Increasing problematic behaviours
The effects of punishment on canine behaviour
Over the last few posts, I built up to a paper from Helen Howell and colleagues1 where they looked at what dog trainers thought contributed to aggressive behaviours in dogs, and what they thought academics were researching, along with the mismatch between them. They concluded that dog trainers & behaviour folk thought a lot more about some things, like the impact of punishment, and a lot less about other things, like breed, age and sex. Interesting, that, isn’t it?
Academics more interested in the impact of biology and dog folk more interested on the effects of environment & learning. I wonder if that’s why so many of the academic veterinary behaviourists who publish books and papers think much less about context and environment and learning and antecedents and consequences than we might tend to do?
