We love our illusions. In dog training, people cling fiercely to the idea of free will, treating a dog like a moral agent who chooses to be stubborn, disobedient, or …
Ever see a parent get angry at a child for picking up a spider? The kid is calm, fascinated, and completely engaged. To them, the spider adds something good to …
If you look around the dog training industry or the commercial neurodiversity space, you’ll see no shortage of self-proclaimed “behavior experts.” They put it on their websites, their YouTube channels, …
If you are autistic, or if you live with and care for a dog, you have been sold the exact same fundamental lie. The multi-billion-dollar compliance industries—spanning modern pet training …
If you ask your average dog owner—or even your average professional dog trainer—who invented the “Four Quadrants” of dog training, they will almost certainly give you one answer: B.F. Skinner. …
If a dog’s behavior isn’t a conscious choice—if it’s not an act of “free will”—then the entire dog training industry falls apart like a house of cards. The whole $100+ …
In the world of behavior analysis, few terms are as misunderstood as extinction. In popular culture, “extinction” sounds dramatic—like a species wiping out or a total erasure of a behavior …
Upwards to 25% of autistic adults have attempted suicide. How many succeeded? I don’t trust stats – but how many is too many? Its an appalling number. More Importantly – …
Punishing Contingencies are JUST THE REVERSE of reinforcing – B.F Skinner. But dog trainers all blame Skinner for the quadrants – especially the punishment quadrants? Can we please stop the …
For thousands of years, dogs were our independent partners. But it goes deeper than that: we co-evolved. We created them, but make no mistake—they created us, too. Ten thousand years …
If you’ve spent any time watching the political or social landscape over the last few years, you’ve probably noticed something unsettling: everyone seems to be losing their minds. Whether it’s …
Welcome to the new normal – normalization of lies and fraud. It’s normal now to sit on camera and knowing lie through your teeth to dog owners – to make …
When you are desperately seeking help for a struggling dog, it is easy to hand over your trust—and your wallet—to anyone who claims to be an expert. But the dog …
Walk into any movie theater, and you’ll see it clear as day. A movie like John Wick comes on, a character slaughters dozens of people in a ruthless rampage, and …
Pride and ego are purely human inventions. Dogs don’t have them. A dog doesn’t care about moral superiority, authority, or winning an online debate. A dog lives in a world …
If you peel back the layers of the dog training debate—past the prongs, the e-collars, the treats, the rigid dog sports, and the endless internet arguments—you eventually run into a …
If you call yourself a dog trainer—or worse, a “behaviorist”—you should at least know the absolute basics of the science you claim to practice. Recently, I asked Jonas Schwartz to …
If you listen to the average vet clinic poster or late-night pet forum, you’d think a single leaf of cannabis is an instant execution order for your dog. They’ll throw …
Look in your dog cabinet right now. What’s sitting in there? A pouch of processed treats, a plastic crate, a prong collar, a shock collar receiver, maybe a slip lead …
If you’ve spent five minutes in the modern dog training world, you’ve heard the buzzwords: Operant Conditioning, Balanced Training, NePoPo, Quadrant Theory, and Skinnerian Science. It sounds deeply academic. It …
Dr. Lisa Radosta, president of the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists (ACVB), recently took to social media to scoff at critics who accuse her profession of relying on chemical shortcuts …
If you want to understand why modern dog training is full of snake-oil promises, buzzwords, and band-aids, you have to look at how the founders of the commercial pet industry …
Let’s talk about the biggest brand name in dog aggression today: Michael Shikashio. I would love to see Michael Shikashio sit in front of a camera and actually define what …
Here is a simple thought experiment that would instantly break the dog training industry: Take away every piece of cheese, every freeze-dried liver bite, every e-collar, prong collar, clicker, slip …
Ask a standard “balanced” dog trainer about CBD or cannabis for dogs, and watch them recoil. They’ll throw around scary buzzwords, claim it’s a “gimmick,” or tell you that using …