Last movie night I was looking forward to watching Terminator Genesis. I had the whole evening booked off and was curled up with four pillows and Milo. (No snacks or drink though, you’ll see why in a moment.) Lovely evening right?
Wrong. I am a bit of a goof when comes to suspense and action movies. This is probably why I love them. When things are scary I hold my breath and get twitchy. When things are surprising I yell. I’ve been known to jump out of my seat and toss my popcorn over my shoulder (hence the lack of snacks and drink on this evening). Tense, jumpy, twitching, and yelling–not a good way to be when you are the guardian of a recovering reactive GSD.
Movie night was no exception. I held my breath and Milo’s head came up and he started scanning the room. I twitched and he jumped to his feet. I yelled and he was off, pacing through the house, searching for the evil. He was going to find it and end it.
It took some work to get him calm and happy again.
I had to call him to me and softly sooth him: “There, there, baby, there, there.”
We did some easy obedience to calm his mind: Sit, stand, down, sit, down, stand, down, sit.
We did some difficult obedience to refocus his attention. He practiced cleaning up his toys.
After that it was a treat and a cuddle and we were good to go watch Gilmore Girls.
So, I have more action movie watching constraints. No snacks, no drinks, and Milo gets a bone to chew on in the other room.
This was a good reminder, you need to stay on top of your state of mind when you’re with a sensitive dog.
When someone calls a dog training method scientific they should mean that there’s
a body of peer reviewed, publicly available, scientific evidence demonstrating that the method they are referring to meets their training goals better than alternative methods.
There’s a lot packed into this definition, so let’s take it apart and figure it out piece by piece:
there is a body of scientific evidence
the evidence is peer-reviewed and publicly available
the evidence relates to the method they are using
the evidence shows that the method they are supporting is better than the alternatives
the evidence shows that the method meets their training goals.
For the rest of this post, I’ll think about what it means for there to be a body of peer-reviewed, publicly available scientific evidence. In the next post in this series, I’ll consider other parts of the definition, the ones that relate to particular dog training methods.
Body of evidence
It is not enough to find one experiment that supports what you already believe is true. One experiment can be mistaken or be inappropriately influenced by a unique experimental setup or idiosyncratic features of a particular scientist or laboratory.
There are too many cases where one or two scientific research studies support one side of a debate and hundreds of research studies that support the other side of a debate. For example, a 1998 research study suggested a link between childhood vaccination and Autism, but since then there have been many studies demonstrating that there is no such connection. Unfortunately, there are still people who point to that one study as an argument for not vaccinating our children, even though there is an overwhelming body of scientific evidence showing that we should. This sort of mistaken use of scientific research is not uncommon.
One experiment or one scientific publication should, at most, give you something to consider. Before you start drawing conclusions about what you, or anyone else, ought to do, you need to be able to draw on a bunch of scientific experiments, and you need to make sure that you are fairly considering all the evidence.
One way to make sure that you are considering the evidence fairly is to spend as much time searching for scientific studies that are critical of your training method as you spend searching for scientific studies that support it.
Peer-reviewed and publicly available
Peer review and public scrutiny are crucial tests for scientific knowledge. Peer reviewmeans that the research was sent to experts in the field who carefully and critically checked it for errors and assumptions. They evaluate things like the theoretical perspective underlying the research, the choice of experimental methods, the way the experiment was conducted and the data collected, the way that the data was analysed, and whether the conclusions that the authors make are justified by their data.
It is worth noting that mistakes can still get through the peer review process. But it is an important quality control mechanism that makes scientific knowledge as reliable as possible.
Public availability is also important. It should be possible to go to the library or go online and get the actual research publications. This lets the scientific community (and you if you feel like it) see how the researchers got their results and test those results for themselves.
Peer review and the public availability of research are important because they make scientists show their work–everyone is invited to check the facts and reasoning that researchers use to support their conclusions.
If someone tells you that a method is scientific, you should be able to find the research publications supporting that method yourself and those publications should be in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
So what?
This way of thinking about what it means for a training method to be scientific emphasises the fact that science is never about one person or about one experiment. Science is a public, social activity. It depends on lots of studies, conducted by lots of people, in lots of places. These studies are performed by groups of people, they are reviewed by different groups of people, and they are available to anyone who wants to read them. This makes scientists, and the research they produce, accountable to the broader scientific community and accountable to you and me as well.
Note: This is the second post in a five-part series about what makes a dog training method scientific.
My overall goal is to get Milo titled in CKC Rally Obedience.
This week we will work on:
3 minute sit and down stays (medium distractions when we are at home, and mild distractions when we are out).
three steps of focused heeling that starts and ends with a nice sit.
still front feet for stand-from-sit (just popping out his butt). We’ll do this on a front foot target at home (which he already knows) or on a picnic table if we are out.
clean up 3 toys in one room.
I’ll use a clicker for the heel and stand exercises to help with my timing.
We’ll do two, five-minute training sessions on six of the next seven days.
We worked on stays at home and on a field where we regularly play and train. I ended up using medium rather than small distractions. They included: opening the fridge, throwing a toy around in front of him, dropping a chicken wiener in front of him, and at one session another dog came to our field and played frisbee with its person for a while.
He didn’t break a single stay! Next week we’ll try for three minutes.
Cleaning up his toys
For this trick Milo goes through the house collecting his toys and putting them in his toy box. We’ve been working on this for a while.
We didn’t make any progress for the first part of the week, so I took some time to sit back and think about what we were doing.
I realized I was messing up by asking him to do figure out two things at once. I was asking him to(1) get the idea that he has to clean up all of his toys, and (2) get the idea that he needs to clean up his toys in all the rooms. So, I scaled back to laying out a few of his toys in one room, and gradually increasing the number of toys (all in the same room) that I was asking him to clean up. After he gets the hang of cleaning up all the toys in one room, we’ll add rooms one at a time.
This trick is teaching me to break up training into little bits, use my markers more accurately, and discipline myself about when I use words and when I use gestures as cues.
Milo did better after I cleaned up my act. Next week, more toys, but still in the living room.
Heel Position
This is going fine. The next week it will be correct position for three steps.
A summer-long, cross-Canada road trip with a gigantic German Shepherd, even one as smart and charming as Milo, presents a few challenges. Challenges like, where will we sleep for those months on the road?
It didn’t take me long to figure out that my criteria for a reasonable living arrangement aren’t complicated. It has to be
convenient for both me and Milo,
reasonably affordable,
reasonably comfortable, and
condusive to my research and writing.
Additionally, it has to
accommodate a flexible travel schedule,
come with a vehicle that is easy to drive, and
provide at least a little access to wilderness.
A good plan is one that gets at least a B grade for each criterion.
The options: Family and friends. This option scores high in terms of comfort, convenience, and affordability. But, I love these people and want them to love me back at the end of the trip. I have enough sense to know that showing up with Milo for an indefinite amount of time is not OK.
Don’t mind me and my giant, shedding, barking dog. Aside from scratching up your floors and getting hair in every possible nook and cranny in your home and on your person, we won’t be any bother at all. He and I, you know, are both sweet darling angels from heaven…
I have one friend and one aunt who might be on board with this.
Hotels. Motel 6‘s across North America are reasonably priced and pet friendly. They’re plain, but usually clean. The trouble is, living in a reasonably priced hotel for months on end still gets expensive. Also, I’d need to supervise Milo pretty much all the time. While I see the appeal of his constant company, a girl has to buy groceries and go to the library once in a while. Finally, no wilderness.
Tenting. Staying in a tent with Milo, for a weekend, is great. We’ve done it before and he took to it like butter to bread. This den, he seemed to think, was just the right size for both of us. The first evening he walked in, snuggled up, and went right to sleep.
In my 20’s, I spent an entire summer living in a tent on the shore of a pristine lake in Northern Saskatchewan. But, now I’m in my 40’s, and my back hurts at the thought of spending 2 nights in a row sleeping on the ground. I can’t see being happy in a tent for an entire summer. Also, no office.
Gigantic motorhome. I have a vision of motoring along the highway, hands resting at 10 and 2 on a really big steering wheel, occasionally giving a serious nod and a little wave to passing truckers. Linda Ronstadt is rocking in the background and Milo is sitting in the passenger seat wearing a red bandana. Sigh.
That’s not going to happen. Unfortunately there are two kinds of motorhomes: the old ones and the expensive ones. Expensive is not an option. And, since my mechanical ability is limited changing tires, old is not an option either. Old too frequently turns into expensive. Also, I don’t like driving in big cities, even with a little car. The thought of someone else taking a gigantic motorhome along Yonge Street in Toronto is hilarious. The thought of me doing it is terrifying.
Camper trailer. A camper trailer will be pretty good at all the things I need. It’s not as cool as tenting or a motorhome (yes, I think motorhomes are cool, I march to my own drum). But, it will be convenient for me and Milo. I can keep my work set up and ready to dive into whenever I want. I can park it on crown land, or friends’ yards, or campsites, or Walmart parking lots. I can afford one. And I can unhook it and have a comfortable vehicle to motor around in. This is the winning option.
Summary:
Family and friends
Hotels
Tenting
Motorhome
Camper trailer
Convenient
B
C
B
A-
B+
Affordable
A
D
A
F
B
Comfortable
B
A
C
A-
A-
Workspace
C
C
F
A
A
Flexible
C
A
C
B
B
Access to a vehicle
A
A
A
D
A
Wilderness
C
D
A
B
B
The bottom line:
If you and your dog are heading out on an extended road trip, take a camper trailer.
If you want to see a good internet fight, just toss out the question “What method should I use to train my dog?” People go all cap locks on each other in no time, no time at all.
Sometimes these fights are about very specific training methods, but most of the time they boil down to disagreements about whether dogs should ever be given corrections or punishments. People want you to train your dog their way.
Why should you do it their way? The same set of answers pop up over and over again. You should do it their way because:
your dog will be happier
your dog will learn faster
your dog will love you more
your dog will respect you more
your dog will be safer
your dog will be less stressed
and then out comes the big gun
because SCIENCE says so.
I am a beginner dog trainer, but I am an expert on evaluating and using science—in fact, I’m a philosopher of science and so that’s my day job. And let me tell you, “because science says so,” is a troubling answer.
It bothers me when “science” is thrown into a conversation as a way to end debate. ‘Science says so, smart people defer to science, so take your pick: agree with me or be stupid.’
The trouble is, scientists disagree with each other ALL the time. In fact, one of the main things that scientists do is try to prove other scientists wrong.
Calling something scientific should be an invitation to open and respectful discussion of different kinds of evidence, of our experiences, and of the values and assumptions that are part of scientific practice. When someone demands unquestioning faith in science, something is messed up. Science doesn’t work that way.
Don’t get me wrong. Science is AWESOME. It is a tool we’ve used to figure out all sorts of interesting and useful things. I’m writing this post on a really nice computer. Thank you Science. But, just like any other tool, it takes time and energy to figure out how to use it responsibly. Using it responsibly means using it in a way that is honest, morally good, and practically useful.
We should use all of the tools and resources we can to figure out how to best work with our dogs. After all, we want to do the best we can to treat our dogs with respect, develop good relationships with our dogs, help them be safe, happy, and fulfilled, and to develop public policies and laws that are good for the dogs and people in our communities.
Scientific research can provide excellent resources to help us meet these goals. But, if we are going advocate for scientific dog training methods we need to ask ourselves:
What does it even mean to say that a dog training method is scientific?
Is a scientific method automatically good?
How can you tell if folks are right when they say a method is scientific?
How do you make the jump from scientific theory and evidence to doing what is best for the dog in front of you?
There aren’t foolproof answers to these questions. Philosophers disagree with each other all of the time too. But, if you are going to use scientific information responsibly, you need to think carefully about these questions.
Note: This is the first post in a five-part series about what makes a dog training method scientific.
Accurate positioning for stationary heel. There is polite leash walking, and then there is formal heeling. Formal heeling involves the dog holding a precise position at the handler’s left thigh, parallel to the direction the handler’s facing and giving the handler its full attention. Sometimes Milo is a little bit ahead of me, sometimes a little bit behind, and sometimes his back end crabs out so that we are not perfectly parallel. That is sloppy, and we need to go back to basics to fix it. This week, all I’m going to do is call Milo to a stationary heel between me and a wall and reward him when he gets it just right. This will help him feel exactly where he is supposed to be.
Increasing the duration of sit and down stays with mild distractions. These are tough for Milo because he is vigilant and likes to move. Long stays not only help him learn self control and be a better citizen and companion, they are also are important elements of competition obedience. This week, we’ll work on one minute stays in the presence of mild temptations.
Thorough searching when he cleans up his toys. For this trick, maybe better called a skill, Milo goes through the house, collects his many toys, and puts them in his toy box. We’ve been working on this for a while. He gets the finding and putting his toys away part, but he doesn’t get that he’s not done until he’s gathered all of them. So we’ll work getting him to do a more thorough job.
We’ll do two, five-minute training sessions on six of the next seven days.
Sometimes these fights are about very specific training methods, but most of the time they boil down to disagreements about whether dogs should ever be given corrections or punishments. People want you to train your dog their way.
On the road with Milo 