What is a correction?
In the dog world, the phrase "to correct" is controversial Many dog trainers argue that there's nothing wrong with 'correcting' a dog because you're simply showing him how to be correct. I've seen entire blogs written to justify the use of the word, and its application in dog training, by referring to the root of the word "correct" - to make right. I know that I appreciate it when someone corrects my work to help me improve.
If a correction is designed to make the dog correct, why does it often look like the dog is being made sorry rather than being made right?
This reminds me of a phase in my life where saying something was "bad" really meant that it was "good". Cool. The meaning of the word changed, and only a person in a closet would have failed to notice that change. As a result, we accepted the changed word and we used the original meaning with care to avoid a misunderstanding.
Is it possible that the current meaning of the word "correct" has changed from "being made right" to "applying unpleasant consequences?" I'm talking about the dog world; not the common usage of the word (we are talking about dogs here, aren't we?).
If you cannot decide for yourself if the meaning of the word has changed, then I'd like to suggest a fairly simple test to help you get calibrated.
You'll need three things. A dog making a mistake, a trainer applying a correction, and a five year old.
While the five year old is observing, "correct" the dog for making a mistake. Then ask the child, "is the dog happy now that I showed him how to be correct?"
If the five year old looks at you like you've grown a second head, then you may wish to acknowledge that the root meaning of the word and the common usage of the word are no longer the same.
Lets call a spade a spade. A correction means to make the dog sorry so that they will perform differently the next time. If you are showing a dog how to perform correctly, then don't call it a correction. You are "showing","teaching" or "training" the dog. And if you are really trying to help the dog, then whatever you are doing should look like help to the random five year old.
Regardless of how you feel about corrections in training, isn't it better to use language that is clear and descriptive of what is really happening?
I've seen people jerk their dogs all over the place in the name of dog training. I've seen dogs cowering away from their owners and other run away in fear. I've seen dogs pee and roll on their backs as their trainer approached. I'm sure each of those individuals would say they were 'correcting' the dog, and many of them would subscribe to the usage of the word that I began with - that they were making the dog right.
I've yet to hear someone say they were abusing their dog. So, in the interest of clarity, if we are truly showing our dogs how to perform and we care how they feel about their work, we should eliminate the use of the word "correction" from our vocabularies and substitute onother, less tainted word, in it's place.
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There has never been any question in my mind that “correction” was the euphemism applied to collar jerks and ear pinches(or whatever escalation from there). When I trained using collar corrections, I used that word. Now I don’t train using collar corrections, so I don’t use that word. (Although you cannot imagine how the devil whispered in my ear last night as my dog decided that he suddenly no longer knew how to heel without lagging. The devil did not win. I am growing up.)
Euphemism is how we cover up an uncomfortable feeling about something through choosing words that we don’t think will trigger negative reactions in another person. For instance, this week I learned that the newest term for applying electricity to a dog’s neck(evolving from “shock” through “stimulate” and “nick” to the rather odd “stem” by Ed Frawley), is the one I heard this week when someone explained to me that what certainly looked like an ecollar on the dog they brought to my 99.8% positive class was not a shock collar: it was more like a TENS unit. Not having heard of using TENS units on dogs, I looked it up, and it appears to me that there has been another paradigm shift. There are dozens of hits when you google “dog training TENS.” It is not a shock collar any more. It is a TENS device. TENS: a medical device thought of positively by many people who associate it with solving pain problems.[I leave a small amount of room for the possibility that there really is a magic device that is different than a shock collar and like a TENS unit]. It sure looked like a shock collar to me. And I don’t have any objections to well-planned, carefully targeted use of an ecollar. I think it can be a lot more humane than some of the alternatives. My point is that it makes me cringe when people try to hide from their actions behind a veil of words. Call a spade a spade, as Denise suggests.
Interesting – as the most common type of “correction” seems to be a collar yank or as someone described above, a stim from an e-collar. The “correction” event seems to tell the dog NOTHING about what the correct behavior is and instead is marking the incorrect behavior. So, really “correction” isn’t a very accurate term. Most “corrections” seem like they would be better described as “wrong behavior markers”.
I may be misunderstanding this part of the post:
“So, in the interest of clarity, if we are truly showing our dogs how to perform and we care how they feel about their work, we should eliminate the use of the word “correction” from our vocabularies and substitute onother, less tainted word, in it’s place.”
I take this to mean that the fact that I am giving my dog a painful consequence for failure to comply with a known command that I am not showing my dog how to perform and I don’t care how they feel about their work. In other words, I think the statement that I quoted is implying that corrections are wrong. That is where I disagree. Have I misunderstood this statement?
If you follow up the “yank” with the cue for the correct behaviour (eg. sit), does that then qualify it as a way to explain what is right?
For years I used the word balance and can’t anymore because it’s been tainted to mean a balance of rewards with punishments. I used it to mean if the reinforcement history is very strong on “this side” you need to balance the reinforcement history on the other side. For example, if the dog is so crazy to run out to get his dumbbell, you need to bump up the reinforcement on the staying side. To me the opposite of a reward/reinforcement is no reward, not a punishment. It’s getting really hard to talk about training period. Vocabulary is a very importable and tricky thing!