Earlier today I wrote about how Cesar Millan must be timing his punishments awfully well in order to get the kind of high success rate that he touts on his show. But then, after watching a couple more of his videos, I changed my mind. I was being too nice.
The Dog Whisperer’s timing is nothing compared to that of Barbara Woodhouse, author of Dog Training My Way and No Bad Dogs. Big in the UK in the mid-1900s, she was a training maverick with precise timing of punishment–at least compared to Cesar Millan.
Here is Barbara Woodhouse demonstrating how to use well-timed punishment to get a dog to stop chasing cars:
Enlist the aid of a friend with a car. Ask him to drive you slowly past the dog that chases cars, and as the dog comes in to the attack, throw out as hard as you possibly can any fat hard-covered book, and make certain that the book hits the dog. The shock it gives the dog so frightens it that I have never had to repeat the treatment more than twice, even though the dog may have chased cars for years.”
Just like Positive Reinforcement trainers are careful about choosing their rewards, the late Barbara Woodhouse was particular with her choice of punisher. She ends this passage by saying:
My favourite book is an old A.A. Handbook, it is just the right size.
Will this approach yield a dog who will not run in the road? Maybe. But it also makes you someone who throws AA books at defenseless animals. Is there a twelve step program for that?
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