The Secret History of Kindness: Learning from How Dogs Learn Hardcover – May 4, 2015

I recently read a book by Melissa Holbrook Pierson entitled “The Secret History of Kindness: Learning from How Dogs Learn” (Norton, 2015). I tossed this in the trash. I wish to share my review with you because it highlights the errant thinking resulting from an unsubstantiated evolutionary biological foundation to some modern psychology. You should be aware because this sort of stuff is being taught in institutes of higher education and promulgated by the intellectual elite who have no room for God in their thinking.This book came to my attention when I read the author's column in the Wall Street Journal about how dogs communicate. I, being the owner of two loving dogs, was intrigued and hoped I could learn more about my dogs. I was misled. This book is about psychology and reward/punishment conditioning.It is also claims to be the basis of some psychiatric treatments. I did not fully understand this until I read this book. Not all psychiatric counselling embrace what follows and it remains a valid treatment option. I do not take issue with psychiatry and psychology but with the foundational philosophical and “scientific” beliefs about humanity found in this book and that are embraced by many who seek to put them into practice on people.The author draws a horrid lesson about humans from her own experiences with dog training and that relationship and finds support for her contentions in the work of B. F. Skinner and the ilk that followed him. It is true that we, as animals, have instincts and respond to rewards and punishment.In the mix of nature and nurture, our complex interpersonal and societal relationships do have an effect on how we behave. And it is possible, as evil scientists and societies have demonstrated, to use such measures as a perverse means of controlling people. The concept is noxious regardless of benevolent or ill intent.Man, though animal, is made in the Imago Dei. The height of that image is moral agency which can choose between what is good and evil. No other physical creature has this attribute. Adam, before the fall, was sinless and in a state of posse non peccare and of posse pecare (possible not to sin and possible to sin). In the pre-fallen state Adam was able to think and reason clearly. He perfectly followed the good and perfect will of his creator until he followed his own desires in conflict with that will. In other words, Adam looked to his own above his maker and the fall would bring about the defacement of man into a self-centered, instinct-pleasure driven creature that preys upon others unless the negative consequences outweigh the potential reward. This is not humanity it is barbarism.Even in situations wherein society and family condition individuals to behave civilly and benignly, the root of this scheme lay in the base motives of pleasure and pain, reward and punishment and not in higher virtue and transcendence of the biology that the author claims enslaves us.There are also situations and persons who defy the reward/punishment scheme by seemingly to respond to punishment as positive reinforcement and act in ways that destroy themselves and others despite reasonable measures to correct them. The cause, likewise, is evil even though a descriptive biological mechanism may be found.There is no true kindness in any model that embraces reward/punishment as the underlying cause/motive. Kindness is a transcendent virtue. The problem is moral.The moral agent man was created with the ability to rise above the animal instincts and the reward/pleasure of his fallen biological nature and see the highest virtue in beneficence of Being and love of others. There is no physical reward for loving God and selflessly loving others.Indeed, Christians often suffer for doing so and suffering for our faith and for the Gospel is expected. Skinner’s rewards and punishments have no explanation for Tertullian's Apologeticum wherein he writes “We are not a new philosophy but a divine revelation. That's why you can't just exterminate us; the more you kill the more we are. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. You praise those who endured pain and death - so long as they aren't Christians! ….. And you frustrate your purpose. Because those who see us die, wonder why we do, for we die like the men you revere, not like slaves or criminals. And when they find out, they join us.”Ms Pierson is describing the terrible fate of man without God, man who rejects God, man who is not chosen by God for regeneration and redemption. She is describing the dehumanization of man, being given up to a debased mind.Whereas Scripture can clearly explain the debased, animalistic (driven by animal appetites) mind of fallen man, Ms Pierson and B. F. Skinner cannot explain the Christian. Nor can they explain that man, though corrupt, is not as bad as he can be. Scripture teaches that it is the restraining hand of God, common grace, the residual of the Imago Dei that is the radix of any real good within us.A human being is not a body with a soul but a soul with a body. We are not rats. We are not dogs. We are moral agents who will be held accountable before the judgment seat of God. A human is not defined by his/her biology but by our relationship to our Lord and Creator.I too love my dogs. This book, however, is being reprobated into the trash.

Ms. Pierson has a difficult style of writing, not as bad as stream-of-conscieness, but more like footnotes-for-footnotes. Don't mistake me, there's a lot of information in this 308 page summary of modern day animal training research. The introduction is a fascinating review of uses for animal training. Chapter 1 is the author's personal motivation, and introduction to modern dog training. Chapter two ought to be entitled BF Skinner, what he did right and what he did wrong. Chapter 3, introduction to clicker training. Chapter 4, Karen Pryor's workshops, or teaching chickens to dance. Chapter 5, Karen Pryor's dolphin training experience and its application to dogs; chapter 6 Clicker training and application to hyena and zoo animals; chapter 7 The authors experience with dog rescue; chapter 8, the power of dopamine vs classical dog training; chapter 9 operant conditioning possible application in society, with footnotes; chapter 10, author's attempts at training her own dogs and frustrations. The afterword is an attack on Stanley Kubrick's "Clockwork Orange," and its misunderstanding of operant conditioning.However, this book opens up a whole new world of information for those wanting to train animals, and be nice about it. Its not a how-to course on training, more, its an argument why to forego classical training methods and pick up clicker training if you want a well-adjusted pet.

This is a terrific book on many levels. The author offers a very useful introduction to operant conditioning and then applies it to dog training with wonderful extensions to other situations including relevance to society in general. For example, she demonstrates the way the negative punishment process implicit in our penal system is unlikely to provide effective rehabilitation due to the long lag between crime and punishment. She further points out that the reason this ineffective system is perpetuated is based in the positive reinforcement provided to the punishers (and, I might add, to the corporations providing penal services). Her basic message is that positive reinforcement, properly applied, is by far the best approach to train one's pooch and to mold behavior in general. The author gives her take on dog-human interactions, which one can accept or debate, but she is probably pretty correct in the most part.

This book is informative and a good read. I'm giving it 3 stars because if you do not have a background in reading scientific papers it will be an extremely difficult read. She writes the entire book like it's a scientific paper. My background and education is in psychology and dog training and I'm very familiar with skinner and I even found myself having to look up some of the vocabulary. If you want to understand the science get this book. As a professional dog trainer I would not read this book as a training manual but only to understand operant conditioning. I did not fully agree with all of her dog training theories bit again the science part was on point.

Wow! Amazing book! I can't say enough about the book, "The Secret History of Kindness: Learning from How Dogs Learn" by Melissa Holbrook Pierson. It arrived as suggested.

Anyone who still uses pain-compliance techniques (including choke and prong collars) needs to read this book. I am a big proponent of positive/reward training, and this book still had a huge impact on me. It gently addresses the self-conceit humans have when dealing with animals, and the reflection it casts is not complimentary. The book made me want to be a better person to all my animals.

Bit long but gets excellent towards the second half of the book. I would consider this easily one of the best books on dog training written thus far.

The wise observations about how dogs navigate their world was both informative and entertaining . Anyone who loves a dog would benefit by reading this book. Kindness, a sense of humor and patience are all qualities that make living with a dog so rewarding.

It is worth stating at the outset that this book is definitely on the right side of the aversive/non-aversive argument, at least in theory. It has been, after all, endorsed by Karen Pryor no less. However, it also contains an inherent contradiction: by the author's own admission, just publishing the facts accompanied by proof does not convert anyone. So, who is the book aimed at? Aversive trainers will not be convinced by it, however hard Holbrook Pierson attempts to pre-empt their rebuttals; the converted probably know this already and have read the source material as well as being able to train their own animals. There is a faint chance that it may convince the odd doubting Thomas. But, and it is a very big but, there are some fundamental mismatches between what the author professes to not only believe in but evangelise and what she tells us that she does in practice.She clearly understands the theories of behavioural science and has put some effort into learning how to put them into practice while improving her own techniques. So, how come there are glaring instances of her throwing it all out of the proverbial window? She condones direct abuse of her first puppy when she cheerfully regales us with a tale of how her trainer bit the puppy on the ear and, frankly, her behaviour with her dogs is often not only abusive but downright irresponsible (guided by her trainer). She rightly explains that one erroneous study on wolves led to people continuing to believe that they are directly analogous with domestic dogs and then blithely ignores the fact when it comes to feeding and exercising her own dogs. In practice, she seems far more wedded to a permissive, dare one say hippy, theory of dogs than the premise of the book would lead us to believe. She is rather vague about the details, but does seem to imply that her first dog died because she knowingly allowed her to scavenge and thereby ingest a toxin. Her second dog is also allowed to roam on land that may not even be public as it appears to be used agriculturally, and then is left alone so that Holbrook Pierson can go and do things with her kid instead. Her gamble pays off but I for one was dismayed by her description of the cold, wet, hungry, tired and frankly forlorn dog that was waiting for her return in the dark, empty car park, time and time again. The same with the multiple vet visits following non-fatal scavenging that could have been so easily prevented.She comes out on a high from Clicker Expo (who hasn't!) and then can't be bothered to train and consolidate a decent recall. Pretty basic stuff. Long lines clearly don't have a place in her house. Why? Because her dogs' supposed "freedom" is part of their supposed "wolfishness" in the author's mind and therefore more important that they run around as they like than that they be safe and secure (emotionally as well as physically) when off lead.They are very big reasons why I would find it very hard to recommend this book to the unitiated and, frankly, the initiated have gone far beyond it.

An enjoyable read, which gives you lots of useful information and makes you want to look for more. Well written in an easy to follow style.

Melissa is a master researcher and a consummate presenter of evidence in support of her argument, which is far-reaching. The book is only tangentially about positive, humane dog training, and presents a thorough review and update to Skinner's theory of behaviourism, far more compelling than Skinner's arguments, and goes on to explain why, like dogs, human behaviour is entirely conditioned and we have absolutely no free will. These arguments are very controversial and will probably set some readers off. But the writing is brilliant, well-supported, articulate and in places is quite poetic and memorable. This is the third book of Melissa's I've read and enjoyed, and is one of the most important books I've ever read — it transformed my view of human behaviour and has made me a more compassionate human being.

This book was suggested on a dog training page, and I heard a lot about it. So it was really disappointing for me when I found out that it's not a practical guide, but a philosophical essay about punishment with lots of own stories.The book summarises Skinner's, Pryor's, and Donaldson's work, but doesn't give much to them.And the other problem for me as a foreigner was that it is really hard to understand because of the unusual words used and the too many American cultural references.For me it was just a waist of time, I'd rather read something else from Pryor.

Very interesting bring a new perspective to training dogs