Introduction
Written by Jean Donaldson, The Culture Clash is a masterpiece that marries theory to practice as it tries to analyze different ways of training dogs and the anticipated results for each training method. Jean Donaldson puts forward different ways of training pet dogs like, obedience, leash, and house training, giving insights into what lies below each method of training.
This is not any other ordinary work; apart from letting the readers know how to raise and train dogs, Jean goes a step further to let the readers know why they should do what she puts across. However, this book contains some issues that the writer of this paper differs with on matters of opinion and principle.
The organization of the book seems flawed with the writer ignoring the fact that dogs; just like any other creation, have innate needs, among other issues that will be noted in this paper. Nevertheless, this is a must-read for individuals concerned with behaviorist theories of training pet dogs.
Overview
The Culture Clash is made up of 202 pages exploring dog behaviors coupled with captivating dog pictures at the beginning of every chapter, probably for the reader to visualize the contents of the book. Containing six chapters, each chapter explores characteristic issue about dog training and all that is there to be known, at least from Jean.
The first chapter is Getting the Dogs Perspective. In this chapter, Jean emphasizes on intelligence and morality aspects of dogs. She argues that “dogs are social predators with limited intelligence and natural drives that make them very different from human beings” (Donaldson 24).
The second chapter comes under the title, Hard-Wiring: What the Dog comes with which tackles the characteristic innate behaviors that dogs possess naturally; that is, predation and socialization. Dogs, naturally without training, have instincts of predation because this is rooted in their genetic makeup. This may explain in part why an untrained dog will have the instincts to waylay moving objects like papers and catch them. On the other side, dogs are social naturally, and that is why they will tend to associate with people with ease.
Socialization, Fear, and Aggression is the third chapter where Jean explores different characteristics of dogs, as some dogs are fighters while others are biters. This chapter resonates well with chapter one where Jean posits that dogs have some degree of intelligence, and this explains why they have behavior that takes after that of human beings.
The fourth chapter is titled, Its All Chew Toys to them. This chapter sheds light on the behaviors of dogs. Jean here looks into some problem that people encounter while trying to understand dogs’ behaviors. She does not only look into the problems but also offers solutions to these problems.
Chapter 5 is Lemon Brains But We Still Love The. In this section, Jean explores how dogs learn despite their seemingly small forgetful brains. Dogs learn through a variety of ways depending on certain issues that Jean pinpoints out in this chapter. The last chapter comes under the title, Nuts, and Bolts of Obedience Training. Here, Jean explores in detail how to train dogs. She gives directions, systematically on how to train dogs and elaborates on the ways to prove the efficiency of the methods used.
Behavior Techniques
The approach to training that Jean hold is that “because behavior is under the control of consequences, obedience is about providing consequences to the dog” (Donaldson 102). She argues that instead of punishment people should shower their pet dogs with reward-based practices and use food as a motivator. Concerning food as a motivator, she banishes traditional forms of training by stating that, “I once spoke to a traditional trainer who poured scorn on the use of food as a motivator.
The line he trotted out, which still makes me wretch even to this day, was ‘if you use food to train, the dog is doing it for the food and not for you.’…This man’s dog, trained by avoidance with a strangle collar, was supposedly doing it for him because the only positive reinforcer was praise…
If you opt to not use positive reinforcement, you end up, like they all do, using aversive and announcing that your dog is doing it for you, pathetic” (Donaldson 69). The thesis of this book is that trainers should employ positive reinforcement whilst training their dogs.
However, with all due respect, I seek to disagree with Jean. Think of police dogs that undergo a different form of training and still perform well. The issue of luring dogs away by use of food as bait is not sound at all. On dealing with aggressive dogs, Donaldson suggests that trainers use food stating that, “breed is not an excuse for behavior” (Donaldson 156).
It is common knowledge that there are genetical predispositions that determine how living things behave. For Donaldson to overlook this scientifically proved fact and suggest that inducements like food can change these genetic dispositions is out of place. Finally, on issues of punishment, Donaldson fails to underscore the claims that physical punishment will do more harm to a dog as opposed to yelling. This exposes how flawed some suggestions are in this book.
Conclusion
This book may be helpful to some extent but it contains some serious flaws making it unprofessional at some point. Firstly, Jean shows utter disrespect to trainers who apply other training methods not based on her ideologies. This does not go down well and it makes the reader wonder how he or she can respect Jean’s opinions when she does not respect other people’s opinions. I know many traditionally trained dogs that perform well compared to Donaldson’s trained dogs.
Works Cited
Donaldson, Jean. “The Culture Clash.” Berkeley: James & Kenneth, Publishers; 2nd Ed. 1996.