Turning Fierce Dogs Friendly by Kellie Snider

Author:Kellie Snider [Kellie Snider, MS]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Dog, Training
Publisher: CompanionHouse Books
Published: 2018-02-12T14:17:17+00:00

Dr. Rosales used to say, “Yes, Pavlov is sitting on one shoulder, and Skinner is sitting on the other.” B. F. Skinner is the psychologist who founded the field of behavior analysis. Dr. Skinner (who reportedly preferred for his students to call him Fred) identified operant conditioning as a process that takes place naturally in the world, just like classical conditioning. Operant conditioning was the name he gave to learning based on the consequences for the behavior in a certain situation. The outcome may be reinforcing, meaning that it makes the behavior stronger (e.g., the dog sits, you give him a treat, and he is more likely to sit in your presence in the future), or it can be punishing (e.g., the dog sits, a loud siren goes off outside, and the dog is less likely to sit in your presence again). Operant behavior is behavior that happens because it is followed by a desirable consequence (a reinforcer), resulting in the animal doing that behavior more often in the future.

Many people believe that aggression is primarily about inherited traits, but according to the research I conducted under Dr. Rosales’s direction, aggression is operant behavior. When the aggressive behavior happened, it produced a consequence that the dog wanted. Before we started CAT with the dog, the dog’s aggression made something he didn’t like go away or stop happening. That consequence made the dog willing to be aggressive again. During the process of CAT, the dog learned that if he did nicer things, the thing he didn’t like would still go away or stop, so there was no point in getting all worked up about it. And when we completed CAT training from beginning to end, the dog completely changed his mind about the thing he didn’t like, and now he acted friendly toward it. So we’re back to the beginning, where an association changed the emotional response of the dog. He didn’t have to get mad or scared anymore because he knew he could control his world with friendly behavior.

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