France Regulates Everything. The French Dog Has Reviewed the Regulations and Made Its Own Assessment.
PARIS — The French dog that has completed obedience training and has demonstrated competency at sit, stay, come, and leave it in the controlled training environment has not necessarily transferred this competency to the Paris street, the park, the restaurant terrace, and the specific situation of the interesting smell under the bench at the Luxembourg Gardens. The training environment produced a dog that performed correctly in the training environment. The world is not a training environment. The world has interesting smells, other dogs, falling food, and the specific magnetic pull of situations that the training did not specifically address. The trained dog in the world is still mostly a dog.
The Selective Compliance
The dog that comes reliably at home and comes approximately reliably at the park and comes not at all when a pigeon is involved has not forgotten its training. It has made a cost-benefit calculation: the cost of complying (leaving the pigeon situation) versus the benefit of compliance (whatever the owner provides as reinforcement) has resolved differently in this specific context than in the training scenario. The dog is not disobedient. The dog is economically rational. The pigeon situation’s value exceeds the recall reward’s value. The training programme did not adequately price the pigeon situation. This is a training gap, not a character defect. According to France’s National Veterinary Association’s behaviour guidelines, recall reliability in high-distraction environments requires specific training in those environments rather than transfer from low-distraction training. The park training session is the solution. The park training session has not been done. The pigeon continues to be interesting.
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