unschooling the dog whisperer?

The kids and I were flipping the channels the other day and landed on “The Dog Whisperer.” I recognized the main dude, Cesar Milan, as the joke ‘big shot’ dog trainer from The Back-Up Plan movie that I saw this summer, and thought, oh, hey, it’s that guy. I didn’t know he was a real person. Apparently everyone has heard of this show but me. But seeing as how I’ve been interested, ahem, in dogs lately, we watched it. Which triggered a bit of controversy around here. I’ll get to that.

First there was this cute, little, totally terrified dog that Cesar took to live at his place (I think?) where there are all these other dogs. The little scared one ended up getting taken under the paw by another of the dogs and sort of re-socialized, or maybe socialized for the first time, by the other dogs. It was pretty cool, I thought. There was something about her walking on a treadmill that I didn’t understand, but I was impressed with how kind Cesar seemed to be to the little dog, never behaving in a threatening manner to her, for example, making himself low and crawling backwards towards her, so that she wouldn’t be scared, or making a safe place for her to go to when she was nervous, so she wouldn’t have to hide. The kids and I were all happy when this transformed, not-very-scared-at-all, dog was reunited with her owner.

The second part of the show was about a private company that used dogs trained to sniff out explosives. The dogs did great while they were on the job, but when they weren’t working, they were all enemies, causing all this stress for the owners who had to walk them all separately, feed them all separately, etc. Cesar comes in, and there is some of that stupid reality-tv over-dramatization going on, but he comes in and says look, these dogs are all hyped up. They can’t relax. It’s all work work work. Which was pretty much the deal with the owner. So Cesar sets about getting the dogs to relax by walking them with no job to do, no destination. He keeps adding dogs until there are four or five of them, walking along. The main thing I was struck by was his extremely confident, relaxed manner. He’s a little guy, and these were huge dogs, German Shepards, dogs that had been attacking each other, and he goes in like it’s nothing. Maybe the show hyped that up, but still, his manner, walking along with the dogs, was all confident relaxation. The other dog handlers were impressed, too, and the one guy who was so Go Go Go looked taken aback, like oh, wow, I don’t know how to relax either.

Anyway, we were impressed. It was tv, so who knows what was edited or cut, but taking it at face value, I thought, huh. This guy seems interesting. So we looked him up.

Wow, what a lot of controversy! The American Human Association has issued a statement on this guy saying his methods are cruel and asking The National Geographic channel, which airs the program, to cancel it! The American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior has said his show and books have set dog training back twenty years! Ten minutes on google and I had run across dog trainer after dog trainer that hated him, his work, his methods, the whole package.

Well, that was unexpected. Seems he uses aversion to correct dogs, which I didn’t see much of in the one episode, but yeah, maybe he used his energy to say “stop it” a lot, or gave the dogs a poke here or there to get them to quit whatever they were doing (I’m thinking of the second group, not the little afraid dog). Modern dog training is all about positive reinforcement, it turns out. Behaviorist stuff. Skinner. Treats and praise and clickers, with no punishments, force or coercion, which, apparently, this Cesar guy uses a fair amount of in his show.

Man, do I hate Skinner. Well, I mean, not Skinner, I never met the guy. His work. Behaviorism. The whole rewards and punishment thing, the whole ‘changing other people’s behavior’ thing—and dog training seems to squarely sit in this continuum, whether one’s philosophy is on one end with ‘aversions’ or the other end with ‘positive rewards.’ It all strikes me as yucky and manipulative. Hey, I’m a radical unschooler. I don’t believe in rewards or punishments or trying to get people to behave in a certain way, or trying to get them to be motivated to work towards my goals for them. I’m all about people having their own goals. I don’t punish or reward my kids. I don’t even think these methods work, in the long run, if by ‘work’ one means ‘gets people to do what you want them to do,’ which I don’t want to do in the first place, but if I did, I think punishments and rewards suck as a method. I know I’m in the minority here, you don’t have to tell me.

One book that sums up well some of what I’m talking about is Punished By Rewards by Alfie Kohn. Basically, if you get a person (or dog?) to do what you want for the reasons you put forth (they will get this reward or punishment if they do or don’t) you might get some short-term compliance (along with some secret fudging) but the person’s reason for doing/not doing the action isn’t coming from themselves, and so it won’t stick. You haven’t made a child honest by punishing them for lying, even if they stop lying (when they fear getting caught/punished). If you value honesty, you can model honesty, you can be scrupulously honest to your kid, but that’s it. If honesty truly has value, your kid will be able to perceive that, and will choose it for themselves.

So far, this kind of philosophy has worked fantastically in our family.

But if we got a dog?

Because, of course, I’ve jumped species, haven’t I. All of those thoughts above, and Kohn’s book, these are all about humans, not dogs, and maybe there is a difference…? I’ve only had one dog, Kodiak, and he was wonderful and required no training, so I really know nothing about this. If I got a dog now, totally hypothetically speaking, say a super cute puppy, I’d have to do some training, probably, I mean, that’s pretty standard. I think. Right? So, would I have to pick something on this scale of punishments or rewards?

I know, I know, people say things like “dogs need _________” and you can fill in the blank with things like ‘discipline, guidance, rules,’ etc. But people say that stuff all the time about kids and honestly, I think it’s not only a load of malarky, I think its age-ist, and rude. Here’s the test: if you take any “Group A needs _____” statement, such as, “Children need boundaries” (that’s a popular one) and change the noun to “women,” or “African-Americans” you can probably here the sexism, or the racism, right? If I got up in this day and age and said “African Americans need boundaries” I would get lynched. If I stood up and said, “Women need boundaries” not only would they take my Feminist Card, they would be right to do so. You just can’t lump everyone into one pile and then tell them what they need. Some children need some boundaries some of the time. That’s probably true, but it also means essentially nothing.

Again, I know I’m in the super-minority here. Just about everyone seems to have no problem talking about what kids need. So, forget I said all that. Nothing to see here, no radical philosophy showing, no alarmingly confrontational statements have been made. Move along, move along.

Because here’s the question I’m really wondering about: is it dogist to make statements about what dogs need? Aside from food and air, I mean. All the dog training (and maybe the problem is in the word training?) info I’ve run across in the last coupld of days is totally comfortable loading up with the Dogs Need X, Y, Z statements, whether it is ‘positive reinforcement’ or ‘rules and a pack leader’. And maybe they’re right? I honestly don’t know. Are dogs people, too?

Is there no unschooling for dogs? Respecting their needs? Helping them get what they want? Finding a way to say yes, or yes-if, a lot and no hardly at all? Choosing friendly partnership over an adversarial relationship? I just don’t know if I could go all behaviorist on another sentient creature.

I have no problem handling the goats. Would it be the same? I never ‘trained’ the goats, but they hop up on the milking stand and come when I call them and just generally are friendly and calm. They don’t come in my house though. Might be a totally different thing. They have their space, I have mine. And I definitely control their behavior, for example, by having a strong fence, or have goals for them, for example, by breeding them so that the produce milk. So maybe it isn’t the same thing at all, with animals.

Hmmm.

Well, obviously it’s all moot because we aren’t getting a dog.