A tourist was on the ferry boat, and stopped to chat. She told me her two shelties used to be terrible barkers.
"But I had Barkbusters come out – you know they have a lifetime guarantee. The guy says ‘bah!' in this very dominant way and throws a special chain that makes lots of noise, and in three minutes, he trained them not to bark!"
The boat was landing. I barely had time to nod and say, "Well, I like to train with reinforcement."
"Oh yes," she agreed, "right after the dog stopped barking, I was taught to praise and pet and say ‘good dog, good dog, good dog,' so they'd get reinforcement for not barking! They totally learned their lesson. Now, all I have to do is just pick up the chain, and they scatter! They take off terrified. I don't even have to throw it!"
"Beware what works" is a saying I learned when my kids were little, in reference to excessive time outs and other punishments which undermine the parent-child relationship. I wish I'd said, "beware what works" to this woman.
One problem with punishment is that they are sort of like antibiotics: organisms build up tolerance to them (otherwise, how could we ever put up with the sound of jets flying overhead? Or, the aches and pains of aging?). Animals usually require greater and greater aversive stimulus to elicit the same reaction. After the first surprising toss of the chain, my neighborhood boxer probably wouldn't care unless you tossed a whole car! I tried to understand how it worked: the animals hear a loud noise, stop barking, and then get petting and praise? My dogs would just be hoping for another loud noise!
But shelties, by nature, tend to be shy and sound-sensitive dogs. Often, they don't even like petting all that much. They often fear thunder and fireworks. Apparently that scary racket did get the shelties where it hurt.
So why am I not applauding? Hey, it worked, right?
Other people have other goals, and that's fine, but I want my dogs to be happy and healthy, I want them to respond with confidence when I call them, I don't want them to be nervous wrecks, I want them to trust me. If no- barking is a higher priority, why not just get a cat?
Dogs are feeling, thinking, aware, intelligent beings. They bark for many reasons. How would you feel if every time you yelled in frustration, or fear, or joy, your mother threw a can with pennies in it? Punishment undermines the whole relationship, not just one behavior.
Punishment, by definition, makes behaviors go away, but how do you notice things when they are disappearing? Maybe these dogs don't quite come as eagerly as they used to. Maybe they aren't very friendly with visitors. Maybe a potential interest and enthusiasm for training, and a sense of curiosity and confidence in learning, a feeling of joy with their handler, was punished right along with the barking. When this woman told me "all it took was three minutes," I couldn't help but sigh.
