Part 1: How I used punishment to train my husband to cover his mouth when he yawns

Annie is happily married to a man named Jason Pedicone, who is basically perfect in every way except... he doesn't cover his mouth when he yawns. So, she decided to use her talents as a dog trainer to train him to change this behavior. But she decided to try something she doesn't normally do with dogs: She attempted to curb his habit by using punishment. While she sort of succeeded, she also got a first hand taste at how training using punishment can mar a relationship in unexpected ways. Notes: Pavlov Dog Monitor - Pet Safe Anti-Bark Autotrainer - Jonah Hill on Fresh Air with Terry Gross - Dogs and Yawning - Tips on keeping your dog out of the ER this Thanksgiving - Music: "Hello My Baby" ukulele cover by The Channel Drifters --- Partial Transcript: Jason: Coming to you live from New York state highway 81 North. It's a gray day here on the shores of Lake Ontario. Just came off extraordinarily greasy lunch and we're ready to talk about punishment. **music** Annie: Hello listeners. Doing a little bit of an experiment in podcasting this afternoon. My husband and I are on a little road trip to Montreal and we're gonna be doing some car casting. Is that an actual phrase? I don't know. Podcasting from the car. We'll see how it goes. I forgot my microphone back at home. So the quality might not be top notch, but the content will be because my husband is here and he's a genius. We are going to talk about punishment. Specifically a punishment in our relationship, more specifically about a specific incident where I attempted to use punishment to change Jason's behavior. But before we get into this particular incident, Jason, why don't you, I'm curious for if you could tell me or our listeners what you, how you would have thought about punishment or how you would have defined punishment prior to your union with a dog trainer. Jason: Yeah, that's a very good question. I guess, the first thing that comes to mind when I think of a punishment is just something bad that happens to someone or something in order to try to discourage it from doing something which is bad. So spanking a child or spraying a cat in the face with a water bottle, something like that. Annie: Yeah. Yeah. Although I think too often and really the technical definition of punishment is that it discourages a behavior. But I think too often it can get wrapped up in the idea that it's something bad. And that I was actually, I was just listening to an interview on Fresh Air with the actor, Jonah Hill, who has a new movie out about skateboarding, and he was talking about how he got really into skateboarding when he was a teenager because it was so, like, I think he described it as punishing and painful and punishing and that made him want to do it more. And I thought, okay, well I totally understand what he's saying, but actually the pain was reinforcing, not punishing because if it made him want to do it more, then that wouldn't be punishment. Anyway. But,I know you tried to use punishment with the dog that you had before we met, right? Jason: Yeah. Uh, I used to have a dog who was extremely high strung and he was a Papillon and just sort of always very excited. His little body was constantly taut and he barked a lot and he had this issue where, when I went out and left him home alone, he would bark nonstop for hours. Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts Get full access to Don't Be a Dick to Your Dog at dogtraining.substack.com/subscribe