[Vision2020] Re: rubbing their noses in it

[Janice Willard]

Jean, Debbie, Jennifer and other Visionaries,
Actually, as a veterinary ethologist, a veterinarian who studies animal
behavior and applies this to behavior problems, I don't agree with these
approaches for dealing with pet behavior issues. Punishment-based learning
paradigms have a very bad habit of backfiring with animals, because people
often don't understand the learning principles that underlie them and apply
the wrong timing, force, surrounding stimuli and release from the negative
stimulus to get the kind of learning that they want.  Also animals can very
quickly learn that human+behavior=negative stimulus, while behavior w/o
human= no negative stimulus, thus they may simply engage in the behavior
whenever you are not around.

Punishment based learning systems also have the problem of increasing
anxiety in animals.  And unfortunately many behavior problems are
anxiety-based, medical or behavioral conditions.  As an example, cat
spraying is an anxiety-based behavior (there is plenty of evidence for this,
which I can tell you privately if interested).  So take an anxious cat that
is responding to its stress in a ethologically- evolved, behaviorally
appropriate response to stress and start applying random punishment to the
already stressed animal.  This may stop an immediate spraying incident, but
will likely increase the overall spraying because you haven't dealt with the
underlying stressor that is leading to the behavior or the additional stress
you just added to it with the addition of random punishment.

Some stress-mediated conditions present as medical conditions, as in the
example of a cat with a urinary bladder syndrome (often called FUS but goes
by a variety of names).  This serious and painful medical condition has been
recently found to be related to the inability of the adrenal gland to
respond appropriately to stress--in other words, these individuals are
acutely sensitive to stress and do not recover easily from stressful
situations and at necropsy show alterations in their adrenal glands.  They
respond well to ethologically based, environmental management to reduce
stress.  Needless to say, adding the additional stressor of random
punishment into the lives of these animals is really contraindicated, as it
will increase both the problem behavior and the medical condition.

Rubbing an animal's nose in something that they did hours ago, that you did
not like, will only make the animal fear you, it will do nothing to teach
the animal the connection between your displeasure and a deed they did hours
ago.  Animals do not use symbolic language to process learning and so
delayed punishment like that doesn't work in their brains. This is a
particular problem, that humans tend to think that animals must think like
they do and because we can process the concept of delayed punishment, they
can as well--that is sort of like saying that because we have the same kinds
of bones in our hands that a bird has in their wings, we can flap our hands
and fly also. You have to catch them while doing the behavior or within 1
second, for them to connect the punishment with the action.  Delayed
punishment is simply a way of the human venting their anger, it does nothing
to teach a task to the animal.  What the animal actually learns from this is
how to recognize when you are angry and try to appease you (dogs more often
do this, which humans mistakenly interpret as guilt) or get away from you,
because it has learned that you will lash out at those around you when you
are angry.  And while animals can't read words, they are extremely good at
"reading" humans.

Of course, I realize that probably *no one* is interested in this or has
even read this far in my post, but I really get the heebie-jeebies when I
see that kind of discussion taking place, because a great deal of behavior
problems, and some outright inhumanness to animals, is a result of our lack
of understanding the natural behavior of animal and how they learn.  So I
had to jump in, for whatever good it does.....

I'll try to restrain myself in the future, lest ammonia-laden water or
flying objects are lobbed in my direction.

Actually for the people showing their butt cracks in public, I thought that
your best punishment option would be a thoroughly human approach--take a
picture of the offending visual stimulus with a digital camera and then
print it out (maybe write the word "yuck" on it) and hand them a copy of
it--or stick it up on a bulletin board where they work.....

JW, DVM, MS

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "JeanC" <jeanc38 at gmail.com>
To: <Vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Friday, February 11, 2005 10:28 AM
Subject: [Spam] Re: [Vision2020] Re: rubbing their noses in it


> On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 20:50:57 -0800, debismith at moscow.com
> <debismith at moscow.com> wrote:
> > How about the ammonia/water laden squirt gun? Works on dogs and
cats.....cats are
> > smart enough to figure out there is a person behind the "God Gun", but
dogs and
> > spitters seem really baffled by this....
> > Debi
>
> Of course some cats  just ignore the squirt gun and keep on doing what
> they are doing, even when you are squirting them in the ear!.
>
> What we've been finding to be much more effective is one of those
> inexpensive blow guns from Tri-State with the "stun" darts (hubby and
> I "shot" each other to make sure it wouldn't actually hurt the
> kitties). It is now to the point all we have to do is pick it up and
> the offending kitty immediately stops what they are doing. And we
> don't have to worry about accidentaly spraying computers, TVs, stereos
> and any other electronic equipment.
>
> Jean C
> "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can
>   change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has"
>     Margaret Mead
> http://www.uidaho.edu/~bjcraw/
>
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