E166: 로어 호그 박사(Dr. Lore Haug) - "고전적 조건화와 부정적 강화"

And this was kind of like, like old traditional obedience school, you know, wait until they're six months, put the choke chain on and, you know, around the parking lot you go. So, but she bought me a puppy when I was 12, partly because I was very shy. She was trying to facilitate social interactions. But, and so I started training and then I got involved in competitive obedience for a number of years. And just as I, you know, I kind of grew up around animals. We always had rabbits and guinea pigs and ferrets and we, you know, rehabilitated cottontails and barn owls and nighthawks. And we had finch aviaries and we bred parakeets. And so I was just kind of like surrounded by animals and everybody just assumed I would be a veterinarian. And of course I had to not so much rebel about that, but I was actually concerned that if I became a veterinarian, I might get kind of burned out. And so I decided I was going to be an ocean engineer instead. And then one day at the end of my freshman college semester or year, I was walking with one of my professors and I was like, oh, yeah, I'm a math science major. And he goes, oh, well, you must like the math and physics best in your classes. And I was like, no, I like biology the best. And then I thought, wow, what am I doing? I went back and changed my major the next day. So I've just always been interested in, you know, behavior. And then as a career, I thought it might be a good way to meld those two together, behavior and veterinary medicine. Talk about a life-changing conversation, huh? Right. It's kind of a unique mix, though, just having kind of all three of those pieces come together. So it's kind of a cool, cool melding. Yeah, I like, you know, and I think a lot of behavior consultants like learning about, you know, medicine too, because I talk to a lot of them. But I hope that by having a background in veterinary medicine, behavior consultant and training, including the performance aspect of training, that I can provide a more wholesome experience and treatment plan for our families and our patients. You kind of mentioned in there, you got started when you were 12 with a not exactly positive training bent. So what kind of you started in positive training? Kind of how did you make that switch? Yeah. And, you know, I look back at some of those things I did, and they're just horrifying to me. But, you know, I was a kid and you do what people show you. But I was fortunate enough to meet two kind of life-changing people, Cheryl Trotter and a veterinarian named Kay Stevens.

Cheryl Trotter, unfortunately, passed away last year, but we were friends for many years. But she and Kay Stevens kind of took me under their wing and then also took me to my first APDT conference back in 1995 and exposed me to a whole different world of behavior. You know, Murray Sidman and a lot of the Pottery and Training people and a whole different set of books and outlook on behavior. And then, like, that was just it. I was like, oh, I love this. Like a lot of people, it was difficult sometimes to make that switch in practice, though, because you're kind of raised or developed initially thinking, you know, I've got to tell this animal when they've done something wrong. Like, how do you get a well-trained animal without ever correcting them? And so it was a little bit difficult transition for a while. But I was also fortunate at the time, I think, to have the right dog. Like, the dog I had at the time was a good dog to help me leap all the way over that fence. What was it about that dog? Well, one, she didn't have any kind of horrifying behavior problems. Fair enough. And she was pensive. You know, she thought a lot about things. So she wasn't spastic and energetic. It wasn't like trying to train a chicken. And then she was just, her reactions made me stop and think about what I was doing. And her behavior and her temperament allowed me to be patient and more empathic. Because this is kind of terrible to say in a way, but there wasn't anything about her behavior that would make me angry. You know, like sometimes people get animals with behavior problems and they get so frustrated that they're angry. And that does make them want to lash out and punish because they don't know what else to do. So fortunately, like I said, she was just passive and pensive. And she really helped me work through a lot of those difficulties and questions that I had about switching to a truly positive reinforcement-based paradigm. It's definitely a huge switch. So to kind of look back where you came from, how would you describe your training philosophy today? Today, you know, every day I hope that I maintain a commitment to Lima principles and most positive, least intrusive. You know, we're not perfect, but I'm always looking to find more positive solutions to things, help people do that, and also try to constantly remind myself, is there a way to give an animal even more choice in this situation than is what is occurring? So it's still a journey. I think I do a pretty good job, but it's still a journey for me because I always want to try to do better.

And I'm sure it's also partially a journey just because you work with, I mean, non-canid species are a little bit more difficult, right? They're just a different ballgame than some of the dog training stuff out there. Yeah, they're just different. What I wouldn't necessarily say, they're more difficult. Certainly have a lot of respect for people that are working with, you know, zoo and exotic animals, especially if they're not in protected contact because your mistakes are much more costly. I think horses overall are pretty forgiving a lot of times. There's certainly a class of them just like the dogs where mistakes are more costly because they just don't tolerate errors. But I wouldn't necessarily say they're definitely overall not more difficult. And I think as we get more proficient with cats, we find they're not really so difficult either if you have the right motivators. Fair enough. So I kind of mentioned earlier the fact that I thought it was really interesting kind of these three different backgrounds and they kind of merge together. So I'd love to hear how, you know, being a trainer, a behavior consultant and a vet kind of impact how you think about behavior and training. It's really rare to find somebody who kind of checks off all three boxes. You know, I try to obviously start with, again, like these intervention hierarchies like Susan Friedman has, like is the animal's biological needs being met? And I think one of the particularly useful things about my sort of trio is we want to not only think about how medical things might impact the behavior, but I think sometimes we forget to take into account how medical issues might impact the treatment program. And I don't mean just like whether you're giving them medicine for a problem, but what type of issues may affect the animal's mobility or their cognitive function that might require you to change your approach to accommodate that. Just like we would change our approach to accommodate an owner, for example, that maybe was in a wheelchair or had a hearing impairment. Those things impact the treatment program, not just the etiology of the behavior. And then all those things are ongoing. I do say I miss, because I've been doing really just behavior mod stuff for so many years now, because I haven't been in competition for years, but I miss some of that. And I think there's a lot of value that performance people have to share in terms of training techniques that would help us be better behavior consultants too.

So I hope that there's, like we do in this conference, there's more of a blending so that we learn all these pieces from each other. Yeah, I think there's, you know, anytime you see different areas of expertise kind of crossover, there's always opportunities for learning, right? Absolutely. See, you mentioned in there that, you know, this idea of thinking about how medical issues affect the treatment plan. Do you just have an example or a recent case that you could kind of, you know, just give as a little bit of a sample? One of the things that we see commonly, I guess two big categories are animals with orthopedic issues, like they have undiagnosed and therefore untreated torn cruciate ligaments. One of the dogs that I saw for leash aggression to dogs, she had had an amputation of one of her hind legs, but she unbeknownst to the owner had relatively significant arthritic changes and pain in the remaining hind leg. And I'm like, well, we're not going to be able to do like a bunch of, we can't teach this dog to sit and look and practice that 50 times a day or be doing these kind of bat approaches where you're walking the dog up and down and up and down. Like, like we just, we can't do that with her because her mobility is so affected and it's going to make the dog more painful. So we just have to adapt to that. So orthopedic issues are a big one. And then the gastrointestinal issues are the second big group that I see where the animal either has a food allergy. So we're restricted with what type of food reinforcers we can use. Or they may have chronic GI upset, which affects how the animal feels. So there may be waxing and waning of their behavior correlating to how their intestinal tract feels. So we have to keep watch for that. And we may have to put treatment plans, not really on hold, but there may be days when we have to recognize the animal feels bad. And we change the training plan for that day, or maybe don't do any training at all. That's really kind of an interesting thing to think about, right? I think most people think about it for themselves for sure, that if I don't feel good today, like, of course, I'm not going to do my best work. Maybe today's not the best day to take on a brand new big project, right? But kind of thinking about how that influences how the dog's going to feel about other things that you're trying to change their emotions around, too, right? Yes. Yeah. So you mentioned the conference in there. And we're lucky enough to have you joining us as a presenter for the upcoming Lemonade Conference, where you're presenting for us twice.

So the first topic is on theory and application of classical conditioning. And I think most people know enough to kind of associate classical conditioning with Pavlov. But for anybody who maybe hasn't brushed up on this stuff in a while, can you give us just kind of a working definition? Classical conditioning. I mean, obviously, Pavlov is a good example. Like, it was how it started. And we think a lot about conditioned emotional responses. And really, Pavlovian conditioning is a way for animals, or maybe kind of evolved, if you will, to give animals survival advantage. So it is there to prepare them to learn significant or associations between significant stimuli in the environment. If I see or hear or smell this, it might mean there's something in the environment that is beneficial to my survival. Or it may mean there's something in the environment that is detrimental to my survival, like predator, toxins, fire, whatever, so that the animal can learn to seek those things or avoid them. And so, yeah, we think about ringabella and salivate. But what was really helpful to me when I was studying this topic for the lecture was to remember that this is a survival paradigm, if you will. Like, its basic purpose is to help animals get important things or avoid important things. I like that. Can you share just a little more on what you'll kind of cover during the talk? So, obviously, I cover, you know, a brief definition of what classical conditioning is. And then I touch on, again, some of these factors about the survival advantage and looking at it like that. We talk about some of the types of classical conditioning, like delayed conditioning or simultaneous conditioning. And some of the things that facilitate conditioning, like the intensity of the conditioned stimulus or the intensity of the unconditioned stimulus. We talk a little bit about how you can hopefully set up training sessions, like knowing whether what influences number of trials, training time and intertrial interval have on the likelihood of conditioning. I also talk a little bit about some interactions between Pavlovian and operant conditioning, which is super complex, obviously. And then I try because this is why I did the whole, this really, this was a self-serving lecture. Because one of the reasons I did it was to try to take that theory that you read about, which unfortunately, when you read textbooks, you know, it's always about dogs and bells and salivating or rats getting, you know, food pellets or getting shocked. And then I'm like, well, how do I take that?

Understanding why it's so much harder than it sounds like it should be. It certainly does seem to be harder than it sounds like it should be, right? It seems like just simple concept when you think about the basic Pavlovian experiment, right? Like, okay, thing, thing, done. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. So the presentation title kind of specifically calls out both theory and application. So I think you've done a nice job kind of talking us through how you're going to approach each of those, right? And just kind of thinking about the title, it made me think that, you know, there's both overlap and some places those two aren't exactly in sync, which is, you know, in line with what you were saying. Can you talk a little more about that? Where are places where the theory and application, they just don't quite line up? I don't know that it's so much that they don't line up, but that there are obviously situations that you can set up in a laboratory where you have many, many more controlled variables that you just cannot set up out in the real world. You know, a rat in a box, you can control other reinforcement and punishment and extinction contingencies and focus on one behavior and one contingency, whether it's Pavlovian or instrumental. But when you get out in the real world, like you're bombarded constantly with all these different schedules of reinforcement and contingencies and associations, and we can't just pull one out. And the laboratory also allows a much more or somewhat of an in-depth look at how Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning interact and either augment or oppose each other. And again, that's not something, those experiments are complex and it's not something that you can do in the real world. Like, because again, you just can't control enough variables to be able to say, okay, well, this instrumental behavior is, you know, having a 36% reduction in the Pavlovian response or vice versa, you know. And in this situation, you know, the Pavlovian influence is augmenting the operant behavior by 60%. Like, you can't do that. Yeah. Yeah. And just kind of carrying that through, right? Like, obviously, you've got the environmental situation. And then if you're working with a client, so it's, you know, the dog belongs to a person, then it's their behavior also that you kind of have to look at and their ability to be consistent. Yeah. Yeah. So that totally makes sense to me. And then I think too, we forget that, you know, our clients and their pets shape our behavior, sometimes even unbeknownst to us.

Like, I don't think sometimes we're consciously aware of over time, how we've slowly changed our behavior, our thought processes, and also our physical actions because of reinforcement and punishment contingencies from the animals and their owners. So, you know, I think we're, like I said, the more aware of that, maybe we can help control them when they're not heading us in a good direction. Yeah. But yeah. That's so interesting. Because I know in sports training recently, we've kind of been having some conversations around the idea that often it's so reinforcing for our dogs to get the step that we're at, that maybe we don't increase criteria. Right. And so, because the moment we increase criteria, we increase the chances the dog's going to be wrong or make a mistake or do something that's slightly different than what we anticipated. And so, we end up plateauing progress, right? Which is, I'd imagine is similar. Yes, I could absolutely see that happening. And, you know, I think when we talk about different sort of focuses, negative reinforcement, you know, punishment, positive reinforcement, whether you ever, I mean, there are pros and cons to each of those. And, you know, reinforcing is reinforcing. Like, it is reinforcing to me to click and treat my horse or my dog. And that makes me want to do it more. And then, like you said, sometimes we keep doing it for the same criterion and maybe get stuck there. And then, you know, get the animals stuck there. So, it's not really a bad thing about positive reinforcement per se, but it's something that we need to try to be self-aware so that we don't fall into that trap. Because I have fallen into that trap. Haven't we all? So, I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about your second presentation. So, your second topic for the conference is on humane use of negative reinforcement, which seems like we could easily spend, you know, a whole episode kind of just talking about that. But, kind of, again, just to make sure we're all kind of working up the same definitions here. Can you explain what you mean by negative reinforcement? So, just as a slight tangent, it may be a good thing that we ended up doing this conference online. That way I don't have to stand at the front of the room and get tomatoes thrown at me during this lecture. But, you know, negative reinforcement is what it is. It's the removal of a stimulus that results in the increased probability of a, you know, of a behavior. And, like I said, the definition is pretty straightforward.

Obviously, just like many things, bringing it into the world we live and work in a little bit more complicated. So, let's talk about that just a little bit. How can trainers use negative reinforcement humanely? Can you kind of talk us through a couple examples? Yeah, and the fact of the matter is that, like you said, it's happening. And sometimes I think it's often being used without it being, without us realizing it. Like, there's a lot of contention about this topic. I haven't even given the lecture. And I've already received information from some people, you know, out through Facebook and stuff that this is causing angst in individuals that I'm doing this lecture. Um, but one of the things I think, like punishment or positive reinforcement or whatever, like, I don't go around punishing animals, but I do need to understand how it works. I think we need to understand how negative reinforcement works. One, so that if we do want to use it, we do it properly. And two, we can recognize if it's happening when we don't want it to happen so that we can change it, you know. So, um, examples include simple things like front clip harnesses. You know, you walk along, the dog pulls, the dog feels the pressure, a little bit of the torque of the harness, and the dog backs off the pressure. Sometimes we do that on purpose, where we're standing somewhere, the dog's standing still. Maybe you put a little bit of tension on the collar or the harness, and then you just stand there and wait really patiently. And eventually the animal maybe gets a little bit annoyed by the pressure, and they move into the pressure, and then we release it. If people have ever trained their dog to put their paw on their nose by putting a piece of tape on the nose, that is negative reinforcement because the tape annoys the dog. The dog paws at the tape to get it off, and when the tape comes off, the annoyance is gone. It's negative reinforcement, you know. So, it's happening a lot, and let's own up to it as long as we're doing it well. Yeah. Yeah, and I'd go so far as to say, you know, nagging, right? So, sometimes with the dog, we think the dog knows a behavior, and we nag. Do it, do it, do it, do it, right? That's the same kind of idea, right? But most people probably wouldn't think of that. Right. You lean down on the dog's face, you know, and stare at it, to get it to sit, and then the dog's like, oh, and it sits, and then we stand back up. For a lot of dogs, that's negative reinforcement. You know, not all of them. Some of them may enjoy that. But there's plenty of them, especially our behavior cases, that don't enjoy that.

Right. Right. So, where do you, obviously, the things we're talking about seem to me like most positive trainers would probably not think of those as extreme things, right? Like, repeating a cue, and like, even just a little bit of collar pressure. So, where do you kind of draw the line? Where does it, at what point does it cross over from humane use to becoming inhumane or unkind? For me, I think there's two kind of big points or reactions I'm observing from the animal, which is, one, when you apply the aversive, does that aversive impact the behavior the animal was doing at the time you applied it? Like, is it reducing the frequency of that behavior? So, if your dog is standing beside you and you put pressure on the collar, does, over time, is your dog less likely to stand beside you? Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay? And then the second thing is, does the animal still want to do the training? Like, if I'm giving them choice where they can get up and leave the session whenever they want, but they choose to stay there, then to me, that implies that this aversive is not significant enough to damage the bond and the animal's willingness to continue to participate in the process. Mm-hmm. And obviously, that'll be different, totally different, depending on the animal in question and the dog temperament. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so, you mentioned that, uh, the training, getting tomatoes, they're new. Why is it that, that trainers typically think of negative reinforcement as such a dirty word? How did it kind of get that rep, or what can we do to recognize it in a way that, um... Because it, because it has, it has the word aversive in it. You know, like, when, you know, you can define it by saying the app, you know, the removal of a stimulus that increases the frequency of the behavior, and a lot of people would also define it as, um, the removal of an aversive stimulus, increased frequency of the behavior. So, as soon as they hear the word aversive, you know, everybody's brain explodes, um, and instead of having a rational, objective thought process and discussion about it, um, again, I've become much more open about this process since I, you know, got so involved in horses many years ago because the negative reinforcement is rampant in that discipline. Um, and some of it's just horrible, horrible, but there's a lot of it that is very thoughtful and humane. Um, and, and there's, again, things we can learn from that. Us dog and cat and parrot and stuff, trainers, um, can learn from that. And the horse people can learn from us. So I think that's a good note to kind of, um, wrap things up on.

So I've got three more questions here that I usually ask kind of at the end of every interview. Uh, so I'm going to go through them. And the first one is, uh, what's the training related accomplishment that you're proudest of? You know, honestly, and this is really, um, sappy, but I guess I'm just really proud that I was able to so fully make the transition from the way, you know, from a compulsive traditional style training, um, over to this, like that when I started the transition and it got hard and I had all these questions, how does this possibly work that I didn't just give up, but I thought about it and I got people to help me. Um, I think that's important is to reach out to people to bolster you and not just try to snow you. Um, and, and then pushed through it, um, to come out the other side. Um, I'm, I'm not glad for the things I did to the animals back then. I am glad for myself that I had that experience because it does make me more committed to the avenue that I'm on now because I've seen and done both sides of the fence. I like that. Um, it's just a good perspective to kind of have, right? Um, so my next one here is what's the best piece of training advice that you've ever heard? Uh, one from Bob Bailey, which is to always go back to the basics. Like you can never go wrong going back to the basics. Um, and I think that's super powerful and important. And then all of the many individuals that have really helped us, um, think about choice and giving animals choice. Yeah. Uh, last one here. Who is somebody else in the training world that you look up to? That's also super difficult because there's like, can I list like 10 or 20 people? Um, um, you know, I have to give to, like I said, kudos to Cheryl Trotter, uh, for really mentoring me back when I was, you know, younger. Um, and then I, I think I've learned a lot, um, personally and professionally, um, from people like Susan Friedman, Kathy Sadeo, Sharag Patel, um, and Laura Monaco Torelli. I think they're all phenomenal. There's many, many, many, many phenomenal people. Cause really, I could just do a whole podcast, just listing like the Oscars. You know, I have to thank these, you know, 5,000 people. Um, so that's the short answer. Fair enough. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming back, coming on the podcast, Laurie. It'd been fantastic to kind of chat through all this with you. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. And thanks to our listeners for tuning in. We will be back next week. Don't miss it. If you haven't already subscribed to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice.

They'll have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fensie Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fensie for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lynn. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training. Thank you.