The problem with punishment- Part 2

Other issues with positive punishment are listed below.  (This article is a continuance of The problem with punishment- Part 1.)

Many people have difficulty timing the punishment correctly.

According to AVSAB (American Veterinary Society of Animal Behaviorists), in order for punishment to be effective it must occur within one minute of undesired behavior.

You may need to increase the intensity of the correction to get results.

Dogs can get used to the level of aversive punishment that is applied causing the owner or trainer to increase intensity to get results.  For example, a dog is being walked on a prong collar.  Everytime he pulls, the owner gives a leash correction at a low intensity because that is all that is necessary to stop the behavior and it works.  If this person uses these same intensity leash corrections for this and other behaviors (applying a leash correction is often used by old fashion trainers for non compliance with a request, i.e. sit or down), eventually that level of correction would need to be raised in order to be aversive for the dog. 

When prong collars are misused, you often see dogs that even pull against the prongs as a matter of habit and feeling quite comfortable pulling against them. This is especially true if they get to move forward – a very rewarding behavior for some dogs.

If you start out at too high of an aversive stimulus you may hurt your dog.

It is difficult to gauge the amount of correction needed to stop the behavior.  If you start out too heavily with your correction, you can really damage the dog, either emotionally or physically) and your relationship.

If you are punishing a dog for aggressive behavior, you can escalate the aggression.

If you apply an aversive stimulus when the dog is highly aroused, it is possible that the dog will redirect the aggression onto you. 

If you punish a dog for showing distance increasing signals such as growling, you may end up with a dog who bites without warning.

Even if you apply the aversive and it works in stopping the behavior, you may only be punishing the signs of the behavior and not the emotion involved with it.  If you apply a shock correction to a dog who is growling at another dog and the dog stops growling, next time he may just decide to bite because he was punished for the growling.  So in essence, you punished the growl and not the aggression.  Often times, this is how people get a dog who bites without any signs.

Negative punishment is often used with positive trainers and it has the least opportunity for serious side effects but these side effects do exist.

Negative punishment is the removal of something that the dog likes in order to stop a behavior.  A classical example of this is when a dog jumps up and the owner removes all interaction as a result.  Like most people who walk into their home, they look at their dog barreling down the hallway or waiting at the door to greet them.  So you start the interaction with eye contact and acknowledgement of the dog.  If the interaction didn’t start that one, one could argue that we are using a different method.  The reward may have been touching, petting, puppy talk or even eye contact.  Once this is removed, the dog is punished for his greeting because what the dog wants is being removed.

If you are training with rewards, you are always using negative punishment- everytime a dog tries a behavior and you don’t reward it.  Let’s say our example dog knows sit and down.  We ask the dog for sit but he offers a down.  We don’t reward the behavior and his sit in this context reduces in frequency.

If you are not training properly and constantly assessing your dog’s abilities, you may be setting your dog up for a lot of frustration.  This frustration may get the way of learning.  This is why reward based trainers set the dog up to succeed and raise the criteria gradually. 

Although negative punishment can cause some side effects, most trainers believe the side effects are less severe and easily overcome with good instruction.