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Fuck You Animal Planet
10 years ago
General
Animal Planet is a fucking joke now.
All it is these days, is morons chasing imaginary animals, living in the mountains, perpetuating fear and worsening the stigma against snakes and reptiles, and teaching people how to abuse their dogs (Dog Whisperer).
Steve Irwin would puke if he saw these "FLESH EATING 13 FOOT PYTHON" shows. Good job undoing all his hard work to redeem snakes and reptiles and educate people.
~
I actually don't understand.
AS for him kicking a dog, I saw that and while most people were up in arms about it. I would of done the same thing if a dog had clamped on to my arm. Yes he provoked the dog by getting in it's space and nears its food but I would boot my dog in the sides if he clamped onto my arm, no way would I let my dog just attack me and just stand there like an idiot.
There are four things you do to apply behaviorism when training a dog:
Positive reinforcement - a treat
Negative reinforcement - escape from pain
Positive punishment - Pain
Negative punishment - No more treat.
When you want a dog that isn't afraid of anything and is able to handle a variety of situations - like a therapy dog - you can't apply punitive training techniques. Punitive training techniques are focused on extinguishing unwanted behavior rather than increasing the prevalence of desired behavior.
Punishing unwanted behavior makes the dog less likely to experiment with behaviors new to it. This isn't just "oh, I can't train him to roll over because he's nervous around me", it's also "wow, this 6'7" broad shouldered dude is unlike anyone my dog has ever seen and she starts vomiting any time she sees him because she's scared of him because we were harsh on her for jumping up on strangers."
Punishment also causes unintended side effects. Dogs have about a 3 second attention span for applying punishment and punishment is super effective. A poorly timed punishment gets associated with things the trainer doesn't intend it to. I.E. you smack a dog for barking, and it's already turned its attention to a fire hydrant. Therefore the dog associates the smack with the fire hydrant and not with barking at the squirrel.
In general, punishment/aversive stimuli cause the animal to behave in a fearful, timid way. It also causes the dog to be very tense and encourages explosiveness when the dog gets to its threshold, rather than the natural progression of fearful responses. So instead of hunching down, a nervous grimace, a nervous growl, a bark, several barks, a snarl and lunge, and then an attack, your dog goes from tensing up to mauling something because it's afraid of being punished.
I've simplified a lot of stuff because I don't want to go too academic on you, but I'm a dog trainer that's currently on hiatus from training dogs to be steadier than bomb/police/search and rescue dogs. I'm considering getting into Schultzhund or S&R training after graduation if I don't go back to training therapy dogs.
Milan is a quack. He punishes dogs natural, normal fear responses. Half the dogs I've seen him work with give completely natural "STAY AWAY FROM ME" and "DON'T HURT ME PLEASE" responses and he beats them into submission pretending his hissing noises make it some sort of 'natural' thing. The only times dogs do anything remotely resembling his hand-bop 'trick' are when they're threatening to attack.
The dogs he trains are unsafe. The training techniques he espouses are bogus.
If you want to learn how to train dogs 'the right way', I recommend starting off with "The Culture Clash", which is aimed squarely at Milan's brand of dog training, and then reading through Ian Dunbar's books, and "The Other End of the Leash".