Molly

There seems to be a never ending rift between so called “positive only” trainers and those who use correction. This seems mostly silly and unnecessary since there are hardly any trainers that don’t use positive reinforcement and very few “positive only” trainers who don’t use some negative reinforcement. Mostly this is a marketing ploy whereby the “positive only” crowd paints themselves as nicer and other trainers as cruel, and the ones who use correction paint the “positive only” guys as ineffective. Since the science of dog training (as opposed to the art) is based on operant conditioning, in which it has been shown that animals of all kinds (including humans) respond to and learn from both positive and negative stimuli, it seems counterproductive to limit oneself to one or the other.

Positive reinforcement is used to promote desired behavior, and correction is used to discourage unwanted behavior; so using either one inappropriately will not produce the desired result. The real question we need to ask is whether our training is coherent. Does the dog get it?

Sometimes people are afraid of using correction because they are worried about making a mistake and correcting the dog in a way that is not understood. This fear is a good one to have if it makes us careful and thoughtful about how we use correction. I have sometimes seen people, who, in trying to avoid being harsh, prolong a correction to the point where it becomes more uncomfortable and less clear to the dog what he is being corrected for.  This is not a kindness.

On the other side of the coin, some people figure you can’t do any harm with positive-only training—not true! I remember a Border Collie who’s owners used to give him a cookie every time they left the house thinking that this would put a positive spin on their leaving. Unfortunately, the owners worked long hours, and the cookie soon came to signify for the dog prolonged solitude and physical discomfort. The cookie began to evoke an increasingly aggressive response. The point is that there are proper places in dog training for both positive reinforcement and correction, but you need to be clear to yourself and to your dog about what you are doing.

Winnie

Sometimes it’s good to remind ourselves of why we go through the bother and expense of owning and training dogs. Recently, John Pappas, author of That Dog Will Never Hunt asked me to review this new collection of true stories, and I was glad I said “yes”. Having learned dog training from poet, author, dog and horse trainer Vicki Hearne, it was refreshing for me to return to literary roots -  roots that reminded me of the romance of our relationship with dogs and the possibilities of nobility in both man and beast.

You’d expect a book of stories about real people and their dogs to be authentic, and John Pappas does not disappoint. At first his style can sometimes seem a little choppy until you realize that this is simply strong masculine prose shining its light on reality. Most of the stories are written from the point of view of a man or a boy, and although their dialogue is often simple and occasionally coarse (as is our wont), the writer’s perception of the thoughts and feelings of the characters is by contrast deep, complex, and genuine. From the humorous title story, “That Dog Will Never Hunt,” to the thought- provoking conclusion of “Statue Man,” Pappas’ characters struggle with the world and themselves in ways that ring true every time.

Pappas is concerned with the things that concern men: the beauty of creation as revealed in nature; the desire to be worthy of our position, particularly in the eyes of a dog or a woman; the realization that often we’re not; and the incredible grace of knowing that we are loved anyway or at least have enough hope to get up and try again.

The Bible says in Genesis that after God made man, He gave him dominion over the animals. And although this special position was severely damaged in The Fall, we still see glimpses of it in our relationships with domestic animals, particularly (in my experience) dogs. These glimpses fire the imagination and lead to expectations in both man and beast; expectations that can cause us to realize our potential or our brokenness and sometimes both. It is within this tension that these stories reside and have their beauty and poignancy.

That Dog Will Never Hunt is entertaining and sometimes challenging. If you’re someone, particularly a man, who knows and loves dogs, you’re really going to enjoy this book. You might even learn something as I did—about greyhounds.

You can order That Dog Will Never Hunt from Amazon, and you might want to check out John’s website at http://orca11.com.