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
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And of course, in the meantime, enjoy this
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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.