As IF Times

link Casey Heynes | Bully Video | SportsGrid.

Anyone who has ever successfully trained a dog will appreciate that in order to shape behaviour, it is important to associate reward or punishment immediately after the response.  There is no point in smacking the dog with a rolled up newspaper two days after he has bitten someone or pooped on the oriental rug.  People who don’t immediately reward or punish their dog after an incident will continue to be puzzled as to why their dog doesn’t behave properly.

This dynamic is now accepted and encouraged  in our modern civilized society.  We have been conditioned to let the “authorities” mete out the appropriate punishment rather than responding directly to the transgressions ourselves.  Often, the punishment, if any, is inadequate and the time gap from the original crime is lengthy.   Is this the hallmark of a civilized society?  That’s certainly debatable.  If you asked the aggrieved party, they may say no.  If you are an academic living in a theoretical world, maybe.   If you extrapolate the direction in which ‘civilized’ society is being steered, it doesn’t bode well for those who generally follow society’s basic codes of behaviour.  It means that they will generally suffer at the hands of those goons unwilling to follow society’s rules, written and unwritten.  Pretty soon, we’ll be overrun by bullies and jerks as if they were weeds on a lawn.  With the perverse bloat of the legal system, all manner of anti-social behaviour are excused by specious claims and rulings.  This emboldens even more undesirable behaviour which encourages more goofy rulings and the cycle continues.

In fact, not immediately applying retributive action to miscreants is contrary to the rules of nature.  In the natural animal world, boundaries are clearly established by virtue of the fact that  dire consequences will result  if they are breached.  In the best case, the intruding animal may get into a fight, in the worst case it gets eaten.  It’s a rare sight to see Wildebeest frolicking among lions for example.  There are no written laws of conduct in the natural world.  Be stupid and become exhibit A in Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection.  In the case of the punk harassing Casey Heynes in the video, the kid is clearly in the Wildebeest mode.  He’s lucky he didn’t have his head cracked open.  That this little darling got smacked will go a lot further than  any ‘strong scolding’ by the authorities after the fact.  Just ask Cesar Milan, The Dog Whisperer.  His standard technique for dog discipline and training is to associate positive rewards for good behavior and immediate negative consequences for unwanted behaviour.  But the key theme in his training is the behavior of the humans.  His premise is that how humans respond to their dogs’ behaviour will determine if they respond acceptably or not.  Control rests with the humans.  Maybe Casey should have eaten the little punk.  That’ll learn him.