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While putting together our evacuation plan, I needed to look up some phone numbers of local shelters. As I clicked around, I realized that one of them uses old-fashioned, dominance-based, often inhumane strategies to train shelter dogs. Apparently, they offer classes in this method to community members. They even claim that issues like fear, aggression, and such are quickly and easily solved using these methods. I FELT SICK. I’ve always known that all shelters, humane societies, rescue groups, or whatever are NOT created equal, but this came as a tremendous shock to me. …

I pretend I’m Dian Fossey as I track Lilly’s various fear behaviors so that we can gauge their severity, speculate about their cause, measure any changes. Was that a happy kiss or an anxious one? Is not actively wanting to come in a door refusal or does it only count when she throws a true shutdown behavior at me, playing the writhing dustmop or the boat anchor? And, what constitutes hiding? …

One of the headlines from our animal behavior consult is that I’ve done far too much operant conditioning and not enough classical conditioning. Generally I assume that experienced “dog people” know what this means. A recent conversation proved otherwise. At least one person thought I meant punishment-based training when I said classic. So, just to be clear, classical conditioning is a way of learning, not the out-of-date punishment/dominance obsessed style of dog training.
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