50 shades of NO
I say no.
Let lightning strike me. Because yes, I say no.
When a bitch is in heat in my village, and Marley, my dog, has a very soft heart (and very hard pen**), hormones that tickle him and he tries to pass his desires on José, the pig, I say no.
When José tries to uproot a vine of lavender that I have just planted, I say no.
When Luna or Tia, the parrots, approach an electrical outlet to break it, I say no.
A few years ago I wrote an article called "My Name is No", which warns against using the word "no" as an absolute method of education.
But yes, sometimes I say no.
I know that this tiny 2 letters word can create huge debates in the world of animal education.
With these few lines, I will try to explain the different shades of no that I observe.
As part of my work as a behavior consultant, I visit families who have a behavior/communication problem with their dogs, cats and/or parrots.
My job is to help them cope and deal with these behaviors, while respecting their physical and emotional well-being and that of their companions, relying primarily on applied behavior analysis, which is the factual application of behavior change technology, as well as other "sister sciences", as Dr. Friedman so aptly calls them, such as ethology.
Is science favorable to NO?
If science demonstrates laws and principles, it makes no judgment on them. Thus, we know how reinforcement and punishment work, their effect on behavior, the resulting side effects, and it is up to us to "decide", based on our knowledge, skills and experience, which procedures we will implement to modify the frequency of a behavior, with consideration, respect and ethics.
Many studies have demonstrated the harmful effects of punishment in behavior modification.
By definition, in applied behavior analysis, punishment is a consequence that occurs after a behavior, which serves to decrease the likelihood of that behavior occurring again.
Reinforcement, on the other hand, is a consequence that occurs after a behavior, which serves to increase the likelihood that it will happen again.
All of us, human or non-human animals, are subject to multiple reinforcements and punishments in our daily lives.
During my interventions with my clients and in the education of my own animals, I try as much as possible to not resort to punishment as part of a behavior modification protocol. Instead of reducing the frequency of an undesirable behavior, I focus my work on creating or increasing new skills, in order to see good behaviors increase on a daily basis.
Positive punishment and negative punishment
In behavior science, we distinguish between two types of punishment: negative punishment and positive punishment.
The term “positive” implies the addition of a stimulus after the behavior is emitted; as for the term “negative”, it refers to the withdrawal of a stimulus after the emission of the behavior.
Here are some examples of stimuli that can be added or removed from an individual's environment after a behavior is emitted:
Treats
Pain
Toys
Rolled up newspaper
Pets
Electrical shock
Words (whisper, congratulations, pleasant tones or shoutings)
Water sprayer
Food bowl
Strangers
And so on
Each of these stimuli can be added or removed after a behavior.
Is saying NO a punishment?
Referring to the scheme above, one could quickly imagine that the use of the word “no” after a behavior refers to a positive punishment.
And yet… If that can indeed sometimes be the case, it often is not.
For this letter word to act itself as a punisher, it must have an observable and measurable effect on the future frequency of the pet’s behavior after its use (a decrease in frequency).
Example: if my dog is digging in the garden and I say NO, the effect of a punishment procedure will not only be that my dog stops emitting his digging behavior *at that moment*, but that the overall future frequency of this behavior decreases.
In most cases, this is not the effect seen when the word no is said after a behavior.
NO as a behavior interruptor
Response interruption and redirection (RIRD) is a practice that is divided into two parts to decrease the frequency of occurrence of a behavior.
The first part “the interruption” aims to prevent the individual from engaging in the problematic behavior. The second part “the redirection” aims to encourage the individual to engage in a more appropriate alternative behavior, which will be reinforced.
Saying NO to our pet can therefore be part of a RIRD, provided that we add the second component of the procedure, which is the redirection to an alternative behavior, preferably having the same function as the initial behavior.
Could the NO, on the contrary, be a reinforcement?
You are at home, working, and Pitchou, your Amazon parrot is starting to make small noises imitating microwaves. You tell him NO. Directly after your intervention, Pitchou begins to scream. You tell him NO. Barely a few seconds later, Pitchou screams his entire repertoire. And the more you tell him NO, the more Pitchou gets crazy.
The NO will have had the impact of increasing the frequency and strength of appearance of Pitchou's behaviors. This is called a positive reinforcement procedure.
Training NO as connection behavior
Very often, we use the word NO in emergency situations where the animal must imperatively interrupt his behavior because he puts himself or others in danger (running towards a road, towards a bull in a meadow, eating batteries, and so on).
If the word no has a bad reputation among humans, due to unpleasant associations since our childhood, it initially has no connotation for our pets.
Whether one decides to name a cue "NO", "ham", "Alphonse" or "Blibloup" makes little to no difference in terms of education.
It is our role, as pet owners, to associate one or a series of behaviors with this word, as with all other cues, such as sit, come, down, ...
We could therefore very well associate the cue “no” with the behavior “look at me” or even “come back to me”.
NO, a human reflex?
And then sometimes, simply, the word NO is the first word that comes to mind when we want the individual in front of us to stop what he is doing.
We are human, subject to the same fundamental laws and principles of behavior analysis as all other animals. Our own reinforcement history shapes our current and future behaviors.
If we know that saying NO can have a concrete effect on the behavior of others (because we have seen it work in others or because we ourselves have obtained good results with this strategy), then we will tend to repeat this behavior, even if we would like to react differently.
Does saying NO make us bad owners?
No, definitely not. Regarding our education since our childhood, regarding our society, regarding our relationships with species other than our own, I not only think that saying NO is not an ungrateful and shameful defect that absolutely must be changed, but I also think that it is probably impossible to really get rid of it.
By NO, I also include the "hun hun", "tss tss", and other "that's enough", "stop", "I will abandon you and move to a desert island if this continues", which all have the same objective: to offer us a moment of respite when the individual in front of us exhibits behavior that we consider problematic.
I am absolutely convinced that everyone who lives with an animal has at least once said these words, or similar ones (to the mountain instead of the desert island, perhaps).
That doesn't make us monsters and for the vast majority of people who say no to their animals from time to time, there are billions of moments of affection, of YES, of love, of training, of walks, creation of enrichment, tenderness, and so on.
So can we just say NO?
Using the word NO can have a bunch of different shades, sometimes it can be a positive punishment procedure, sometimes a positive reinforcement procedure, sometimes be an interruptor, sometimes be useless, sometimes be a cue, a reflex and probably a whole lot more, depending on our understanding of the fundamental laws and principles of behavior analysis, the effect the word has on behavior, and so on.
While I admit using the word NO from time to time to interrupt problematic behaviors, I hardly ever stop at just using it.
As a general rule, the use of the word NO will be directly associated with two reflections in me :
1. How can I prevent my pet's behavior from appearing?
2. How can I encourage another behavior
Here come the antecedent arrangements.
For one NO, a hundred YES
Knowing that behaviors are dependent on the environment, sometimes to best way to modify an animal's behavior, is by modifying the environment.
This is about arranging the environment to “block bad behavior” or make it less accessible, and at the same time promote “good” behavior.
"Environmental management" prevents the appearance of undesirable behavior, to make room for good behavior.
If we come to say no, it is because the environment calls for the behavior and this behavior has the opportunity to be emitted.
To avoid having to say no, the first thought will then be to modify the environment so that the undesirable behavior does not have the opportunity to appear.
Examples:
- separate the dog and the pig when the dog is sexually active and motivate
- put a fence around the freshly planted lavender plant
- put a plug cover so that birds do not have access to it
No “bad” behavior = no No!
In a second step, we can (if we wish and/or if necessary), work on training new good behaviors that we will immensely reinforce, so that they become the first behaviors emitted when the environment cues the opportunity to behave.
Conclusion
Saying NO *can* be problematic and *can* be avoided.
Other strategies are available for us to better manage the education and modification of problematic behaviors in our pets.
Nevertheless, there are instances where saying NO isn't so dramatic and doesn't deserve the stake:
- When used to interrupt behaviors dangerous to the animal or individuals around
- When used as a cue and the corresponding behavior is reinforced
- When it is rather said as a reflex on the part of humans and has no influence on the emotional well-being of the animal
The cases where the NO should not be used, in my opinion, are the following:
- When pronounced to destabilize, frighten, intimidate the animal
- When used with the ambition of making it act as a punisher
- When used as a method of education
Indeed, saying "no" to a dog who barks, flies, runs away, pulls on a leash, growls, jumps, will never teach him what is the right behavior to have in the face of the environment.
In the same principle, saying "no" to yourself if your answer to the equation 4(2x-1)(3-5x)=3/4-3x² is not the right one will not teach you to achieve the right result.
In the same way that we would not permanently continue to use a drug that does not cure us, saying NO all day long to our animals is probably not the best strategy to educate them.
If we have to repeat this "no" over and over again to our animal and his behavior continues all the same, it is because it is not the right medicine.
Finally, the debate should not be about knowing whether it is dangerous, coercive, mean, bad, to use the word no, but rather about understanding how to avoid having recourse to it in the general education of our companions.
Instead of focusing on the undesirable behaviors of our animals, we should put all our energy in arranging their environment and reinforcing their good behaviors, because if the "no" can stop a behavior on the spot sometimes, it often goes against our final objective which is to teach them, in a sustainable way, the behaviors to emit for a life in harmony in our society; without ever forgetting, of course, that dogs are dogs with dog behaviors and remembering that they are dogs remains the best way to offer them a good life by our side.
