TurboK9
New Member
This was written by a friend in TX, an old timey dog-man Butch Cappel. Thought some may find it an interesting read.
How the Catholic Church Created Dog Training
By Butch Cappel
"Back around the twelfth century, when all the big church guys were busy writing all the rules for everyone to live by, for the next few hundred years, someone asked about the status of animals, cause if murder was to be a sin what happens to those that kill animals, like even a priest at a sacrifice?
It was quickly decided that an animal had no soul and so it was not a sin to do whatever you wanted to. To have a soul you had to be aware of God and heaven and all that sort of stuff. It was reasoned that, a human could reason that, if he/she were good today they could get to heaven tomorrow. As no animals or dogs had been known to express a desire to get to heaven (among other reasons that are a whole nother story) they must not have reasoning powers. And if they didn’t want to get to heaven they had no concept of love, so they had no emotions either.
So it was written that animals cannot feel emotions or reason. This is the reason we know that if a puppy pees in the house at 9: am, you cannot successfully scold him for it at 10:am. Because the puppy cannot reason, so he won’t understand that the reason you have a reason for scolding him is because there was no reason for peeing in the house, but he can’t reason so it doesn’t matter. And this is the thinking that brought us all things Animal Training.
You need to understand that in those days the reading was pretty much only done by the monks and church folks, and the church was responsible for all things scientific. So animals not being able to feel or reason became a scientific fact. But there were still people, thinkers, that wondered how does a herd know to put their backs to a north wind to stay warmer, how does a lion pick out the weakest antelope in a herd, if they can’t reason? Why does a pack fight to defend its young or its territory if they cannot feel?
We move up to sixteenth century France where we meet a man named Descartes. He is considered by many the father of modern science and was kinda like an Albert Einstein of the times. (I know, I know, you’re thinking what the high happy heck has this got to do with how I train my dog? Hang in there; keep reading we’re almost there)
Gardens were a big entertainment thing for the rich folks of France at this time. Why not, they’d quit throwing folks to the lions, and they didn’t have Honky Tonks or cable tv, you gotta have some way to spend those Francs and get your giggles, go for a garden.
One huge garden had acres of flowers but also statues of things like a little boy raking leaves. These statues were made of metal, and had hydraulic cylinders that made them move and rake leaves or dip water from a well, or whatever. Descartes had been trying to figure out how animals act and react for survival, without thinking or feeling, when he took a tour of this garden. And that is when the foundation for animal behavior was written.
Descartes reasoned that just as these statues were made to move by a liquid force pushing them in one direction, and then they stopped when the water quit pushing so animals would be pushed to make responses if a force, like an hydraulic force, stimulated them to respond in a manner dictated by their biology. If a horse were stimulated by the sight of a stalking wolf, they would respond, without thought, by running.
If that same wolf was stimulated by the sight of another wolf near his mate he would respond biologically by fighting the intruder. No thought, no feelings just as the church had written in the twelfth century. As the church was the final authority of all things scientific at this time, this met the test standard for acceptance and became a scientific fact.
It is now 1930 and science has overtaken wars and military generals as the heroes and cool thing of the day. Enter B.F. Skinner, who could be called the Father of modern animal behaviorism. Science like law and other scholarly professions work from ‘precedents’ that is; the facts written before you started studying something. When Skinner started his now landmark studies there was still something missing in the writings of Descartes’ stimulus/response teachings?
Some mammals had been observed using skills to survive. A wolf would roll in the carcass of a dead deer and then hunt downwind from the herd? If animals can’t reason how did this behavior happen (can’t say evolution cause the church started all this stuff, remember?)
Skinner had of course read the works of the Russian scientist Pavlov (also educated in a church seminary) and his writings on classical or conditioned responses, but this still didn’t explain acquired behaviors in animals. So Skinner observed plants bending their stems to sunlight for growth and higher mammals acquiring skills to solve problems and then probably had a Eureka moment. If there is a benefit that follows a certain behavior, that behavior will be repeated by the animal, and Operant Conditioning now joined Classical Conditioning as a scientific fact and we still don’t have dogs that can think, feel or got to heaven.
As I said it was important for the church that animals not have souls. That decree set the precedents from which all future studies of animals and their behavior are based and fortunately for the church today, science found a way to keep dogs dumb."
How the Catholic Church Created Dog Training
By Butch Cappel
"Back around the twelfth century, when all the big church guys were busy writing all the rules for everyone to live by, for the next few hundred years, someone asked about the status of animals, cause if murder was to be a sin what happens to those that kill animals, like even a priest at a sacrifice?
It was quickly decided that an animal had no soul and so it was not a sin to do whatever you wanted to. To have a soul you had to be aware of God and heaven and all that sort of stuff. It was reasoned that, a human could reason that, if he/she were good today they could get to heaven tomorrow. As no animals or dogs had been known to express a desire to get to heaven (among other reasons that are a whole nother story) they must not have reasoning powers. And if they didn’t want to get to heaven they had no concept of love, so they had no emotions either.
So it was written that animals cannot feel emotions or reason. This is the reason we know that if a puppy pees in the house at 9: am, you cannot successfully scold him for it at 10:am. Because the puppy cannot reason, so he won’t understand that the reason you have a reason for scolding him is because there was no reason for peeing in the house, but he can’t reason so it doesn’t matter. And this is the thinking that brought us all things Animal Training.
You need to understand that in those days the reading was pretty much only done by the monks and church folks, and the church was responsible for all things scientific. So animals not being able to feel or reason became a scientific fact. But there were still people, thinkers, that wondered how does a herd know to put their backs to a north wind to stay warmer, how does a lion pick out the weakest antelope in a herd, if they can’t reason? Why does a pack fight to defend its young or its territory if they cannot feel?
We move up to sixteenth century France where we meet a man named Descartes. He is considered by many the father of modern science and was kinda like an Albert Einstein of the times. (I know, I know, you’re thinking what the high happy heck has this got to do with how I train my dog? Hang in there; keep reading we’re almost there)
Gardens were a big entertainment thing for the rich folks of France at this time. Why not, they’d quit throwing folks to the lions, and they didn’t have Honky Tonks or cable tv, you gotta have some way to spend those Francs and get your giggles, go for a garden.
One huge garden had acres of flowers but also statues of things like a little boy raking leaves. These statues were made of metal, and had hydraulic cylinders that made them move and rake leaves or dip water from a well, or whatever. Descartes had been trying to figure out how animals act and react for survival, without thinking or feeling, when he took a tour of this garden. And that is when the foundation for animal behavior was written.
Descartes reasoned that just as these statues were made to move by a liquid force pushing them in one direction, and then they stopped when the water quit pushing so animals would be pushed to make responses if a force, like an hydraulic force, stimulated them to respond in a manner dictated by their biology. If a horse were stimulated by the sight of a stalking wolf, they would respond, without thought, by running.
If that same wolf was stimulated by the sight of another wolf near his mate he would respond biologically by fighting the intruder. No thought, no feelings just as the church had written in the twelfth century. As the church was the final authority of all things scientific at this time, this met the test standard for acceptance and became a scientific fact.
It is now 1930 and science has overtaken wars and military generals as the heroes and cool thing of the day. Enter B.F. Skinner, who could be called the Father of modern animal behaviorism. Science like law and other scholarly professions work from ‘precedents’ that is; the facts written before you started studying something. When Skinner started his now landmark studies there was still something missing in the writings of Descartes’ stimulus/response teachings?
Some mammals had been observed using skills to survive. A wolf would roll in the carcass of a dead deer and then hunt downwind from the herd? If animals can’t reason how did this behavior happen (can’t say evolution cause the church started all this stuff, remember?)
Skinner had of course read the works of the Russian scientist Pavlov (also educated in a church seminary) and his writings on classical or conditioned responses, but this still didn’t explain acquired behaviors in animals. So Skinner observed plants bending their stems to sunlight for growth and higher mammals acquiring skills to solve problems and then probably had a Eureka moment. If there is a benefit that follows a certain behavior, that behavior will be repeated by the animal, and Operant Conditioning now joined Classical Conditioning as a scientific fact and we still don’t have dogs that can think, feel or got to heaven.
As I said it was important for the church that animals not have souls. That decree set the precedents from which all future studies of animals and their behavior are based and fortunately for the church today, science found a way to keep dogs dumb."