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Pain, help or hindrance

We need to feel pain in order that we can survive as it stops us doing things that would otherwise cause us damage. If we were to lift something too heavy then we would feel pain to warn us we have exceeded our abilities and to save our muscles from damage. Pain also tells us when we have damaged part of our body and the need for us to repair ourselves in order we continue to survive.

We can even have the psychological fear of pain controlling us in how we act like driving a car. If we are aware that when drive fast this is likely to cause an accident then we drive slower. This is the basis but we all know different people do act in other ways. At least we know how it should work and scientists know how the brain works to register this pain to aid and control our survival.

Like me, you may have read an interesting article last week where scientists now have evidence that a feeling of rejection from one person towards another actually registers in the same part of the brain for physical pain. This is particularly interesting as this gives more proof, if it we need any, as to how we influence people with our body language.

We have always known our use of body language does and can have a painful effect on other people that they seem to physically feel. We always thought that this was simply psychological pain but it now proves that it is registers as physical pain. Is this how the body maintains us as sociable people for our own survival?

I will not say that women are the only ones to use body language to good effect but possibly; they have a better understanding of it. It is they who must keep their family together to bring up the children in a safe environment to survive. This needs them to have an ability to be able to influence their partner to stay together without using physical restraint. Sex is not the cohesive force working here: survival is.

Men too use this but do they only register their feelings without care and in so doing create sometimes-devastating reactions with their partner. I read of a young lady that felt her lover had lost interest in her so she drowned herself in a goldfish pond. Her feeling of pain must have been so great it could override her need for self-preservation that is inherent in all of us.

It may well be because we feel rejected or excluded and this is registering as real pain this helps reinforces our survival need that makes us stay together in families and in groups. This same feeling is not just in the home but also found at work and in our recreation activities. We seem to have a driving force to be a part of the group.

Look at children how they must not feel different with other children so that they “Fit In” and belong. Send any under privileged boy from say Tyne Side to Eaton Collage and within a short period, he will seem and sound the same as all the other more privileged children. Not to feel different or feel as an outsider and to belong is very strong within us.

Because children are only learning these body language skills, it is so easy for us to see and understand. As we grow older, these signs become less obvious but they are still never the less there.

Working with dogs, we see them use this effectively as they communicate with one another because they do not have our type of verbal language. Rejection is one of the most common signs used by dogs in order to maintain control within their pack. The thought of being alone is a fearful option and is it the pain they feel here that keeps dogs sociable. Unless dogs also remain as a sociable pack in the wild, they will not survive. If this is, the body design for both humans as well as dogs that making non-sociably language to feel like physical pain this is possibly the body’s control it needs to maintain survival in sociability.

We could then say that using a choker to inflict pain or using rejection towards our dogs in order to maintain disciplines are therefore the same. Both will inflict the same pain in the same part of the brain. It begs the question whether both methods are both as cruel. Both are a reaction to pain so it will stop and improve its chances of survival. Both methods we can easily understand. The difference is that with actual physical pain this produces a desire in the brain a need to escape from the source. The other is like the boy at Eaton school in the need to conform in order for the brain to maintain sociability.

Living with dogs, they understand the use of rejection as normal so they react accordingly to remain sociable. It is better to ignore a dog when it has done wrong that to actually chastise it. Ignoring is producing pain but registering as a pain it must repair the cohesive force that keeps your dog with you. Chastisment on the other hand will make your dog wish to get away from you.

If in the beginning, you teach heelwork with the use of a check chain the initial response to the physical pain is to escape from you as the source of that pain. In time, it will learn that the pain will stop, if it remains close to you but on a score for love and affection it registers low in any vote.

Continued use of a check chain, you will create the pain to flee but it will not as it now knows that your influence ranges out quite some distance. The problem is that when your dog is able to be further away from you off the lead your influence diminishes but your anger grows so survival is not to come back as you may harm it on its return. When you do dog get your dog back you then place the dog back on the lead and issue further pain. After a while with further pain the dog is too scared to venture away at all as there is no where to flee to as it would end up alone.

On the other hand if you started by walking heel free and walking away from your dog, it will wish to remain with you. This is because it feels the pain from you rejecting it. In addition, if you teach this in an area, that your dog is not familiar with so to venture away from you is dangerous and so this will reinforce the need for remaining next to you. The brain knows being with you is the correct choice so the dog will react by remaining by your side because it has to in order to survive. I know today such survival needs sounds odd but you have to remember the brain is still working as it did thousands of years ago.

Even our old brain has still not progressed. When we go towards the checkout at a supermarket we are in flee mode and we are looking for the fastest exit. Ever wondered why we prefer checkouts to be on our left? Why do the doormen at hotels always stand to your left as you enter? It is all to do with our old ability to flee more quickly from our left to our right. The doormen adapted this in the times of knights wearing a sword on the left. He can draw his sword faster than the incoming knight whos sword is at 90 degrees to the guarding knight.

With puppies or a dog from a shelter, heelwork is so much easier because they need to be by our side. Knowing why helps us utilise this and why Winston learnt his heelwork off the lead together with my walking the opposite ways to which he wanted to go. By changing the areas where I taught him like the Arenal or in the main street of Denia, this made Winston need to remain by my side because of survival.

To change to a lead I simply followed John Rogerson’s trick of fastening one end of the lead to Winston and the other to the wall so I can groom him and play with him. In this way, he learnt that when the lead gets tight it is his fault and backs off to stop hurting himself. This then conditions Winston to know when the collar starts to pull he is doing it, not me, as I am just a wall. I do not pull the lead to give a command.

All that I need to do then is to reinforce his need to stay by my side by destabilisation and lots of praise. I achieve this by walking along in a straight line then simply move over to one side or just turn around without giving a command. This leaves Winston alone and so he rushes back to catch up with me to be by my side. With practice, Winston in order to survive he must learn to keep his eyes on my legs so I cannot just walk off and leave him.

This type of pain registering as physical pain is the body’s natural cohesive force to control us to stay together for our survival. Rejection is a bit, like when you know, you cannot have something we then seem to have an uncontrollable craving to have it.

Now that we understand how and why this works, we can apply this to improve our training of dogs in a more effective way. Like with Pavlov’s dogs we are inside their programme and so we can use this to our advantage.

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