Rethinking Aggression: The Science Beyond Labels

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
In this episode I sit down with Chirag Patel to
unpack the layered dynamics ofaggression in dogs and the human
behaviors that so often shapethem.
We explore why aggression issuch a subjective label, how
functional assessments can leadto more ethical and effective
interventions, and why empathyand scientific thinking are both

(00:23):
essential in behavior change.
And why empathy and scientificthinking are both essential in
behavior change.
From classical and operantconditioning to future
technologies that may transformour field, chirag offers a
thought-provoking look at wherewe've been and where we're
headed.
Chirag is a globally respectedbehavior consultant who has
worked with everything fromfamily dogs to zoo animals and
even A-list celebrity pets.
With a background in veterinaryscience, clinical behavior and

(00:47):
applied behavior analysis,chirag is best known for his
science-based, low-stressapproach to training and
behavior modification.
His work spans TV appearances,international speaking
engagements and consulting fortop organizations like Guide
Dogs UK and consulting for toporganizations like Guide Dogs UK
, dogs Trust and the KongCompany.
Before we jump into today'sepisode, a quick heads up If

(01:10):
you're looking to learn moreabout helping dogs with
aggression issues, head over toAggressiveDogcom.
We've got something foreveryone.
For pet pros, there's theAggression and Dogs Master
Course, the most comprehensivecourse available on aggression,
packed with expert insights andCEUs For dog guardians.
Check out Real Life Solutions,a practical course for everyday

(01:32):
challenges like leash reactivityand dog-to-dog aggression.
And if you want full access toexpert webinars, live mentor
sessions and exclusive discounts, the Ultimate Access Membership
is just $29.95 a month.
You'll also find info on the2025 Aggression and Dogs
Conference happening inCharlotte this September.
That's all at AggressiveDogcom.

(01:55):
Check it out after the show.
Hey everyone, welcome back tothe Biting into the Dog.
This week, I have a very dearfriend and I would consider a
mentor.
Chirag Patel is with me andsomebody that I've learned a lot
from over the years, and wewere just talking about his

(02:16):
Brain to Bites DVD that I thinkI watched about 15 years ago,
which was part of my growth andjourney in aggression cases,
which was part of my growth andjourney in aggression cases.
And, of course, we've all seenor at least most of us have seen
his wonderful videos on YouTube.
Domesticated Manners is hischannel the muzzle video that I
think is probably about 20 yearsold now, that has been shared

(02:37):
countless times because it's sogood and it's timeless.
So, without further ado,welcome to the show, chirag.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Hi Mike.
Thank you for having me and forthe lovely introduction.
I'm really excited to be here.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
I'm so excited for this because I know we're going
to take some deep dives.
This is not going to be asurface level conversation, I
think, so let's kick it rightoff with talking about.
You know, I always ask myguests what their definition of
aggression is.
But let's go a step furtherbecause, going back to that
Brain to Bite DVD, we could talkabout some of the internal
mechanisms and, given yourbackground in ABA or Applied

(03:12):
Behavior Analysis, we often arelooking at sort of that
observable behavior approach todefining what aggression is.
What's your elevator pitch forthis is what aggression is in
dogs.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Oh, that's a great question.
So for me I would say, first ofall, it's behavior.
Well, depending on whichperspective we're looking at it,
are we looking about theinternal changes, the physiology
, the biology?
So, from a behavior perspective, I'm looking at various
behaviors the dog is engaging inand I would say behaviors.
So behaviors that potentially,subjectively, people might class

(03:51):
as dangerous.
So, again, dangerous might besubjective.
What do I class as dangerous ornot?
Could do harm?
And so for me I find it reallytricky when I talk about
aggression, because I was likewait, we're talking about a set
of behaviors that people mightsay this is aggression or not.
And I suppose my definition isactually a little bit more fluid
in terms of aggressive behaviorare behaviors that take on the

(04:14):
or fit under the category ofaggression because of the
person's definition that they'reapplying, based on their
learning history, and whetherthey're using a definition in a
textbook or in a paper andwhether it's matching that.
But for me I see it as,essentially, if I give a seminar
on aggressive behaviors, it'slikely to sell out.

(04:35):
But if I give a seminar onbehavior change, people are like
oh, I know that behavior change, I just want to focus on the
aggression side, but I actuallysee it as the same thing.
Really, it's just that thebehaviors that we're looking at
are the ones that people labelas aggressive or reactive.
So, yeah, I don't know if thatreally answers your question,
but for me it's a bit open and,um, I suppose certain

(04:57):
topographies, like a dog puttingits mouth, but then you could
say a puppy putting its mouth onhand and biting is not
aggression, and so, yeah, it'svery subjective.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah, and that muddy term or description of intent to
do harm is often put in there.
But that also is subjective.
You know, the dog just lightlyputs their teeth on skin and
doesn't do any harm.
Do they still have intent to dothat and do we know the dog's
level of intentional thoughtright?
So there's a lot of questionsthat go into it.

(05:29):
But we often look at thefunction of behavior, right.
I always define the function asto increase distance from or
eliminate a particular threat.
That the dog finds is, again,another subjective thing, but
the goal is to increase distanceor eliminate the threat for
aggression.
However, you know, if we lookat the behaviors you were just

(05:50):
saying biting maybe we say thatthe the goal is to increase
distance from that.
So it could be the person'shand reaching to touch the puppy
and the puppy doesn't want tobe touched.
At the moment they put teeth onskin and the person's moves
their hand away.
So is that aggression or not?

Speaker 2 (06:08):
right.
Yeah, and I think it's sointeresting because I'm starting
to work with, say, I think I'vegot more of this perspective
from a learning history andexposure to working with
non-canines or like more zooanimals is I saw so many cases
where when we looked at, say, adolphin, and the dolphin would
bite or do a big tail slap andthose might be considered

(06:30):
precursors to aggressivebehavior or aggressive behavior.
And so when you start lookingat, okay, under what conditions
does a dolphin do that and whatoutcomes?
So when we talk about thefunction, for me from a behavior
, behavior analytic perspective,a function is more what are the
maintaining consequences?
So is it maintained for apositive and negative reinforcer
?
What are those stimulus changesthat we're calling that

(06:52):
function?
So basically, if I look, I'veseen so many times when an
animal's been trained to dosomething and maybe the steps
are slightly too big, or thatthe animals actually learn I
make, I do something, it doesn't, an outcome doesn't appear,
that normally appears, whichwould be a whistle and a fish,
uh, for a dolphin.
And then what happens is thedolphin?

(07:13):
Um, there's like extinction,essentially.
So where behavior normally atcontact, some kind of
predictable reinforcer, um,there's a break in that and you
get operability.
So you get maybe otherbehaviors occurring that
wouldn't occur otherwise.
And the dolphin goes to tailslap, or dolphin does tail slap
and the trainer reduces criteriaor asks for what we call easier

(07:36):
behavior and I'm using airquotes when I say easy with my
fingers.
That people probably can't seebecause again that's a bit
subjective when we say easier.
But then suddenly the animal asbehavior contacts reinforcers
and we maybe establish a certaincondition as a cue that signals
that reinforcers are availableunder these conditions for tail
slapping.
And I see so many cases wheredogs and other animals will

(07:59):
engage in what we might label asaggressive behaviors.
And when we look at thefunction, the maintaining
consequences, they're actuallypositively reinforced if we do a
functional assessment, and so Ithink that's really interesting
as well that we don't maybealways talk about when it comes
to aggressive behaviors.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah, and I would class those sometimes in dogs.
Let's just give an example,like a livestock guardian dog
keeping coyotes away from thesheep, right?
And is that?
You know, depends on what thefunction is right and also what
we selected for.
So, yes, and we can starttalking about the internal

(08:38):
mechanisms, you know.
So, for instance, the dolphinmay be experiencing frustration
and then gets reinforced forthat behavior with the fish,
versus making a threat go away,which would be a negative
reinforcement contingency, right.
So let's dive into that side ofthings, right?
And how?
The emotions?
We were talking about emotionsa little bit before we started
the show.
But how do emotions and what'sgoing on as the motivation or

(09:01):
the cause for these aggressiveresponses?
In each one of thosecontingencies, we could talk
about an animal being happy insome cases and maybe not in some
other cases, and it's stillpositively reinforced.
So give us your thoughts there.
Emotions side, causes side.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
So I think this is a fantastic, like a really
interesting discussion andsomething that I was fascinated
by and with friends were talkingabout and you mentioned the
Brain to Bite DVD and I rememberthat was a time where I think
I'd just been through themaster's program at the
University of Lincoln, like Ididn't actually finish all my
assignments and stuff to get amaster's, but I did the whole

(09:37):
year.
I attended all the lectures andI saw cases and things and
that's where I was introduced tolike a lot of Panksepp's work
work and at the university underDanny Mills they talk, they use
a lot of that, they look atcases and it's like what system
do you think is or what systemis maybe occurring right now?
So they use that level ofanalysis and it's something that
I kind of struggled with or notreally got my head around.

(09:59):
In terms of a clinicalperspective, like an application
in some of the work we do Nowthere's pros and cons, I see,
like when there are benefits,but we can come back to that as
well.
But in terms of emotions, Ithink for me, and also being
like following Skinner'sphilosophy in terms of
behaviorism, radical behaviorismit's interesting like watching
Skinner do lectures and seminarsand like he videos or

(10:22):
recordings and luckily I haven'tseen him live, but he talks a
lot about like a psychiatristasked him about what?
About all the internalmechanisms and things that are
going on, isn't that important?
And Skinner's answer wasactually like I've never said
black box, and I don't believethere is a black box.
I believe that the organism isrich and full of a nervous
system and everything plays parttogether.

(10:43):
I don't say it because I don'tknow.
I don't know what's happeninginside right now, but there are
physiologists learning andinventing things like MRIs and
stuff to learn what's going on.
So, moving with that analogy, healso in another interview where
he's talking about counseling,he says you about like the
emotion as um.

(11:04):
He says you go to a dentist ifyou have tooth pain.
The dentist doesn't necessarilytreat the, the pain.
They treat the environment, thetooth, the decay, the exposure
to the roots, and when they dothat then the pain disappears.
Obviously you can also use painmedication and things like that
as part of the, the treatmentprogram, and so that really gave

(11:25):
me a light bulb moment in termsof thinking about emotions and
the way I think of them in mywork and I'm not saying I'm
right, this is just my learninghistory and the way I think of
things.
So when I see a case, for methat contingency is super
important in terms ofcontingency meaning, like the
if-then relationship, and wetalk about a four-term
contingency or three-termcontingency, meaning you have
your antecedent, your behaviorand your consequence, the

(11:47):
relations between them, how theyare linked.
And also we talk aboutmotivating operations, which are
like a stimulus, change and anarrangement in the environment
that influences the value ofsomething as a consequence of
something.

(12:07):
As a consequence, say, for adog, if I haven't walked Miska
for three days, my Germanshepherd then maybe certain
things are more valuable as aconsequence.
So I can manipulate what wecall the MO and establish
something or abolish something'svalue as a reinforcer by
changing things in theenvironment.
If you have a headache, thatmight make music less valuable
to contact music as a reinforcer, whereas if you don't have a
headache, that might make musicless valuable to contact music
as a reinforcer, whereas if youdon't have a headache, it may

(12:29):
make it more valuable.
If you haven't listened tomusic all day, okay, it may
really work hard to access thatsong or to be able to have that
time to listen to music.
So that contingency when does ithappen?
I think of it like a Googlesearch, a www, the when, the
what and the why.
So the when is what we call theantecedents, the what is the

(12:49):
behavior, what does it look like?
And the why is what are themaintaining consequences?
And through contingencies youestablish what we call
functional relations and so whenyou have a contingency
occurring and it's a strongcontingency, like the
relationship is quite strong, ithappens predictably under the
like.
Only when this happens, underthese conditions, this outcome
is accessed, then potentiallyhave a strong functional

(13:11):
relation where when I engage inthis behavior, I bite someone, I
show my teeth, the hand movesaway, or I bite someone and the
person asked me for port andgives me a treat, so, whatever
that is.
So by understanding that, Ibelieve I get a lot of
information about what'soccurring From an emotional or
internal perspective.

(13:31):
I personally don't really knowwhat emotion, the animal's
feeling that I'm working with,and I'm going to say that
because I could say like, oh, Ithink the animal's happy or I
think he's frustrated, I thinkhe's sad, and I can sit there in
the pub later and put any ofthose labels A friend of mine
could put different labels, butI really don't think it's
actually that important in thatmoment because for me it's if I
understand the functionalrelation and for a functional

(13:55):
assessment.
When I make a change to thatcontingency, I'm going to make a
change to the emotionalexperience the learner is having
and if I can change it from anegative reinforcement
contingency to a more positivereinforcement contingency,
potentially I'm hypothesizingthat there's a better emotional
experience, and whether I'mright or wrong I don't know

(14:16):
because I can't really readinside the animal, but that's
yeah.
So that's how I kind ofthinking about emotions and I
think dogs feel emotions.
I don't know exactly whatemotions they feel and how they
feel then, whether it's the sameas us or it's different, but
emotions are important becauseit's an experience the
individual's having.
Or if I'm feeling frustrated,that's really real.
But what I train myself to do isgo okay, I'm feeling

(14:39):
frustration, but understandingfrustration isn't gonna help me
deal with my frustration.
What's gonna help me deal withmy frustration?
What's going to help me dealwith my frustration is under
what are the contingencies?
I'm trying to do something.
I keep failing.
Oh, I've got access in thereinforcers I'm used to
accessing.
I don't have a skill set toaccess them in other ways.
So maybe I need to try andlearn something different to
access those, and suddenly Ifeel less frustrated, and so for

(15:01):
me it comes back to thatcontingency and that functional
assessment and to change what myemotional experience is.
So that's, I suppose, how Itrain myself is, and then I'm
feeling something like that.
I ask myself wait, what are thecontingencies?
And rather than trying tounderstand the emotion more, yes
, all right.

Speaker 1 (15:17):
So I want to break this down a little bit further.
Sorry that was very long.
No, I love it.
I love it.
I love where this is going,because I think especially with
and we'll talk later abouttechnology and how that's
changing things.
But, you know, as we're goingalong, we're getting better at
truly identifying what's goingon from an emotional state or
level of an animal, and mostlyin the positive balance of

(15:40):
emotions, because it's hard todo an MRI on an animal that's
fearful of something orcertainly ethical concerns with
that.
However, I think we are gettinginformation that says, okay, if
an animal is doing X, y or Z interms of the body language,
we're observing.
So we're observing behaviors orcommunicative gestures of an
animal and we can make educatedguesses, I guess, for lack of a

(16:02):
better label on that, to saythis dog might be experiencing
fear, this dog might beexperiencing rage or anger.
So what are your thoughts juston that, in terms of our ability
as professionals, is it good tokind of assume or make a guess

(16:22):
about an animal's emotionalstate or a dog really or is that
going to hinder us in some way?

Speaker 2 (16:28):
I think both.
So I love to.
I think one thing youdefinitely like what you said is
like.
I love the fact to use like.
So he might be experiencingthis, or I think he's
experiencing this, and I thinkit's really important to think
about that language when we'reusing it, because sometimes we
could say, oh, he's showing'sshowing aggressive behavior,
it's fear, and then we make awhole.
So are we saying that he'sengaging like this because he's

(16:49):
fearful, and are we saying Ithink he's experiencing fear?
And that's two different things, because and I think sometimes
we're trained to the negativeaspect of this is or let's
actually just start with thepositive.
So the positive aspect, I think, is great, because I think we
do start thinking of dogs asmore than just machines or they
we want to like.
I love my dog, I want Miska tobe happy, I want her to have the

(17:10):
best life possible.
She essentially is my familymember and so from that
perspective, I really do thinkin society, the way we use
language, where we think aboutthings, talking about emotions,
with a customer saying I thinkyour dog might be frustrated,
can have a lot of value.
However, on the other side, as aprofessional, I need to
separate what may be acorrelation or maybe what I

(17:33):
don't have data for, what itmight be my subjective
interpretation compared to whatthe data might say, or if I even
have any data, and am I forminga hypothesis to test and then
trying to get the answers.
I've already made an assumptionthat I'm basically setting my
behavior mod program on becauseI've already said the dog's fear
for is happening, I fear.
And suddenly I'm going to pickthis type of intervention wait,

(17:54):
where is the data for that?
I don't see any data.
Show me the data.
And so for me it's reallyimportant if I say that, okay, I
think this animal might befrustrated, okay, that's fair.
But that doesn't help me withmy intervention or my assessment
, and I know that sounds a bitcontroversial.
But for me what helps me withmy assessment is a functional
assessment, so understanding thecontingencies.

(18:16):
So I said I think the animal'sfrustrated, the learner is
frustrated.
Then I put a full stop thereand my next page essentially is
also, or even even before, thatI probably wouldn't start with
the animal frustrated.
I would go wait, what's thedata to say I'm going to
correlate what I'm seeing withfrustration.
So I start with my functionalassessment.
Let's see what the ABCs are.
What are the maintainingconsequences?
Is it, have I got correlationdata or causation data?

(18:38):
And then based on that I go oh,I think there's a negative
reinforcement, a positivereinforcement, maintained
contingency here.
And I might think, under theseconditions or situations, I
would say, maybe my experienceor the data I have, the dog
might be feeling frustrated orangry or whatever you want to
say.
And then, when it comes to theintervention, the intervention
comes back to the data from myfunctional assessment, not my

(19:01):
inference of the emotion.
And so that's where I wouldstruggle to kind of I know some
people go on without theinference of the emotion, they
can't do the intervention, andthat's where I struggle to
understand that link.
I haven't understood that linkyet for me, let's dip our toes
in there then.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
Okay yeah, and you're spoken like a true scientist
too.
Like you know, you need to seethe data to inform your
decisions on the behavior changestrategy in a meaningful and
objective way, right, versus thesubjectivity we might have in
looking at a dog and saying, oh,I think it's fearful, or using
one of those labels orconstructs.
Now let's take it a stepfurther.
Let's use a few case examples.

(19:40):
Maybe we'll take, we'llconsider three different dogs
and what we suspect, based onthe body language we're seeing
and the communication, that itmight be a certain emotional
state could I add one thing?

Speaker 2 (19:54):
because I think it'll be important for the next bit
of our discussion is yes, so youmentioned the body language bit
, and this is actually somethingthat I'm going to talk about at
your conference, um, later thisyear.
Which I'm looking forward to,is what is body language and are
we actually thinking about bodylanguage very incorrectly?
And where's the science tosupport the data on body
language?
And if we go back into actuallylooking at the data on the

(20:15):
science, going, oh, when thedog's lip licking it must mean
this, or when this human issmiling, they're happy, again,
it contradicts completely for methe approach from a functional
perspective as opposed to atopographical perspective.
So when we talk abouttopography, we're talking about
behavior in a form that it lookslike.

(20:35):
So you see the lips, the mouthopen or grin or whatever the
physical look is, the functionis.
So science of behavior analysisisn't really that focused on
what we call the topography.
It's more about okay.
So science of behavior analysisisn't really that focused on
what we call the topography,it's more about okay.
So a child is smiling, but thatdoesn't really tell me anything
more than a child is smiling.
Because now a child could smile, because humans are born to

(20:56):
smile and it's in their genetics.
Now, that could be a possiblehypothesis.
However, because from the momentwe're born, our behavior is
under control or affected byconsequences.
I can learn to smile insituations because it has a
different outcome to me beinghappy, so the person stops
talking to me, or the personsays something, then does

(21:16):
something nice, or doesn't dosomething or gets away from me,
so whatever it happens to be.
And so if I get stuck at thelevel of not stuck, if I use, um
, body language as a essentiallya focus on a topography, the
dog is yawning or lip licking,so that must mean they're
stressed or frustrated, blah,blah I may miss a whole bigger
picture, which is not biggerpicture.
I miss a different perspective,which is okay.

(21:39):
The dog is yawning or the tailis tucked, not because I'm happy
or sad or fearful, but when thetail tucks, people walk away,
or people bring out food or thetrainer starts asking for
quicker behaviors are likely tocontact reinforcers, and so can
I see that predictability inthat data.
So for me that would.
That's just another I wanted toadd in in terms of body

(22:01):
language, in case that changesanything in our future
discussion yeah, no, that's areally good point, uh, because
you're evaluating what'shappening with that particular
behavior, you know so againsmiling or a grimace or a growl
or ears going back, we classifyunder that umbrella of behaviors
.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
and so if we step from that operant lens into more
of a classical lens I guess,for lack of a better description
and we use, you know, we have afew different dogs that we
would witness.
So we have a dog that isgrowling near their food bowl
and has, let's just say, he'spracticed it a bunch of times so

(22:44):
it's somewhat habitual, but thefunction is making the hand go
away.
So if somebody goes to sticktheir hand near the food ball,
dog growls, the hand goes away.
So that's the ABC, verystraightforward.
And then you have, let's say, adog that is you know, has issues
is under socialized, hasn't meta lot of people scary, deep

(23:05):
voice individual comes into thefront door and the dog tail
tucks and air snaps and runsaway.
So again, function is or theABCs person enters, growl,
consequences the person walks,moves away.
And we're going to put thatunder.
We're going to assume the firstone's a rage or anger system
going on, we'll assume thesecond one's a fear based

(23:29):
emotional response.
And then let's go with thethird one where it's that
livestock, guardian dog scaringaway somebody, that or scaring
away an animal that'sthreatening the sheep.
So we will put that into apositive, balanced emotional
category.
Again, the ab ABC is prettystraightforward Wolf approaches,
globstock Guardian barks, wolfgoes away.

(23:51):
So all three have similarfunctions making something go
away, right.
But we look at what approachesare we going to use for?
So for resource guarding couldbe the standard person
approaching, doing a counterconditioning or even a
differential reinforcement.
We just select a behaviorthat's alternative to growling

(24:12):
or snapping at a hand.
And the second one what ifwe're looking at?
We just want to help this dogfeel better about the strange
man entering the home, and so wemight go with a more classical
desensitization and classicalconditioning approach.
And then the third one.
We might go with a straightoperant approach because we're
not necessarily looking to undoa negative balanced emotion.

(24:35):
So does that make sense?
So there's three differentcases.
I know that's a lot to kind ofthink about and digest.
But and then we're assumingdifferent emotions in each one
of those.
We're making educated guessesbased on the behavior we're
seeing and the body language,the topography, so to speak.
So thoughts, thoughts there.

(24:55):
And do we run the risk ofprolonging things if we're
saying to that, oh, thelivestock guarding dog, we're
just gonna do straightcounter-conditioning here.
So you see a wolf, we're goingto help you feel better about
wolves and toss you treats and,you know, keep the wolves at a
distance or something, if we hadthe luxury to do that.
And so do we run the risk ofprolonging things or maybe

(25:17):
having some issue with how thatbehavior change strategy is
going to affect the animal ifwe're missing a potentially
strong emotional response inthat animal or strong emotion?

Speaker 2 (25:29):
Ah, so okay.
So I can't remember the exactdetails because I'm really,
unless I write this down, I'llgo back and break it down, but I
think from the.
So I might ask you for somemore detail, like ask you to
remind me about this, but from ageneral perspective, I'm going
to start with I think so for mebecause I see the emotion as

(25:49):
like almost it's part of thecontingency occurs.
So you have your motivatingoperation, whether that is in
that moment, whether that valueis like how sleep and all the
other things that have madesomething valuable or
consequence valuable, you haveyour cue that's signaling if
something's available or not.
So if I growl, now the personleaves my house or keeps coming
in the house, or the wolf goesaway, or in all of these.

(26:12):
So for me, the three differentscenarios I'm going to bring
this same level and the sameanalysis to, regardless of
whether it's a livestock,guarding dog or whatever,
emotion could be going on and sosomething signaling that now a
consequence is available if Iengage in this behavior.
So then, basically, for me Iwouldn't look at, and I don't

(26:33):
even look at, if I go to a house, the breed in terms of the dogs
, to explain the dog's behavior.
Again, that probably going tosound very controversial to many
people.
I've moved away from that a lot.
So for me, whether it's anelephant, a dolphin, a tiger, so
yes, there are going to be froman ethological perspective, and
the genetics, like theseanimals are going to be more

(26:55):
likely to engage maybe incertain topographies of behavior
.
And if we call them natural butthey're not, I would argue that
I think it's an inaccurate kindof description because, like,
operant conditioning is natural.
If they're engaging in thesebehaviors because it's a
livestock guarding dog, how do Iknow it's engaging in this
behavior because it's alivestock guarding dog, whereas

(27:17):
a boxer or something else couldengage in this behavior for the
same function, for the sameoutcome, the same contingency
occurring.
And so I try to take thatassumption off the table and go
with again, what's the data infront of me from as a scientist
or a scientist practitioner,what are the antecedents, what
are the behaviors and what arethe consequences?
I don't know if it's becauseit's a boxer or a Jack Russell.

(27:38):
I could go back and say, oh,it's a Jack Russell.
Of course they're going to benippy and barky and chase things
, but I don't know that.
All I know is what data I havein front of me which is
currently through thisfunctional assessment or
analysis and again, both thoseare a little bit different as
well.
I have a correlation orcausation, like data that shows
me causation, and that causationis again not about wants or

(28:01):
needs of the learner in terms of, but it's basically the
animal's not behaving like thisbecause it wants someone to go
away.
So I even the language I'musing, so my customers, of
course, I'll say I think hewants this or he wants that or
he needs this.
But from a scientist'sperspective, a clinician
perspective, I'm thinking thatlearner's engaging in this
response, this outcome.

(28:21):
If I can switch this, switch onor off, which is the person
leaves the room or doesn't leavethe room, a person stands still
or backs away, can I then alterhow much behavior is occurring
from the learner?
And if I can, I can demonstratea functional relation.
If I can demonstrate that, I gookay.
So the behavior of the doggrowling with its teeth coming

(28:42):
forward, I want to change thatto what I might label as a
happier behavior.
I need to define what thosebehaviors are and I can shape
those behaviors specificallyrather than trying to shape a
happy dog.
If I start with, I want the dogto be happier with a person
coming in.
What is happy?
How do I know if the dog islying in its bed that they're
happy?
A dog lying in its bed could bean unhappy dog or a frustrated

(29:03):
dog.
So for me it's what are thespecific topographies and not
just topographies Like?
For me, behavior is not just atopography.
Behavior is actually an action,and an action doesn't occur in
isolation.
It occurs when you behavebecause there's a change in the
environment.
So really, when we talk aboutbehavior, we can't really talk
about just the lip lick or thegrowl.

(29:25):
It always has to be growlingwhen someone walks in the room,
and often when someone walks inthe room and the dog growls, the
person walks out the room orsomeone opens a garden door, and
so we really should maybechange.
If we're thinking from abehavior analytic perspective,
from talking about behavior asjust what we see the animal

(29:46):
doing to it can't really talkabout it unless you talk about
when and the why, and for methat changes the whole
perspective of the emotions arealways there and the contingency
that's occurring is maybe likethe emotion is part of that and
different people based on theirlearning histories, might label

(30:06):
that as frustration, sad orhappy or whatever.
The label is going to be.
There, the emotion is going tobe, but that's not going to
change my intervention, myintervention.
Change is going to come fromthe glass dog guarding dog is
growling and this occurs if Iwant more or less growling or I
want the livestock guarding dogto go and ring a bell, because
when they ring a bell the wolfruns away.

(30:27):
I'm gonna do that by going.
What is the maintaining outcome?
If the maintaining outcome isperson walks away, the wolf goes
away.
Can I allow the animal toaccess the learner, to access
the outcome without taking itaway, but by maybe engaging in a
different behavior topographythat might be safer or more
suitable for the home we'reworking in.

(30:49):
So that's my thinking currently, based on what you said if that
is useful at all, it does.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
It makes perfect sense, and certainly from that
ABA perspective.
So do you find there's merit inever just going with a straight
classical counter conditioningstrategy?
So let's say there's no targetbehavior that we're focusing on,
it's just let's see if we canget a suite of behaviors that

(31:18):
look like happiness.
Yeah, because yeah.
So yeah, give us your thoughtson that.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
So again I would say no.
Well, okay, I'm going toexplain this.
It's not just no.
So I actually even again don'tthink about using classical
conditioning as a prior Like.
It's not classical or operant,because a lot of the data now
shows that we can't just haveone or the other.
You can't just have a dog asoperant and not respondent, or
you can't turn off the operantLike.

(31:44):
People go, oh, he's operant orhe's not.
And when I say people, I usedto say this.
My learning history has changed, so I'm changing what I say.
But I can't say the dog isoperant or not in terms of like.
It's always operant until itdies.
The dog is always there'sbehavior is going to be under
influence of respondents untilyou die, and so for me it can't

(32:06):
really isolate either.
One is, both are alwayshappening, and I kind of think
about the aged analogy I thinkmaybe I heard Bob Bailey say
many times, maybe others have isSkinner's driving the car.
Pavlov is sitting next door onthe passenger seat, because many
of the behaviors and thecontingencies that are occurring
are operant contingencies.
Generally speaking, in terms oflike, the respondents are there

(32:30):
.
But when we talk aboutrespondents, we're talking about
relations between almostreflexes and things that are not
.
So there's like you sneeze andthere's an antecedent that
elicits that sneeze behavior andit's not necessarily that the
sneeze is under control orconsequence, but in some of
these behaviors that we see youcan go wait, that could be more

(32:53):
under the control of a certainantecedent stimulus without a
consequence being there.
But actually if a consequencestarts becoming involved then
that becomes like Susan talksabout as a popper and I think
like it's partly operant, partlyrespondent.
So that's my backdrop.
And then my next bit.
Where I go with this is Istopped using respondent
conditioning approaches orclassical condition approaches,

(33:14):
primarily in my work because Ihave a dog.
They see a dog.
I throw food open, bar, close,bar type stuff.
Because what am I actuallytrying to shape?
And a lot of times we go I wantthe dog to be happier.
But what does happier mean?
And are we just hoping forhappiness?
Or, as a scientist, as someonewho can predict and like, manage

(33:35):
contingencies, I don't have tohope that I can get happier dog
if for happy looks like to me,the dog can lick the floor,
sniff, pee on the floor, eattreats off the floor, engage in
a hand target when another dogis present and I label those as
happy.
I can shape those behaviors, Ican arrange contingencies and
have a happy dog quickly,compared to just throwing food,

(33:55):
which I might be reinforcing.
I lunge and I get food.
I lunge and I get food.
And so I think for me, Isometimes do say to my customer
what I want you to do right nowis just throw food when you see
a dog, and I don't call thatcounter conditioning, because I
think again, if you think aboutthe concept of counter
conditionconditioning, evendesensitization to a certain

(34:15):
extent, I think it breaks apartwhen you start really looking at
what we might call learningtheory in quotes, if we look at
the ABCs and what it actuallygoes, because there are
antecedents, there are behaviorsthat are consequences.
So I don't think it is justrespondent counter-conditioning
occurring.
So, yeah, I think we can targetthings more specifically and

(34:36):
get better outcomes.
We can be more objective andethical, I would say even
because I can follow data tohelp my learner get to a place
where I think they're having abetter life Again, that's
probably subjective, but orhelping the client achieve their
goal of I want my dog to beable to walk past other dogs

(35:00):
without growling or whatever thewithout is defined as in the
positive way.
So for me that's one of the bigreasons I can't really just say
I go to counter-conditionalclassical conditioning is
because what am I really shaping?
And also, if it's not a reflexrelation, it's not really just
counter classical conditioning.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
Yeah, but very well explained again because you know
my mind's going to.
You know, as as practitionerspositive reinforcement
practitioners our job is to setthe environment, set the stage
well for the animal to learn.
And and really what we could bedoing is setting the stage for
capturing relax.
What we would classify or wecould, you know, put our best

(35:37):
guess in this dog is showinghappy, balanced emotional
behavior, such as a relaxed,open mouth, a soft tail wag, and
we can capture those operantly,because those are the behaviors
we would define as being happyright.
So we might say could beclassical conditioning, helping,
could be a change in theemotional balance, but really
we're just looking at thoseobservable behaviors that were

(35:59):
or are desirable for us to seeand observe in our data.
So, yeah, yeah, I love how thisconversation is going.
We're going to take a quickbreak, though, to hear a word
from our sponsors, and we'll beright back.
We're going to jump into moreof the caregiver influence as
well.
So be right back.
We're going to jump into moreof the caregiver influence as
well, so be right back.
Hi, friends, it's me again andI hope you are enjoying this

(36:22):
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All right, we're back here withmy good friend Chirag and we've
been deep diving into classicaland operant approaches, or lack
thereof sometimes, but let'skeep going with this because you

(39:40):
know there's so much we can gointo here, but I think we should
look at I think, a hot topicthese days how much the humans
influence their dog's behavior,and there's been some recent
research paper just came outlast year on some of this.
So what are your thoughts on,especially when you're working
your aggression cases right?
So let's kind of focus on thattopic and how much, because

(40:04):
people are always worried.
They're saying, oh, it's myfault or I did something wrong,
I broke my dog, or things likethat.
And yes, we know again, talkingabout reinforcement can happen.
However, let's get into againthey're maybe their emotional
side right and how I can kind ofguess how you might see this
actually.

Speaker 2 (40:22):
So but let's, let's, let's dive into that boring
podcast let's dive into that andwhat you know.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
What are your thoughts on when you have that
conversation with a client, ifthey're worried about or you're
seeing something that they areactually influencing their
animal's behavior through theirown.
You know what you're observingin their body language for
behaviors and things like that.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
So, yeah, it's fun to say as well, I love this
podcast, like this justdiscussion of chat with us,
because sometimes, like it'sjust cuts the fluff and we've
gone straight like we're goinginto like deep stuff and almost
talking about the nitty-gritty.
Really I love it just I think Ithank you for this opportunity,
um, and your questions and thethoughtfulness of like the way

(41:03):
you've constructed this.
So, yeah, with customers, um, Iwould approach again the
customer's behavior because,like for me, I'm not a
psychologist so I'm going tostay away from that's not my
expertise, I don't have thoseskills.
So, as a behavior for me, froma behavior perspective, um, I'm
going to approach the customer'sbehavior and look at that and
again the function of thatbehavior.

(41:24):
So, when a person is crying, orif I have a customer who's
crying, I'm not going.
Oh, you're crying, you must beupset.
I need to be like.
I need to like, I want to beempathetic, but that's not the
right word.
I'm not going to go because youcry, I need to slow down.
I need to say oh, my god, I'mso sorry.
Let's not talk about this,let's use a different word.
What I need to do is go, okay.

(41:44):
So what's the contingency here,what functional relations could
be occurring.
So I'm essentially doing afunctional assessment on the
human's behavior.
So, as the customer's cryingsometimes, I'm just even based
on if I've got previous data.
If I'm not, it's just newbehavior, I'm just observing.
I'm going okay, they're crying.
They told me about this withtheir dog and I'm going to
engage in a response in a momentand I might be just, I might

(42:05):
stop talking or give them abreak.
I just say that's okay.
When you can, when you're ready, you can let me know, and if
you don't know an answer or youjust want to take a break,
that's completely okay as well.
So I'm going to try and arrangethe environment, generally
speaking, that I want the humanto feel great through arranging
that contingency.
But also, rather than focusingon the crying, I'm focused on
that relationship between thecrying behavior, the consequence

(42:27):
and the conditions that cryingis happening under.
So that's one thing I'm goingto think about.
The other aspect is I thinkit's life that when we say, does
a human's behavior impact onthe dog's behavior, for me
that's going to be an maybe, ofcourse, answer from a behavior
analytic perspective, in thatnot always, because what the

(42:48):
human might be doing may notactually function to change
anything on the dog's behaviorat that moment.
That's why functional analysisis important.
Is we look at person, does this?
And I've noted there is arelationship between human doing
this and the dog growling more.
Now we can subjectively callthat the fault of the human or
not, and a part of that is goingto be about.

(43:08):
Like skinner talked aboutselection at three levels.
He talked about selection atthe um sort of evolutionary
level, darwinian selection.
He talked about selection ofconcept by consequences.
So you natural selection isgreat, but you doesn't explain
what happens within the lifetimeof the organism.
And so he believed, or hedemonstrated, I would say um,

(43:29):
for much work and people afterhim, that selection for
consequences is a level ofselection that we do can explain
the change in behavior for alifetime of an organism.
The third one where he talksabout is the idea that as
individuals we also live insocieties and we have a culture,
and a culture in japan might bedifferent to a culture in the

(43:50):
uk, to america.
And is it innate, is it learned?
That's a different discussion,again, I think, or maybe not,
but I think why I'm saying thisis there's a TED talk as well
that on language.
I love it.
It's by Laura someone.
If you type in TED, talklanguage, laura will come up.
She's wearing like this, reallyvery nice clothing, like red or
pinky color, and she gives thisamazing 20 minute talk on

(44:13):
language.
And one of the things she saysin there is this idea that if
someone hits a vase, like aflower vase, and it drops on the
floor, in some Western culture,in some English speaking
languages, I should say we go,he broke the vase or she broke
the vase, because our trainingfrom a young age is to kind of
go he broke it or she broke it,and there's a reinforcing system

(44:36):
there that, from a young age,is like who did this?
If you are a Spanish speaker, inSpain people wouldn't say that
he broke the vase, they wouldsay the vase broke.
Saying the vase broke comparedto he broke the vase is again,
two different ways of sayingthis.
And the topography could meantwo very different things to
learners with different learninghistories and different
cultures.

(44:56):
So, again, two different waysof saying this.
And the topography could meantwo very different things to
learners with different learninghistories and different
cultures.
So, again, with the customersI'm always thinking about okay,
so I don't know the exactlearning history, but if I say
when you do this, your dog isgrowling more, they might start
going to the idea that he saidthis is my fault and that could
be the internal thinkingbehavior, the private behaviors
occurring and that might not bean environment that's going to

(45:17):
help me, help them and theiranimal.
So I'm always careful when I'mtalking to customers that can I
construct language in a way thatcould be the antecedent
arrangement or my behavior as anantecedent arrangement, for
their behavior is less likely tocreate contingencies that are
not useful for this moment.
And if I do say something andthey start crying or they're

(45:38):
upset or they start going oh myGod, it's my fault, then that
just is data for me to say okay,I need to use different
constructions of the environmentto promote different verbal
behavior and responses,non-verbal responses from my
human learners.
And so if I have customers like, oh, so my dog is doing it,
because I'm doing this wrong,I'll often say things like well,

(45:59):
that's one way to look at it,but that's life, like I do,
things I learn.
If I don't know something, I dothe best I can and I assume
you're doing the best you can tohelp your dog.
You've done all this research,you've gone on YouTube, you
watch all these people and thatshows me that you really want to
help your dog and you've comeacross advice that may be not
helping your dog.

(46:19):
But I don't even go into thisidea that we have good trainers
or bad trainers, or we havepositive is good and negative
good or whatever, because I justdon't think that's a discussion
of having.
Personally, I think it's betterto just go.
What we're, what we're learningtoday is in our session we saw
that doing it this way comparedto the other way of doing it,
we're seeing different results.

(46:41):
So what that data would suggestto me is let's try a week of
doing it this way and if you seethe benefits continuing to
occur, then we have our answers.
So it's nonjudgmental.
It's kind of saying and also itcould be that last week your
dog wasn't ready for this way ofdoing it because the conditions
are different, but now your dogisn't in pain or there's

(47:02):
something else happening, orthis has happened more sleep or
you're not in a new house, orthere's no building work going
on.
The contingents are different.
What's valuable as a reinforceris different.
The MO as a reinforcer isdifferent, the mo's are
different.
I don't use a technicallanguage.
My customers generally speaking, so that's the way I would
approach my customer.
I don't know if that answersthe question I hope it does.

Speaker 1 (47:19):
I think it does.
Yeah, definitely, because,again, it just reiterates that
well, when you think about it,the client is part of the
animal's environment.
They're learning experiencesright.
So now, in terms of youmentioned empathy early and
that's really, of course, animportant part of the work we do
.
We have to, especially inaggression cases.
It's probably the number onetool that a consultant a good

(47:40):
consultant can possess inhelping a client and building
that you look anxious or youlook angry, you know, so we can
frame it as you know.
Or I would actually ask do youdo?
This Is like, do you feelanxious or is this making you

(48:00):
anxious, or how are you feeling?
So you can get some of thatinformation from them?
Do you do that?
Because I find that can alsohelp them empathize with their
dog, especially if I find adisconnect.
So if they start to say I'mprocessing my feelings, well, my
dog probably has feelings too.
Do you start using those labelsthen?

Speaker 2 (48:18):
or Definitely so I would say 100%.
Like I use labels, I useconstructs, my customers, people
might like if I had a trainerwatching.
Sometimes I have studentswatching and at the end I know
we're always gonna have adebrief and discussion because I
want to ask them like okay.

(48:39):
So I said to a customer the dogwas probably frustrated.
Or I said, oh, I can understandwhy you're really angry right
now and I would probably beangry.
Or like there are times when mydog, if they've rolled in dog
poo or they've eaten fox poooutside and they come in trying
to give me a kiss, I might notfeel the best, I might go, oh,
don't do that.
And oh, my God, I shouted aboutsomething and not purposefully,
but it's just a reaction I hadand I think it's okay.
But what I want to say withthis is I think all of this is

(49:02):
okay completely and I think weshould have the ability to say
different words, and wordsaren't good or bad necessarily.
What I think we need to do Ilove Kay Lawrence's discussion
of like she says about trainedthoughtfully, and for me that's
really important is that useyour words thoughtfully Now.

(49:22):
Don't use your words from aconstruct perspective or from.
This is my advice, like I'm notsaying right, but from a
behavioristic perspective, andSkinner's analysis of verbal
behavior as well.
It's really interesting tolisten to that.
If you're not aware of it, orlike anyone listening is not
aware, is the verbal behaviorgained.
Or we often say he said this.
It must've meant this becausehe said this.

(49:43):
For me that's the samediscussion as the dog growled or
did a lip lick, so they must bestressed.
No, that just looks at thefunction.
It doesn't look at thetopography.
And so when I say I feel angry,am I really saying that I'm?
Am I what Skinner calledtacting?
Almost it's like you'relabeling something.
Am I saying that I am labelingan internal experience?
Or am I saying I am angrybecause that's to get me, the

(50:07):
person I'm talking to, to dosomething different?
And so, as humans, we're notalways labeling something.
We're saying those words for adifferent outcome.
And if you look atrelationships and partners, you
see this all the time.
Someone might go I'm angry, andyou go and do something you
think that can make them lessangry.
But they weren't saying that Iam angry right now.
What they're saying is I needyou to do something different.
And so, with human language.

(50:28):
I think it's so important thatwhen I'm with my customer I'm
thinking function rather thantopography, and words don't just
mean one thing because I soundlike one thing, but what's the
maintaining consequences ofthose words for those
individuals?
And obviously you have to makesome generalizations, because
when we work with so many peopleor groups we may not be able to
do individual functionalassessments for everyone.
But why I'm saying that is it'scompletely okay to say to a

(50:53):
customer in my perspective.
Oh, you must be feeling angry,but I'm not saying that just
from empathy, as in I just wantto be nice, like I love to be
kind.
Like for me, I want to be askind as possible.
But I think kind has to beobjective in a certain way.
Like I don't think it can justbe a fluffy feeling that we just
try to be nice, because bybeing kind you might be actually
not being helpful.

(51:14):
If I'm being kind to my dog andjust quickly picking them up or
walking across the road, maybeI'm shaping more fearful,
anxious behaviors that we mightlabel as in their quotes and
actually not helping them feelbetter, because the contingents
are shaping more what we mightcall panic behaviors.
And so I really think we can bemore better like I want to be.

(51:35):
I don't know how you couldlabel it like scientifically
empathetic or um, objectively Idon't really like thoughtfully,
yeah, thoughtfully um.
So that's where I would be goingwith this answer is, I think,
yes, definitely, but I will want, let's be thoughtful and
analytic about it Analyticallyempathetic, I like it, Some

(51:57):
people might go oh my God, it'sso cold, can you not just be?
a human Like I, have friends whosay can you just not analyze
that and just be a human?
But what does that actuallymean?
Am I just closing my eyes tothe world at large?
That is real for me.
For me, the only way I can bemore kind is by actually
understanding function.
I'm not living my life all thetime just trying to do ABCs, but
if I really want to understandsomething and be helpful to

(52:19):
someone, I believe the best wayI can be helpful is by being
analytic and being a scientificpractitioner.
Not by just being nice or kindand saying what I think could be
the right thing, but actuallysaying something, that I'm doing
it for a particular reason.
I'm understanding those reasons.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
I like where this is going, because I want to take a
segue into the next topic here,which is sort of the ethical
considerations in our behaviorchange strategies, because we're
again looking at observablebehaviors in the work we do and
we get into the discussions oftools and approaches and the

(52:55):
quadrants and which ones are youknow.
So we have all this debatethat's happening and then when
we add in the layer ofaggression, you know, or
aggressive aggression cases, Ishould say, and the potential
for risks and danger andmanagement strategies that might
be more intrusive or takingaway some of the agency for the
learners, so we have a lot ofdynamics when we're looking at

(53:17):
behavior change strategies.
And again, this is a big topicthat it's talked about quite
often and we see it in socialmedia.
Of course it's the big topic.
So for me we could talk abouttools, but that's not really the
thing I focus on.
Again, people are like do youuse e-collars, do you use this
or that?
And of course no.
And though I think that's thewrong focus, because you and I

(53:40):
actually I was just out inSwitzerland and place same place
you've done workshops and alsoin Denmark same thing, where
most aversive tools are notallowed.
Actually, they're banned.
However, most aversive toolsare not allowed actually,
they're banned.
However, there's still somestruggles about people using
punishment.
So instead of whatever tool,they can just reach for or make

(54:01):
something else up.
So it's really a punishmentculture that can dictate how
animals are treated.
Now, all that being said, weoften talk about the level of
aversiveness that an animalmight be experiencing, so these
arguments typically fall aroundthat Be like okay, well, this is
aversive.
Well, and then some argumentsare like well, this particular
approach can be much moreaversive, and that's true.

(54:22):
Is there some things that dogswould find much more aversive,
in terms of tools or situations,than any particular aversive,
you know, commonplace tool wesee in these conversations?
So, that being said, how do yousort of navigate that
conversation when it comes to,okay, this particular situation,
context, environment, tool isaversive to this learner.

(54:46):
How do you evaluate that whenwe're looking at behavior rather
than focusing on oh, dog's tailtucked, so they must be fearful
of this tool or this situation,which is often a good a guess,
but yeah, it doesn't really tellus so.
Thoughts on that um.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
so that's another amazing question, um, and you
have such a great way of likesummarizing or asking that, um,
I take many more words to saythe same thing as you.
You're very fluent in like,beautifully saying it um.
So, okay, yes, I think it'ssuch an important discussion and
topic and I think I love you.

(55:28):
I love you for many reasons.
I love your work for manyreasons.
I think one one of the like youdo engage in conversations with
many different people, even ifthey have different perspectives
or different learning histories, and I think that's super
important.
My Ian Dunbar was a huge mentorfor me early on and he very
much taught me about be open,talk to everyone, see what you

(55:49):
can learn.
It doesn't mean you're going tobe using an e-collar and for me
, I love talking to differentpeople, different trainers.
I don't see them as bad people.
Their behaviors they engage in,there's conditions under which
they engage in those, and mostpeople I work with who use
aversives, they love theiranimals.
I can't remember the last timeI met someone who hated their
dog or hated the police dog theywork with, even if they're

(56:10):
using an e-collar or they'rehanging them in the air and to
sit down with them and to seethem in tears if their dog is
being struck by someone orsomething happens on a patrol
dog or something like that.
You see these big men crying.
They love these animals, thedogs they work with.
So I think just the idea thatif someone does something again,
what's the function, ratherthan topography, because someone

(56:31):
raises their voice, doesn'tmean they hate the child.
So I think if there are like,so the tool, like again, people
might hate me after this, butthat's okay.
Um, the tool isn't the badthing, generally speaking.
Now, of course, there arecertain tools that probably
don't have much benefit, butit's.
I think.
Again, you can ban as manytools as you want, but again,

(56:52):
what are contingencies?
So, when a learner is doingsomething and I raise my voice,
I can train an animal, and Ihave inadvertently trained my
dogs in the past and probablyeven with Miska.
Sometimes, like something issomething I don't want, or I get
irritated by something and,yeah, I get irritated.
I like to try and live my lifegiving as many choices of
control, try to be as kind andnice to her as possible, but,
like in my life, there are timeslike Miss could just stop it

(57:14):
please.
Or, um, like I'm feeling Idon't know I have things going
on in my life or something badhappened and um, the MO's in
place, like maybe I'm not aspatient as I normally am, and so
, if I think about it, there areplenty of times where, even if
I look in a certain way or ifyou have a child, you probably
noticed this you can raise youreyebrow or something and that

(57:34):
becomes a cue for signalingavailability of a punisher or
something.
So you might go wait, eyebrowraising that doesn't look like
it's going to kill someone orhurt someone or cause pain.
But that could be havingcontrol over a human's behavior
or learner's behavior, I shouldsay not even human.
We are animals, non-humananimals, animals.
So behavior, a cue signals theavailability of a punisher, the

(57:58):
topography of that cue, thestimulus may be what you label
as more or less bad or good orevil looking or not evil looking
, but it doesn't actually tellyou how evil or how bad aversive
that actually is.
So without understanding thefunction, again, the function,
sorry, I'm not sorry, sorry, butnot sorry.
David Lovato love that song, isthat yeah?

(58:18):
So basically you're withoutunderstanding contingencies and
the functional relations, likewhen that is happening, is it
actually helpful to the learneror not?
And when I say helpful, how arewe defining?
If it's like, is aversivenessin that moment the main priority
, or is it about the 24-hourlife cycle of that learner, or

(58:39):
is it about the week or the year?
And if we're thinking aboutjust this moment and I'm being
kind, like I said before, maybeby being kind and moving across
the road, I'm actually not beingkind in the long term,
potentially if something'smaintained through a negative
reinforcement contingency.
So, for example, with Miska, myGerman Shepherd.
She came from a client.
At young age she engaged inwhat people might label as

(59:03):
reactivity anxious, aggressivebehaviors, so lunging, screaming
, like any change in theenvironment people, dogs she
would actually on a walk,hackles would go up from the top
of her neck to her tail andnothing.
I didn't see a change.
But two minutes later a dogwould appear around the corner
and she was air-senting out dogsand literally flying and
screaming.
As she was five months of ageand so she wouldn't take food

(59:26):
outside, so if I presented food,she'd turn her head and walk
away or like just keep dragging,and by functionally assessing,
like taking her out the house,she would be essentially
dragging all the way back to thehouse.
So to me the data seemed tosuggest like there's a massive
negative reinforcement loophappening there.
Like I leave, you get all thisbarking and screaming stuff, but
then you end up back at homeand if I try to give her treats

(59:49):
outside, like there was notreats, so you might say, wait,
do I not take her out?
Do I take her out?
How do I start adding inpositive reinforcement loops
into this?
And for me, the reinforcers werenegative reinforcers early on,
like when I left my house, ornot even left my house, maybe I
just opened the front door, theporch door, and worked in my
hallway and came a bit out.
But actually and I wasn't goingI'm going to throw you in a
situation of trying to leave butshe would be leaving, going

(01:00:12):
forward for a second, seeingsomething, and she could run
back if she wanted to.
But then she lunged forward andshe screamed at something.
Did I just open the door, likedid I just go, oh, let's run
back inside.
Or did I say, well, let's justhang out here, because nothing's
really going to kill you for asecond?
And you see the person go by?
Yes, she screamed and barkedand the person disappeared
You're eating treats.

(01:00:32):
She wasn't eating treats, she'ssniffing or something.
As soon as she started sniffing,we went back inside and I had a
dog who I was able to.
Now, if you give her a treatshe's actually looking for
treats on walks and she's likeasking for more treats.
And I had to shape all of thosedifferent behaviors.
But if someone saw her now theymight go oh, she looks quite
happy outside, she walks pastdogs or she can be off leading
stuff, and so again, I think ifI would have gone down the route

(01:00:54):
of weight, I can only usepositive reinforcement.
I want to try and use as muchpositive reinforcement.
My philosophy is to maximizepositive reinforcement, but I'm
going to say that for me I can'tget away from real life and
negative reinforcement, positiveand negative punishment,
because they are all around usand I don't have to actively set
up contingencies to use those.
But if my learner is underthose contingencies or already,

(01:01:19):
just by being in that situation,I'm going to go wait.
What is the current maintainingreinforcers?
How do I act now?
That might look not asnecessarily kind in that moment,
because maybe I'm standing abit longer than another trainer
might, or what I might've donetwo years ago.
But the moment I decide to takea step or put my hand in my bag
or turn my body, all of thosecould function as conditioned
reinforcers or cues, and so I'mvery thoughtful in my body

(01:01:41):
movements and what I find isthat the dogs I work with, my
customers, week later or sixweeks later, you see such a
happier dog or even much quickerresults, whereas previously I
felt I held animals back becauseI was like this idea of
threshold we have to be belowthreshold.
What does that threshold evenmean?
And that's another topic maybewe could go down the rabbit hole
of.
But when I stopped doing thatand stopped looking at because a

(01:02:04):
doged, they're practicing it.
No, lunging doesn't mean you'repracticing it, you only practice
something.
Well, depends on what yourdefinition is.
If you engage in a behavior andthere's a reinforce under those
conditions, under thoseconditions that behavior is more
likely to happen.
But if the conditions aredifferent, behavior is going to
be different.
And so when I started to becomemore analytic, I found I was
able to help animals faster.

(01:02:24):
But it it's not just aboutspeed, but actually help them
more and not just have a dogthat I go.
Oh, you missed thesocialization period.
So he's reactive eight yearslater.
I don't believe missing asocialization period is a reason
that you're reactive eightyears later, because how many
dogs in India in the streetswere not socialized and they sit
there and lie there while youwalk straight past them?
Yes, if you touch them they'reprobably going to bite you.

(01:02:46):
But what is socialization?
That's a construct.
And so yeah so I'm going to stopthere for a second.

Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
You can respond or say whatever you want, but
that's where I'm going with thatkind of thought.
Yeah, no, it's definitely adeep dive into it and you know
my mind's going to again thisdebate over what, what we need
to look for for when a dog isexperiencing something we think

(01:03:15):
would be aversive, because thatthat common saying the dog will
tell you if it's aversive, butwhat does the dog?

Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
tell us, let the data tell you yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:24):
And so let's let's use an example, maybe just to
help our listeners kind of wraptheir head around it.
And they, you know, you have alet's use the dog outside on the
leash and they're having atough time, they're barking,
lunging at things, and so youknow the the common argument
like, oh, we have a certaintraining collar on the dog and
somebody's yanking it andthey're showing pinned back ears

(01:03:45):
.
And so we're describingbehaviors, observable behaviors
that we'd say this dog is likelyexperiencing aversive, but we
don't know for sure.
Again, because we could take adog that's much less expressive,
I guess, or that we don't seethose overt behaviors popping
out, but that dog still could beexperienced having a very
aversive experience.

(01:04:06):
It may be the data that saysokay, they show, no, no, nothing
, they're like just stoic dogs.
But then they start to thebehaviors I show, but they're
avoiding the area more in thefuture.
So we see a decrease infrequency of that behavior of
going to that location.
So expands for us and you know,even if it's a dog guardian
listening in right now, like howwould they know what their

(01:04:28):
dog's truly experiencing?
And then we also want toprevent people from not going
anywhere or doing anything elsewith their dogs, as they're
worried.
Yeah, no, I agree.

Speaker 2 (01:04:36):
So I think the first thing is I asked a question
about okay, so we see something,uh, we label it, we, we have
our initial uh when we say, see,you only see what you've been
trained to see.
So I could be with a friend andthey say, oh, did you see that
hotel?
They had this picture and this.
I was like what hotel were youin?

(01:04:56):
But because they've got alearning history of seeing
colors or the colors meansomething to them, when they
walk into a hotel, they see allof these things that I wouldn't
see because I don't look forthose things.
So when we say I see, noteveryone sees the same we see,
based on our learning, yes, weall have biology that I've
learned and optic bits and bobs,whatever happens with the eyes,
but basically that biologydoesn't mean we all see the same

(01:05:18):
.
Maybe the underlying principlesor mechanisms are similar, but
the learning histories.
So this is why biology isn'tjust like separate to operant,
and operant is separate to like.
Biology is all connected and soyou have a learning history of
observing.
And so I stopped and I go.
Okay, so I see somethinghappening here.

(01:05:40):
My dog is growling and they seea dog outside, or I'm going to
go with a slightly differentexample, because I think it
might be.
If it's different to whatyou're actually asking, let me
know.
But I've got this video, thisdoberman that I was training
with canada, like with thetrainer, and she was amazing and
she said, um, he does thesebehaviors outside, barking and
screaming at things.
Can we have a look at that?
I was like sure.
So she got, she got a treat bag, she had the clicker, she put

(01:06:01):
the harness out, she goes.
He sometimes gets a bit anxious.
The harness I think it could beconnected to him going outside
or whatever.
I can't remember exactly whatshe said.
Like that might be.
Let's just say that's ascenario and I was like, okay,
cool.
But again, what I'm looking foris okay, let's take a step back
and look at the contingenciesand what's actually happening.
And one of the things youobserve in this video is the
harness comes out, the dog getsa treat.

(01:06:22):
She does a beautiful job ofdoing things, slowly giving a
treat.
Every time she does a step.
But if we're just focusing on,I need to do a classical thing
or I just need to be kind andharness treat.
What I observe, and you seeclearly in the video is.
There's times where the dogactually, if she goes to clip a
clip on the dog, takes a stepaway from her and leans away and

(01:06:42):
then, if you watch, whathappens happens next.
Often the hand goes in thetreat bag or the dog then comes
forward again, she gives a treatand then she goes to clip the
lead on or harness on the dog,backs away and leans away and
and then she gets her, puts herhand in the treat bag.
And what we changed in minuteswas if your dog leans away,
you're just going to have yourhand by your side and stand
still when your dog comesforward and takes a step forward

(01:07:04):
and you move the collar harnesstowards the dog and the dog
stays standing forward.
Whatever approximation that is,it could be one centimeter, one
millimeter we're going to givea treat Over a few minutes.
What we quickly see is you'vegot this dog standing there,
you're able to put the harnesson, there's no leaning away and
you see a difference in thedog's behavior.
And so I think that's what'ssuper important here for me is

(01:07:25):
when we're looking at, is itaversive or not is sometimes
without that analytic aspect toit, we don't know.
And so I see a dog.
I do something, I go.
He hates this.
It doesn't hate this.
This is cruel.
It's not cruel.
Take a step back, maybe consultwith, again, different experts.
We're not all the experts inthe same thing.
We've got different learninghistories.
We see things in differentlenses.
So if you want to stay away orminimize the use of pain or

(01:07:48):
things that could be causingdiscomfort as part of the
learning process, then you finda trainer who focuses more on
that philosophy and approach.
Or if you don't care, then youuse a different philosophy.
But let's say you make thatchoice as a human, as a
caregiver and like, and youmight think that choice is not
really a choice because a personmight be not have access to oh,

(01:08:11):
I didn't know that you coulduse food and achieve the same
outcomes.
I thought because it's severebehavior.
You have to have a severe likestrategy and I would say that's
not true.
Um, like, you can and again,food can be bad.
If I have many cases or myselfuse food and taught dogs to do
things you don't want.
So food isn't good.
Positive reinforcement isn'tgood.
You can use positivereinforcement to shape behaviors

(01:08:33):
you don't want, but what we'relooking for is really a trainer
who can be analytical and usethings that maybe aren't going
to be causing discomfort andpain to our learners, maybe
minimize our learnersexperiencing those aversive or
maybe things that aren't nicefeelings and emotions.
I can't do them directly, butthrough the contingencies I set
up and then go down the route ofokay, let me analyze what is

(01:08:54):
the maintaining outcome forthese behaviors.
Is the behavior getting more orless, and under what conditions
?
And again, I think sometimeswhen we look at this we just
think about behavior andconsequences, we don't think
about the A.
So you can't do a Google searchwith WW, it always has to be
WWW.
And the reason I say that is ifwe start thinking WWW, the Q or

(01:09:16):
what we call the antecedent,which is a signal of
availability of a certain BCrelationship, behavior,
consequence relationship.
You can't just say my dog isreactive or not reactive, my dog
is reactive or not reactive, mydog is aggressive or not
aggressive, because they're not25 hours a day showing those
aggressive behaviors.
All those behaviors areoccurring under a context of
those signals of availability.
And so we start to go oh okay,the dog engages under these

(01:09:38):
situations, under theseconditions, and by understanding
all three, maybe a certain toolor music could be aversive
under a certain condition.
If I'm trying to focus, getsomething done there, a certain
tool or music could be aversiveunder a certain condition.
If I'm trying to focus, getsomething done, there's certain
music appears.
It could start becomingirritating because I love that
music.
But now I really want to getthis email done and now it's
irritating me, but once I don'thave the MO in place that

(01:09:59):
sending this email is important,suddenly that music is the best
thing in the world, and so wehave to stop and move away from
this idea that it's like okay,like not even use the word
shotgun, but let's say even thefood, because I use food, I did
a good thing.
Because I use food, I didpositive reinforcement.
We did not do positivereinforcement because we added a

(01:10:20):
treat.
That is not the definition ofpositive reinforcement.
So I think we have to clarifysome of these terms as well, of
what we call learning theory,because I think we misunderstand
or our learning histories maybearen't as clear in terms of
what they really are.
We often talk about I use food,so I'm doing positive
reinforcement.
I used a clicker, so I'm doingpositive reinforcement, but a
clicker doesn't mean positivereinforcement.

(01:10:41):
Food doesn't mean positivereinforcement.
What's the function, whatcontingencies?

Speaker 1 (01:10:45):
that gives us more information right and an
aversive doesn't always meanpositive punishment no negative
reinforcement.
No, it's right.
We need to see the data yep,exactly yeah, that's such a
great way to to wrap up thattopic, because I think it's it's
so much goes into.
We have to observe the data.
That's and that's what a goodanalytic consultant or trainer

(01:11:06):
is going to do.
So in that regard let's talkabout, just to wrap up the show
what do we see in the futuredirection?
What are our future wishes forthe direction of the dog
training and behavior industry,especially in aggression?
Maybe some new gadgets outthere or certain procedures or
different sciences that you'reseeing?

(01:11:27):
What's exciting you these daysin terms of where you see the
next steps in our industry?

Speaker 2 (01:11:32):
so a couple of things .
One is going back to ourfoundations and really going
back to the science of behaviorchange, behavior analysis and
going what is this science?
What is actually learningtheory?
It's more than what we oftenthink of, as in dog training,
and I think it may actually noteven be new.
It's what's already there, likewhen I watch Skinner's videos

(01:11:52):
or I go and read like ABA papersor actual lectures, I go, oh my
God, it's mind blowing.
It's so new but it's not reallynew.
It's just I haven't hadexposure to this and I think the
more we actually start reallygoing wait, there's more here I
think suddenly we're going to beable to help more animals and
people.
Well, people are animals, likeI said before, but we're going
to help more learners, and so Ithink for me, going into the

(01:12:14):
future, I would love to see morescience coming to a table, not
science as in oh, this ispublished in this book.
He's a scientist, so it'sscience.
That's not really because youcould have science or something
and actually make an inferenceand that's not really
science-based methodology, butlike science in terms of a
scientist practitioner and theprinciples of the most basic
level of science is observation,correlation, causation, data,

(01:12:36):
experimentation.
So I really would love to seemore of that perspective come to
dog training and actuallybecome the predominant way of
how dog behavior and trainingand behavior changes happens.
And I know people would saythat's we already do that, but
like what level?
And, um, like I think some ofthe discussions had today really
highlight that and I thinkthat's such a so that's one of

(01:12:56):
the things and you mentionedearlier on the.
Something you said earlier wasabout ai and like I laughed when
you said that and I was.
I'm so happy because I found somany uses for AI that have
helped my life.
There's antecedent arrangementsand consequences writing emails
for me, helping me actuallyhave a system of more
productivity and organizationand helping me do things and I

(01:13:18):
think you need to learn how touse a system and do that.
But the more I learn, I waslike, oh my God, there's so many
things we can do Data keeping,helping liaised with clients,
helping clients problem solvingthe moment if we're not there
and are learning what kind ofquestions they can ask AI and
how we can use that.
So I think that's going to besuper exciting and I think
Skinner was really passionateabout the idea that radical

(01:13:40):
behaviorism was radical becauseSkinner's approach was we
shouldn't ignore the inside.
Behaviorism was radical becauseSkinner's approach was we
shouldn't ignore the inside.
We don't call thinking assomething that's magical.
It's a physical thing thathappens and it should have a
physical explanation and dataand what actually is happening.
Skinner's really passionate onnot ignoring something because

(01:14:00):
you can't see it.
In behavior analysis a lot ofpeople think you ignore it if
you can't see it.
That's not true.
You look for a way to study asobjectively as possible without
just making stories about it.
And so I think this idea thatbiology and I think again you
mentioned this previously whenwe were just like getting
started or chatting before thepodcast recording is the idea
that there could be tools thatallow us to see inside what's

(01:14:21):
going on.
And again, like having thosetools doesn't necessarily mean
there's a causation.
It could mean there's acorrelation.
So heart rate changes, there'scertain maybe biochemical
changes, maybe certainendorphins are like, even
whatever.
Like our app suddenly tells usthere's a chip inside the human,
like I was thinking the otherday on the toilet.
I don't know why, but it wouldbe cool if I had a chip inside
me because, like, I'm alwayssticking things on my body and

(01:14:42):
collecting data.
So I'm like apple watch, afitbit, this, that, and I was
like sticking a little bloodglucose monitor and monitoring
what happens when I engage indifferent activities.
But for me again, is it myblood sugar causing me to be
unhappy or is it that there werethese events that changed what
my blood sugar did and then thatit also could function as an
antecedent arrangement for thenext thing?
But again, not just.

(01:15:02):
I see a change inside.
That's the causation.
It could be correlation.
So for me, that is what I'dlove to see in the future, and
always more Skinner.
And I'll quickly plug, if I can, the BF, skinner Foundation.
They've got this amazingSpotify recording that's come
out recently, a series ofrecordings on verbal behavior,
and because it can be quiteintense to think about Skinner's

(01:15:25):
approach to verbal behavior andit's different how we normally
think about it.
So I think, if you'reinterested, go check out on
Spotify anywhere SkinnerFoundation Verbal Behavior and
listen to the recordings.
It's mind-blowing, it's amazing, and Skinner Foundation has
lots of free information outthere delving into radical
behaviorism, behavior analysis.

Speaker 1 (01:15:45):
Amazing, and I'll be sure to add those to the show
notes as well.
Thank, you.
Yeah, the technology, I think,is just going to be amazing.
You know we were talking aboutthe devices, both of us.
You can't see us peoplelistening in, can't see us right
now but we've got the Whoopdevice which measures all of
your sleep and your heart rateand your heart rate variability
and your stress levels and ittells you how much you should do

(01:16:06):
the next day.
You know in terms of yourworkouts and you should take it
easier, do more.
So imagine if we had the samefor dogs.
You know where it's going tobecause the, the app or the
device is really going to helpus with the science and the data
of it and there also will havenice big data sample size from
all the dogs, you know.
So whoop tracks all the humansdata you can opt out, but it

(01:16:27):
does a great job of saying, okay, based on this number of people
you know doing these workoutsor whatever, we found that this
is the best for their nextproductive day.
So a dog that, let's say, had aterrible night because they
were experiencing thunderstormsand sometimes that stress can
impact their heart rateavailability dehydration, things
like that can impact that.
Bigger or higher levels ofheart rate availability are

(01:16:50):
supposedly a good thing.
I've learned on the app.
So it's good for your next day,the better you.
Actually, if you're notdehydrated, your heart rate
availability is bigger and itlooks at your resting heart rate
.
But imagine that for dogs, youknow.
Imagine the person that can saywhat does my app tell me I
should do with my dog today?
Or did they have a hard time?
Because we don't always noticethat we can barely pay attention
to ourselves, let alone ouranimals, right, when we're

(01:17:12):
looking at that kind of theirdaily structure and routine.
So, yeah, I'm excited for thefuture, for sure.
And speaking of the future,we've got you speaking at the
Aggression in Dogs conferencehappening September 26th to the
28th.
Real, quickly, you're talkingabout body language.
Is that your focus?

Speaker 2 (01:17:30):
Yeah, body language kind of thinking about is it
time to throw out?
I think I said, is it time tothrow out the baby in the
bathwater?
And so we kind of hit upon someof the points in this recording
today.
But, yeah, really going intothis idea, what is body language
and how useful is it?
And is it useful, is it not, orwhen is it useful?
And should we not talk aboutbody language?

(01:17:52):
Should we talk about it?
And so what are some of thedata say as well, and so I'm
going to be discussing thattopic in a lot more detail with
some videos, and I've got somereally cool practical videos
actually of cases and you willtake the lens and see how we can
apply to practice.
Hopefully people can actuallyleave with um something straight
away.
They can apply to theday-to-day work after the

(01:18:13):
session as well amazing, amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:18:16):
Looking forward to that, and where else can people
find you?
What are you up to for the restof the year?

Speaker 2 (01:18:21):
oh, um, so I'm working on my organization
system, as I said, so it's hardto find where.
But, like, um, if you look upchirag patel consulting on
instagram, youtube, uh, mywebsite, which is not up to date
, but youtube, instagram areusually the most up to date and
I've been taking a little breakfrom social media generally this
year working on myself, but Iam starting to go back on to
plug it in, like using socialmedia more.

(01:18:42):
So you'll find a lot of stuffon instagram and facebook and
youtube.
So I say, check out those andhopefully in the future, my
website will be more up to dateas well amazing, and I'll be
sure to include those in theshow notes as well.

Speaker 1 (01:18:57):
Drug, thank you so much for coming on today.
This has been an amazingconversation and I'm looking
forward to seeing you at theconference.

Speaker 2 (01:19:03):
I can't wait.
Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:19:09):
It was such a privilege to talk with Chirag
Patel and hear his thoughtfulinsights on the science and
heart behind understandingaggression in dogs.
His ability to bridge theworlds of behavior analysis,
compassion and practicalapplication is something we can
all learn from as we work toimprove the lives of dogs and
their people.
If you're ready to go deeperinto understanding and helping

(01:19:30):
dogs with aggression, visitAggressiveDogcom.
Whether you're a professionalor a dedicated dog guardian,
you'll find everything from theAggression in Dogs Master Course
, the most comprehensive programof its kind, to expert-led
webinars, informative articlesand the Aggression in Dogs
conference happening fromSeptember 26th to 28th 2025 in

(01:19:52):
Charlotte, north Carolina, withboth in-person and virtual
options.
And don't forget to check outthe Help for Dogs with
Aggression bonus episodes, whichare solo shows where I walk you
through real-world strategiesfor issues like resource
guarding, fear-based aggression,territorial behavior and more.
Just hit, subscribe or head tothe show notes for more info.

(01:20:13):
Thanks for listening and, asalways, stay well, my friends.
You.

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