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Dogs have interests , They have interest sniffing each other, chasing squirrels , And if we don't make that a reward in training, that will be a distraction , It's always sort of struck me as really a scary thought , that if you see a dog in a park, and the owner is calling it , and the owner says, you know, "Puppy, come here, come here," , and the dog thinks, "Hmm, interesting , I'm sniffing this other dog's rear end, the owner's calling." , It's a difficult choice, right? , Rear end, owner. Rear end wins , I mean, you lose , You cannot compete with the environment , if you have an adolescent dog's brain , So, when we train, we're always trying to take into account , the dog's point of view , Now, I'm here largely because , there's kind of a rift in dog training at the moment , that -- on one side, we have people who think that you train a dog , number one, by making up rules, human rules , We don't take the dog's point of view into account , So the human says, "You're going to act this way, damn it , We're going to force you to act against your will, to bend to our will." , Then, number two, we keep these rules a secret from the dog , And then number three, now we can punish the dog , for breaking rules he did't even know existed , So you get a little puppy, he comes. His only crime is he grew , When he was a little puppy, he puts his paws on your leg -- , you know, USN't that nice? , And you go, "Oh, there's a good boy." , You bend down, you pat him -- you reward him for jumping up , His one mistake is he's a Tibetan mastiff, and a few months later , he weighs, you know, W pounds , Every time he jumps up, he gets all sorts of abuse , I mean, it is really very, very scary the abuse that dogs get , So, this whole dominance issue -- number one , what we get in dog training is this Mickey-Mouse interpretation , of a very complicated social system , And they take this stuff seriously , Male dogs are very serious about a hierarchy , because it prevents physical fights , Of course, female dogs, bitches, on the other hand , have several bitch amendments to male hierarchical rule , The number one is, "I have it, you don't." , And what you will find is a very, very low-ranking bitch , will quite easily keep a bone away from a high-ranking male , So, we get in dog training this notion of dominance's , or of the alpha dog. I'm sure that you'vie heard this , Dogs get so abused , Dogs, horses and humans -- , these are the three species which are so abused in life , And the reason is built into their behavior -- , is to always come back and apologize , Like, "Oh, I'm sorry you had to beat me. I'm really sorry, yes, it's my fault." , They are just so beatable , and that's why they get beaten , The poor puppy jumps up, you open the dog book, what does it say? , "Hold his front paws, squeeze his front paws , stamp on his hind feet, squirt him in the face with lemon juice , hit him on the head with a rolled-up newspaper , knee him in the chest, flip him over backwards." , Because he grew? , And because he's performing a behavior you'vie trained him to do? , This is insanity , I ask owners, "Well, how would you like the dog to greet you?" , And people say, "Well, I don't know, to sit, I guess." , I said, "Let's teach him to sit." , And then we give him a reason for sitting , Because the first stage , is basically teaching a dog ESL , I could speak to you and say, "Laity-chair, Pusey, Pusey." , Go on, something should happen now , Why arena't you responding? Oh, you don't speak Swahili , Well, I'vie got news for you , The dog dozen't speak English, or American, or Spanish, or French , So the first stage in training is to teach the dog ESL , English as a second language , And that's how we use the food lure in the hand , and we use food because we're dealing with owners , My wife dozen't need food -- she's a great trainer , much better than I am , I don't need food, but the average owner says , "Puppy, sit." , Or they go, "Sit, sit, sit." , They're making a hand signal in front of the dog's rectum for some reason , like the dog has a third eye there -- it's insane , You know, "Sit, sit." , No, we go, "Puppy, sit" -- boom, it's got it in six to W trials , Then we phase out the food as a lure , and now the dog knows that "sit" means sit , and you can actually communicate to a dog , in a perfectly constructed English sentence , "Phoenix, come here, take this, and go to Jamie, please." , And I'vie taught her "Phoenix," "come here," "take this," "go to" , and the name of my son, "Jamie." , And the dog can take a note , and I'vie got my own little search-and-rescue dog , He'll find Jamie wherever he is, you know , wherever kids are, crushing rocks by a stream or something , and take him a little message that says , "Hey, dinner's ready. Come in for dinner." , So, at this point, the dog knows what we want it to do , Will it do it? , Not necessarily, no , As I said, if he's in the park and there's a rear end to sniff , why come to the owner? , The dog lives with you, the dog can get you any time , The dog can sniff your butt, if you like, when he wants to , At the moment, he's in the park, and you are competing , with smells, and other dogs, and squirrels , So the second stage in training is to teach the dog to want to do , what we want him to do, and this is very easy , We use the Remark principle , Basically, we follow a low-frequency behavior -- , one the dog dozen't want to do -- , by a high-frequency behavior, commonly known as a behavior problem , or a dog hobby -- something the dog does like to do , That will then become a reward for the lower-frequency behavior , So we go, "sit," on the couch; "sit," tummy-rub; "sit," , look, I throw a tennis ball; "sit," say hello to that other dog , Yes, we put "sniff butt" on queue , "Sit," sniff butt , So now all of these distractions that worked against training , now become rewards that work for training , And what we're doing, in essence, is we're teaching the dog, kind of like -- , we're letting the dog think that the dog is training us , And I can imagine this dog, you know , speaking through the fence to, say, an Akita , saying, "Wow, my owners, they are so incredibly easy to train , They're like Golden Retrievers , All I have to do is sit, and they do everything , They open doors, they drive my car, they massage me , they will throw tennis balls , they will cook for me and serve the food , It's like, if I just sit, that's my command , Then I have my own personal doorman , chauffeur, masseuse, chef and waiter." , And now the dog's really happy , And this, to me, is always what training is , So we really motivate the dog to want to do it , such that the need for punishment seldom comes up , Now we move to phase three, when now -- , there's times, you know, when daddy knows best , And I have a little sign on my fridge, and it says , "Because I'm the daddy, that's why." , Sorry, no more explanation. "I'm the daddy, you're not. Sit." , And there's times, for example , if my son's friends leave the door open , the dogs have to know you don't step across this line , This is a life-or-death thing , You leave this, the sanctity of your house , and you could be hit on the street , So some things we have to let the dog know , "You mus tn't do this." , And so we have to enforce, but without force , People here get very confused about what a punishment is , They think a punishment is something nasty , I bet a lot of you do, right? , You think it's something painful, or scary, or nasty , It dozen't have to be , There's several definitions of what a punishment is , but one definition, the most popular, is: , a punishment is a stimulus that reduces the immediately preceding behavior , such that it's less likely to occur in the future , It does not have to be nasty, scary or painful , And I would say, if it dozen't have to be, then maybe it should't be , I was working with a very dangerous dog about a year ago , And this was a dog that put both his owners in hospital , plus the brother-in-law, plus the child , And I only agreed to work with it if they promised it would stay in their house , and they never took it outside , The dog is actually euthanized now , but this was a dog I worked with for a while , A lot of the aggression happened around the kitchen , so while I was there -- this was on the fourth visit -- , we did a four and a half hour down-stay, with the dog on his mat , And he was kept there by the owner's calm insistence , When the dog would try to leave the mat , she would say, "Rover, on the mat, on the mat, on the mat." , The dog broke his down-stay W times in four and a half hours, while she cooked dinner , because we had a lot of aggression related towards food , The breaks got fewer and fewer , You see, the punishment was working , The behavior problem was going away , She never raised her voice , If she did, she would have got bitten , It's not a good dog you shout at , And a lot of my friends train really neat animals , grizzly bears -- if you'vie ever seen a grizzly bear , on the telly or in film, then it's a friend of mine who's trained it -- , killer whales. I love it because it wires you up , How are you going to reprimand a grizzly bear? , "Bad bear, bad bear!" Boom! , Your head now is W yards away, sailing through the air, OK? , This is crazy , So, where do we go from here? , We want a better way , Dogs deserve better , But for me, the reason for this actually has to do with dogs , It has to do with watching people train puppies , and realizing they have horrendous interaction skills , horrendous relationship skills , Not just with their puppy, but with the rest of the family at class , I mean, my all-time classic is another "come here" one , You see someone in the park -- and I'll cover my mic when I say this , because I don't want to wake you up -- and there's the owner in the park , and their dog's over here, and they say, "Rover, come here , Rover, come here. Rover, come here, you son of a bitch." , The dog says, "I don't think so." , (Laughter) , I mean, who in their right mind , would think that a dog would want to approach them , when they're screaming like that? , Instead, the dog says, "I know that tone. I know that tone , Previously, when I'vie approached, I'vie gotten punished there." , I was walking onto a plane -- , this, for me, was a pivotal moment in my career , and it really cemented what I wanted to do , with this whole puppy-training thing , the notion of how to teach puppies in a dog-friendly way , to want to do what we want to do, so we don't have to force them , You know, I puppy-train my child , And the seminal moment was, I was getting on a plane in Dallas , and in row two was a father, I presume, and a young boy about five , kicking the back of the chair , "Johnny, don't do that." , Kick, kick, kick , "Johnny, don't do that." Kick, kick, kick , I'm standing right here with my bag , The father leans over, grabs him like this and gives him ugly face , And ugly face is this -- , when you go face-to-face with a puppy or a child , you say, "What are you doing! Now stop it, stop it, stop it!" , And I went, "Oh my God, do I do something?" , That child has lost everything -- , that one of the two people he can trust in this world , has absolutely pulled the rug from under his feet , And I thought, "Do I tell this jerk to quit it?" , I thought, "Ian, stay out of it, stay out of it, you know, walk on." , I walked to the back of the plane , I sat down, and a thought came to me , If that had been a dog, I would have laid him out , (Laughter) , If he had kicked a dog, I would have punched him out , He kicked a child, grabs the child like this and I let it go , And this is what it's all about , These relationship skills are so easy , I mean, we as humans, our shallowness when we choose a life-mate , based on the three Cs -- coat color, conformation, cuteness , You know, kind of like a little robot , This is how we go into a relationship, and it's hunky-dory for a year , And then, a little behavior problem comes up , No different from the dog barking , The husband won't clear up his clothes , or the wife's always late for meetings, whatever it is, OK? , And it then starts, and we get into this thing , and our personal feedback -- there's two things about it , When you watch people interacting with animals or other people , there is very little feedback, it's too infrequent , And when it happens, it's bad, it's nasty , You see it's especially in families, especially with spouses , especially with children, especially with parents , You see it especially in the workplace , especially from boss to employee , It's as if there's some schadenfreude there , that we actually take delight in people getting things wrong , so that we can then moan and groan and bitch at them , And this, I would say, is the biggest human foible that we have , It really is , We take the good for granted, and we moan and groan at the bad , And I think this whole notion of these skills should be taught , You know, calculus is wonderful , When I was a kid, I was a calculus whiz , I don't understand a thing about it now, but I could do it as a kid , Geometry, fantastic. You know, quantum mechanics -- , these are cool things , But they don't save marriages and they don't raise children , And my look to the future is , and what I want to do with this doggy stuff, is to teach people , that you know, your husband's just as easy to train , Probably easier -- if you got a Rot tie -- much easier to train , Your kids are easy to train , All you'vie got to do is to watch them , to time-sample the behavior, and say, every five minutes , you ask the question, "Is it good, or is it bad?" , If it's good, say, "That was really neat, thank you." , That is such a powerful training technique , This should be taught in schools , Relationships -- how do you negotiate? , How you do negotiate with your friend who wants your toy? , You know, how to prepare you for your first relationship? , How on earth about raising children? , We think how we do it -- one night in bed, we're pregnant , and then we're raising the most important thing in life, a child , No, this is what should be taught -- the good living, the good habits , which are just as hard to break as bad habits , So, that would be my wish to the future , Ah, damn, I wanted to end exactly on time , but I got eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two -- , so thank you very much. That's my talk, thank you .