Behaviourists Don't Understand Behaviour

I got into a to and fro with a certified behaviourist and PhD candidate in a FaceBook Group the other day. This blog is going to dissect that back and forth and analyse it. This will be a series of blogs because there are around 10 in depth comments to go through. I’ve managed just two in this blog.

I’ll post some of the behaviourist’s comments as screenshots so there’s no doubt that I didn’t write these to suit my purposes, then I’ll deconstruct them for you because it's a bit scary how wide of the mark some of the interpretations of behaviour are. Remember these people charge up to $500 an hour to work with your dogs. Not all behaviourists are like this, I should include that caveat.

I shall include refutations based on my personal experiences, and I’ll refer to Robert Hynes’ experiences where relevant too. Here’s the first comment:

Let's unpack that;

Interestingly, right up front and honestly is the statement that dogs behave differently depending on who holds the leash. Yes, 100% agree. However, the next part about worse being safer goes wonky quickly.

Firstly fear does not truly inhibit behaviour. Fear is a negative reinforcement state. It drives incompatible behaviour, or in other words, it creates new behaviour to exit the negative reinforcement, the state of fear; either fight, flight or indifference being the options. Part of the initial process is the inhibition of the current behaviour, yes, but that is only half the story. Steps will be taken to exit any fear state. A bit cheeky for a behaviourist to leave that out.

I think what he is trying to say about the dog being with their most trusted person is that seeing the dog's behaviour at its worst is better than not seeing it, or seeing a subdued version during an assessment, and then getting caught by surprise at a later date. I appreciate the acknowledgement that the worst reactivity and aggression will be seen when the owner is holding the leash, that is generally a true statement and stark admission, because the owner is usually the biggest problem (hence my joint venture “Your Dog Is Not Broken” with Robert Hynes), but the reasons given by the behaviourist for his statement are inaccurate.

A dog, or any mammal for that matter, cannot lie in terms of behaviour, all behaviour is fundamentally “who they are”. When an animal is acting out of fear – and reactivity and aggression are fear based behaviours – they are absolutely showing you who they really are, however, this is purely a reaction to the feelings they are having about things in the environment in that moment. It is not a reflection of their desired or preferred state of mind at all. The behaviourist has made the mistake of forgetting that behaviour is not voluntary, it is controlled by the limbic system in the brain (call it instinct, or learned behaviour, both can be appropriate here). “Who they are” or more commonly “Personality” infers the choice of the preferred state of mind and thus the preferred behaviour. The reactive dog is not making a choice, beyond exhibiting the preferred behaviour of the fight or flight response. That is Skinner 101, and does not fit under the banner of personality, which is a notably badly defined thing in psychology. There is no settled definition of it, I found papers proposing new definitions of it very quickly.

The different reactions when away from all familiar social objects is no less “who they really are”, but again we are looking at behaviour, driven by the limbic system, which is not voluntary, but is subject to learning via operant conditioning. I note the inference here from the behaviourist that dogs away from their owners are less reactive. Not initially, but yes this does happen, usually because the new handler is not stressed or nervous and so the dog responds to that after some time, which varies dog to dog.

In my experience, the dog won’t be less reactive with someone different until they’ve built up some trust in the new handler; the dog needs to go through the operant conditioning loop with the new person, but it starts the moment the new person is detected by sound, smell or sight. The new handler is a different environment to the owner, hence the different behaviour from the dog as it begins to learn about the new person. You can see evidence of this in real time with my video of Dexter’s assessment, Dexter is learning about me on our walk, and he looks pretty good. Make sure you read Dexter’s back story in the video description, and ask yourself, why is Dexter so calm around me when he bites guests in the presence of the owner?

https://youtu.be/noLLfB6LKf0?si=fOje72Yoi7EJwOgX

On my walk with Dexter, we come across a dog behind a window in someone’s home, Dexter reacts. Totally expected. He calms down and disengages far faster with me than with the owner though. Why? Because I am not stressed at the situation and he notices this very quickly, and his response to that is to join my calm and move on. He is reacting to the environment that I am, as well as the dog behind the window.

“It’s not really normal for a lot of dogs to have no familiar social objects with them. So, they do a big overt display when mum or dad is with them because they know someone trusted has their back."

The first half of the paragraph above is true. We take our dogs out, we don’t send them out on their own to do things, save the livestock guardian breeds. The rest of the paragraph is unmitigated gibberish, and from a certified behaviourist no less.

As previously mentioned, reactivity is a fear based behaviour. It is an instinctively driven emotional reaction (limbic system) to a stimulus in the environment, nothing more. Fear based outbursts do not happen because the dog thinks they’ve got a bigger threat behind them ready to do bad things to the threat they are reacting to. The reactive and aggressive outburst is the opposite. It is the dog stepping up and taking control of the situation to make the threat go away, specifically because they do not trust that their person has the capability to do so and is therefore not in control of the situation. This is sensed through the detection of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline in the human by the dog, as well as muscle vibrations felt down the leash that give away how tightly it’s being held. If you’re close enough, they can hear your heartbeat too. They know if it’s going 200 BPM. All the dog actually wants is for things to return to the calm state they were before the outburst, fight or flight are the only options for that. If the dog thought the human has this under control and “has their back” you’d see a calm dog that doesn’t feel the need to lash out because it’s not threatened. Who is the more secure confident person; the random guy strutting down the street, shouldering into anyone that doesn’t get out of his way, or, the MMA fighter who no one notices because he’s just walking down the street integrated into the crowd drawing zero attention? Who is more likely to lash out in fear? So it is with our dogs.

What the behaviourist has described is a bully, in the human sense, almost premeditated violence type stuff, I’m not buying that at all. The only situation in which I can conceive that this behaviour would be exhibited is in wild dog or wolf packs. The lone wolf runs from a threat, the pack has the numbers and confidence to “attack” the threat – in most cases they just chase it off, but violence does sometimes happen. Even that behaviour fits into the paradigm of standard positive and negative reinforcement, which as I’ve written before goes all the way to the survival of the individual and the species, so I’m sort of lost.

When pressed, the behaviourist ascribed this enhanced reactive and aggressive behaviour in the presence of the owner to something called disinhibition. The definition of that term is this:

“Behavioral disinhibition refers to a loss of self-control, leading to impulsive and socially inappropriate actions. It involves acting without thinking, often driven by immediate desires or emotions, rather than considering potential consequences or social appropriateness. Behavioral disinhibition can be a symptom of various neurological and psychiatric conditions, including dementia, traumatic brain injury, ADHD, and certain personality disorder.”

By ascribing the reactive and / or aggressive outbursts to disinhibition, the behaviourist is suggesting that the dog has a psychological problem, that something is (seriously) wrong with the dog. I fundamentally disagree with that premise. My own experiences with my own dogs, and working with clients reactive dogs have shown me a grand total of zero cases where a reactive dog is either at fault or psychologically broken. That’s not to say that they don’t exist, broken dogs do, and we’ll get into that, and the cause, later. In every single case I have worked, the biggest issue was the owner / dog relationship. The second biggest issue was the dog not knowing how to be a dog because it has never been allowed to be. As we go through this series, a common theme will emerge from our behaviourist, the human is never at fault, the behavioural problems are all laid at the feet of the dog, which is wrong.

Lets move on to the next comment. The behaviourist was particularly shocked that I meet clients dogs one on one to assess them;

That paragraph right there is depressing to read. Just depressing. First off, nice try at writing off the dogs I've worked with as not as bad as the ones he has. In fairness, they probably aren't, but part of that is the way he approaches the problem - it causes the exact issue he's railing against. If you want to see aggression from a scared dog, put the leash in the owners hands and go into the property. You will get to see aggression. Why? The dog owner will invariably stink of fear - cortisol and adrenaline with an increased heart rate, zero trust in the dog and there is no better recipe for an aggressive outburst than a scared dog, scared owner and no trust. This is why Robert and I don't want the owner there. We never get bitten one on one.

Second, it is obvious that the behaviourist is scared of the dogs he gets called to work with. Perhaps oddly I have sympathy for this. He is working with dogs on psychotropic medications, and no doubt dogs that have been through the dog training IGP style ringer, which is a behaviour suppression based system, and that suppression results in low trust, anxious dogs with reduced decision making processes, and is a great breeding ground for developing psychological problems that result in rebellious outbursts that manifest particularly nastily at times. Going to meet a dog one on one with that state of mind and knowing it’s got a serious bite history is a scary thing to do. I wouldn’t do it. There is a very good reason Robert Hynes and I refuse to work with dogs on psychotropic medications, and we meet one on one. Robert & I bear the scars learning those lessons the hard way. If in doubt, go and read about the side effects of the medications.

Another problem with the behaviourist worrying about meeting the dog one on one is that the concept of every behaviour having a cause, a reason, with no exceptions, has been thrown out here. It does not apply according to our behaviourist. This is implicit in how the statements are worded. For an animal to be antisocial and / or use aggression to get what it wants, by the laws of behaviour, it is be reacting to something that it perceives needs to be reacted against. What that reminds me of is resource guarding. In our experience, resource guarding occurs as a result of the dog feeling like it is out of control of its own bodily autonomy and decision making, and as a result seeks to control things, like food, as a substitute for the lack of control, and yes that means they will put teeth on owners. All that is, is a symptom of the broken relationship with the owner. There is no trust there. If the dog trusted the owner, and the owner trusted the dog, it wouldn’t happen. I think there’s a link to the earlier comment here. The dog acting out in the presence of the owner is exhibiting an attempt at control, because it feels out of control. That is a trust problem. Nothing else.

The behaviourist offers no recognition of the laws of behaviour in his words above, the dog is just antisocial and aggressive. That statement does not pass muster through the technical lens of behaviour. It is a misinterpretation of what is happening, unless the dog has genuine psychological or physiological damage – exceedingly rare. I don’t have enough context from the statement given to pinpoint an event he’s referring to from his experience, but we can look to some excellent examples from some well-known IGP style trainers on YouTube. Let’s pick one of my favourites, Shield K9, full IGP training with all the aversive tools.

There are two great videos involving Haz at Shield which we will use to fill the example void here. The first is a meeting of Haz with a dog he used to own and train at a seminar. Fast forward to 06:30.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnXCMhBkG5w&t=413s

Haz is standing to the side, but directly in the path of the dog and handler, Gage, the dog, which is muzzled with a snout locking sock muzzle, which it tries to get off at 06:47, Gage walks along with its current owner, Haz is stood still watching them approach. There are people sat down opposite Haz, his former dog notices him as it walks along, as it gets level with him it suddenly lunges for his chest, if it wasn’t muzzled that would have been a bite. Haz finds this mildly amusing. The dog ignores all the other people around.

The point here is that this dog meets the criteria our friendly behaviourist describes above. As far as the behaviourist is concerned that dog acted unpredictably and aggressively, perhaps even under the concept of disinhibition. Pretty much everyone in the world would be scared to meet that dog one on one in its home environment having seen that. It looks highly unpredictable and nasty. They key is why. Why would a dog do what it did to its former owner the first time it sees him in just under 2 years, ignoring all other people in the immediate vicinity - and whilst muzzled with a sock muzzle, in a place it doesn’t know surrounded by people it doesn’t know – how wound up ready to snap would you be?

Remember all behaviour has a cause. All behaviour is non voluntary and is driven by an emotional response to a stimulus in the environment. Haz was the environmental stimulus. Haz used to own and train this dog, using all the IGP tools at his disposal. Do you think the dog didn’t recognise him? I think you can probably put those pieces together yourself. Trust and respect are earned from our dogs. So too are distrust and disrespect. Haz just received confirmation of what the dog thinks of him.

Haz tries to pass this off as if the dog has no memory of him after approx. 18 months away. Absolute and utter nonsense. Not a chance. That dog knows exactly who he is, he had the dog longer than it has been away.

If the dog didn’t know him and did that? The laws of behaviour still apply. There is a reason the dog did that. Finding out why is vital. It’s obvious to me, the dog is wearing a muzzle. The owner doesn’t trust the dog, thus, the reverse is true. The dog doesn’t trust the owner. That is all you need to get a reaction like that in an unfamiliar environment, chuck in a person acting a little abnormal, and well, there you go. Would the dog behave like that in a one on one meeting with a stranger, at home, no owner present, and no muzzle? No. No it wouldn’t.

The second video is Haz going to another one of his dog’s kennels, Mace, a dog that has been returned to him after it turned on its owner and put him in hospital by ruining his forearm. Fast forward to about 09:30 in the video. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNEeTK-IsAI

Haz is trying to get this returned dog of his out of the kennel. He needs treats and a slip leash. This is not a relaxed situation. Haz is wound up, and so is the dog. You can see Haz doesn’t trust the dog. This is what our behaviourist is likely picturing when he talks about meeting new dogs one on one. Dogs that are wound up, don’t know what’s going on, and have no one or no other dog nearby that they trust. This is a disaster recipe.

Why did the dog have to be lured out of the kennel with a treat and immediately put into a slip leash like it did? Because Haz is scared of the dog, and everything he did was disrespectful to the dog, the dog has no choice about what is being done to it, and Haz was absolutely terrified of what would happen if it went wrong, and unfortunately, rightly so. How would you react to a semi familiar man bribing you out of a cage then putting a noose on you to drag you around? Would you be ready to do violence? I would, you can bet your bottom dollar I would.

What you just watched, is the result of years of disrespect and suppression of behaviour. Let’s not beat about the bush. IGP type training turns some dogs into psychotic monsters living on a knife edge of losing their minds and attacking the things doing the disrespect and suppression – the humans, see Mace, above. There is no relationship based on mutual trust and respect at all.

American Standard K9 can be quoted in saying only 30% of police dogs will “out” from a bite on verbal command of the handler first time. The dogs are allegedly going through the best designed training programmes in the world – 30% release of a bite on verbal command. That’s awful. Police dog training is IGP by the way. Same difference. Violence begets violence. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, Michael Ellis & Ivan Balabanov have openly stated that their IGP training creates OCD in the dogs. That is a psychological problem. Deliberately being put into the dogs. That is what dog training today is based on.

To meet a dog like this one on one safely would require time, and patience. It absolutely cannot be done in a kennel environment like Haz does in the video; there is no room for anything other than control. There is no room to listen to the dog, to understand the dog, and that is the problem. The dog must comply, or there’s something wrong with it, no matter how truly awful a worldview that is. You can see Haz’s relief once he has the slip leash on. This is akin to our behaviourist needing the owner around, just in case, except that having the owner there makes a violent reaction more likely - good for business though, weird that isn't it.

For meeting a new dog one on one, the dog needs to be shown respect, it needs to be shown that it has some agency over its own body and its own decision making process. Given the length of time it has been supressed and forced to comply, the road back to the natural mental state may not even be possible for Haz’s dogs – OCD trained in etc…. I recall some circus animals trapped in tiny cages all their life when rescued walk in tiny circles like a mental tick until the day they die.

Let me describe my meeting process as a way of making my point to close out. Both Robert Hynes and I specifically insist on meeting new client’s dogs one on one at the owners property, no owner present. Why? Because we want to see what the dog is actually like, away from all of the interference of the dog / owner relationship, other dogs, and all the learned behaviour that goes with that when unknown people come onto the property. 

In technical terms, what we are doing is giving the dog a new environment (us) to operantly condition themselves to. Our presence in their property forces them to go into the operant conditioning loop and figure us out, they go through fight or flight (they have to, the laws of behaviour are pesky things) and then to indifference. Once indifference has set in, curiosity comes along, and they’ll check us out, the next step is trust. Then we can get a leash and start working with the dog - only when the dog offers us it's trust. Note I offered Dexter the chance to let me leash him. Zero command or pressure from me. That matters.

We cannot form that early relationship with the dog with the owner present, it just can’t be done, too much prior history, too much anxiety and stress coming from the owner, and no we don’t want to get bitten, so we meet the dog on its own. If you want to see how that goes for us, its all over our YouTube channels. We aren’t hiding anything.

In my personal experience (and Robert’s) the times we get bitten by dogs have always been in the presence of the owner. When we go one on one, we never get bitten unless we do something stupid like disrespect the dog’s personal space and ignore the warnings for doing so. What separates the technique Robert and I use from the behaviourist and Haz is basic respect. We do not pressure the dog into anything except accepting us being there. There is no timeline, there is no invading the dog’s personal space, even if they invade ours. Everything is about presenting them choice, offering them trust and respect. It really shouldn’t be a surprise that those are what we get back.

We are not scared of the dogs we work with, the behaviourist is, as is Haz, when the tools are off. We have no reason to be scared, we don’t abuse them mentally, and we don’t supress behaviour physically, that goes an awful long way just on its own.

Look at my interactions with Dexter, who has a horrid backstory, contrast that with Haz’s “well trained” dogs and his interactions. Then step into a behaviourist’s world where he is unable to see that a dog using antisocial behaviour and violence to get what it wants is communicating that it feels out of control, not listened to and disrespected – the nasty behaviour is a reaction to all that, it’s behaviour is continually being suppressed through “dog training” and so it bubbles out elsewhere in even worse behaviour until you get an explosion. The dog is crying out for some respect. That this isn’t blindingly obvious to a behaviourist charging hundreds of dollars an hour is almost laughable.

I’ll end the first of this series here. The heading fits, behaviourists don’t understand behaviour, and as a result, don't know what to do about it and are scared of the dog.