence.

Athena- husky mix. As she has just begun her training I am not very strict with it. Punishments are mostly verbal correction and ignoring her behavior. When she is playing with me and bites I say "NO" and I just go away from her. If we are on the couch and she continually crawls into my face (which I hate) I say "NO" and put her on the floor. Being put on the floor and me leaving her do not last long. As I know she will not comprehend why I am not playing with her an hour after she bit me. So when she comes back to me to play (which is usually only a few seconds) I will play with her again...should she bite again the process it repeated. I do plan to use the same training methods with her as I did with Taz. I had such great results with Taz. However, I will pay attention to her and note her progress as I do not expect her to repsond exactly the way Taz did. At this point Athena has never shown any signs of being afraid of me.

IMO, punishment is "too much" when it is intimidating for the dog, not informative. Also, I think punishments should be followed up with some type of correction (if possible) and a reward for the correct behavior.

Corvus, I'm sorry if I've made you feel harassed or been too nit-picky with you.

But this is a really good topic.  I think you are totally correct that what is not too punishing one day may be too punishing on another day. People are like this, too.

There are very few situations in which I feel the need to use really strong P+, for maximum effect. So for example, what we did with Ivan is not how I normally wish to engage with dogs. I do not feel we acted improperly with him, just that the situation was extreme and not something I hope to be in again. (We gave strong collar corrections, with a prong, to stop dangerous behavior that other forms of reaction had not solved.) So, I'm going to put that in a little box and say that I don't use come-to-Jesus methods.

My punishments, given via communication of my disapproval, are really mild. What mudpuppy would probably call nagging. If the mildest "eh" stops the dog, great! If not, a slightly stronger and more guttural "eh" is used. Most of this is very instinctive, I'm not thinking about it at the time. Of course, it is only a punisher if the dog accepts it as such.

In training terms, what I do is not the most effective or cleanest way to train a dog. But I'm sappy and I think of my dogs as companions, "people" who I have relationships with. I'm willing to be polite, and then up the ante if I'm ignored. I see Sasha do that with Eko, too. Mild annoyances are handled generously, but there are lines not to be crossed lest you get a roar-bark or a warning snap. Where I am a trainer and not a dog is that if a couple of increasing eh's don't work, I will change my tactics.

One of the neatest things I see is sometimes when Eko has been a real pest, and Sasha has resorted to charging him with a snap, she will then snuffle his ear or lick it. The ear snuffle seems to reassure him. Maybe it is Sasha's way of giving Eko R+ for stopping whatever obnoxious puppy thing he was doing.

I use very few punishments in my life with dogs, and I use them relatively rarely. When I do use a punishment, whether human-related (P-) or environmental punishment, it is always judiciously and with careful thought.

To be honest I think a lot like 4IC does with this statement:

FourIsCompany

Except in emergency situations, if the dog is doing something I want to stop, the first thing I do is think: What is going to be the most effective way to deal with this? What's causing this behavior? What's driving him (or her) to do this? Can I reduce that motivator? Is there something I can do differently that would take the motivation away? I analyze the heck out of the situation and come up with a plan.

That's pretty much what I do when a situation arises in which I think the dog's behaviour needs to change.

How do I decide if a punishment is to be used or not? It's very dog-specific, but generally I do the following:
1) Understand the dog, and reflect on everything about the dog, to first determine if a certain punishment is even a possibility. For dogs that I know well, that step doesn't take all that long *G*.
2) If I think a particular punishment is a possibility (given step one worked out), and feel it is necessary, the only thing then is to try it.
3) Then I look at the result. How did the dog react to it? Relatively minor annoyance but effective? Did it even affect the dog? Did it really strongly bother the dog? Did it leave any after effects? How quickly did the dog recover from the punishment? Did it shrug it off and wander away, or stay in a stressed state for a period of time?

The thing to realize is that with any type of punishment, no matter which route you wish to take, is that there is always a risk using a punishment, and you don't know until it's too late (after the punishment has occurred). No matter the type of punishment, whether it's a hand clap, a collar pop, a shock, a tap on the rump, or removal of attention. Using punishment to decrease behaviour always carries with it some risk, and that risk is of course variable depending on the situation. So if one is going to set up a punishment, regardless of what it is, it is best to really analyze the situation before setting it up, and question yourself as to whether this is really what is required, before going ahead with it.  Because most times you don't know how the dog will react until, well, it happens.

An answer to the subject line,,, but the follow up questions.

One trial learning.... This is a phenomena in which the event immediately following the behavior is so profound, the behavior never happens again.  In most cases one time learning is limited to life threatening situations and a stimuli that has consideral (extreme) physical sensation that the Sd and the behavior are forever linked. 

Some real life lessons, a dog who hits an electric fence for livestock containment and never makes the same mistake again.  Eating something poisonous and getting violently ill (toads come to mind).  Surviving being hit by a car and not venturing into the street again unless on lead.

Aw, Dog_ma, that's okay. I just felt like the other thread in the training section was getting bogged down by different definitions and all that jazz. I thought it might be helpful to step away from OC for a moment and concentrate on the details. Not what one can or should do , but how one judges these things from moment to moment with an individual.

With that in mind, Tssst, I'm not really interested in the theory. I started this thread to get an idea of how people decide what level of punishment to use, or to use any at all. And to discuss the little details and the grey areas where something is mildly punishing, like nagging. Yes it will be subjective.

So I'd like to discuss these nagging scenarios, where you use mild aversives such as "eh-eh", or in my case, chasing an animal off something you don't want them into. I've discovered that there's a way to chase an animal that seems to be interpreted as half-serious, or not serious at all. If I use teensy steps and stamp them a little as I come and hold my body quite tight and reasonably upright so there's nothing reaching out to touch the animal as I approach, they seem pretty unworried, but will still move in most cases. I think it communicates to them that I'm not going to reach out and grab them and I'm giving them plenty of time to scoot before I get there if they really don't want me to get that close. It's pretty non-threatening, but that coupled with 'oi!' or something similar does seem to decrease the likelihood of the animal getting into the thing they were chased off in the future. They still do it, but over time it becomes less common.

How do people use these mildly aversive nagging tactics? I like to try to use them to form a way of communicating to the animal that I don't really like them to do that without taking away their choices or doing something to them that they really don't like that might have a lasting effect. As risk goes, I think it's very low, and if it is too much, it's so mild in the first place that it's not likely to be terribly hard to repair what you've done. If one is to use a punishment, and this were considered a punishment, I think it does the job without the need for a strong punishment designed to stop a behaviour forever in one or two applications. I often have need to tell my animals I don't want them to do something, but rarely feel it's something I need to squash out of them forever. In fact, I can't think of anything I've felt that way about that they've done. Because after all, we are just trying to get along with one another, and I wouldn't want to punish an attempt at communication to the point where the animal would never want to try it again. So isn't the use of extremely mild aversives a way to use punishment to strengthen a bond through establishing a relatively harmless way of asking an animal not to do something rather than just being a punishment that isn't strong enough to teach the animal much?

Although, Penny I think did find the mild aversive of leash pops to be a good reason to trust me a little less. Perhaps for some animals it's best to avoid physical corrections, even mild ones.
 

mrv

An answer to the subject line,,, but the follow up questions.

One trial learning.... This is a phenomena in which the event immediately following the behavior is so profound, the behavior never happens again.  In most cases one time learning is limited to life threatening situations and a stimuli that has consideral (extreme) physical sensation that the Sd and the behavior are forever linked. 

Some real life lessons, a dog who hits an electric fence for livestock containment and never makes the same mistake again.  Eating something poisonous and getting violently ill (toads come to mind).  Surviving being hit by a car and not venturing into the street again unless on lead.

corvus

So I'd like to discuss these nagging scenarios

I use "eh-eh" all the time. I use it as a reminder or warning (Kim was talking about this in another thread - she called it a CP+ Conditioned Punisher - meaning if you continue to do what you're doing there, you will receive a punishment.) "Tssst" - I use in much the same way. It means, "Stop that right now". In fact, I use WAY more conditioned punishers than I do actual punishment. WAY more.

I, too, do a lot of communicating with my dogs with words they don't know. Just today, I took Jaia with me when I picked up dog food. On the way back home, he kept trying to get in the front seat. I decided to let him to see how it worked. So he was up there sitting in the front seat, enjoying the view and scaring the other motorists () and when I was done watching him so closely, I wanted him to get back in the back. I pulled over and turned to him and said, "Jaia get in the back", and gestured toward the back. He jumped back there. He's never been in the front seat before much less know what "Get in the back" means. So, this "non-command" communication I have with my dogs is a huge part of our daily lives together.

corvus

So isn't the use of extremely mild aversives a way to use punishment to strengthen a bond through establishing a relatively harmless way of asking an animal not to do something rather than just being a punishment that isn't strong enough to teach the animal much?

I'm going to agree with you here. I don't consider my animals so sensitive or emotionally thin-skinned that my nagging is going to make a difference. In fact, they nag me, too! LOL  

FourIsCompany

If the animal cringes or gives me a "don't hurt me" look,

That's how Shadow looks at me in reaction to a special tone of voice that I normally reserved for idiots in traffic. Now you know why I curb my tongue and watch my tone. It shuts down whatever he is doing far more than any scruff and pin, or body block, or even finger poke did.

Hi everyone!  This seemed like a good place for my first ever post (aside from my intro)

 I agree that the use of very mild aversives such as "eh-eh" can better a relationship or bond by making communication clearer.  I use "eh-eh" with my dogs and feel it's appropriate for many situations.  I also use the occasional body block (which seems like a poor description of what I actually do... I shift my weight forward slightly, and my dogs back up.  They're very concious of space), and I do remove attention... can never decide if it's -P (removal of attention) or +P (imposing social isolation) not sure.  Either way, I use it.

 I have used more severe corrections in the past, when I first got my cocker spaniel and joined 4-H.  I realize now that those "trainers" were very harsh, and I believe I permanently damaged my relationship with my very soft dog, Rusty  They recommended giving collar pops on a choke for almost every situation, and I didn't know any better at the time than to listen to them.  My dog basically shut-down while in class, and seemed nervous when in  my presence outside of class occassionally as well.  It's taken a long time to undo that damage.  I realize that many trainers do use this form of correction with-out any ill effects, but because of that bad experience, it's not something I feel comfortable doing anymore.

I did lose my temper once with Sebastian, my border collie/hound mix.  It was right after I adopted him, and he was a crazy, reactive, turbo-charged boy in those days...  At the time I did not have access to a fenced yard, so when I took him to potty I'd take him on a long line.  Well,  one night it was late and very dark, and he spotted a rabbit and took off, dragging me out of the house and down two steps, onto the hard concrete, and causing a heck of a rope burn on my hand.  Purely reacting to my pain and anger, I screamed "Leave it!" and yanked hard on the line.  He came cringing over to me, ears plastered to his skull, tail tucked, head low.  I felt like the worst dog owner in the world.  I still feel a little sick at the memory, and that was five years ago!

 I provided the above experiences as very extreme examples of a punishment being too much.  I do believe that there are much, much more subtle signs that a punishment is "too much".  I see them every day at the clinic when people punish their dogs for acting in completely acceptable ways, given the circumstances.  Sometimes it's as simple as a quick glance and droop of the whiskers, a dog looking away (deliberately, not the normal checking out of the environment), or displacement sniffing.

In any interaction with my dogs, I'm always aware of their body language and what they're trying to tell me.  Most of the time we understand each other, and the dogs are comfortable and relaxed.  If I notice that is not the case, I will change what I am doing.

corvus

So I'd like to discuss these nagging scenarios

I frequently nag at my pups, but in a human to human way (I know they are not humans).  When they are being bad (usually it is Duffy); say he is rolling in some unmentionable, I will give him a lecture about how gross it is, he understands from the tone of my voice that I do not like what he has done, but the words are meaningless, like most nagging.

To the main question, I have decided that in formal training I will not use any aversives.  That means if I can't teach Selli a retrieve in completely +R techniques, I refuse to use a forced fetch and we will stop formal obedience training right there.