The Problem with Punishment

Anytime punishment is applied in dog training, you can see some unwanted side effects.  These unwanted side effects are often called behavior fallout in the dog training and canine behavior world.

Positive punishment is not positive in the way that most people think of it.  It is application of something that the dog doesn’t like to stop a behavior.  (To learn more about this concept, see our blog post How do dogs learn- Operant Conditioning.)  This type of punishment can be mild, like saying no in a sharp tone or very strong such a high level of shock.

One possible example of behavior fallout is a poor association with whatever the dog is looking at, at the time of correction.  For example, a dog and their family live in town and have an electric fence.  They begin to go to the boundary to greet passerbys and as a result receive a shock.  The dog learns, through classical conditioning, that people walking by cause the shock.  (To understand more about classical conditioning, please see our blog post Pavlov is at work with your puppy.)  Some dogs can learn this in one trial, others learn it in several trials and still some never make that association.  It always depends on the dog.

Using a mild aversive can have the same behavior fallout but it is less likely to occur or produce a strong reaction.  In this example, let’s say that when a dog jumps up on counters you yell “no”.  If a dog has a strained relationship with a person, this could cause a sensitive dog to run and hide or be apprehensive about approaching the person who issued the punishment.

 It should be noted here that a dog that is sensitive to sound may find yelling “no” highly aversive and a dog who is looking for attention and accepts any interaction as wonderful may find this rewarding.  Rewards and aversives are always defined by the dog and not the human.

Punishment has to be consistently applied to be effective.  In the example above, with the dog jumping on the counters, if you only catch the dog doing it 4 out of 6 times (for example), your dog may learn to play the lottery.  This means, he’ll give it a shot because he may get yelled at or he may not.  The possibility of rewards may be greater than the possibility of punishment.

More about punishment tomorrow.