Welcome to the Animal Training Academy podcast show. I'm your host, Ryan Carledge, and I'm passionate about helping you master your animal training skills using the most positive and least intrusive approaches. Here at ATA, we understand that navigating the vast challenges you encounter in training requires a comprehensive base of knowledge and experience. It's common to face obstacles and rough patches on your journey that can leave you feeling overwhelmed and stressed.
Therefore, since 2015, we have been on a mission to empower animal training geeks worldwide. We've aided thousands in developing their skills, expanding their knowledge, boosting their confidence, and maximizing their positive impact on all the animal and human learners they work with. We are excited to do the same for you. Simply visit www.atamember.com, join our vibrant community, and geek out with us.
And of course, in the meantime, enjoy this free podcast episode as we explore new ways to help you supercharge your training skills, grow your knowledge, and build your confidence so that you can craft a life that positively impacts every learner you encounter. We will start today's episode where I'm thrilled to welcome back to the ATA podcast show, the wonderful Rick Heister and the renowned Dr. Susan Friedman.
And to get us started, for those who may not be familiar, Rick Heister is the curator of behavioral husbandry from the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado. He's been with the zoo since 2006, working with a large variety of species from penguins all the way up to African lions. In 2015, Rick began collaborating with Dr. Susan Friedman, diving deep into the world of behavior analysis and its significance for animals and human care.
Rick is also an adjunct faculty member at Colorado State University and a consultant for Susan Friedman's Behavioral Works, LLC. Dr. Susan Friedman, on the other hand, is a professor emeritus in the department of psychology at Utah State University. With her work translated into over 15 languages, she has consulted with zoos globally, working with all earthlings. She's also been instrumental in shaping the understanding of animal behavior in our industry. Her influence spreads across the planet.
So without further ado, it's my very great pleasure to welcome Rick and Susan back to the ATA podcast show for, I think, our fourth episode together maybe. Susan and Rick, thank you so much for taking the time to come and hang out and to geek out with us at Animal Training Academy. It's a pleasure. Thank you for the invite. And thank you all for being here. Just an incredible community. So many people's names and faces are familiar to me.
So if you're listening to this podcast on whatever app you are listening to it on, we are recording this live today within our Animal Training Academy membership. So if you hear us refer to those with us live, that's what we are talking about. But today I'm excited because we're going to be discussing a hot topic, one that might be blowing up your socials.
We're going to endeavor to address this current excitement and in some cases confusion around the acronym LIMA, which stands for least intrusive, minimally aversive. We hope to calm some of the dialogue with hopefully some reasoned thought, discuss whether we persist with LIMA or maybe we pivot. What are the considerations here? What are our options? So to get us going on this discussion, Rick and Susan, can we start please by unpacking what LIMA is for those listening?
Where does this acronym come from? I think we look at each other. You go, no, you go. I'll speak up here because I think its origins are in special education in the United States. And the first person that we know of who leveraged it in some form to dog training wisely was apparently Stephen Lindsay. But it is so close to the least intrusive, most positive, least intrusive alternative that is in the law for protecting kids with special learning needs since 1975.
And also because of Stephen's use of the, he calls it dead dog rule, which he cites Ogden Lindsley's dead man's rule. I think that he was somehow tapping into that special ed literature as have I. And someday when I meet him, I'll ask if that wasn't an early influence in using that particular combination of words.
So I guess we can say that acknowledging the use of it in special education back in the seventies and acknowledging Stephen Lindsay for publishing it in his book, revising the name a bit from least intrusive to least, most positive, least intrusive to least intrusive, minimally aversive. That particular collection of four words was introduced by Stephen Lindsay in his book. And I think it's, Rick, is it volume three or volume two where it first shows up?
Yeah, I think he first mentions it in volume two, I think, and then writes more extensively in volume three. Yeah. And as is very common on this planet of evolution co-occurring in many fertile grounds around the globe at the same time, rather than from one sole center point. He wrote that volume in 2005.
And I published the first article on the least intrusive principle in Barbara Heidenreich's Good Bird magazine based on her encouragement to write it down because I had been teaching it in slides for years before, also in 2005. So this feed grew and was watered by two people from two completely different sectors of the behavior world at the same time.
So we're going back to 2005 and Stephen Lindsay had it in his, can you just, for everyone listening, repeat the names of that text in case anyone wanted to go to the source? You might have mentioned it, sorry if I missed it. I sent my copy, I sent my library to Rick before I moved from Utah. And so any text references we're going to need to get from his shelves now. Yeah, so he wrote it in Applied Dog Behavior and Training. And there are three volumes of that book.
So Applied Dog Behavior and Training Volume 1, 2, and 3. Right. And Susan, for anyone listening, told me not to invest in that because it was for this podcast because of the cost. But I did find an online membership option where you can get access to a large variety of textbooks for $18 a month. I'm sure there's probably multiple options out there nowadays. So there are cheaper ways to access that text.
Okay, so 2005, what do you, and then you, Susan, did you write about, did you say Lima or did you start to develop your hierarchy? Yeah, the hierarchy was, the least intrusive principle was deeply embedded in the early years of applied behavior analysis with children with special learning needs. And we can dig into that label if we need to. But there are kids who just were not learning comfortably or who were behaving in ways that didn't make their teachers feel comfortable.
I was one of those kids earlier in the 60s. And so they went into special classes with hopefully special curriculum designed for their learning needs. And around that time, public law 94-142 was passed. And there was also a law passed in Australia. The United States and Australia have always been, I don't know about New Zealand, have always been partners in moving these edges of improved educational policy forward together.
And in that law, it states that children are protected to the least restrictive alternative. And in the writings around that, the least intrusive, most positive, least intrusive educational alternative was used back then.
So when I wrote about it, it was from that background of mine for the first 20 years of my career, which was in special ed. And then as is cited in all of my three papers that have addressed least intrusive principle applied to animal training, I mentioned two important sources. One is Alberto Entrautman's Applied Behavior Analysis for Teachers, which is also somewhere on Rick's shelf.
And in that book, Alberto Entrautman had a little four-part hierarchy of just behavior reduction procedures, according to this least intrusive principle.
And when I remembered that after a few years working with non-human animals, when I remembered that, that's when I first thought maybe it would be of value or a contribution in some way to stretch that four-part hierarchy out to include wellness, antecedent arrangement, positive reinforcement, before we get into the behavior reduction procedures, which are where the speed bumps and the barriers start to show up on the graphic.
And then the second important sort of seminal article is Carter and Wheeler's, where it was the first time that I had read an operationalization of what intrusiveness is. I have not done, we have not done, Rick, this is something that'd be interesting to do, a thorough review of literature to see where that least intrusive concept is operationalized. But they described, they defined it as having two factors.
One is social acceptability, where they talk about the survey work that was done by two other researchers, Melton Berger and Elliott, asking stakeholders what they believe to be sort of the rank order on intrusiveness for using our procedures. And across the board, positive reinforcement was considered by lay people, as well as professional psychologists, teachers, to be the least intrusive.
And then the second factor was the definition I really seized on, which is the teaching solution that leaves the learner in the most control of their own outcomes, where they have the most counter control. Envisioning a situation where teachers and parents have a lot of control over children's outcomes and where they sit and how much they eat and that kind of thing.
So then when we looked up and started looking around, we recognized that the least intrusive principle has widespread use in many service professions, including medicine, bioethics, law, law enforcement, and more. Wherever there's a disparity of power, we might say, then these professions hold their members to the standard that interactions are guided by the least intrusive principle.
The principle that states the less empowered individual is protected, their power is protected, such that the more empowered individual needs to be accountable for using the least intrusive solution. Sorry, that's a lot of words, but I hope you can parse them out and with recordings and so forth. There's so much, I talk about this so often too, that there's a level of sort of automaticity for me that I hope is not off-putting, but is clarifying.
So that's where the least intrusive principle for me came across my path as a young special educator back in the 70s. Was Carter and Wheeler also in 2005? I believe so, yeah. Yeah, which is interesting that in all those decades that I had been working and using that concept, that I hadn't found on a succinct operationalization. I hadn't really looked either, but that just kind of came my way.
And that really helped me have confidence in writing the article in 2005 that's called, What's Wrong With This Picture? Effectiveness Is Not Enough. Because now I had a really clear way to describe what we were going for. Always protecting the less empowered partner's empowerment to the greatest degree in any teaching interaction. So that's the background for me.
And then when I wrote the next article many years later, Why Animals Benefit from Trainers Who Adhere to the Least Intrusive Procedure, that's when I really started to explore how widespread the use of this principle was, which gave it a whole nother dimension for me. That is the dimension where we're joining up across professions to adhere to this standard of respecting that our learners come to us with a right to counter control to the greatest degree possible while still being effective.
And so that kind of, yeah, tightened it down or expanded it and tightened it down even further. Awesome. Thank you for sharing all of that. We just have a question because we are live for those listening to the podcast on your apps. What is counter control? And I imagine if one person's asking that, multiple people might be. Yeah. Rick, do you want to take that one? Because we have so many videos that show an example of giving control to an animal and a non-example.
Why don't you describe what it looks like? Sure. Susan has often made, I think, an important point about the procedural hierarchy where those different procedures are ranked by their relative intrusiveness with counter control as one of our measures, that if we were to change the name to the least to most control hierarchy, they would stay in the same position.
And in this recent discussion that we've been having, if we were to change it to the least to most choice hierarchy, it would likely stay the same. Providing learners with the opportunity to choose between multiple responses is a practical way that we provide them more control. And one thing that I was excited about this discussion over Lima is it prompts us to go back and read. So it prompted me to go back and read Carter and Wheeler again, which I haven't read in many, many years.
And new insights jump off the page because you're contacting it with different information. And they point out that intrusiveness, the issue of intrusiveness really comes into play when we can compare two interventions, two procedures. We can measure it. You can see the difference when you compare two procedures to each other, all of which can be effective. So it's not about effectiveness.
And that's, I think, Susan's brilliant question of is it necessary guides us to look to more than just effectiveness. All the procedures on that hierarchy are effective at changing behavior. But when they're compared to each other, we can see intrusiveness. So we can see a chicken being picked up and transported by hand to another location. It's effective. Chicken goes from point A to point B. Compare that to a chicken who chooses to step onto an offered hand. They can stay where they are.
They can step onto the offered hand. They step onto the offered hand for positive reinforcement and are transported to the separate location. When we compare those two procedures, we can see intrusiveness. And it's part of our ethical standard to move to the less intrusive procedure wherever it can be effective. You know, so much of this is linked together to things that we talk about so often and have talked about with you, Ryan.
This idea, it's why a podcast is hard because there's so many different threads that are pulled in to make this weave of caring for animals better every year, every decade better. We want more. Listening to Rick, it comes to mind for me the question of what is behavior for? And the wonderful veterinarian, Linda Randall, has been creating these videos for both of us where she interviews children and adults and just says to them, what are your eyes for? And of course they all say vision.
And then she says, what's your behavior for? And their answers are hilarious. The recent one she sent last night, a kid said, for fun, for having fun. And I thought, well, that works for me. That's a good answer. But that question, what's behavior for? I think matters in this discussion, in all discussions about training, but particularly about those that revolve around the question of control.
And the answer to the question, what is behavior for, from an evolutionary point of view, that I find most useful and influential is that behavior is for controlling outcomes. It is for acting on the environment in a way that produces more reinforcers and allows us to escape or avoid aversive stimuli. That's what behavior as an evolutionary adaptation is likely for.
And those animals that had some form of action on operating on the environment, likely so that they could move away from flooding waters or from fire, likely lived long enough to reproduce acting, operating progeny. And that is so much the beginning of our story as we understand how behavior works, is behavior as a biological endowment for something.
And it's different than hearing and vision in that it allows us to move the environment actively, the brilliance of the word operate, operant, rather than passive intake of data.
So now to knit that sort of foundational understanding to any discussion of giving animals control, more control, or counter control, meaning that they're able to use their behavior to control the outcomes they choose to produce through this behavioral mechanism, through their genetic tendencies to behave in certain ways, through their learning history that has been successful in the past or taught them what not to do, and in their current conditions.
So I think that's what we need for understanding counter control is that we're born to control our outcomes, to move the environment, to reveal reinforcers, and to move away from aversive stimulation. We're born to do that. That's a biological adaptation.
And when we restrict the animal's ability to control or to have counter control to their teacher or caregiver, then we start to provide environments that are less natural, less evolutionarily sensible, or like Rick says, are less in the core interests of the animal. And that's why it's so important. And people often put choice and control as though it's the same construct, but for us, we've spent time thinking about, is there anything useful in separating them?
And we think of controlling outcomes as what is part of our biology and choice as the number one mechanism by which animals then can have control. In very barren environments, there are few choices to make, and they're less free because those environments don't build skills and don't offer opportunities to learn richly. But when we have an environment that is richly organized or engineered for many choices in a day, then that means that animals are using their control to make those choices.
And that is more likely to produce behaviorally healthy animals. Rick, add to that, because I feel like I'm like walking on sort of, you know, trying to knit these big concepts that we've been working on for decades. Is there anything more to shine that light on how this all comes together? I'm not sure I can add to that. I'm excited about having heard it though. I think it was a great, great explanation. Such a great colleague, very reinforcing. Of course, if I'm wrong, then I'm lost.
Because you're always so quick to praise. But yeah, I mean, I think that without that bigger picture, these discussions become quite shallow. Oh, follow this person. Follow that person. Here's a new shiny. Let's grab that.
But when you've got this, really what it is, is a philosophy of our science, not just the tools of the science and not just an understanding of the science, meaning the research, but the philosophy that goes back one step deeper, then it all kind of has this connectedness that leads us to make different choices about how we interact with organisms we're teaching, whether it's children or manatees.
Seeing all of your questions come through in the chat, for those who are watching us live, and we're going to, I think, dance between them and a track that I have written down on my computer for the conversation about lemur. So let's dance back this other way and maybe we'll dance back this way later. So we've kind of jumped from 2005 to the three articles that Susan mentioned. We can link to all of those articles and show notes for this episode in case you haven't already read them.
I encourage you to do so. For those of you here in Animal Training Academy, we're covering them this month in our curriculum, as we did last year. Thinking about the text we talked about earlier with Lindsay introducing this acronym, LEMA, can you share then how Lindsay's use then began to be adopted in our industry? Yeah, Rick, you want to talk about that because that's where things kind of moved us to go sideways, I think, legitimately to take another look at that.
You know, what he intended versus what the organizations who use the acronym. Yeah, I didn't come into contact with LEMA very early in my career through the zoo profession. It's not as prevalent in the zoo profession as it is amongst dog trainers, which makes sense because his literature was targeted at the dog training community. So I came into contact with the least intrusive principle through Susan's procedural hierarchy when we started partnering with her back in 2008.
And Cheyenne Mountain Zoo adopted that procedural hierarchy as many zoological institutions across the world have done. And only more recently, through Susan and through living and learning with animals, as I come into contact with the more diverse professions, that's when I've started to sort of contact the LEMA acronym. And then lately, you know, we went back and we read we read Lindsay's work.
And one, I like Susan's interpretation of this, I think it's clarifying that a difference in his writing is where he lands on the continuum of frequency of use of aversive stimulation. But he's having a very similar discussion to the one that we're having, asking, when do you use more intrusive or more aversive procedures? And how do you decide? Where he's different on that continuum is he's discussing it to be used at a higher frequency, that it's a necessary component of teaching dogs.
And so since you know, you're going to have to use aversive stimulation, you have your list of aversive procedures, you use the least aversive of them. Where we're landing on the continuum is is to not be aversive at all, if we don't need to be. The least intrusive principle is moving us there. And, and as we revise our procedures, which we're ever revising as we practice them, and we talk about them, we're less and less intrusive.
So you know, even thinking about our approach to training, now teaching animals new skills now compared to even just I don't know, five years ago, 10 years ago, the presence of extinction is so minimized, as we rely heavily on arranging antecedents. So we're not having to withhold reinforcers to to give to deselect for missed responses, because antecedents are so carefully arranged that there are very few missed responses, they're coming in and they're, the stage is set for them to succeed.
And we're just there to reinforce it. So it's ever moving on that on that continuum of the frequency of of use of more intrusive procedures. And Lindsay's writing is just at a different place on that continuum, suggesting that it's going to occur at a higher frequency, then, then we see we see that it's not necessary.
It's back to that is it necessary question, we've seen that it's not necessary to use aversive tools on a regular basis to teach learners of any species, dogs, horses, children, elephants, giraffes, cockroaches. They're all they're all part of these behavior programs now. So yeah, anything to add to that, Susan, or you want to drop in?
I mean, we, we raked over some of the interesting quotes that are going around with from Lindsay's book, and we caution everyone to be really careful to, to look at the whole quote, the whole paragraph, the whole page. Because when people cherry pick just the part that proves their point, of course, that doesn't help the validity or the integrity of our work at all.
But when you do read the details, he's very clear that he's not advocating for the use of aversive tools like prong collars, and shock collars, and so forth, are tools of aversive stimulation to be the, the first thing you do, or that you do it without careful, careful consideration. So in that way, we're, we're very similar. But I will, I'll give a shout out to my family, you know, which is so amazing.
One night, I was sharing them, asking for their help to be able to figure out how to talk about this. Could we think of other, other phrases or acronyms that had one meaning in their origins, and then switch to a different meaning in contemporary use?
Because there are people who are saying, we should just drop Lima, because now we understand that the author that brought it to dog training, is saying that aversive tools are an expected necessary part of the toolbox, but you should not go there first, you should not go there if something less aversive will do. And so we started generating ideas like the idea of the word debt, the word debt used to mean a terrible and shameful thing, and now you need it in order to get a credit card.
But it was my son in law, my brilliant son in law, Tim, who said, you know, I think that's not really what is going on. I think that everyone is using the term Lima the same way, referring to the same continuum, where on one end, people might start with punishment.
We know some of those trainers advocating the first response is punishment, all the way to, we might say, people who are advocating for positive reinforcement only on the other end of the continuum, although I think that's, that's got issues we can talk about later.
But if that sets the continuum, as Tim explained, where Lindsay's description is on this continuum, is just closer to the punishment person, and where our use of Lima in IABC, APDT, CPDT, is closer to the don't use any of those tools, they're just not necessary. And so I thought that was really clarifying for me.
As Rick says, you know, it really, I then shared it with Rick, but we can go back to the source was Tim, who's an engineer, but it just shows you how accessible and how relevant this conversation is to all of us, regardless of our professions, that it is just one continuum, and it's where you situate. So a punishment first person's on one end, a never but anything but positive on the other. And then where Lindsay sits is closer to the left, and where we sit is closer to the right.
So there's very definitely a difference in intention, in recommendation about what procedures you would use. But it's not wildly off the continuum. We're not talking about two completely different conceptualizations. And neither conceptualization talks about the procedures in a hierarchical, least intrusive way, except the hierarchy of procedures that I wrote about, you know, jumping off of my special ed background.
So we still need that to be able to articulate, okay, what should a new trainer do first? And our answer is, and I think Stephen Lindsay's answer is also, you start with wellness, antecedent arrangement, positive reinforcement. I don't think that there's disagreement about that. It's what you do next, where it starts to move apart on the continuum. Right. So let's just talk about the timeline and my understanding of everything. So I can throw it back to you.
You can clarify if I've misunderstood anything up until this point. We've got lots of action happening around 2005, multiple people jumping into the discussion then, including Stephen Lindsay, including you Susan, including Carter and Wheeler. Was it Carter and Wheeler in 2005? Yeah. And then Stephen was suggesting that we're going to use aversives, but we want to use the least intrusive aversive. The least intrusive and minimally aversive. And minimally aversive aversive.
And then this, when organizations took Lima then to lean on and to help guide their decisions when intervening in behavior, was there a misunderstanding about Stephen's description? Key question, Ryan. Really key question. And I hadn't asked myself that question in quite that simple direct. That is a key question. And the answer is apparently so, you know, apparently so that his situation where he situated himself on the continuum was a higher frequency or more justification.
Help me out Rick with any other words there of aversive stimulation and dog training organizations that I mentioned were further away. And that was, I think, compounded. Their understanding was compounded by their adoption of the hierarchy as a secondary supportive tool. So they had their understanding of the words, least intrusive, minimally aversive, which was closer on the positive reinforcement only end of the continuum.
And then they, they filled that concept with the hierarchy that describes a guideline, not a recipe or a rule book, but a guideline, I think a piece really of when to use each one of the antecedent consequent tools available to us.
Yep. So I do think that it's fair to say, although when you say, did they think, I guess we could always say who, you know, this is an organization made up of thousands of people, but I can tell you that when Margie Alonzo came to me and said, I think that we're going to come together, these three dog groups, IABC, CPDT, and APDT to have a common commitment to this version of Lima. Can we use the hierarchy to add information?
My first response, and I'm sure this will get to Margie at some point, I should warn her. My first response to her was yes, but the least intrusive, minimally aversive phrase bothers me a bit because the word aversive makes it sound like we expect to use aversive stimulation. And more and more, we're learning that we can meet our goals without aversive stimulation. And she, as she told me, brought it back to the group and they said something like, let's just stick with Lima.
You know, that's known. It won't be coming at flying out of nowhere. We're just going to stick with it. And I do have those emails. And so I said, sure, but it did move me to put that little note that you, if you look at the graphic that they use, it has a note about how the least intrusive solution may be a more intrusive, generally speaking, or a less, depending on what you're trying to accomplish and what is effective. So it isn't a lockstep march.
It's a, it's a guideline where you may move up to negative reinforcement or extinction, depending on what you've tried that hasn't worked. And interestingly enough, Lindsay has that phrase in his book as well, depending on what you've tried that hasn't, that has failed to be effective. And so there's so much commonality. And I do think that the original seed of commonality is special education because it's so similar.
So yeah, I do think that they took Lima, they interpreted the words as the words have meaning to this current culture and movement to be as positive reinforcement based as possible, rather than going back to the origin writer and finding out what he was talking about. And that's, that's the mashup now, that's the confusion. And what do we want to do with that? Rick, did you want to add anything at this point? No, I don't think so.
So just again, a reminder to the listeners on your podcast, actually recording this live. So Jill asked, is it a misunderstanding or just that it's such a large continuum? Is it that it's not the continuum's large, but it's not about it being large. It's about where the models are situated on that continuum. Is it? Yeah, I don't know that they understood that Lindsay was talking more about a higher frequency of aversive tools. I don't know that they understood that.
I think that they, my guess is, my personal guess is that they, they meaning the movers and shakers of these three, you know, very big contributors in these three organizations was the parent, just the plain meaning of those four words. And the least intrusive principle and the writing that I had done seemed to have a real synchronicity for them, which it does depending on where you sit, situate.
Had I read Steven Lindsay's volume two and describing how he then, then articulates the proper use of a prong collar and so forth. I would have raised that flag for sure. And I don't think that they knowingly would have continued on using that acronym. I don't know, you know, it's hard to say historically how thoughts move, but the least intrusive, minimally aversive ethical standard has, has plain English meaning. And I think that's what they were picking up.
And, and it's really now in hindsight that we say, you know, maybe a way to understand this is to think about it as where we are on the same continuum from massive punishment right off the bat. I'm thinking of like Cesar Milan to positive reinforcement only. And it's, there are people who advocate that and talk about that. But for me that that would not be the standard either. Those extremes, of course, if I had to pick one extreme or the other, I'd pick the positive reinforcement only.
I just don't think that's really feasible on this planet, but that's kind of a different conversation, I guess. So then as a trainer operating in the 2000s, 2010s and 20s, late 2000s, and you might call yourself a, you might have, I'm not talking about anyone in particular, this is a hypothetical person, let's call him Bob.
Bob labels himself as a Lima trainer based on the meaning of the words in the acronym, only to discover later that, hang on, there is this acronym in this text from this person in 2005, and it doesn't align with what I was identifying with when I used the word Lima to describe myself. Exactly. A pretty uncomfortable place to be in. So then the question becomes for Bob or an organization, do they persist with Lima or do they pivot?
Which is, when you're thinking about your identity, I think challenging and uncomfortable. But how can Bob determine what approach to take and how to move forward? Yeah, I mean, that is the problem. Absolutely. So, you know, oh, I hesitate to use metaphors, so I won't. But if you each could think of things in your own lives that nowadays with our current view would not be acceptable to us, and what do we do about it? This is one of those examples.
I think that with all of the courage that people have nowadays to speak out and say this is wrong and these things need to change and this language needs to change. I mean, for example, if anybody would say to me, yeah, or say about me, yeah, Susan Friedman's quite a gal, a girl, quite a nice girl, that would be very offensive to me. So we do have a lot of pivoting going on as our consciousnesses are raised by our social political sharing. And that has always gone on.
It will hopefully always go on. You know, we're always changing. So I guess one thing I want to say is be at ease from the point of view that we are always being pressured to keep up with improved thinking from past either abuses or even just uncomfortable uses of words and concepts. And the other thing that I want to share to be at ease about, because this is what I say to myself, is we do get to choose whether to pivot or to persist with that acronym. We do. We do as individuals.
I mean, I never called myself a Lima trainer or a Lima anything. I stuck with the least intrusive principle because that's my background. And it has the advantages of being cross fields and so forth and so on. You know, not for any particular reason. I mean, actually, honestly, I'm not sure I've ever described myself as a least intrusive trainer. I probably have. But I just want to say, these are two things that I wanted to share that put us at ease.
We're kind of in a hot spot where the sand is moving and that's uncomfortable, but it should be really expected as an earthling. That happens all the time. And the beauty of it is that we are empowered to move to a different spot, you know, where the sand is a little bit more stationary, at least for today. And then who knows what tomorrow is going to bring. I don't see these kinds of things as the make it or break it or faint, you know, oh, what am I going to do now?
You know, we are always being challenged in these ways. So we can decide what to do as individuals and as groups. We can decide to maintain Lima and do a better job of distinguishing what we mean by that term, that acronym, that we are describing a place on the continuum that is closer to force free and positive reinforcement only. And we can talk about how you get there. You know, what are the skills you need to train from that place on the continuum?
Or we can say, this is going to be too confusing for people. And so we should just say, we're going to use a different acronym so that there's real clarity about what we mean. Although I will tell you that whatever acronym you pick, in 10 years, there's going to be a reason to move it again.
Because I've lived long enough in special ed and know a little bit about the history from The Mismeasure of Man, a great book for you to read, the history of psychology and how its labels have changed and been devastating, where what we call today intellectually challenged people used to be called imbeciles or dumb or idiots. And with each 10 years, mentally retarded in my day, and now intellectually disabled, you know, labels get poisoned.
So we should be ready to be on the balls of our feet and move where our raised consciousnesses move us. So like we said at the beginning, the journey is home. We're not home. There is no place we're going to arrive at where we have the perfect acronym and the perfect description of the acronym. And that's going to be it forever. That's just not the way it works. We're constantly evolving thought and revolutionizing thought. And we just have to be comfortable with that.
We move, stay on the balls of your feet. As long as we're moving in a better direction, better as defined by people having more control over their own outcomes, more equity, less stigma, so forth and so on, I'm for it. So that to say, what should we do about it now? I mean, I don't know. I'm comfortable with LEMA and just defining it as the continuum and starting to write in that way.
I'm also comfortable with coming up with another acronym that describes the least intrusive effective solution in some way or another. Um, and I'm not, I'm not shocked by the fact that the sand is shifting under our feet again, because my whole career, it's been one shift to the next. You know, the behavior analysis of today is not the behavior analysis of 40 years ago, thankfully.
And when Stephen Lindsay wrote that, those books in 2005, we did not have the data we have today about how far positive reinforcement can take us. I mean, look at his justification centers mainly around, you know, the really difficult dogs that would be dangerous and uncomfortable to live with. And, you know, much like say Cesar Millan's justification for his exclusive use of So this is not an uncommon description of why punishment would be necessary.
But when you look at Mike Shikashio's work, when you look at Emma Parson's work, when you look at Leslie McDivitt's work, Lisa Mullinick, and the list goes on and on and on. These are people who have specialized in that very kind of behavioral, unsafe, behavioral and uncomfortable for the dog repertoire. And they've shown us you don't need a shot caller. You don't need it. What you need is a great consultant and a willingness to change what you do as the caregiver, Eileen Anderson and so forth.
So, I mean, the list is very, very long. We know this now. We've got the data and we've got videos to demonstrate it. So, you know, does he still feel the way he did in 2005? Rumor on the street is he does. At least I know that there are people who do, who feel that it's very important to keep punishment tools close just to know when to use them versus pack them away, lock them up, throw the key, which I wouldn't be an advocate for either. But we're not on the same place on the continuum.
So, I don't know. You know, what do you guys want to do? They are us. We are the community. And we can stick or we can pivot based on what criterion? The criterion that will move people further away from the unnecessary use of punishment? Yes. Move people away from the assumption that there are behavior problems that we can't solve with enough skill and information? Yes. I don't know. I'm anxious to see how we progress as a group on that, as a community.
We're curious to hear anything you've got to contribute. Yeah, it reminds me something that has become more clear to me in this conversation is a strength of the least intrusive principle that this worldview, this ethic that has us moving as new information comes in. I think it's what allows it to stand the test of time rather than committing to a particular acronym that will later be revised. The least intrusive principle seems to be able to keep up with the revisions.
We're always moving to the less intrusive, effective method of changing behavior. And we've operationalized what that means. How much control over the environment does the animal have? How well can they control their own outcomes with their behavior? And in the comparison between these procedures, we can see it. So, we just keep moving. So, our procedures are changing, but I don't know that our commitment to the least intrusive principle is going to change anytime soon.
What that looks like changes. But the principle, I'm not sure how to phrase it, but it is really brilliant because it keeps up. It keeps up with the revisions. So, an example of a revision might be an increased use in allowing animals to say no, which is a negative reinforcement paradigm. When an animal says no with its behavior and you back away, you're reinforcing that behavior by removing something, strengthening through the removal of something that's aversive to your proximity.
So, that's not something that had been commonly considered, although I wrote about it in an article called Pavlov's Parrots in 2000 something or other. I don't know. Because I had learned about it from an old trainer, Doug Cook, and thought, oh yeah, I see that vision. That's neat. That's a sound use of behavior principles.
So, now we have negative reinforcement kind of drifting into our ethical standard that includes allowing animals to say no, which by definition is a negative reinforcement procedure. And then we compete with the no to get to the yes with positive reinforcement and shaping and all our other best tools. Antecedent arrangement is our number one. So, that's a good example, but that doesn't take us out of the hierarchy.
It just has us ask, when you use negative reinforcement to reinforce the communication, that means no back up, stop. Is that the least intrusive principle or the least intrusive procedure in that scenario? The answer is yes. And so, we say, right on. Just now you have to learn how to get to the yes, because I'm hearing too many people saying, I let him say no, and so now I'm not training.
So, I realized that we have a lot to teach that I wasn't being clear about, and we'll use the three-path model to really build that out. How do you get to the yes? And that's one of the topics I'll teach in Chicago for Clicker Expo is, you know, no is not enough. How do you get to the yes? Well, we'll be able to talk about that.
That's why I say, for any success in disseminating we've had, we thank you, because it's your response that moves where we study harder, what book we open up, how we frame what we're doing, how we advance, how we change. So, that's a pivot. But it's not a pivot from the least intrusive principle, because that says, if negative reinforcement to allow an animal to say no is your least intrusive procedure, use it.
And that was an insight that Rick had that I thought was really valuable for me, is that because it's not prescriptive, it's not saying what you must do in any situation. It's saying, if it's not necessary to use aversive stimulation, don't. And then we have to parse out what is necessary look like. And I think that Lindsay was doing that in his writing, having read now those sections of his book.
You know, he goes on at great length to not describe the place on the continuum where it's punishment first, where he says, aversive procedures are legitimate and valuable tools for controlling undesirable behavior. That got cherry picked. It ended there. But the rest of that sentence was, but such techniques, these aversive procedures, these techniques can be rapidly debauched into a form that substantially complicates matters. And he talks about the hazards of punishment.
So, he's further down the continuum than we need to be based on the data we have today. But by no means is he on the part of the continuum where he's advocating for punishment first. Wow. This is exciting. You know, this could be like a limited series on Netflix. Was he pro punishment? Oh, wait, wasn't he? But look what he's, I mean, you know, and one of the things we can say for this community, each and every one of you here is, you are what it looks like to do it right.
You may not agree with anything Rick and I have said, or with I've said, or with what Rick has said, but you came to hear and to understand more, to be influenced more, what your end behavior is, is not as important to either one of us than the fact that you're doing the work. And one of Rick's great quotes we all use ever since he said it was, when somebody says to him, what do you have to do to be an animal trainer or to do what you do? His answer is, you have to read a book.
Is that not a great, you have to read a book. In other words, you have to do the work. We've been working on this original Lima and how it fits with least intrusive and how it fits with the Lima use for the three organizations and dog training in general for really happily for months now. And you have to do the work. And when you show up, instead of just hearing a soundbite or an authority or someone who's going to bully you or shame you, when you show up, you're doing the work.
And that makes you very rare and we need to teach other people how reinforcing it is to do the work. You know, my latest rant when I'm working with people that I'm coaching is they're not even coming to the debriefs with a pencil. I think I ranted to you about that last time we talked. It's just, it really hurts me that I could, I can't care more about this than you do. I can't care more about training your rhino with the least intrusive principle than you do. Got a pencil?
You know, I say, well, what did you learn from this meeting? Oh, I don't, I'm overwhelmed. Well, if you had a pencil, you might be less overwhelmed. You know, you are here doing the work. Go and read Lindsay's stuff and see what you make of it. Don't take it from our authority. Go and read how Lima is used by these organizations. Don't just grab the acronym. Goodness me, don't just grab the graphic of the hierarchy.
That's gotten people into a lot of trouble about misunderstanding, thinking they knew what I meant because they only looked at a picture. You know, you're doing the work. So I just want to say, I'll calm down. I'll take a deep breath. But this idea of, I need, I need to put it on Facebook with a meme is you want to learn how to train? You got a pencil? You know, when is this going to happen just through osmosis? These are such complicated thoughts we spend so many hours. We're doing the work.
It takes work to be a Lima trainer as we're using the words, the acronym nowadays. It takes work to know how to use that hierarchy. It takes work to answer the question, is an aversive procedure really necessary? But what about Leslie McDivitt and Emma Parsons? They're doing it. So I just really, that started out as me catching you all being good because the fact that you're here is you're working at it. And we are too. Nothing is done with a cavalier attitude.
We're not giggling after somebody's hard work, like those three volumes of Lindsay's or, you know, yeah. So we love you. Wait, I can do it. I can make it happen. I can operationalize it. Did you get it, Ryan? Did you see the love hearts that came up on your zoom screen when you did that? Yeah, on purpose. Did you know that was going to happen? That's control, baby. That's what control looks like. There is the image for this podcast episode. Amazing.
So let's, we're going to have a Q and A. My original plan was to not include the Q and A in the podcast. I want to stick with that because I can modify it later if I need to. So let's wrap it up in terms of the podcast recording. We've talked about the acronym LEMA is coming into existence and Steve Lindsay's work in 2005. We've talked about the work from you, Susan, and Carter and Wheeler and others contributing to the discussion.
We've talked about how LEMA has been adopted by organizations with a different understanding and therefore application compared to what Lindsay wrote about. It was about coming to a point where we've gone, oh shit, mind my French. That's what Lindsay was saying and it's caused some dissonance in us and we are now, this is where we end. We're in a discussion. Do we pivot? Do we persist? And we've got some critical questions to ask.
And for those, tell me what you guys think, Susan and Rick, and then these will be our final thoughts. For those engaging on conversations and on social media or getting hot under the collar in these conversations, the solution is, that's a pretty bold way of saying it, a offering is to, as you would say in my household here in New Zealand, do the mahi, which means do the work and get a pencil, read a book and be part of the conversation. Yeah, absolutely.
Susan said something recently that now I'm taking everywhere with me, related to this topic. Move slow and think hard. You know, there are situations where it's time to do the work, time to read, time to think and then make a decision and then test it, you know, go out in the world and use it and that gives you feedback and revise and that's an endless thing that we're all going to be doing.
But, you know, for any given behavior situation that we encounter, there are a variety of ways for us to address it. So we're going, there's a choice to be made, so what's going to guide your decision? And I think when we're early in the profession, we may not even recognize that we're making a choice of how to intervene, but we are.
And so that occurred to me thinking about this topic this morning, that just becoming aware that we're making a choice in how we intervene is an important step, I think, in how we interact with learners. And what's going to inform our choices, what are going to be our guides? And there's a lot of reading to do, I think, to form that for each of us. Yeah, final thoughts. Susan, thank you, thank you for sharing. Yeah, that's great, Rick. Thanks for- Yeah, I guess, yeah.
Oh, I just wanted to say that when we talk about what's best, change Lima, use Lima, but define it carefully. I think the answer will be connected to what's best for the animals, the learners we're working with, and the people who are working with them. So it's not going to be best in any sort of popularity, it's not going to be like by democratic vote or something like this. I think somehow we've got to attach the criterion of what's best for learners and best for teachers.
And that has to be part of what informs our decision, because too often what I see is it's just about who's the bully or social media now, and we want to make sure that we don't jump into that ring. And so when we say, what should we do? Well, what is best? Best for who? That's sort of how I'm moving through it myself. And then I just really look forward to the conversation that comes of this. Amazing. Well, thank you for this conversation.
Thank you so much for doing the Mahi, both of you, and bringing that inspiration and these insights to us. Our job now is to go do the Mahi, do the job. Can we just, before we officially wrap up this recording, this podcast recording, just let everyone know where they can go, Susan and Rick, to find the articles of yours that we've mentioned today, and all of the great work that you're doing through Behaviour Works, and about the offerings that you guys have.
Where online do we send the listeners to navigate? Rick and I just published an article in the AZA Connect magazine. So I'll put that up as soon as I get a PDF of it. So that'll be available. And that's a Hester Friedman related to the discussion article. And then the rest of them are at my website. And you are so welcome to take down everything, anything on the website. There's no charge. Disseminate. There's the graphics to make t-shirts, whatever, posters. Use it all.
Any feedback, I'm happy to hear. And if you need to make any changes, let me know. Let me be part of that decision. But other than that, go for it. And that's behaviorworks.org. And we will link to that in the show notes as well. Looking forward to your AZA article, Rick and Susan, as always. This has been so much fun. So from myself, on behalf of everyone watching live with us today, and everyone listening, we really appreciate you taking the time to come and geek out with us.
Thank you so much. My pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity and for the influence that you all offer us. Wonderful. Absolutely. Thank you all. And thank you so much for listening as well. This is your host, Ryan Cartlidge, signing off from this episode of the Animal Training Academy podcast show. We hope today's conversation inspired you and equipped you with new tools for your trainer's toolbox.
Remember, every challenge in training is an opportunity to learn and sharpen your animal training geekery. Embrace the rough patches, learn from them, and keep improving. And don't forget, the path to growing your skills and expanding your knowledge continues beyond this episode. Visit www.atamember.com to join our supportive membership, where you will find a community of trainers just like you.
Together, we're making a huge positive difference in the lives of animal and human learners worldwide. Until next time, keep honing your skills, stay awesome, and remember, every interaction with an animal or human learner is your opportunity to create ripples. We're here cheering you on every step of the way. See you at the next episode.