Source: Gilberto Reyes/Pexels.
It’s clear to anyone who pays close attention to how dogs should be taught to adapt to a human-oriented world that positive, force-free, do no harm training is the only show in town. Because dogs are not really unconditional lovers (or our best friends), it’s essential to establish a give-and-take relationship―a series of ongoing compromises―with our canine companions based on trust, mutual respect, and having a dog consent as much as possible to what you want them to.1
In her new and fun-to-read book How to Train Your Dog with Love + Science: A Dog Lover’s Guide to Animal Behavior and Positive Reinforcement Training, dog trainer Annie Grossman uses the latest science along with wonderful stories to show us how to allow dogs to express as much of their dogness as possible and have satisfying dog-appropriate lives without forcing them to do things they’d rather not do. When dogs feel safe and trust us, and we take their point of view on the matters at hand and they agree with what we’re asking them to do, it’s a win-win for all―what could be better?
Marc Bekoff: Why did you write How To Train Your Dog With Love and Science?
Annie Grossman: In 2007 I was working as a freelance journalist and wrote a story for the New York Times about how the success of the show The Dog Whisperer was leading people to become trainers. I wrote it in part because I’d always loved training my own dog to do tricks and imagined it’d be a cool job. But in reporting the story, I got the sense it was an industry inundated with charlatans, with many “schools” praying on dog lovers daydreaming about plan-b careers.
Source: Sourcebooks/with permission.
But a few years later, I started chatting with someone at the dog park who told me his dad had been a criminal prosecutor and, after retiring, went to the Karen Pryor Academy for Animal Training and became a dog trainer. He didn’t sound like someone who would be taken in by snake oil salesmen. I enrolled and went in knowing zilch. I came out seeing the world anew, through the lens of dog training (dog training! of all things!). I’d had no idea that there was a science of behavior, let alone that it could be applicable both to house training a dog and dealing with how I related to people.
I immediately knew I wanted to write about this rich, surprising world and to inform people about what good dog training looks like.
MB: How does your book relate to your background and general areas of interest?
AG: As a journalist, I love stories and characters, doing research, and asking “why” ad nauseum. The result is a book that takes a broad view of the subject and contains history and real-life villains and heroes and even something approaching a plot. It’s prescriptive, but it’s…well, one of my friends said it was “novel-ish,” which I took as a compliment.
MB: Who do you hope to reach?
AG: I hope it’ll reach people who are ready to get addicted to a new hobby. It’s funny how horseback riding is understood as a legit hobby but dog training is usually billed as a chore: You get a dog, you train them, then you’re done. I try to make the case for training as an enriching, low-stakes pastime. All you need is some hot dog bits and the space between your couch and your coffee table.
MB: What are some of the major topics you consider?
AG: The first part dissects the weird ways in which dogs have been considered in the mainstream media in recent times: We’ve been fed that they’re both our best friends and also our foes in a quest for domination. We’ve only been training domestic dogs for about a century, and most of that time, so-called ‘pros’ had been rebranding forms of coercion and punishment. You can do terrible things to dogs in the name of training and they still come back looking for belly rubs, so it feels like it ‘works.’ I think that’s why the industry has been slow to change.
It’s generally not understood as relating to science at all, so I break down the science piece and talk about how we can understand conditioning, a.k.a. learning, by considering how it impacts our own human lives. The basics of conditioning are not species-specific. Sprinkled in are stories of my own life and about how, once I started understanding conditioning, I found myself training random things on the fly―it expanded my idea of what the word “training” even meant. I share how I “trained” my 3-year-old to stop fearing driving through tunnels by leveraging her obsession with the Blue Swede song “Hooked on a Feeling.”
The exercises I include are building blocks that can work on many levels. I introduce a framework I call the Training Triad, which involves manipulating the environment, choosing what rewards are going to be most impactful, and then perfecting the timing with which you dole them out.
The last part looks at how advances in technology make it possible for people to use positive reinforcement more effectively and approach training as an application of science rather than as something birthed by some divine gift, a la Cesar Millan.
MB: How does your book differ from others that are concerned with some of the same general topics?
AG: It challenges mainstream narratives about dog training and contextualizes the subject. Positive reinforcement is why we all are addicted to our phones, for instance. When you start to think of, say, Jeff Bezos as being a highly successful human trainer, it’s hard to go back to trying to rely on sheer “calm assertiveness” to get your dog to stop pulling. Thinking about how you get your dog to stop barking is a good lens through which to scrutinize your own unwanted compulsive behaviors.
It also offers exercises that are engaging, not just practical. I don’t only demonstrate how to teach a dog to sit, I teach it how to do it literally with just a snap of your fingers. Some of the exercises could be parlor tricks―like I show how you can teach your dog to take a selfie―but what I’m doing is helping both the trainer and the dog build skills that can be applied to anything.
MB: Are you hopeful that as people learn more about the right way to educate dogs they will stop using aversive, useless, techniques?
AG: Oh my goodness, yes! Actually, I’m hopeful about way more than that. I think the more people understand how to use positive reinforcement, the better we’ll get at understanding ourselves, and being good to each other. Peace, love, and good dog training!
