Back to the research on How to Build an Amazingly Awesome Puppy.
Clover — one of nine amazingly awesome Wildflowers
Most things I discuss are related, although I know that is not always clear.
Today I hope to create a connection between the last two days of my minor ranting about board-and-hurt so-called training and the related concepts of Learned Helplessness and Resilience.
I want to produce confident, resilient puppies.
Just guess which puppy this is leading the charge to master new experiences.
What does that mean? It means I want a puppy who will try new things, and who will “bounce” if things do not go well.
I am looking to shape an internal locus of control — a perception that effort influences outcome — because that is key to resilience.
I want the puppies to march through the world with an “I Can” attitude. We want puppies with Grit!
“I can — escape!”
In a review of fifty years of work on the concept of learned helplessness Maier & Seligman (2016) assert that helplessness is not learned, but rather “…passivity and heightened anxiety are the default mammalian reaction to prolonged bad events” (p. 364).
The authors go to say that “what can be learned is cortical—that bad events will be controllable in the future” (p. 364).
And so we should understand that newborns arrive hardwired to be upset and passive in the face of an adverse experience, and this is overcome “…by the experience of mastery over aversive events… (Maier & Seligman, 2016, p. 363).
Of course, this assumes the bad event doesn’t so traumatize the developing brain that the youngster stays stuck in anxiety. Learning to escape something bad, after all, is not the same thing as mastery.
Mastery of a challenge comes with rewards — escape the Nursing Alcove and there are new things to chew and places to pee!
It is normal to feel some degree of distress in the face of a challenge (Brown, 2015). What we want is the willingness to whine through the distress and do it anyway — or at least try.
Sigh. Loose puppies make one clean Puppy Central in a big hurry.
A resilient human does this all the time — in fact, we are all doing this now as we face the pandemic. Lots of whining (and some wine-ing, I know) but we keep marching.
Our job as humans is to offer puppies opportunities for mastery. The tasks must not be impossible or super scary — or too boring, easy, and/or repetitive.
There is a sweet spot — that is our goal.
Well, it is my goal.
The puppies who did not escape but who decided to hang with mom — or climb her.
Dogs and humans who learn to avoid bad outcomes are not building resilience — in fact, avoidant coping styles are associated with less resilient personalities (Brown, 2015). Therefore, pain-based and/or fear-based training, which relies on avoidance of an aversive (e.g., e-collar, which is code for shock collar), are exactly the opposite of what we want — unless we want a dog who is anxious and avoidant.
I sure don’t!
What I want for puppies and people is the ability to square up and face the challenge, confident they can do it — even if they whine a lot.
Our Wildflowers are four weeks old today. They are still exclusively nursing — of course. They are enjoying novel things every day to support the development of intelligence, curiosity, and resilience — but they are carefully protected from experiences that push them past their developmental capacities and comfort-levels. And starting tomorrow — their world will expand to include visitors.
But today — party time.
EVENING: Four Week Photos (plus a couple of extras)
Paintbrush
Mallow
Clarkia
Sage
Mariposa
Lupine
Buttercup
Larkspur
Clover
DH and Mariposa
Clarkia and toes
Karma the Demo Cat
Sparkle checking things out
Good Night, Friends!
Work Cited
Brown, R. (2015). Building children and young people's resilience: Lessons from psychology. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 14, 115-124.
Maier, S., & Seligman, M. (2016). Learned Helplessness at Fifty: Insights From Neuroscience. Psychological Review, 123(4), 349-367.