No Nonsense Dog Training

★★★★☆ No Nonsense Dog Training: A Complete Guide to Fully Train Every Dog by Haz Othman

This is the second part of a two-part series on dog training methodologies. If you haven’t read my review of Zak George’s Guide to a Well-Behaved Dog, do that first. Or don’t. I’m not the boss of you.

Okay, I have THOUGHTS. Firstly: the four stars represent my experience of reading the book and the sheer amount of new information I learned. It does not represent a belief that balanced training is superior.

There is a disclaimer at the beginning and another at the end. The first one was basically the publisher saying, hey don’t blame us, blame the author! And the very last page of the book is just this, emphasis added:

All training in this book is a description of what I do, not an instruction or recommendation for the reader.

Page 28. I am using this quote out of context for more effect, but I did not change any words:

ensure that you PRE-BONK the dog. Pre-bonking is basically bonking the dog for no reason. […] throw the bonker at the dog’s head or shoulder area.

I enjoyed the author’s informal tone.

Page ii.

If you are looking for fluff and unicorn stories, put this book back on the shelf and pick up something by a dolphin trainer or some TV actor pretending to be a dog trainer.

Coincidentally, I’ve read both of those books already..?

Page 9:

This may help alleviate some of your concerns that he is Cujo reborn

And page 37:

Greeting other dogs, smelling something on the ground, and the second coming of Jesus are situations where pulling is still not acceptable.

Page 83

However, if you were lazy or stupid enough to skip steps and jump ahead to doing this without following the preceding steps properly, get ready for bad things to happen.

This is what Haz Othman and Zak George, or perhaps Team Balanced and Team +R in general, would both agree on:

Positive reinforcement is the best quadrant for teaching new behaviors.
You and your dog need to learn to play. It’s great for your dog, providing reinforcement, enrichment, and exercise all at once.
Seek professional help if you have a dog that wants to seriously injure/kill others. Do not do it on your own, because there can be terrible consequences.
If your dog has failed something too many times in a row, it is your fault for not calibrating the difficulty properly.
Puppy “socialization” does not mean forcing your puppy to interact with strangers, dogs, etc. Do not force your puppy to do this. However, desensitization to various sights and sounds (vacuum, fireworks etc) is good. (I can understand where this misconception came from. If I say I’m going to “socialize” at a party, nobody assumes I’m going there to read a book and ignore everyone)

Key differences:

+R really emphasizes setting your dog up for success. Haz does this, but he also emphasizes setting your dog up for failure. Amplifying the mistake, he calls it.

Page 96:

Almost intentionally trying to tempt him into breaking and correcting back to the position when he does. Only by stress testing the command will it become reliable.

Zak really emphasized exercise, but Haz takes a different approach:

No, that did not involve hours of running them or any such craziness. Just two structured walks, a training session or two daily, outings on the weekends, and some basic rules in the home.

This is interesting because I thought a high drive Malinois or some such did need hours of running a day. You often hear it repeated online. But I suppose most people saying that don’t have a Malinois themselves. Same as the people saying macaws need “hours of direct interaction every day,” ugh.

His generic method for training something:

Train it with positive reinforcement
Introduce negative reinforcement and a cue. When you do the thing, I stop doing [annoying thing], and also you probably get a reward.
Introduce positive punishment and fade away negative reinforcement. Now you get a few seconds to obey. If you don’t, then the e-collar comes on.
Proof it. Increase the intensity of the punishment when disobeyed, but this should be infrequent. Improve distance, duration, distraction.

SKILL

I feel like +R training has a lower skill floor, but also a higher skill ceiling. Needs creative problem solving.

Kikopup video example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuxoJEL0_5E&t=25 [Two merle border collies (of course they’re border collies smh) beside each other, crossing their paws to walk forward] I saw this recently and wow, it just shifted my window on what was possible. How do you even shape/capture a standing dog crossing its paw in the first place??

You could argue, well, a balanced trainer does +R and then some. But they have an easier, faster way out. Why not use that instead?

You could also say, cleaning toilets with toothbrushes is worse than cleaning them with [specialized toilet cleaning tool]. But cleaning them with toothbrushes builds character. Grit. Resilience. Problem-solving skills, probably. I often write on paper when I could be typing. Similar idea.

The book Don’t Shoot the Dog! has a short point about the creativity of animals that have never been exposed to punishment training. How there’s this specific thing where you challenge them to show as many new behaviors as possible, and how punished animals don’t want to do that.

But maybe he doesn’t want creativity? and that’s fine?

One of the big draws to Team +R is the bond with the animal. I want to say, good for you, I feel the same way, but this isn’t universal. Most of us get a dog for companionship, but some of us don’t! Maybe you just want a fully trained dog to sit in your backyard. Or win IGP titles with. Or post on Instagram. Or look scary while you walk around and collect taxes.

If you judged my parrot by 1) how well he can talk, 2) how cuddly/gentle/child-safe he is, and 3) how well he (supposedly) fits into a standard life, he would be a failure of an animal. These are common priorities, but they are not the only priorities. More importantly, they are not my priorities.

Page 48

The main reason why many dogs struggle to play with the handler is that they view the handler as an end to the fun.

Respectfully, this may be a you problem. I feel like even a crappy +R trainer will be fine here. Dogs naturally want to play with you. They do not flee from you in terror. It takes punishment, accidental or otherwise, to change this.

I enter my room in the evening, my bird looks a bit sleepy. I say, “hey, wanna go training? Train. Training!!!!!” and he climbs down to his training perch, looks at me expectantly.

I wouldn’t give it up for the world.

Another point is learned helplessness. Haz’s training for fearful dogs is 1) ideally prevent it in the first place by doing proper desensitization as a puppy, but then 2) punish the dog so that it no longer reacts to the scary thing. No running away, no barking, no moving.

Is that not the definition of learned helplessness? Or: does it matter what the dog feels on the inside if it’s RESULTS?

There was another part about having the dog chase the thing he’s afraid of when possible - it would reframe the fear in the dog’s mind. I thought that was genius.

He says on Page 126 that there are only two ways to deal with undesirable behaviors: Punishment and management. I feel there’s at least four. You can do counterconditioning. Food-aggressive dog. Toss food into the dog’s bowl while it’s eating. Problem solved. That’s not punishment or management.

You could also do differential reinforcement of alternative behavior. Bird gets mean inside the cage? Well, ask him to leave the cage first.

Shopping list For +R you need:

a leash
a collar
some treats
(clicker optional)

But this is what you need for all the balanced training detailed in this book:

all of the above
A long and light leash
A prong collar
A choke chain
An e collar (e as in electric, not Elizabethan. Both usages are common in dog world)
A bark collar
Wifi camera
A crate
A place mat
A tab leash
The infamous BONKER
and a hand (to whack the misbehaving dog with)

Conveniently, most of these hard-to-find tools are available on Haz’s website.

One of the common criticisms of balanced training is that the dog only listens when you have the e-collar/etc available on hand. I had been wondering about this, but Haz addresses it in two short sections. Basically, it should be random. Put the e-collar on for no reason and don’t use it. Only use it when a second collar is also on, so the dog falsely believes the second collar is the shocking one. This is interesting to me- I didn’t think dogs were that intelligent.

If your dog is already “collar wise”, you should put the collar on the dog for a few weeks full time without using it, then ease back into it.

I liked this specific criticism about +R: the dog is always calculating. Does he want the treat more than he wants to chase the squirrel? I haven’t seen a good refutation for this beyond “it’s not just the treat, it’s the treat AND your bond.” With balanced training, there is no choice. In a way, that is security.

He DOES draw a distinction between what he views as willfully disobedient dogs, versus ones that don’t’ know what they’re supposed to be doing, too scared, etc. There’s “help” and then there’s “correction.”

Maybe balanced training is an evil for human convenience, but isn’t behavioral euthanasia a human convenience too? Like, okay, this pit bull will only ever be happy in a rural home with no dogs, no cats, no children, no men, no livestock, no cars, no loud noises, $500 a month in anti-anxiety meds, and a diet of extinct fruits. But maybe it’s your fault for not providing that. Is the life of this dog worth less than your petty human marriage, job, children, and sanity? They say that dog can’t be happy, that euthanasia is a mercy. But it usually can, you’re just not willing to provide the resources.

This review is already 2000+ words, so let me wrap it up. These are some mini foods for thought:

Why doesn’t punishment work as well on parrots? Or does it, and you’re just not allowed to say? And don’t use the cop-out answers: they don’t respond to punishment (that’s an insult to their intelligence); they have wings and can escape (many can’t fly); they’re not domesticated. Is it because nobody’s made tiny little electric collars yet?
How much can mental engagement make up for physical engagement? Can I have a border collie with two walks around the block and a training session a day?
What if, unlike Haz, you don’t have access to the controlled environment of a dog training facility? The dog is clever enough to become “collar wise”; will he not become aware that some members of the household are rather inconsistent in using the aversives? You’re amazing, but maybe your wife keeps getting the timing wrong, your daughter is a staunch believer that all aversives are evil, and your son keeps leaving toys around the house. What then?
Would I let a world-famous +R trainer (say, Barbara Heidenreich) train my bird? Yes, without question. Would I let Joe Schmoe +R Aspirant train my parrot? Maybe, as long as he doesn’t instinctively whack my bird for nailing him. World famous balanced trainer? Maybe, currently leaning towards no. Average balanced trainer? Absolutely not.
I dislike how the balanced training community uses “positive only” as a strawman for the +R truthers. Nobody calls it positive only. They might say “without aversives,” or “Force Free” (which is trademarked), or just Positive Reinforcement Trainer. Come on, Team Balanced. If there was a branding war, you guys were never going to win anyway.
Obvious point about balanced training being dangerous in the wrong hands.

I am not a dog [citation needed] but life as a dog in Haz’s household seems bleak. You’re crated for 14+ hours a day. When you’re not crated, you never have free roam in the house. Stay on the place mat where you belong. You get kibble as a reward, or maybe just some praise, or maybe you just don’t get shocked. There are no toys laying about; you can play with your handler as a reward, or not at all.

Yeah, anthropomorphism, the eighth cardinal sin. Sorry.

But he’d say this is a good thing, that dogs require structure. That with you as the leader, they’ll feel secure of their place and happy and fulfilled and stuff.

And are the lives of those dogs worse than a factory farmed pig? I will argue no. Concretely no. But man. Bleak.

As a side note, I’m having pork for dinner.