I received a note from a DDA acquaintance in southern California today. Apparently, the idiots at HSUS are calling for a ban on the use of "bull hooks" in the state. That term for the tool is one that they made up, because it sounds terrible. The correct term for the tool, which has been in use for 3,000 years, is "ankus". And the ankus is properly used as a tool for guidance; elephants are really big animals, and the ankus simply extends your reach.
Of course, any fool can misuse a tool, but the answer is not to ban the tool, but to ban the fool.
The ankus, when properly employed, is most often used to exert negative reinforcement, which is generally followed with positive reinforcement. People who lack an understanding of behavior modification commonly equate negative reinforcement with punishment; that is not the case. Reinforcement increases the probability of occurrence of a given behavior, while punishment leads to extinguishment of undesirable behavior.
Negative reinforcement, then, actually increases desired behavior, and particularly when it is used in conjunction with positive reinforcement. These are basic operant conditioning concepts, and they are concepts that most people seem to completely misunderstand. I have conditioned wild and domestic animals for over forty years. And so I'll tell you a little story about how it works.
Many years ago, I took on a "problem" elephant cow weighing about 10,000 pounds. Apparently, she'd attack people for no seeming reason, and at the time I arrived, staff were considering housing her in isolation. Having watched her for a while, this seemed like a bad idea; she lived for socializing with other elephants, but she did have a tendency to attack humans. So I proposed a different approach. It wasn't an easy sell, but they went with it.
I moved the elephant's mother, who was very tractable, to the right side of a cement and steel manger. Her "aunt", even more tractable, to the left. Then I brought our "problematic" cow between them. I tapped her head with the ankus, and told her to kneel. From past observations, I guessed that I had about eight seconds before she reared up and tried to smash me. So, at eight, I rolled under one of the other elephants. Sure enough, she reared up and drove her head into the wall.
That, my friends, is "punishment". When she backed out from between the other two elephants, why, there I was. Grabbed her ear, told her we aren't doing that, and led her again for another kneel. After a few times, her head really hurt. But she did it herself. That's punishment.
Within a few weeks, she realized that if I told her to kneel and then to stand, she got an apple slice - as long as she didn't try to kill me. She quit trying to attack people. She did, however, start following me around like a 10,000-pound gray dog. Well, hey.
I used a combination of negative and positive reinforcement, and let her inflict the punishment on herself. The result: she stopped the unwanted behavior, but willingly followed my instructions.
As the supervisor there noted: "Yeah, she does what I ask, now, but she does it for you without any reservations."
Key issues: negative and positive reinforcement works well. Although it does help if the animal inflicts its own punishment, because hey - it's not your fault.