“No” is not a behavior. . . But it’s not the problem to say it

I don’t think this post is going to win a popularity contest, but here goes anyway. I can’t get it out of my head.

Trainers routinely work hard to teach people alternatives to constantly saying “No!” to their dogs. Even those of us who know the traps of habit fall into them from time to time.

But I seem to disagree with many others on what exactly these traps are.

Here’s why I’m thinking of shouting “No!” is a bad idea: most people who do this weren’t taught it as a cue for behavior trained with positive reinforcement. It ends up being an aversive method and carries all the usual potential for fallout. It relies primarily on a startle response. If the dog gets used to it, people intensify the aversions.

But that’s not the objection I usually hear.

The common objection to “no”

I re-read it the other day, in a discussion advising someone struggling with unwanted behavior from their dog. She had told her dog “No!” when he performed the behavior. Several people intervened, pointing out two related things: “no” is not a behavior, and saying “no!” did not tell the dog what he should do.

Both statements true. But they indicate a failure of formation, not a magical property (or lack of property) of the word.

The statement that “no” doesn’t tell the dog what to do is also true for every verbal cue we use – we have to learn association. For example, just saying “turn around” also doesn’t give the dog any information about what we want him to do. A signal and a behavior are two different things. We form the latter and associate it with the former.

R+ trainers commonly say two things that are contradictory.

1. On the one hand, we tell beginners that any word can be a clue. It’s true. “Lightbulb” can cue sit. “Resonate” can make the dog look at me. Trainers just need to remember this and be able to teach dogs. Clues don’t even have to be words. A cue can be a hand on a doorknob, the sound of an approaching car, a time of day, or the smell of vinegar. This takes a while for most of us to figure out, because the language aspect is usually far more important to us humans than anything else. And we tend to backslide. We constantly confuse the meaning of the word with its function as a discriminating stimulus. I talk about it in my blog post, “Good Sit!”
2. But we also tell people that “no” is not behavior. This is also true, but not really relevant. When we say ‘sit’, ‘sit’ or ‘light bulb’ these are also not behaviors when they come out of our mouths. These are landmarks. “No” is not a behavior, but it is not obligatory. Simply indicate that a reinforcement is available for a behavior. We’re not saying that a hand on a doorknob or the smell of vinegar can’t be clues because those aren’t canine behaviors.

It is not logical to designate the “no” as being only meaningless.

The real problem with no

I believe the fundamental problem with “no” is that people don’t form it; the word does not designate a behavior that will be followed by positive reinforcement. And if saying it fails to interrupt the dog, people usually get worse. So no!” comes to predict aversive conditions: harassing, shouting, stomping, clapping or even physical aversions like hitting.

Dog trainers rightly advise their clients to start over and use another word if they are going to teach a “leave it” or a switch, because most of us rarely say the word “no” to dogs. dogs kindly.

But we can. I have a friend who has trained for ages to use “no” as a go signal for her service dog so she can say it in a pleasant, neutral tone of voice.

When I shouted “No!”

Believe it or not, I yelled “No!” the same day I started this article, just after thinking about all this.

I make a baked dessert with oatmeal, egg whites, almond butter, dried cranberries, and dark chocolate. A plot of dark chocolate. I warmed a piece that night on a plate and put it on the counter. You know what’s coming. I turned around and Lewis was counter surfing. He had his nose up, sniffing the dessert, about to take a bite.

Even though I taught Lewis a leave clue, I panicked, I yelled “NO!” and clapped my hands. I did exactly what I described. I yelled, hoping to startle him, and when that didn’t work instantly, I clapped, for the same purpose.

What did Lewis do?

He didn’t back down, shiver, or run away. He slowly slid off the counter and came calmly towards me, expecting a treat. I gave him a handful, then pulled the dessert out of his reach.

I didn’t form the word “no” as a signal, but I did form several other words that work to interrupt, and he’s especially used to being called away from the counter. So to him, no matter what i said, nor, apparently, how I said it. Lewis associated behavior (reorienting toward me) with my saying “No!” because of other things that I have formed.

I taught him “Pas” (forget it), “Excuse me” (put all four paws on the ground) and “Lewis” in a high, singsong tone (come here). None of these words or phrases “were behavior” when he first heard them, but now they mean good things if he engages in the behavior I associated with them. And by generalization, the “no” too.

I used to form “Hey!” I carefully conditioned it to predict great things for dogs that come to me, since that’s what usually came out of my mouth when I was freaking out about something affecting a dog. I even practiced it in an irritated tone, so the right reinforcer hopefully counteracted my grumpy tone. You can see a demo here. I should do it with Lewis too.

There is a lesson to be learned here. The signal taught by positive reinforcement for Lewis to get off the counter is, “The lady is saying something while my feet are on the counter.” Yes, any word can be a clue, but often it’s not the word at all. We humans are the ones who focus on words.

And of course, I’m not suggesting shouting “No!” to our dogs is a good thing. I have delimited the problem with it already. It worked for me in that instant with no fallout, but only because it felt like a real workout I had done. We might not have been so lucky. It would have been safer if I went out with one of my trained cues. I need to practice more, or maybe I should condition “No!” as well as “Hey!”.

Not just a semantic argument

I thought a lot before posting this. It can give people the false impression that I support by shouting “No!”. I’m not! Or it may seem unnecessarily picky. Maybe.

But my motivation is practical. Focusing on the word “no” and what it does or does not mean supports the idea that cues determine behavior. If we center our argument on the fact that the word ‘no’ is not a behavior, we are very close to implying that words like ‘sit’ and ‘sit’ are behaviours. And it can reinforce our unconscious tendency to believe that dogs automatically understand language like us.

That’s the downside of saying, “No is not behavior.” This adds to the confusion over which words are both cues and verbal descriptions of behaviors. Sometimes cues can describe behaviors, but they don’t have to.

I understand that the statements people make about “no” that bother me are shortcuts. Trainers usually don’t lecture on discriminative stimuli when first introduced to R+ methods. And it’s true that people who shout “No! usually don’t think about what they want the dog to do; they think about what they want the dog to stop doing. So it’s great to introduce the concept of positive reinforcement training and get people thinking about building incompatible behaviors instead of reacting repeatedly in the moment.

I am not a professional trainer; I don’t work with humans who train their dogs every day. If telling people that “no don’t tell the dog what to do” helps most of them break that habit, then great.

But I bet there are others like me who eventually want to understand this stuff about indices a little better, and assertions about “no” can slow that down. I know, because it took me 10 years to sort out even a little bit of it.

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