Hi everyone, I am new to the forum and right now going to school for dog training(ABC) and I feel like they are giving me a good foundation but I would love to learn more. I always thought that Ceasar was a good person to listen to, or at least I was told, never fully understood his methods, and now its neat to see why(because of him training in a negative way instead of positive)
Actually if we’re talking in terms of behavioral science and learning theory, Cesar is pretty positive - he sure loves his positive punishment!
Positive = add something (like in math)
Negative = take something away (like in math)
Reinforcement = behavior will happen more often
Punishment = behavior will happen less often
It is always the dog’s response that determines if something is reinforcing or punishing.
Positive and Negative has nothing to do with the *attitude* with which you train. PR trainers call themselves that not because they’re “positive†happy people, but because the bulk of how they teach behaviors is through
Positive
Reinforcement. With the philosophy that in order to eliminate undesirable behaviors, it is more effective to teach a dog what to do instead, and reward for that, than to teach a dog not to do that undesirable behavior while leaving a behavioral void. (Dog ends up not knowing what to do instead.)
Cesar Millan tends to eliminate behaviors through positive punishment. Which presents it own set of issues. Steve White has a list of rules to consider when going the P+ route, and some good points on where this quadrant falls short.
Personally, I’m not good enough to not screw up using P+ so I try very hard not to use it at all. By the same token, the better you get at using R+, the less you end up needing to punish behaviors. They simply don’t happen because the dog is too busy doing what you asked.
But someone said that the dog didn't look calm in the video right before he got bit, I thought he did, having his ears down and body relaxed. How was he nervous and what signaled that?
Eleven seconds in, before she even went to eat, she had already blinked at Cesar several times, had turned her head, and briefly puffed her flews, all signaling “I’m very nervousâ€. Her whole body was not “loose†it was tight and unsure.
Ears back or down does not equal relaxed. Nor do attentive, forward ears equal not relaxed. Like all dog signals, you have to take the ears in context. Forward ears with tight lips, closed mouth, means something totally different than forward ears with loose lips, slightly open mouth.
There is a video response floating around the interwebs with the Holly debacle in slow mo with captions - its really helpful. Let me see if I can find it. I tried looking for it in the thread then quickly realized I don’t need to stress myself out reading through the mess it turned in to at the end!