The words dog trainers use to describe their methods online: Anamarie Johnson, MA, CBCC-KA, on her survey of top US trainer's websites

Anamarie Johnson, a former School For The Dogs trainer and current PhD candidate in Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology at Arizona State University, returns to the podcast to discuss her research on language used by dog trainers on their websites. In addition to discussing some of her findings (like what it means when a trainer talks about "nature" and some of the stranger New Age-y language used by aversive and R+ trainers alike), they talk about what's she's learned from working in shelters and more.

Read the paper abstract: Training Dogs with Science or with Nature? An Exploration of Trainers’ Word Use, Gender, and Certification Across Dog-Training Methods

Anamarie's previous visit to the podcast in 2018:

Episode on cues and commands:

Transcript

This transcript was made automatically from the audio, so it may contain small errors.

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Today I am joined by my longtime friend and sometimes employee, Anamarie Johnson. I asked her to come on to talk to us about her very first published paper, which I think you'll find very interesting. She will also be doing a free presentation on her research and a Q&A on August 8th at 3 p.m. Eastern. You can sign up for that at schoolforthedogs.com slash words.

Anamarie Johnson, one of my favorite people. Thank you for coming on School For The Bot, whatever this podcast is called. Whatever this podcast is. I know, we're almost at, I started at School For The Dogs in July of, God, what was it, 2015? Oh my God, seven years.

Oh Lord. Wow. Well, this is your second time. On the podcast. First time since you left New York City.

Yeah. So I left New York City, what, 2018. Yeah. So I came back to California and I was the shelter and behavior manager for a shelter in the Bay Area. So I worked from 2018 to 2020 as a shelter manager and behavior manager and on my long traffic field drives from...

Daily City to Palo Alto, I would talk to myself, think about things. And I realized, I was like, oh, you know what? I should probably go back and get my PhD because I have more questions about training and behavior in my life that I would like answered. So I reached out to Dr. Clive Nguyen at Arizona State.

And in the midst of the pandemic, Applied, I got in. And so I did my first year all virtually. So I stayed in the Bay Area and now I'm officially, I've been officially in Arizona for 10 months. And so I'm now in my second year of my PhD in the technically, I'm in the psychology department, technically behavioral neuroscience and comparative psychology. But to back up a little bit, you having worked in a shelter so extensively now at this point, if someone's going to a shelter thinking about getting a dog, do you have any pieces of advice?

Yeah, for sure. Before I started the School For The Dogs, I had shelter experience. I had done foster stuff. While I was at School For The Dogs, I did some per diem shelter stuff. The takeaways I have for people that are adopting a dog at the shelter is...

One of the big things that I always hearken to people is there's this kind of idea of trauma in the shelter world. Trauma equals damage equals fix equals savior complex in some context. And I always say, you know, not to say that... Trauma does not exist in shelter dogs. It definitely does.

I have definitely seen it. But the scared, shy dog in the shelter that is scared of men doesn't automate, you know, most people see that and they go, oh my God, it must be hit by, you know. Men on a regular basis, and that's why it hates men. And, you know, when I was working with kids at the shelter camps, I would always say, well, that could have happened. But the dog could also have been living with a little old lady that didn't really take the dog out of the house, and the dog got love and attention all the time, but didn't really get socialized.

I was like, does that sound like trauma and abuse? No, it doesn't. But it just is a matter of socialization. So I was trying to try to reframe that for people. Some people do like to go to that kind of baseline level in the context of like, you know, there is a savior complex that goes into it.

But I think for the majority of the dogs. They're there because they're strays or there was too many of them or someone couldn't take care of them or housing issues, all that kind of stuff. And I think a key thing too, and I think we saw this with dogs that would come in from breeders, is that you would have a set of lovely dogs at the shelter that would be there. And this is a common story. You know, all these lovely dogs that would be there.

I remember we had this one litter of puppies that Of course, was, you know, very cute, but they weren't chihuahuas and they weren't pity puppies. And therefore, we opened at like nine. And at eight o'clock, there was like a horde of people waiting outside for these puppies. And my staff and I just were walking around. We're like, go look outside and see all the amazing dogs outside.

And they were like, no, we want the puppies. Because there is this mindset of like the socialization development. And when you're in the context of a shelter environment, you have people that are coming in that are saying, I'll know the background of my dog. I'll know the behavior. I won't have behavior problems.

One of the things I would always try to remind people, and like I said, this is something that we saw with dogs that we would get, people would get from breeders at school for dogs, is that there's always these secondary fear periods, right? So just because you got the dog as a puppy doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to have that same Idealized behavior that you're going to have. And so, you know, giving people the realization that, sure, just because you're getting into the puppy, that's going to be great. And you're going to have some impact on the socialization. But don't think that's, you know, the end all be all.

And an adult dog at the shelter that might be, quote unquote, more permanent in its behavior might be just as good. So it was kind of combating those kind of stereotypes. So talk to me about this paper you just had published. So this just happens to be one aspect of my research theme. Most people have this thematic tie that would go through the different projects that they'll work through for their ultimate dissertation.

And for me, the dissertation, it's going to be kind of like a holistic write-up framing all my potential research projects together, which this includes. You know, there's this concept in the, I would say primarily, positive reinforcement world, where we kind of try to be deliberate in language use, particularly with this idea of cue versus command, right? And I feel like this is just kind of this like understanding, it's kind of like this black box of like, okay, positive reinforcement trainers, we don't say command because it has this like, Very coercive connotation and Q is much, much lighter in context. And, you know, there's nothing written down. It's just, you know, this is kind of the folklore that is our awareness.

And so I ended up taking a class my fall semester of last year, and it happened to be this like qualitative data analysis class. It got me thinking about this idea of like language use and themes that are underlying like how we describe things. So that kind of motivated me to take a look at how trainers describe their work, which ultimately is what... What came out in this publication. There's multiple different ways that trainers talk about their work, given that people are shopping around for a dog trainer.

They're looking at, you know, their training statement, their philosophy, their about me page. So I figured that was kind of the good shot to start with in that. Text Analysis. Ultimately, the paper came to be in, I wanted to try to get as wide as the range as possible of diversity for the different areas. So I did 10 US cities.

I utilized a Yelp. I looked at the highest rated trainers in that area of the identified city with the logic being that I wanted to find trainers that are actually being used by the public, right? I wanted to kind of get that Semi, quasi-randomized thing, but I wanted to, you know, see what are trainers that are actively being used, actively being recommended? What are they saying, right? And what are the differences and similarities across these trainers?

I gathered those philosophy statements beyond those philosophy statements. I kind of looked through and identified them as, initially, I had it as positive reinforcement and balanced because that's kind of our knowledge. That ended up in the paper being described as, you know, aversive versus non-aversive trainers. That in and of itself was a very interesting experience. And it wasn't super easy to identify these trainers.

Beyond their philosophy statements. I wrote about it in one of the papers, this one trainer that was, I believe, out of Austin. And their whole philosophy statement was about angels and spirits and Buddha and Dharma and all this stuff. And I was like, I don't understand what you're talking. I'm a trainer and I don't understand what you're talking about.

And then you finally look on the bottom portion of their page and they're like, we're 100% positive reinforcement training. And I was like... How would I have known that? You have a whole three paragraphs. What is 100% positive reinforcement training anyway?

Well, precisely. I didn't shatter these people. Someone was asking me recently. I made some sort of comment about, well, there's kind of this divide in the world of dog training between... And they were like, well, how would you explain that?

I was like, well, I guess... Broadly speaking, they're the trainers who call themselves positive reinforcement trainers or clicker trainers or whatever, who believe that... That we should be using the least invasive methods possible, the most minimally inversive methods possible. Negative reinforcement, positive punishment should really be very much last resorts and that we're doing everything we can to set up situations so we get behaviors we want and create associations to get behaviors we want. Sometimes we call this science-based, but that's...

It could be confusing because you could be operating in the realm of silence and losing punishment too. So the other side of this division are people who often call themselves balance trainers, although maybe you came up with other ways that they refer to themselves, but balance basically is a euphemism for saying we're going to use a balance between punishment and reinforcement to... Get what we need, which just always confuses me because I always feel like, but what about the classical conditioning? What about the associations the dog is making when you're using punishment? But anyway, I said, then there's this sort of, within that group, usually, there's also this bubble within all of it that I think of as covering the balanced training world, but...

What you're describing is maybe some of this bubble also extends into what might be called the positive reinforcement dog training world, which is like the snake oil salesman of having it be all about, it's all about your energy and your presence and it's like this new agey This sort of like new agey take on dog training that I actually think is kind of new. Like I don't think you're going to find that if you're researching dog training from like the mid-1900s that people are going to say like you need to be a more centered person or you know or like the Cesar Millan show that came out last summer. I forget exactly what it was called but it was something called something like Better Human Better Dog and the posters all showed him with this like beatific grin with his eyes closed as if like the dogs were meditating too and Yeah, so it's interesting. I mean, how the paper ultimately got late, you know, titled, you know, I had wanted to title it, fun fact, I had wanted to title it like to cue or to command. But then ultimately, as my advisor pointed out, he was like, you know, it doesn't really make sense to do that, because you actually didn't see that those two words come up all that often, right?

I'd gone into this mindset with my project being that like, it was so it was all based on this anecdote that I had had of this like, To cue versus command. And it never came up in really the philosophies. I think out of the 100 philosophies, the about me, whatever statements that I call them, it only came up twice. And it actually did not support those three incidents that actually did not support my argument. So I ended up titling the paper, this training with the science versus nature.

So despite that one incident of the new agey group that identified with a little sidebar of positive reinforcement, you know, the incidences of this nature, natural energy, mother nature instinct, all that kind of stuff, all tied in with these non-aversive, these aversive trainers, the aversive balance trainers. With this idea of, you know, you would see things of, you know, what you just said, right? I have to train with my energy. There's a vibe you have to go to. I mean, I think how I would describe kind of the divide is that it's this like...

Nature is natural is good, right? It's the idea that if it happens in nature and you're like a wolf and this is how wolves are and wolves aren't touched by science, then it has to be good and normal and that's the best way to operate, right? Dogs don't, wolves don't operate in this idea of, you know, clickers and all that kind of stuff. And so if they train with animals, If they communicate with their energy and their body language, then a human doing that is going to be just as good and the best way to train a dog because dogs equal wolves. I think harkens back to this whole idea of the misinformation about dominance and that kind of thing.

Dominance and alpha, actually, and I think that was kind of my... Discuss this in the paper, but alpha and dominance, those concepts actually never came up in any of the philosophies. And, you know, if I was going to hypothesize, I would say it's kind of this like trying to avoid the bad connotation, because those are the two words that I think people, I think normal people do use them. But if someone is somewhat aware of this divide in the training world, It's this idea that alpha doesn't really exist. And so actually it was very, and I could totally be wrong in that hypothesis, but the fact that none of them, none of the trainers used that, I thought was really interesting actually.

It's interesting that you did expect to see the words cue and command used differently, but those didn't come up that much. I think though, even if they did, command has become, we associate that so strongly with dogs. That the true connotation of it, I feel like, is lost on your average dog owner in a way that's sort of understandable and, I don't know, doesn't cause me to lose much sleep, I guess. Yeah, so... I mean, I feel like I might tell someone to give a command, even though I know it's not really a command.

Yeah, I do that too. Just because it's, like, easily understood. Yeah. And it was actually interesting that two... So there was three...

Three documents or three philosophy statements in which either of those words occurred. The only positive reinforcement, non-aversive, Trainer philosophy statement that popped up with either Q or command. Incidentally, popped up with both because part of their philosophy statement was actually a whole paragraph dedicated to this concept of Q versus command and how they didn't want to use the word command and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this is what I found really interesting because... As positive reinforcement trainers, we have this idea, oh, we want to see Q, it has a better blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

The two incidences of Q in the balanced aversive trainers actually was in the context of giving an animal an A signal prior to a correction coming, which is totally- Which is a cue. Which totally, yeah, that is a cue. But it's totally not what positive reinforcement trainers are meaning when we're saying cue. So this whole idea that like, you know, what you say from one trainer can totally mean a different thing for another trainer. I mean, it's just everyone speaking gobbledygook at the end of the day is kind of my takeaway from this paper.

You know, it sounds very pessimistic to say it like that, but, you know. There's a word that I think you know gets under my skin, which is the word energy. And I don't remember reading that in the paper. I mean, maybe that's just because it doesn't come up on About Pages. It didn't come up all too much.

But if it did, I had these overarching codes. And I did have these overarching codes. And energy, it was under that Mother Nature instinct kind of thing. It was this thematic idea. Of Mother Nature being... Nature, energy, instinct, you know, that kind of thing.

Yeah. So you took... So talk to me a little bit about the process of setting this up. You chose 10... 10 U.S.

cities, Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle. So I tried to like get the base, right? Yeah. So then I then went to the Yelp pages for those things. I typed in like dog trainer.

And then so basically then I went onto each of those websites. And if I chose as best as possible, the top 10, you know, sometimes you had to weed them out because it was like a boarding place or whatever. So I tried to do someone that was strictly doing training. And then went onto their sites, got some semblance of whether, you know, some people actually say training philosophy, some people say about me, essentially copied that, tried to Anonymize it as best as possible. And then I went through on my back end and basically, you know, super low tech had a spreadsheet where I tried to identify the gender of what I would claim as like the head trainer, because then either pulling it from their philosophy page or somewhere else on their page, identify kind of their methodology.

Like I said, this was actually much more difficult than I expected. If I remember the breakdown correctly, it was like about 50 or so were pretty obvious from their philosophy page, right? They said, you know, I used a balanced approach or I only use 100% positive reinforcement, force-free, whatever designation they want. And so they were identified as aversive or non-aversive. Some didn't describe that, but then I went based on tool use, right?

So if they had pictures on their website of, you know, a dog wearing a prong collar or a dog wearing... Electronic caller, shock caller. Then they were identified as aversive because obviously they showed some willingness to use some type of aversive. And then even for that, that wasn't obvious. So then I had to go for another quarter.

I had to go into the actual Yelp reviews and basically see what the people were reporting. So definitely not an exact science. And I'm sure some trainers that Or potentially included in the study would argue that they don't follow that or otherwise. But that was the best option I had. And that for me just kind of was supportive of how potentially non-helpful.

If an owner was really trying to do their due diligence and actually try to understand what type of training they were, it's pretty opaque. Which is not great for our training community. So then I had that. And then the third level of kind of analysis was this idea of the certification. So, I grouped it.

I kind of parsed it out. I did a certification through kind of these third-party organizations. So, Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers, the CCPDT. I did the International Association for Animal Behavior Consultants, so IABC. And then in the paper, I kind of grouped those as Non-aversive leaning, right?

They have, you know, most of them have an ethics statement. They have a Lima policy of the least invasive, minimally aversive, some kind of idea to this humanoid hierarchy. And then there was the third kind of third party... Group that I identified, which is the International Association for Canine Professionals. And that, I would argue, is kind of more aversive leaning.

They have kind of this breakdown on their website that says none of their members should degrade other members within their community for any type of tool that they might use in the context in which they use them. So then I tried to go through all the 100 trainers that I collected. And see if they had a certification. So some of them were very obvious. I have a certification.

They link. I didn't include, for specific reasons, the third-party designations I included because there's some, the third-party organizations, there's some type of testing requirement and some type of ethical statement. So you have to have some quote-unquote level of education to have that I didn't include things like membership to APDT because that's just a pain thing. One of the things that I came across for this International Association for Canine Professionals is none of the trainers in my sample site were... Certified through that.

There is, for that organization, a certification test that you can't take and be a certificate, but none of them were. And I tried my best to actually verify that because some of them were, you can be a paying member like APDT, but the website made it actually quite difficult for me to parse out who is actually potentially just paying dues and who is actually taking the test. It's confusing, huh? I know, yeah. Yeah, and then I had that other level of the training schools.

So while within the positive reinforcement community, we have the Academy of Dog Trainers and Karen Pryor, technically speaking, there's no overarching organization that can verify the basis for any of those organizations. And so I included that as kind of this idea that, yes, These people are saying that they have some level of education, but, you know, there might not necessarily be any, like, quote-unquote, after testing, continuing education, like there was that third party. But ultimately, at the end of the day, not that many people were certified and not that many people did training school. So, once again, it's kind of a wash. And was that the same whether they were on the balance side or the positive reinforcement side?

No. If you were going to be certified, you were definitely going to be leaning towards non-aversive positive reinforcement methods and you were going to be a woman, which was not wholly surprising to me. The research, previous literature that has kind of analyzed the Dog trainers has shown positive reinforcement, non-reversive trainers leaning more towards the female side. You know, some of these papers, previous literature pointed to the kind of, you know, the stereotype of this machismo macho man that is on the balanced, reversive side versus, you know, the innocent little waif of a woman with her clicker on the positive reinforcement side. Of these kind of two stereotypes.

So it wasn't wholly surprising that the positive reinforcement coincided with women and that the positive reinforcement coincided with certification. I kind of expected that. It was nice that the statistics supported me in that. But yeah, and I mean, 100 is a pretty good sample size. I would imagine that I would probably see a similar trend if I expanded the study.

The one thing that I did find surprising, and that was kind of a happy coincidence, is that a lot of, I mean... I would say most people that, you know, go out and about in their daily lives are seeing a lot of female women that are female women, women that are in the, you know, animal workforce, right? You're seeing them in shelters, you're seeing them in zoos, you're seeing them in the dog training world. And incidentally, I actually had a pretty even split for gender of head dog trainers in that, you know, head trainer was male. And female was almost like a 50-50, literally, which was interesting to me in the sense that I would have potentially hypothesized more female trainers just across the board for all of the philosophy statements.

One of my hypotheses to why it might have been almost a 50-50 split for a head trainer kind of tied into this idea of The fact that head trainers are often similar to School For The Dogs, right? That head trainers are often the founders or the owners for the organization. And generally speaking, for the United States, men tend to be more private, small business owners. And so that also could have been, you know, just kind of a confound of, you know, that. So, but it was a pretty good sample for me just searching Yelp.

Let me, yeah, let me, I was going to maybe read a little bit here. This is from the discussion section. We found that some of the word choices dog trainers made in the training philosophy sections of the website distinguish between their training methods. Philosophies were not consistent in how often individual codes, words and phrases, were used, but certain codes distinguish training methodologies. Men and women differed in their code use, and more women than men followed a non-aversive methodology.

Finally, most individuals who held a certification either from a third party organization or a training school practice of non-aversive methodology. Training philosophies were not generally clear about their approach. Of 100 philosophies examined, only 56 provided an unambiguous self-identification of training method, either non-aversive identifying as positive reinforcement or aversive identifying as balanced, even close inspection of the context in which phrases or words were used by a professional with over 10 years' experience in the field. Did not reveal training method without adding clues such as training equipment being used or reference to clients' reviews of their services. The overall frequency of code use also did not provide a clear division between the language use of non-aversive and aversive trainers.

However, certain code distinctions like shock collar versus electronic collar readily distinguished between non-aversive and aversive trainers. These codes were not used often enough to be useful indicators of training approach. Although simple code frequencies in the philosophies analyzed here did not distinguish between training methods, closer inspection of the context in which codes were used provided more information about specific training methods. For example, the code positive reinforcement was used by aversive trainers as a reference to one of the types of operant conditioning they used, whereas non-aversive trainers used this code to define their method as purely positive. The codes, this is, this part I thought was interesting.

The codes electronic collar and shock collar were not widely used, but their context provided insight into a trainer's mindset. Aversive trainers only used electronic collar, whereas non-aversive trainers use of shock to refer to the same devices suggests a much more negative and emotive view. An adjective, like electronic, solely identifies what the device is made from, electronic circuits. It could describe any sort of electronic device that a dog may wear on its neck, a light to wear at night, an activity monitor, or as in this case, anything to provide aversive stimulation to the dog. On the other hand, the adjective shock harkens to a concept of being jostled or experiencing a sudden event.

The word shock brings up ideas of injury and jarring, often negative events. The different words used to label the same device accentuate how a trainer would want the device to be perceived by the public. Code occurrences formed clusters relating to their use in trainer philosophies. Communication, positive reinforcement, and effective were the most frequently used across all philosophies and therefore were often the stem codes for code clusters. In the co-occurrence map for non-aversive trainers, concepts like communication, positive reinforcement, science, and effective clustered closely together.

This grouping of codes refers to the framework that science provides a foundation for effective training through positive reinforcement. So one thing I took away from that was... Oh, and then here, I wanted to read this part too. It is unsurprising, I'm scrolling down a little bit. It is unsurprising that the two types of trainers who, it is unsurprising that the two types of trainers were distinguished by their use of the terms positive reinforcement and balance approach since those terms define their methods.

Interestingly, however, this division could also be seen in the use of terms science and mother nature, respectively. Non-aversive trainers, particularly those with certification strongly identified with science, The increased use of science by non-aversive trainers likely connects to recent scientific literature that notes the welfare benefits of positive reinforcement training rather than aversive methods. Additionally, identifying with science could intensify the idea that this method of training is more valuable than non-science training. Non-aversive trainers also did not use the term mother nature or pack leadership, likely because these concepts have been criticized by leaders in the animal training world. These codes were only used by aversive trainers, likely in part due to their prevalent history in the dog training world and renewed popularity in the early 2000s with the rise of dog training shows and social media.

Despite scientific literature denouncing these concepts when these theories are presented in the popular media, Especially when they are presented solving intense problems in one simple episode, it is easy to understand why dog owners may seek trainers who espouse similar theories. Very, very well put. Thank you. Yeah, I think that, I mean, Mother Nature is a kind of amorphous idea, like energy. Like, does nature exist as a thing?

Yes. Does energy exist as a thing? Yes. But the way that the word nature is thrown around in dog training, ditto the word energy. I mean, do packs exist?

Yes. Yeah. And to indicate other things in a way that, I mean, even the word science is confusing because, you know, nature, there's science and nature, right? Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's kind of, you know, to go back to that top section where you were talking about this idea of, you know, people saying positive reinforcement, you know, that was kind of, I remember reading one of these one times and I was like, oh, that seems like reading one of the philosophies.

I was like, oh, that seems so nefarious because it was like the way that it was written, you know, if you're, because... Positive reinforcement, as you have discussed in your podcast and as we have had conversations, positive reinforcement is not an ideal concept because people can use positive reinforcement if they're balanced, right? If they use aversives. And you can positively reinforce behaviors you don't like, too. Yes.

So... But I think that is one concept that dog owners do know. So this concept where people, aversive trainers potentially are using, you know, words like we do positive reinforcement and then once the dog, then there's a learning phase, right? And so like, so that was, I was like, I read it and I was like, oh, that's so like nefarious. Yeah.

And so it was like this idea that like, you know, oh, we'll do the baseline behaviors of like positive reinforcement for like, you know, whatever. And then like once the dog needs to actually learn something, then it would, you know, you would come out with the other forms of operant conditioning, which is like the, you know, the learning phase, right? So that's where, you know, that negative reinforcement, positive punishment comes in. What I think people misunderstand is that positive reinforcement is not just being nicey-nice all the time and then you got to get serious, which it sounds kind of like what you're... Yeah, and I think that was also something that I picked up on with this concept of real life.

I thought that was a very interesting concept and something that I think it only happened like once. I mean, it wasn't that frequent of a code, but if it did come up, it happened like maybe once in a positive reinforcement, but much more often. And it was this concept of, you know, oh, we train for like real world conditions as if like positive non-aversive trainers are like training in a bubble and then like the bubble doesn't translate to anywhere else. And so your dog is just like hopeless and like living, you know, Can't cope with life. So it was this, you know, I think that was a very interesting thing that came up where, you know, it kind of ties into this idea of positive reinforcement, non-aversive trainers going to this hearts and stars and, you know, we just throw cookies at the situation and, you know, it's not going to help the animal actually understand.

Yeah. So that came up with this, you know, real life, we train in real life, and the dog can understand real world conditions. And that is a very valuable concept for owners who are potentially having behavior problems with their dog, right? They're having behavior problems with their dog in a real world situation, like walking with their dog down the street, and having a trainer tell them that they're going to help them in that exact situation, as opposed to, you know... Joe Schmell over there with, yeah, who's doing it in a padded room and, you know, won't be able to help you until 20 years down the line where your dog is old and enfeebled and not reactive anymore is not a great concept.

These words are the first things that people are seeing when they're doing these, looking at these websites. And that's what you're picking up on these, you know, kind of emotions that people are hoping for. Then there's, you know, this whole thing of pack leader, which obviously that didn't occur for any of the non-aversive trainers. Not super surprising given, you know, this pushback with Cesar Millan. And, you know, I think that is one of the things if people are somewhat aware of the...

The world that that concept does exist. But like I said, PAC later came up, but things like alpha and dominant, those terms never came up. So just interesting what people are still honing on to and not. Well, I guess as a business owner, are there any takeaways that you saw on About Pages that you think are best practices? Like, can we improve our frequently asked page or were there any that you saw that were like, this place really hits the nail on the head?

I mean, I think the ones where people are talking about they're like, and I, you know, not to... You know, bash. But I think the aversive trainers, this goes back to this kind of idea of, you know, and I think this is, you know, that idea that like Cesar Millan made very popular was, you know, he's always loved dogs. He's lived around dogs. He is a dog.

And that is why he is best suited for this. So... One of the things that, and it's also, I just have a visceral response to it. But, you know, this kind of idea of, I've always grown up around dogs, therefore I'm the best person to train your dog, from my perspective is not great. So I always kind of think it's, it kind of annoys me or it's like a little bit of a minor pet peeve.

I mean, it's such a silly thing that I feel embarrassed even saying that. But when I do go to a, The website of a trainer who I think uses methods that I support and the first sentence of their bio is, you know, so-and-so has loved dogs as long as she can remember, which is like the bio of like... I don't know, 80% of people who work with dogs. I feel like, really? Is that, like, do you read the, do you read, like, would you read, like, the bio of a pilot and be like, ah, clearly they're a pilot because they always loved airplanes when they were.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, like, I don't care that you loved airplanes when you were a kid. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think. I mean, my takeaway for what I would recommend for trainers is to be upfront and as obvious. I mean, obviously that's where I'm going with this, is to be as upfront as possible about, you know, what tools you're willing to use or not, you know, what methods you're going to be using, I think is really powerful.

And I think, you know, at the end of the conclusion of the paper was that right now we're not at that point. Even though as much as I would like to think that non-aversive trainers are all holistically wonderful, I mean, there was no consistency across non-aversive trainers, right? So I can't even say that all non-aversive trainers are universally great. And so, you know, you have a hope, you have a goal. But the best way to know that if you're going to be training for your dog is letting someone come observe, being willing to observe someone's training sessions, an active training session.

And as a trainer, being willing to have people come and look at your stuff. You know, these are people that are going to be paying you money and you can either hedge them at the bet and let them see your stuff. Or you can have them sign on, pay money, and then get angry. And, you know, having, you know, Yelp reviews are one thing. Obviously, that wasn't a metric that I used for this study.

But we all know people that are more apt to write on Yelp or not. I tended to have more positive reviews, but we know people use Yelp for nefarious deeds. So if, you know, you have someone being able to come to your class and ask, Active people that are there, what their opinion is, I think that goes a long way for you being a trainer. But, you know, ultimately at the end of the day is that there needs to be more, I mean, one of my big pieces for this was this whole certification thing, which... Could be a whole other podcast topic, and we can touch on it if you want.

But this whole idea of the owner education, right? Sure, this paper's, I'm obviously proud of this paper. I think it's important. But if it doesn't get to the owners, then it's bupkis, right? And I think that's a lot for most of our scientific literature, is that if it's not actually getting to one, the trainers, and two, the actual people, then it's useless.

And so it's this whole concept of how do you get owner education, And making sure the trainers are educated. And I don't readily have an answer to that. Huh. Well, since we're talking about it, it's making me think maybe we need a page on our website that's like, here are words that are commonly used in the world of dog training. And here is how to understand what they mean.

I mean, yeah, I think that kind of stuff is definitely helpful because you're also showing yourself not just like, I am the best, but like people shop around, right? And you have to be aware of that. And like, you have to be, I think being upfront about yourself in the context that you live in as a business is, I think, very important. Yeah. And you can't imagine that people are only going to search for one thing.

I mean, I know for myself, I'm constantly on people's websites. And if it doesn't appeal to me or it doesn't make sense what they're saying, I'm not going to go to them. But also, I mean, I'm not necessarily the type of person that wants someone that's going to be badmouthing other people. Right. And that's what it is.

And so, like, if you're encouraging people to say, like, hey, we know that you might not be shopping for us, but if this is the aim that you're looking for, this is the guide to. Right. It's tricky because it's hard as a business owner to be gracious in that way. And yet, you know, we are also a mission-driven business, as I think are most dog trainers. So it's hard to just sort of not take a stance against training that we think is ultimately sometimes harmful.

Yeah. And I think, I mean... And, you know, if we're going to touch on, you know, this concept of the certification is that, you know, we're not at a, I don't think the world at this point, owners might be aware that there are different methods of training. But as the fact that I was select, you know, I got a number of aversive trainers that had equally good reviews and opinions is that if owners are not aware of the potential welfare effects, If owners are not cognizant of kind of this whole scientific concept that is happening, then there's not gonna be a demand for certification or licensing or minimal use of reversives, right? We can, trainers can talk all day about this whole thing about like, we need more certification.

And I think there's, you know, there's a certification bill going up in California right now. But like, ultimately, like, The owners aren't going to vote for it if they don't have an understanding of why it's important. And once again, how do we best get that education to people? I don't know, because right now people get their education on social media and there's a lot of garbage out there from both sides. And it's very, the garbage on both sides is very anti both sides.

And that's not super appealing to an owner that is trying to get the most information that they're trying to get. And, you know, I think it's hard. And right now, the science is saying that we don't have enough information about aversive methods and the welfare effects. And I think for me, the big thing is that owners, once again, not educated enough to utilize these techniques officially. You know, you and I were having this text conversation about this whole idea of punishment.

In a very controlled laboratory environment with all the beautiful settings that you could control and with a rat or a dog or whatever you want to do, pigeon, could punishment work? Yeah, sure. You can stop a behavior. I mean, that's the whole concept. Skinner did that.

Can that... Translate to a real world environment with a random owner that is walking down the street and not having perfect timing or doesn't set the intensity correctly or is late. No, not at this point. And that's where my rationale for why punishment shouldn't be used by Dog trainers is that the translation point is just not there. And also, we're not living with rats in a lab.

We're living with animals. Yeah, dogs in context and all that kind of stuff. So I think it's important that there is education and certification. But right now, because the sides are so combative on either side that it's... And it's a very black and white context that trying to get something that either side will agree to is hard.

But at the end of the day, there has to be some middle ground because I think Some type of licensing or certification just for a minimal level of education. And I'm not even, I mean, I'm sure people will get upset at me. I'm not even saying that the licensing would require everyone to be 100% non-reversive. That would be the ideal. That would be great, right?

Everyone has that level of education. Everyone has that ability to do that. I don't think that's how America is structured, if anyone looks at general politics. And unfortunately, I think having that kind of black and white mentality of having that move to some type of licensing or certification is not ideal because it does not give potential leniency to And you would never get anything passed. And I think really at the end of the day, if people are thinking about it or wanting it, is that we need some minimal control, right?

Some minimal level of education. And that all dog trainers, you know, have to do just like, you know, we had, you know, you guys had to do in New York, you had to do that handling animal thing, right? You know, completely useless. I mean, yes, but for us, it was useless for School For The Dogs. But something like that.

For anyone listening, basically, if you run a facility with animals in New York City, you have to take this animal handling course. And I mean, as far as I could tell, it was mostly managers at Petco. And we had to take this two-day course that was so intensely boring and had nothing to do with anything. I remember they had like a list of animals that you can't have as pets in New York City, which I mean, I guess is something that someone has to learn. But I'm like, you know what?

I'm aware that you probably shouldn't have a cheetah. Yeah. Yeah. So this is a whole interesting concept, right? The fact that there is that minimal licensing for staff members working at a petco, and there's not something that, you know, there's not a minimal, something minimal to have people that are dealing with sharp, pokey teeth and dogs that potentially have behavior problems is like ludicrous to me.

Or that, you know, there's more licensing required to paint someone's toenails. Yeah, but once again, I think this goes back to, you know, as a trainer, we can recognize that. Other trainers can recognize that, but nothing's going to happen unless owners are aware that there is something that doesn't exist and yet exists for so many other things and demand it. If owners continue to be happy with the status quo and continue to hire trainers that don't have certification or education, then nothing's going to change. And so it's getting back to that owner education understanding.

Yeah. And I don't have the perfect answer to this, obviously. I will claim that. I just think as a normal human, we should have some level that people know how to handle dogs.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that most people have no idea that there is more than one way to train a dog. And I think there's a disconnect, too, of... What things are defined as, right? There was a study that came out from, it came out recently, it was out of Tufts, and it was, I think it was puppies that came through the vet clinic or something like that.

And they had done a study with these people and they basically said, you know, what are you using to train your dog? And so they asked on a holistic level, what methods are you using? And then they asked kind of... What tools are you using for leash walking or whatever like that? And there was this big disconnect between people that were using things like prongs and e-collars and e-collar shot callers and choke chains and them saying, oh, I'm 100% non-averse of positive reinforcement, right?

So there's the disconnect even at that base level. Interesting. Yeah. I can send you the link for the study. I mean, I haven't experienced that, but I certainly have experienced people using something aversive with their dog or punishing their dog and saying, I would never use anything aversive.

I would never punish. Well, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that was kind of what this was getting at with these people. And I always do say this as a caveat.

As non-aversive trainers, we're trying to be as non-aversive as we can. But, you know, things like leashes can be punishing. So, like, I can recognize that from, like, a scientific perspective, right? A dog might want to roam free. They can't roam free in New York City.

You are decreasing the likelihood that the dog is going to continue to run when you have, you know, and it can be an aversive experience for some dogs. So, you know, recognizing that, but, you know, on these big levels of things that are actively using discomfort to, aversive discomfort to change the dog's behavior and whether people recognize that is interesting. So certainly you're someone who has a point of view, which I know is complicated as a researcher, but it also makes you well, it makes you certainly more informed than, uh, Than your average dog trainer. Yes. So how do you explain to someone who says, for instance, this dog would have been put down if not for the fact that we decided to use, I don't know, say, a prong collar?

Oh, yes. Oh, such a hot button topic. Because I think we were chatting before about that. I forget if you used the term or if I saw it somewhere else, but like the dead dog walking term. Have you heard that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that was in the video. And it didn't come up super often in the philosophy statements, but I think there was one trainer in particular that basically said something to the effect of, I've had dogs that... Would have been dead or, you know, euthanized had it not been for my techniques. And that often was a mindset of the ones that it came up with.

And what I've just seen anecdotally is this of the aversive trainer, right? This concept of last resort. And now the dog is living a happy copacetic copacetic life with whatever equipment it is. And that's such a difficult concept. And I think it would be lovely if it was just potentially a prong caller.

I think most of the time it's to the more aversive level of a shocker and electronic caller. And I think that's hard. I think... You have to look at it from, for me, it comes in this, you know, ties into a little bit of my shelter background. And I'm sure some people have a much different opinion than me.

And this ties back into understanding what is idealized welfare or what is good welfare for a dog. And I don't necessarily think science knows that either. But once again, But is it a quantity versus a quality thing, right? Are we making that decision because we want to be a society that never has to euthanize a dog? Potentially.

And I think for some shelters that definitely does occur. I am not necessarily of that mindset, and I have had to make decisions in relations to that of, you know, rescue options for a dog that did have some pretty severe aggression issues and... None of the rescue organizations I had reached out to were willing to take the case on, understandably. And the one option that did come up was very open and said they used aversive methods. And for me, that was not a situation I wanted to place that dog in.

I didn't necessarily see that as a good quality of life for that dog. You know, the risk is always there. And I think that's something to really... Be mindful of the risk of, you know, if a dog has a history of aggressive behavior, putting a electronic collar, shot collar on the dog does not necessarily minimize, I mean, does not necessarily reduce that to zero, right? You might reduce the behavior.

Potentially, if it's done correctly, which is a whole other. It might also intensify the stress. You could intensify the behavior. Yeah, you could intensify the behavior. And that is one of the, if you look at historical papers on punishment in the laboratory environment, the idea of this redirected aggression, that definitely is the case.

And for me, it was, there just seemed to be so many potential spots where Error could occur, right? Is the dog always wearing the e-collar? What happens when the dog potentially gets adopted, right? Where are the gap points? And ethically, from a standpoint of safety for the public and for the quality of that dog's life, I didn't think that was an appropriate decision.

And so I think that really comes down to those decisions where people are making those statements. And it's recognizing what are kind of the motivations behind that and the motivations for later understanding how that potential tool is being implemented and how that might affect the dog. And that's kind of, I mean, at the end of the day, we have a ton of dogs. And I think this whole gets to this whole idea of this like demonizing of the behavioral euthanasia. But, you know, there are a lot of dogs that if we're coming out from a shelter perspective, there are a lot of dogs out there that need to be adopted.

And putting energy and resources and dogs in an aversive condition just doesn't seem appropriate, appropriate to me. Yeah. So that's my long spiel on that. Well, again, though, I think it's easy to reduce kill shelters and non-kill shelters to good and bad. Yep, for sure.

Or I think it's either way, bad and good. Any shelter that would dare euthanize any animals is bad. And any shelter that does everything to save every animal is good. And certainly I'm not in the camp of like, hey, let's go kill dogs. Yeah.

And I think that... But I think anyone at any shelter that is quote unquote labeled as a kill shelter, I don't think any of them want to be in that position, right? You're working there because you love animals. I mean, it's as simple as that. And no one wants to be put in that position.

Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, it comes down to that safety element and for me is just kind of the quality of life. And as I kind of alluded to, this whole concept of welfare and coping and stuff like that, we don't really have good information on that and we try as best as possible. But dogs in particular are so variable and so like what one dog likes, another dog doesn't, that We don't have a little quick guidebook in the scientific literature that says, this is telling me the dog dislikes life versus this dog loves life.

And so it's hard. It's a judgment call and that gets difficult. Well, this is your first published paper, right? This is my first published paper. Where was it published again?

So fancy, Anthrozoos. So Anthrozoos is kind of the big paper for, it's the, Publication for the International Society of Anthrozoology. So they have a conference and members. And so basically it's kind of the anthrozoos being this idea of human-animal interaction. What's the rest of your PhD studies?

Where do you see that taking you? So I'm continuing with this trend of kind of understanding Training Methodologies and kind of the rationale for people using them. So I have some write-up that I need to do on some surveys that I run that I ran in regards to like what type of method do you use for... For training a specific, combating a specific problem behavior. And then, you know, who gave you that recommendation?

And somewhat a spoiler, as much as we were talking about this whole thing about trainers, Trainers didn't come up that often in frequency of people actually seeking advice from them. It was friends and family members. I didn't particularly find that super surprising. And then this other study that I'm trying to get off the ground, but we can understandably has some potential... Disrespect or not disrespect, but disagreement on it is that from a scientific perspective, there has been research done about welfare generally in regards to the use of aversives versus non-aversive methods.

You know, there's been a number of papers that have looked at kind of training classes that use aversive methods versus training classes that use non-aversive methods. And then obviously there's A number of studies that have made maids in regards to the efficacy and welfare in regards to electronic collars, shot collars. I find it interesting that there's nothing really in regards to prong collars. And I think those, if someone is going to use an aversive method, they're going to often default to that just for leash methods. And no one really has analyzed that.

You know, I think from a positive reinforcement, non-aversive training mentality, we say those aren't good because we understand that they're coming from some level of discomfort from the fact that they're using negative reinforcement, but we don't actually have any science to stand on. And so my rationale as... Historically, being a trainer, but coming from a scientific perspective, it would be nice to have some science on anything. So I am trying to get something going in terms of that, doing some kind of comparison analysis of that versus other leash techniques. So how do you go about doing that?

Well, it's been this attempt for the last year. Do you get a litter of puppies and have three people and three dogs? I'm looking potentially at shelter environments that have used these tools before, so we're not necessarily putting them... In terrible positions. But it would be very brief, short walks and looking at kind of this, you know, does any device reduce pulling, what it is, and then looking at the resulting behavior from the dog.

And just trying to get some information. I mean, that being said, there's really not a lot of great research out there about harnesses. And, you know... I'm sure you are aware that like, you know, we don't tend to use back clip harnesses because they can increase pulling. And there was a recent study that did show that in comparison to a collar, but harnesses in and of themselves can be restrictive for an animal.

So is that affecting welfare? I don't know. We have no idea. You know, we have this concept of their fabric and they're nice and we like them and they're soft and but, you know, they are restricting some level of movement. So how is that impacting the dog?

So just trying to kind of really expand the literature in the sense of getting the... I guess that's ultimately my goal, which is a big lofty goal for my PhD. I have lofty goals and I'm not getting a PhD. I know, yeah, yeah, yeah. But just trying to make sure that we have the most information when we're going out there.

And, you know, I will preface this as I do so that I don't necessarily think it's going to change my context. I don't plan on using a prong collar anytime soon. But I would like to understand what potentially is being affected by the dog on a variety of dogs. And even too, we theoretically slapped, and it sounds so reductive to say this, but we slapped harnesses on dogs all the time. But I don't know how the harness might be affecting particular dogs.

And that would be nice to know. Can I make it somewhat better? Can I adjust it? Is there a better option? That would be nice to know.

And just having that information. I've only recently encountered, maybe you've seen this before, hidden prong collars. They're like a prong collar, but then it's covered with like a, I don't know, like... Fabric? Nylon or ribbon or something.

Oh, no, I haven't. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's... If you Google it, you can see what I'm talking about. Yeah.

Which I was like, who's that for the benefit? Is that the benefit of the owner who doesn't want to see the prong? Or is it like trying to keep others from seeing it? Oh, it's the public. It's to avoid people like me that are spies.

It's to avoid people like me. It had the opposite effect on me where I saw people walking dogs with this thing on and I like ended up following them half the block like trying to see what it was. Maybe you should write a review on that on Amazon. If you are trying to avoid the public- Don't walk on my block. Don't walk on Annie's block.

She will just follow you down the street. I mean, yeah, the whole thing is really interesting. And I think, you know, I find it quite interesting that, you know, places like Petco last year made that, you know, the really big public statement that they said they weren't going to use shock collars. But like, you still go to Petco and you can still see chain collars and prong collars. And it's the level of reversiveness, right?

It's just interesting what gets picked up on the public concept. And if there is potentially a middle ground option that, you know, because once again, I don't think we're ever going to be able to get, given that how America is structured, we're never going to get to a point where we're going to be able to take any of these tools and throw them into, you know, a dumpster and animals can be perfect. It's just, it's not going to be there. But if we have the best information on them... We can learn how to use them better, potentially.

But people going to Amazon and buying these things is never going to be helpful. Even for a harness, I would argue. I just put an Amazon hidden prong collar. The first one that comes up is called dog spike collar. And the thing that's hiding the prong or whatever says on it, best friend.

Oh, yeah, I see that. Look at that.

Yeah, I mean, there's actually a lot of them. 2,000 reviews. I mean, like I said, if the public is asking for it, it doesn't matter. Whatever I say or we say or whoever, it doesn't at the end of the day. School, school for the dogs.

Thank you so much for listening. And special thanks to Bill and Lizzie of Toast Garden for the amazing theme song. You can find Toast Garden at youtube.com slash toastgarden. If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review on iTunes. You can also support us by shopping at storeforthedogs.com and you can learn more about us at schoolforthedogs.com.

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