human race learned the hard way in 1908 that sometimes classical conditioning can come back to sting you in the tail end – or , as it were , squeeze your kids into a river . The narrative goes that a “ hero”dogwho was rewarded with a steak for bring through a drowning youngster decided to make it into a full - prison term spear , shoving unsuspicious child into the Seine so that it could bring them out again . You ’ve got to respect the hustle , I suppose .
The report , published by theNew York Times on February 2 , 1908 , begin with a Newfoundland hotdog owned by a Isle of Man live on the camber of the Seine just outside Paris . This heroic pooch went leaping over hedging and into the water when it heard a child ’s cries , rescuing the teensy tyke after they had fallen in while playing . A square - up rescue , and one that was reportedly – and rightfully – met with a steak reward for our brave Newfoundland dog .
In what would already seem like a bit of a strange coincidence , the precise same weenie rescued another child from the Seine two years later . Another life salve , another steak , and it was here that a pattern started to issue .
fry begin falling into the water more and more often , getting rescue by the same dog each time until “ hardly a day passed ” that a child was n’t taking an unvoluntary dip and getting pulled out by the Newfoundlandpooch . Residents grew concerned that a “ mysterious felon ” might be at study , so set up a watch to catch the horrid child shover red - handed .
The culprit would be caught , but instead red - pawed . Yes , it seemed the dog had picked up on the fact that if it pulled a tike from the Seine , it would get batch of food and tending . However , the tiddler were n’t fall in at a speedy enough rate , so every sentence it see a child playing near the edge of the bank building it would squeeze them in before pulling them out . “ He had thus established for himself a profitable seed of revenue , ” said NYT .
The New York Times describes the tale itself as “ a good narrative , ” so the events are to be shoot with a pinch of salt , but the musical theme that a dog might learn to do something for a reward is far from far - fetched . Pavlov ’s famed theory of classical conditioning demonstrated how dogs could learn to prognosticate a reward with a stimulus ( though the actual experiments themselves werea lot more horrificthan some nutrient and a few Melville Bell ) , so why could n’t that stimulus be yeeting a shaver into the Seine ?
Let the Newfoundland Seine Shover be a admonisher to pick out carefully when rewarding your dog ’s behavior .
An earlier rendering of this clause was published inMarch 2022 .
