Laying the groundwork

Abstract

Before we can ask whether a training choice is right, we have to know what, exactly, it&s;s doing. Learning theory is the part of the work that refuses to let us wave vaguely at “drive” or “reactivity” and instead requires that we describe contingencies, histories, and functions with care. Competence is ethics and ethics is competence. That is, technical competence is a precondition for ethical practice, but not sufficient for it. If we misread how behaviour is acquired, maintained, or extinguished, our ethical debates float free of the very realities they are meant to guide. Good philosophy about dogs begins with accurate behavioural science and good behavioural science becomes sharper when we let ethical questions critique what we think we know. This chapter considers learning theory to be the shared language that lets us do both. It walks through the major processes that shape behaviour – classical and operant conditioning, habituation and sensitisation, desensitisation and counterconditioning, differential and non-contingent reinforcement, schedules, and basic teaching arrangements – always returning to what these abstractions mean for the dog in our care. The chapter culminates in Functional Behaviour Assessment as a way of reading behaviour functionally rather than morally, so that “problem behaviour” becomes intelligible action in a particular body, place, and history. Readers are not expected to become behaviour analysts, but by the end they should have enough conceptual precision to recognise when a method is helping a learner&s;s world become larger and safer.