Teaching, Communication, Animal Behavior

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Josh

A few weeks ago I commented on a blog post by my friend JR Atwood. He had posted a brief clip from the Uncommon Schools‘ teacher training methodology. My comment, essentially, was “That looks just like dog training!”

In a private response, he mentioned that it would be interesting to see a comparison of the two – teaching methods for children vs. dog-training methods.

True to my word, I hit the books over the course of the past couple of weeks and read two dog-training texts. One of them, was Lew Burke’s “Dog Training”

Burke's book is about very specific techniques...

Ready for the comparison?

The first rule of dog training is that dogs require clear (matching your training method with your desired outcome from the dog), concise (one word), and consistent (always the same command for the same desired outcome) communication.

Regarding this first video from Uncommon Schools, we can focus on the “clarity” bit. But there’s another point, I’ll share with you after you’ve enjoyed this video:

Reward is a better motivator than punishment. More importantly, it’s crucial to discriminate between normal communication (acknowledgment, above), and praise. This is true for dogs as well. Giving a dog a friendly word is different from giving a dog a treat.

Only give a dog a treat when it has done something to deserve it.

Dog training actually goes a little deeper than that, but you have to earn that lesson…

Strong Voice

It is important to use proper TONE when speaking to your dog.

NLP literature points out that 87% of communication is body language, 10% is the tone of your speech, and only 3% of your communication is conveyed in the actual content of your words. (I’m guesstimating those percentages…too lazy to look up the exact reference right now).

This lesson carries over to dog training as well. Your dog will discern a lot about you from the way you hold yourself. Raise a fist to strike it, and it isn’t going to respond kindly. Act wildly, and it will think you’re unreliable.

Tone is equally important for dog-training. Most people who have ever had a dog have used the old trick of saying a bunch of nasty names or things about their dog in a candy-sweet voice. The dog invariably wags its tail, not connecting the content to the tone.

Few dogs – showdogs, mostly – have the range of vocabulary to really understand that last 3% of human communication anyway…

Now watch this:

Eye contact is used here. In dog training, the books used for this post mention that either direct eye contact, OR removal of attention, can be used equally well to convey your “leadership” status.

For instance, when giving the dog food, you might look directly (and seriously) into its eyes as you give the “sit” command. Again, the dog must earn everything it gets from its leader (you).

Or, you might say “sit” and look away from the dog, removing your attention (a valuable thing to a dog). When it does sit, you can bring your attention back to the dog, lavish it with praise, put the food down, and leave it to eat.

Cold Call

A dog must respond to your command any time you issue it. It cannot be sporadic response.

That being said, once a dog has learned a skill, the best way to reinforce it is through random reinforcement.

More Thoughts

Now, before you go yelling at me, telling me how insensitive I am to suggest that children are just like dogs, think about this for a second. First, I’m not just talking about children here (read my previous post on the difference between “children” and “adults”). Second, and more importantly, I think it’s time we begin looking at how we actually behave, instead of how we’d like things to be.

The use of motivational tactics is nothing new. I’ve seen plenty of parents these days with leashes on their children!

I think what is (relatively) new in our culture is the lack of consistent understanding about how animals (dogs, pigs, cattle, human beings, monkeys, whatever) behave, and how to treat animals if you want something from them.

In older times (here I go, romanticizing the past…) we dealt with animals quite a deal more. We also had very real “survival” demands to take care of (for instance, if we were farmers). Now that we’re removed from those things, we think there is some sort of “distance” (real and figurative) between us human beings and the other animals in the kingdom of animalia.

Do you think so?

I’ll leave you with this, a quote from Nicholas Dodman’s book, “The Well-Adjusted Dog”:

“Think about it. You have removed your pet’s need to hunt by supplying food. You have removed his romantic interests by neutering him. You have removed his social needs by depriving him of pack interests and competition. He can’t even wander and explore his outside territory, let alone try to resolve his own problems – because there aren’t any…So what’s a poor dog to do? Channel his energy in unacceptable ways, that’s what.” pg. 136

Indeed!

Cults

Posted on September 30, 2009 by Josh

Posted this reponse to John Sifferman’s latest blog entry about Crossfit. While I agree with John about Crossfit, I think it’s important to find the deeper needs that people are trying to fulfill through their actions, and speak to those, instead of battling on the surface all the time.

Here it is:

Hi John,

Good post. I encounter this in many areas of my life on a daily basis. Trainers are often just as (if not, at times, more) guilty of “cult-following” as any trainee. Trainers in the cults of Chek, Verstegen, Sonnon (no offense intended!), Pavel, etc., only look at training through the lens of their leader’s viewpoints.

I think the bottom line with these cults harkens back to the definition of the word. Cult means “religion,” in Latin, and, as such, a cult is a “community of like-minded individuals.”

By the very nature of this type of structure, it is exclusive, and exclusionary – it seeks to pit itself over/above/against any other group.

Does that make it right?

Not at all. But for the people in the cult, all they see is their cult-ure. Their fellow cultists are constantly there to back them up.

It’s kind of a useless battle to fight.

Instead, I’m always interested in the background for the cult’s beliefs. What is/are the need/s that is/are being fulfilled by/through the cult, through membership in it, and also through the exclusivity of the cult?

When I look at it from that perspective, I become more empathetic. I understand that the person is trying to feel connected to something, they want to achieve an image of themselves that they feel the cult offers, they want to belong to something that supports them, etc.

If I can offer them those feelings from my own heart, then we can have a meaningful dialogue about it. Till then, though, we just butt heads.

Josh

Nonviolent Communication

Posted on September 29, 2009 by Josh

Why do people do things? Why have you done the things you’ve done in your life?

When you look for an answer to this question, you’re usually given so many answers that the question becomes meaningless. People do things for reasons involving need, desire, utility, or common sense, or pragmatic sense, or individual history, philosophical leanings/beliefs.

Or they do things for reasons other than those.

Or sometimes, they do things for a combination of those reasons.

Or the do things “for no reason at all.”

NLP says that people always have a good outcome in mind for themselves when they do things, and I believe this is true. They believe that they will get something valuable from their actions.

But what is at the base of “why people do things” is something much simpler. Marshall Rosenberg’s book “Nonviolent Communication,” reveals that we almost always do things based on (in our culture, often un-felt, unrecognized, or unappreciated) needs.

Look back over your life, and consider the following.

All of this time, you had your own agenda. It was separate from that of those around you.

And it was always the same – to get your needs met.

Did you know that that was true? (I didn’t, until I read the book).

If you did/do know that already – do you express your needs as your needs. Or do you express your needs as other people’s problems (‘that person doesn’t know how to drive!’ – really, is ‘I need to feel safer than I do right now’)? Do you express your needs as complaints (‘my boss never appreciates me,’ – really, is ‘I need to feel more appreciation for my efforts at work’)? Grievances (‘my parents never supported me,’ – is, ‘I need to feel supported/loved/cared-for’)? Perceived wrongs, etc.?

Do you know that your feelings are expressions of, and signposts pointing toward, your needs?

Rosenberg gives a simple formula for beginning to explore this concept. The next time you begin to blame someone else for your situation (problem, issue, etc.), say to yourself “I feel x, because I y.”

Usually, the “because” is an unexpressed or unrecognized need that you have.

To boot, toward the middle of the book, a subject heading called “Don’t Do Anything That Isn’t Play!” appears!

Marshall emphasizes that we should “make choices that are motivated purely by our desire to contribute to life rather than out of fear, guilt, shame, duty, or obligation.”

Being fit is also about being able to express yourself, authentically, in a way that other people can understand, relate to, and respond to.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who reads. I’ll be reading it again, myself, very soon.

Integrity, forthrightness, sincerity

Posted on September 21, 2009 by Josh

A debate has raged within me for as long as I’ve been part of the “adult world.” Bear with me here…these too, are new thoughts…

Essentially, the question has been – how to be a “man,” while also being a hu”man” being.

I received two different sets of instructions as a young adult male. The first was from my parents. Those instructions went something like this: be a good person, do the right thing, be considerate, kind, and caring, work to help others.

The other set of instructions was from the-world-at-large, and it went something like this: do whatever you need to do to win.

How does one reconcile this?

It isn’t quite as simple as that. I found that I could be caring and helpful, while also engaging in competitive sports, or other competition-based activities, which were primarily about beating the opponent.

Then I went to work in an office.

Again, the message was different from the reality. What I was taught/told, was: work hard, do a good job, and you’ll get promoted/a raise/”success.”

Reality looked more like this: be friends with your superiors, help them to look good, and make it seem like you’ve done a good job (or just done your job period), and you’ll get a raise/promoted/etc.

Now…how do you reconcile those?! I mean, what is your goal, truly? To do a good job, to work hard – or to make connections, network, etc.? Because, in truth, one cannot serve two masters.

Then it happened again…in my intimate relationships. I was taught to be kind, considerate, and caring. To put my significant other’s needs before my own. To sacrifice what I may want to do to make them happy.

But in reality, I was doing the opposite of what I should have been doing. By “serving” (really, “subserving to”) others in my intimate relationships, I would always eventually lose myself, become resentful, and the relationship would fall apart.

It takes a good deal of strength to do the opposite of what you’ve always been taught as right.

There’s another example I’d like to share, which seems like a bit of a stretch, but it’s related to this.

My roommate and I went for a 9 mile jog on Sunday. We both were wearing Vibram Fivefingers. On the return leg, we had to stop at a light, where two cyclists were also waiting to cross. One of them looked at my roommate’s shoes and said, “Wow! What are those?”

“Vibram Fivefingers,” he said, “so you can run with the same benefits of being barefoot.”

“Oh! Wow! But won’t that hurt your feet?!” she asked. “Isn’t it dangerous?! There’s no support!”

That’s a very common response to the concept of barefooting in general, so my roommate just said, “No, not really.” The light changed then, and we went one way and the cyclists the other.

As we continued to run, our first response was to laugh at the cyclist. The question is so common, and so fraught with error from the perspective of people who have engaged in barefooting, that it’s hard to be compassionate. But then, a thought occurred me, and I said this (as if in response to the cyclist):

“Yes – if your idea of a foot is a lifeless hunk of flesh and bone hanging off the end of your leg, that has no form or feeling, that shrinks back from the slightest insult – then yes, being barefoot is definitely dangerous and harmful to your feet!”

It’s all about perspective

From the perspective of someone raised in a culture that advises the use of shoes at all times; or that creates terror in the heart of its populace about invisible threats (terrorism, viruses, economic meltdown, sports team losses, etc.); or that prescribes to the idea that there is an “instant fix” for anything that might ail you – and that that fix requires little or no real effort to achieve; or that recommends that you only look at the most obvious spot when you encounter a problem, and not the entire system related to that “problem-spot;” the fear of being barefoot, or of suffering through the process of regaining lost function in oneself, is real…in some cases, insurmountable.

What confuses me is that our culture simultaneously promotes “altruistic” and/or “Christian” ideals, yet the reality of the situation is quite different (see the work and relationship examples above).

In reality, there is no real difference between the work or relationship examples above. They’re both “relationships,” particularly in the sense that they require one to be honest with oneself about the situation at hand, and the ability to openly and effectively communicate/navigate their position in that situation.

But you have to know what that situation/position is, truly. And for many, they live for a long long time believing that hard work will pay off, and never find out why it never did.

Any ideas out there?