No. It isn't.

Lisa Whelan started a great conversation over on her blog, and I want to chime in over here.

Is punishment a bad word? I say "no."

First let me get the easy stuff out of the way. As Lisa said in her post and as Dr. Dunbar said a few months ago, punishment doesn't always have to be bad. No reason to cover that ground again.

And, as Lisa also pointed out, punishment doesn't fully cover the "bad stuff" either. Negative reinforcement can be pretty nasty. But punishment, both as a concept and even just as a plain old word, takes all of the heat.

On the extreme end, there are those that feel that any use of any punishment at all is bad and the implication is that its use is a failure on the trainer's part, either because of a lack of creativity, knowledge, or skill. It's an...interesting point of view. When I first came across it, I figured it was a goal, a vision of an ideal level of skill that one should strive for. The Buddha as dog trainer. I have since found that no, some trainers seem to expect their clients to have the knowledge and patience to do things that even most trainers can't do. (For example, rather than turning away from a dog that jumps up, bend over and offer your face, while holding the collar to avoid a black eye. As you know, holding a 75 pound, 7 month old, Labrador Retriever firmly by the collar to stop jumping is just so easy, and there's no way that any dog would find having her collar grabbed, while a human face draws near, at all aversive.)

But that's a rant that I'll need to grab my asbestos boxers for.

Another belief, one that I have a bit of a personal problem with, is that we should try to influence our client's (and even our peer.s) behavior by modifying our language. (Punishment isn't the only target of this tactic, the word "leadership" takes a beating in this game too.) Some people believe that the word punishment should be avoided because it is confusing or can be misinterpreted and avoiding it's use will make it all go away.

I think that this is a form of "political correctness," and in some ways worse that trying to deny that punishment is necessary at all. Either you use punishment or you don't. Deal with it. I happen to believe that even if you think you don't, you do, and the sooner you can get into harmony with your own behavior, the sooner you'll get into harmony with your dog's.

Part of the confusion comes from the way punishment is used by the scientific community. In "the literature" punishment, of course, does not mean scary, painful or even aversive. The concern is that your average pet owner will take the word punishment as a license to use harsh punishments. In my experience the people that are disposed toward those type of techniques (and there really hasn't been that many to be honest) were not going to be swayed by my vocabulary. I had to show them what could be done without using any force.

I also believe that avoiding a word because it might be misunderstood by another adult is a bit condescending. The proper meaning of punishment (and leadership for that matter) really isn't that difficult to grasp. If a client uses it, it's pretty easy to explain that a behavior can be punished by taking something good away rather than introducing something unpleasant. There! Fifteen words.

In the comments for Lisa's post Cindy Bruckart, another DSD blogger, made an excellent point.

I think it would benefit R+ trainers immensely if we gave more people "permission" to punish. When someone is asking which punishment to use to stop a dog from jumping up, that's a fantastic opportunity! If a client is offered humane, dog friendly ways to punish their dog, they are more apt to stick with the training. Clients, in my opinion, are desperately seeking the right way to deal with the dog when, in their eyes, a punishment is necessary. Why would we deny them that?

How our clients feel matters. As "dog people" we are more forgiving than most. That's tough to remember when you're trading cute facebook statuses and tweets with other dog fanatics. We forgive a lot of behaviors and have a deep understanding of why dogs do what they do. Many of our clients don't. That's why they call us. Giving them a non-aversive, safe, and dog friendly, way to stop (a synonym for "punish" to them) annoyance behaviors can be positively (pun intended) liberating.

I don't think there's anything to be gained by altering our language and throwing away perfectly good words because they might be misunderstood.

Comments? Flames? Let's keep the conversation going!