Don't Shoot the Dog! Quotes

“Training is a loop, a two-way communication in which an event at one end of the loop changes events at the other, exactly like a cybernetic feedback system; yet many psychologists treat their work as something they do to a subject, not with the subject.”
― Karen Pryor, Don't Shoot the Dog! : The New Art of Teaching and Training

“One reason punishment doesn't usually work is that it does not coincide with the undesirable behavior; it occurs afterward, and sometimes, as in courts of law, long afterward. The subject therefore may not connect the punishment to his or her previous deeds; animals never do, and people often fail to. If a finger fell off every time someone stole something, or if cars burst into flames when they were parked illegally, I expect stolen property and parking tickets would be nearly nonexistent.”
― Karen Pryor, Don't Shoot the Dog! : The New Art of Teaching and Training

“Nobody should be allowed to have a baby until they have first been required to train a chicken”
― Karen Pryor, Don't Shoot the Dog! : The New Art of Teaching and Training

“To people schooled in the humanistic tradition, the manipulation of human behavior by some sort of conscious technique seems incorrigibly wicked, in spite of the obvious fact that we all go around trying to manipulate one another's behavior all the time, by whatever means come to hand.”
― Karen Pryor, Don't Shoot the Dog! : The New Art of Teaching and Training