23 AugEpisode 73 | Don’t put a towel over a dog’s head & other lessons not learned from Stanley Coren & Psychology Today

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Looking for misguided information about dog training? Look no further than Psychology Today, which is publishing new articles that are offering outdated and possibly dangerous information. In this episode, Annie surveys the work of Dr. Stanley Coren, who recently suggested to the publication's readers that they should mimic wolves and clamp down on a dog's muzzle to stop barking. She reads from some of Dr. Coren's books on dogs from the early 1990s and also shares a comedy clip from the early 1990s on the topic of reading dog minds.

Transcript:

Annie:

A few years ago, a cousin gave me a pile of books about dogs, all these used books that I think he'd gotten at a garage sale. They were all from the nineties. And one was called, What Do Dogs Know? One was The Pawprints of History: Dogs in the Course of Human Events. One was called The Intelligence of Dogs. And I kind of flipped through the books and thought, you know, okay, there's some dated information here, and there was some decent info here and there, but overall I found the books a little, I guess, a little boring.

And I put them on my shelf of books that are dated and, but possibly interesting for future reference relating to all things dogs and dog training. I have a lot of books in this category, or not even books that are dated, just like I like old, weird books about dogs. I like thinking about not only how people think about dogs now, but in the past.

I guess I didn't really consider these books too much or the author, although I did remember seeing that he was a doctor, that he was a professor of psychology. And so there was a little bit of dissonance there for me, because I thought, well, if this person is a professor, you know, I would think therefore a researcher, then we should be taking his work pretty seriously. I think that's like a bias we have when we see that someone has a Doctor in front of their name, or a bias I have.

But of course you can be a doctor and not be a great writer. You could be a great writer and not be a doctor. You could know a lot about that subject and have no degree. You could have a degree and write a book that is not well-researched. But again, I thought, you know what? These were written 20, 30 years ago, things have changed. These aren't necessarily dog training books. They're just kind of general interest books about dogs and not meant to be the latest and the greatest of canine research.

Anyway, books went on the shelf. Then a few months ago, I was trying to find, an old cover of the New York Times book review that father did. My father was an illustrator, and he often did illustrations for the New York Times and particularly for their book reviews. And there was this one image and he had done of people being walked by their dogs. And I was trying to find this old illustration of his, and I found that it was actually part of an entire section in 1994 that the New York Times book review did about dogs, and my dad had illustrated the whole section.

And in this whole part of this June 5th, 1994 book review section that I found, there was a review of Stanley Coren’s 1994 book The Intelligence of Dogs. And above it, there's an article called “How to Wear Rover Close to Your Heart” that's about knitting dog hair. So I found this old book review, and I'm just going to read some of it. It's by Sarah Boxer. She starts out quoting from the book:

“You need a large bath towel, a small blanket, or some other heavy cloth of a similar size. First, make sure that the dog is awake and reasonably active, and then let it sniff the towel. Then with a quick smooth motion (you may want to practice once or twice without the dog present), throw the towel over the dog's head so that its head and front shoulders are completely covered.

“Start the stopwatch and watch silently. If the dog frees itself in 15 seconds or less, score five. In 15 to 30 seconds, score four. In 30 to 60 seconds, score three. In one to two minutes, score two. If the dog has not removed the towel after two minutes, score one.” The dog with the lowest score, the one wearing a towel on its head, may well be on the way to proving its native stupidity according to the canine intelligence test offered by Stanley Coren in The Intelligence of Dogs.

But what about the examiner? The person lofting a towel over his dog's head for no good reason. Mr. Coren’s intelligence test is a set of small taunts. Turning over a tin can on a morsel of food to see how long it takes your dog to get the food. Calling out the word refrigerator to see if your dog answers to that name. Rearranging the furniture in the house to see whether the dog notices.

Is it an accident that this intelligence test, this battery of little indignities heaped on the dog of your choice to see how it copes with the utter incomprehensibility and capriciousness of human ways, looks more like the Book of Job than the Stanford Benet? Probably not. Mr. Coren seems to think that dogs are our servants and we are their gods.

“Dogs were designed and selected by humans to fulfill the needs and desires of our species,” he writes. “They are perfectly adapted to our lives because we created them to be so. We brought them in from the wild and bred them for the characteristics we liked best.”

Annie:

Skipping ahead, a little bit. Um, in this article, I'll post the full thing in the show notes:

But neither sweet temperament nor raw intelligent means anything without the fear of God. It's not enough for you to see your dog as your servant; you must get your dog to accept you as its pack leader. For this, you must periodically “Push the dog over on its side and stare into its eyes. You must occasionally take an object or some food away from the dog and quote. When the dog is resting in a favorite spot, you should make it move from time to time, whatever it takes, show your dog that you are an unpredictable force of nature, a terrible God who must be obeyed.

Annie:

And then the article ends with this long quote from Stanley Coren on how to pet a dog:

“While talking in a soothing manner, saying the dog's name frequently, have it sit or stand in front of you. Take its head in both of your hands. Stroke or fondle its ears, neck and muzzle in this two handed manner, looking into the dog's eyes as you do. Next, slide both hands down the dog's neck, back and sides. Lightly slide your hands over the dog's chest.

And then all the way down [laughs] each of the dog’s front legs. Finish by again grasping the dog's head momentarily and saying the dog's name in a happy voice.”

Annie:

And then the writer writes:

And then pray that your God is not nearly as kinky as you.

Annie:

Alright. I found this book review so interesting because it sort of encapsulated what I wanted to, what I couldn't quite figure out how to express when I first gave those books by Stanley Coren a cursory glance. Which was like, there was a point of view here of us being masters to dogs, which seems weird to me and, you know, outdated. But also just sort of a weirdness in the way that it's telling us to interact with dogs that feels very like human-centric, like us vs. them, rather than thinking about us as kinds of animals that are operating within the same laws of learning.

And like who needs to be instructed on how to pet their dog? It's not that he's wrong. It's just, I feel like he's writing with a point of view that's very, very different than mine and it's one that I have some problems with. But at the very least, I thought that the books and the article, it was all kind of an interesting time capsule of writing about dogs in the 1990s.

Then like a week ago, I saw an article in Psychology Today that caught my eye. It was called “Why Does a Reward During Training Change a Dog's Behavior.” And the first sentence of the article was “Everyone knows that giving a dog a reward for responding in the correct way during training changes the behavior.” And I right away, I thought, really? First of all, does everybody know that?

Because I work with a lot of people where it seems like this is actually news to them, but more than that, you know, to get technical, “everyone knows that giving a dog of reward for responding in the correct way during training changes to behavior”–well, a reward, what is a reward? That's too vague of a term for most dog trainers who I know, who prefer to talk about reinforcers rather than rewards, because what might be rewarding to me might not be rewarding to you. But colloquially, okay, fine. We can talk about rewards. That didn't trip me up too much.

He goes on to talk about basically operant conditioning. Except he doesn't refer to operant conditioning, but he refers to this new study of puppies and dogs who have — something to do with flipping over a cup. I didn't quite follow what he was saying, but basically that the studies, according to him, prove that dogs learn by the consequence of their actions. And that like, I think if they think what the study is showing is that if they flip over a cup one time and there's a treat under it, then the next time they will be more likely to go to that cup to flip it over, rather than going to another cup.

He sums it up though at the end saying, “So it seems like the mystery of how rewards serve as an effective means of training dogs is solved because a very simple strategy has been wired into canines. It says, if something you have done has given you a reward, repeat it, if not try something else, it is a remarkably simple bit of behavioral programming, but it works. And it allows humans to successfully use rewards to train dogs.”

So I read this and I thought, what?! Is he saying like that, you know, operant conditioning has just been proven? Is he saying this is brand new, that like behaviors that are reinforced are more likely to happen again? Is that what he's saying in this kind of roundabout way, that sounds like it's a discovery? And that like, you know, reinforcement is something that we do to dogs by giving them rewards as opposed to reinforcement exists even if humans have nothing to do with it?

I mean, behaviors are reinforced by the environment by other dogs by God knows what. I just found this last paragraph so confusing. And Lo and behold, I said, who wrote this? And it was written by Stanley Coren.

So I found some of these old books that I had of his and I flipped through them just a little bit. And there's just a lot of stuff like this. This excerpt culled from “What Do Dogs Know:”

Compared to their sense of smell, dogs seem to pay a lot less attention to their sense of taste. Apparently they believe that if something fits into their mouths, then it is food, no matter what it tastes like in this, however, they are wrong

Annie:

I mean, it's this kind of writing. That's like guessing at what dogs think. And I don't know. “Apparently they believe that if” — apparently to who? I mean, I feel like maybe I'm being like a niggling jerk by saying all this, but I'm just like speaking out loud my thoughts as I read this stuff.

Here's another excerpt. This excerpt is showing “The 10 smartest dog breeds,” which is like another kind of just like, it's so boilerplate, but that's not even what bothers me about it. It's like the kind of thing you expect to read about dogs, but it just always rubs me the wrong way.

Dogs are individuals. You're going to find varying degrees of intelligence in different kinds of dogs. Different kinds of breeds might have intelligence that are different from one another. What then, what about dogs that don't fall into a specific breed?

So I got kind of curious about who Stanley Coren is. According to his Wikipedia page, he is a psychology professor, neuro-psychological researcher and writer on the intelligence, mental abilities and history of dogs. He works in research and instructs in psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia. He writes for Psychology Today in the feature series called Canine Corner.

Okay, so now we know a lot about Stanley Coren. Which leads me to my most recent encounter with Stanley Coren, which is another article he wrote this month called “A Quick Fix for a Barking Dog: Here is simple way to temporarily control excessive barking by a dog.” Okay. There is a typo in this subtitle they have here.

Anyway, the article goes on to describe how Dr. Coren’s friend was complaining to him that his dog Chester was barking and his friend says:

“Well, at first I just told him to stop barking. I mean, I sort of yelled at him something like ‘No stop that,’ or maybe it got to the point where I was yelling, ‘Shut up. Dammit.’So I went on YouTube where a guy demonstrated how you stop barking by standing next to the dog, and using your hand to smack a dog under its muzzle, just hard enough so that the dog’s jaws clap together for a moment. That shut him up for a few seconds. But when I stepped away so that Chester was out of smacking range, he began to bark again.

Annie:

And then, Coren writes:

“Using punishment to control the dog's behavior is not the best choice, despite the fact that if you consult internet sources like YouTube, most of the recommended techniques to control barking have a punitive aspect.

Annie:

Okay. So reading this, I thought, Hmm, this is talking about punishment and sort of a broad way. For instance, is he saying that him yelling at the dog was punishing? Punishing the behavior of the dog barking? Because maybe the dog was actually found, you know, liked being talked to? And so if the behavior wasn't going away, then it wasn't really being punished by the yelling. It was perhaps being reinforced by the yelling.

And then, certainly he is talking about, I guess, that hitting the dog would be punishment the way that this guy… I don't know, again, a little weirdly worded. I'm maybe just like not the biggest fan of Stanley Coren’s writing.

Anyway, I clicked where it says punishment though. It's underlined, highlighted in this article. I clicked punishment and it goes to a Psychology Today page that is like a thousand words long. It says “Punishment is the imposition of a penalty in response to an offense and it takes many forms. An eye for an eye iis one of the strongest human instincts, and one that can be difficult for both individuals and societies to overcome. But decades of evidence show that reciprocating harm is not always the best course of action, either for the offender or the offended.”

And it goes on and on again, it's like pages and pages long. And I thought, okay, maybe the problem here, isn't Stanley Coren. It's the fact that this was published at all, and published by a place that has this like huge entry on when you click on the word punishment in like their own personal database of like definitions, I guess. And nowhere does it say punishment decreases behavior, the technical definition on punishment.

And instead it's sort of like talking about how punishment is morally reprehensible rather than the fact is like, punishment is part of life, punishment exists. We can be punished by our environment. Punishment isn't just something that happens in relation to an offense. I mean, Psychology Today, isn't like psychology something that falls under behavioral science? Like shouldn't they be straight on this stuff?

I mean, there's just so much more to be said about punishment that has nothing to do with evaluating it as good or bad. Punishment can be very mild. Punishment could be very effective. If I burned my hand on the stove, that's punishing. Because it's gonna keep me from probably touching the stove again. And in that case, punishment is, you know, that's a good thing. It goes hand in hand, you know, negative punishment, positive reinforcement, our, you know, our back and forth that are happening all the time. Behaviors that are being positively reinforced can go hand in hand with behaviors that are being negatively punished.

Okay. Again, maybe I'm just getting overly geeky here about this stuff, but I got to that point in the article and I thought maybe they’re going to turn around here. He's talking about these antiquated methods that we see on YouTube, and he's going to now talk about the more up to date methods, but instead he goes on to talk about how you can copy what wolves basically do in the wild, which is to silence your dog by grabbing their collar, squeezing their muzzle shut with your hand and saying in what he says, you should be a businesslike and unemotional tone, the word “Quiet,” repeating this maneuver over and over again.

This article ended up being met with a lot of anger from basically anybody who knows better today. It looks like it was edited so that it now takes out the part about how you should grab your dog's nose, and just has the part about how you should say the word quiet. Which is good. I'm glad they've taken out this information that otherwise could really lead to some people being bit by their dogs. But I'm still puzzled how this ended up in a magazine to begin with. I mean, I'm puzzled and yet I'm not because there's so much misinformation out there. It's just like, ahhh!

But before they put up this edited version, they did approach Dr. Marc Bekoff to write a response, probably because they were inundated by dozens of people like me writing in and saying like, why did you publish this? And the response was really great. Bekoff’s response was clearheaded and really rooted in science and filled me with hope. So I called Dr. Bekoff and I will be sharing my interview with him next week. Make sure to tune in.

Since we're talking both about the early nineties and attempting to read your dog's mind and thoughts, I wanted to share this clip from Conan O'Brien, from 1993, this is something I love a lot. It's with a young Louis CK, Robert Smigel and Adam Sandler.

[Clip plays]

Conan:

Hello. All right. My next guest say the dogs have more to say than we think. In their new book. What I'm telling you, they explain how a dog’s gestures are a means of communication. Please. Welcome dog experts, Tim Fischer and Bill Connolly.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. How are you? Yeah, you guys, these are very nice looking dogs by the way. Yeah, you guys, you guys have a theory. I flipped through the book. I didn't have time to read it, but I flipped through the book and, and your guys, but you guys basically believe that, dogs are communicating all the time.

Robert Smigel:

Well, that's essentially our book honing through body language and various gestures. These dogs are getting signals to their masters.

Louis CK:

That's right. Yeah. People assume that dogs do certain things because of instincts, but it's really not that simple

Conan:

Now. Alright. You've obviously you brought some dogs here. Very fine looking dogs, right?

Robert:

This one here is Randy. Can you get a shot of this big guy?

Conan:

Yeah. Hey, that's great. Well, can you give us an example? Give us an example of how he's communicating.

Robert:

Okay. Well, I'll give you an example for this. For example, this fellow, Randy, he'll walk in a circle whenever I stand up and appear to be leaving the room. And this may seem like some sort of an odd cryptic gesture, but only he's really trying to say [exaggerated voice] “Please don’t leave me, I love you, I want to play, where are you going.” And it's important to understand that and let him know with a simple Pat on the head that it's okay and you're going to be there for him.

Conan:

Okay. One problem a lot of people have is dogs that go to the bathroom in the house. It's a very common problem.

Louis CK:
Very common with teacup here. When a teacup does this, what she's trying to say is [exaggerated accent] “I made you something, it’s a present, it’s all I have to give to show you that I love you.” And you have to try to understand that that's, that's showing love. You don't want to punish that.

Robert Smigel:

You don’t want to punish love. But on the other hand, sometimes the dog is doing it for a different reason. Sometimes he's saying “I’m angry! Where were you! I was all alone, I have nothing else to do but this for you. I love you.”

We can’t encourage that behavior.

Conan:

I agree with that. Now this little guy right here, I mean, he actually, he looks pretty feisty. This llittle Chihuahua.

Robert Smigel:

His name's Corky and he is pretty feisty. One of his classic Corky moves is here. Let me hold. Sure. There you go. Corky will jump on the couch whenever, but only when I'm on the couch, it's an odd thing. And, and I guess, um, the main reason I think Corky does, this is his way of saying [loud exaggerated accent] “I’m one of you! I’m a human being like you!”

Louis CK:

True, but the conflicting school of thought is that he's saying the opposite. He's saying “You’re one of me! We’re both dogs, let’s watch dog TV together!”

Robert Smigel:

But the essential message is the same, which is “We are equals! You and me, we are the same!”

Conan:

Right. No, I understand that. It's funny. Cause I had a, I had a Cocker spaniel once and he just loved the couch. He really did him. And one day I moved it and you know, he started barking at the couch and I just interpreted it. You know, this was his way of saying, [loud exaggerated accent] “I don’t like change! Put it back the way it was! I don’t like change!”

And I thought, well, this is, you know, very reasonable. This is what he wants.

Robert Smigel:

That's not how a Cocker spaniel sounds. [audience laughter]

Conan:

Wait a minute. What do you mean that's not how a Cocker spaniel sounds?

Louis CK:

Whose name is on the book? Who wrote the book?

Robert Smigel:

I know. It's all right. It's okay.

Conan:

Listen, this is all very fascinating. I just wondered. Does anybody in the audience have a question? Anyone at all? Yes. You have a question?

Adam Sandler:
I have a dog that growls and whenever I'm walking him and he sees another dog in the street, he starts growling on him. Is he being territorial? Is he saying [loud accent] “Don’t pee there! That’s where I am going to pee! Go away!”

Robert Smigel:

Very good question actually, sir, growling like that means that he's being protective of you. Hmm. That's right. He's he's he's saying “This is my master. What the hell are you doing?”

Louis CK:

“You stay away from him!!”

Robert Smigel:

“You stay away from my master! He belongs to me!”

Louis CK:

“You have no business here!” [growling sounds]

Robert Smigel:

“Keep walking!” [inaudible shouting]

Conan:

Very good. Thank you guys, thank you very much. We’ll be right back.

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