Hey there, listener.

This is Hannah Branigan, and you're listening to drinking from the toilet.

We get real about, well, everything to do with dog training, positive reinforcement,

and stuff like that.

So I'd actually been planning to do a podcast talking about reinforcements and kind of

getting sciencey, but also talking about how it works in the real world.

And I just hadn't quite gotten around to it yet.

It's such a really big topic and full of so many fascinating offshoots, which tend to get me in

trouble. But then earlier this week, a friend sent me an internet article arguing that

positive reinforcement doesn't work. And then a little later, one of my students posted that

same article to our Facebook group. And since then, I've seen that same article popping up on

social media multiple times in various places. Now, there's nothing particularly groundbreaking

or even controversial about this article. It's written about people, children really,

and it's not particularly well or poorly written and in fact

nothing about it really stands out in any way I'm not even going to link the

article in the show notes even for you to read along with me because you know

what on the internet clicks on a link often function as positive reinforcement

and well positive reinforcement does work. And I have absolutely

no desire to reinforce this author or the publisher or anything to do with this article with

additional clicks on that page. So don't even go looking for it. Just don't. But it does bring up

many of the common myths or concerns or arguments that will hear in the dog world.

And it's just such a damn good example of missing the point that kicked me in the butt

...