Recently I talked to a woman who came through looking at “No Pull” harnesses for her young boxer. When I talked to her about his pulling, she opened up that he had gone through some training at a local training facility, and the dog knows some basics. She also shared with me that this dog had caught an ailment that eliminates his ability to be walked by a collar. This meant especially that he couldn’t have a choke chain or prong collar on. This trainer told the woman that she couldn’t bring the dog back to training due to not being able to wear a collar but didn’t elaborate the reason why.

I know the reason why. This dog, because of the illness, could not have a collar on. Consequently, the dog could not have a prong collar or choke chain on. Did this mean this trainer was incapable of training a dog without using force around the neck? Yes, that is exactly what it meant. I know plenty of trainers who can teach a dog without using pain or punishment, and some of them aren’t even very good trainers.

“Yank and Crank”

There are a few different problems I see with this style of training. First, we need to teach the dog what the correct behavior is, and this doesn’t do that. Second, it allows for sloppy dog training which can cause a lot of confusion for the dog. This causes the third problem, lack of drive.

I cannot believe the “yank and crank” style of training is still around. It’s so Neanderthal-like, and there is no skill involved in it. Its pretty much like saying, “let’s beat this dog into submission, and once the dog reaches the point of ‘learned helplessness’, we will call it a behaved dog.” This is what many see at the end: a seemingly calm and well-behaved dog, when the reality is by punishing the dog, you have decreased (or sometimes eliminated) the dog’s drive. This is the Caesar Millan method, and not even close to actual dog training.

What does “drive” mean? Robert Cabral describes it like this, “Drives are the unconscious, biological impulses that carry out important, vital functions. They display in a physical manifestation of the dog’s personality and energy.” (Cabral, 2017). A dog’s “drive” is the natural impulse that a dog has to perform a certain behavior or do a certain thing. I talk about drive first and foremost in my group classes, because it’s important to understand what motivates each of our dogs.

 

“Trained dog, Untrained dog, Abused dog”

Training teaches the dog the appropriate behaviors instead of punishing the dog for the wrong behavior. Proper training does this with clarity and consistency. I love the explanation a friend of mine gives, and I use this explanation often: “You can put a bowl of applesauce in front of a child and smack their hand when they put their hand in the applesauce, but you still have to teach them to use a spoon either way. Punishing the child for that behavior may keep them from putting their hand in the food, but how much will the child enjoy eating applesauce after that?”

We want to be very clear with our communication, and timing is very important. Timing the mark for correct behaviors can be challenging enough, and that is true for punishments as well. This can lead to confusion over time. Is that what we look for in training our dog? We might yank and jerk our dogs around, but even though the action was clear to us, was it clear to our dog? Not always. I was told a story about a dog that came into a store off leash with a shock collar. While the handler was shopping, the dog wandered off and went up to a child. The handler noticed, initiated the shock collar, and the dog bit the child. The dog didn’t associate the pain correction with the act of wandering off, but the dog associated the shock with the child. We saw this firsthand a couple weeks ago with a former student of my colleague. The young dog approached my friend excited, but once he reached the end of the leash, the prong collar tightened, and then the dog was suddenly fearful of him. The dog went from being happy and excited, and eager to greet a familiar face, to suddenly being afraid.

Dogs have what is called a “drive” or “prey drive”, and this drive to chase “prey” varies from breed to breed as well as individual to individual. Dogs can be driven by many things like food, toys, physical pleasure, or social interaction, and all of this varies from dog to dog. An untrained dog will act on its impulses, and if that behavior is reinforced (meaning, if that dog gets its way), the behavior will reoccur. A trained dog knows when it is appropriate to act on those impulses and looks to the handler for direction. An abused dog has little to no drive to act on, which is why this can be mistaken for “good behavior”. So often, the dog isn’t willing to offer new behaviors due to fear of the handler. This is called “learned helplessness”.

Fear based training does nothing for the relationship, because the dog walks around cowering, fearing the next correction. With trained dogs, the drive is harnessed to perform appropriate behaviors, and is released appropriately, resulting in a much happier dog. A dog that has been punished to the point of fear is an abused dog, not a well-trained dog. Don’t mistake the two. The average person may not recognize conditioned fear, but our dogs often give very clear stress signals. When stressed, dogs can show signs such as lip-licking, panting when not hot or thirsty, avoiding eye contact, tucking the tail, pinning ears at an unusual angle, “shaking off” when not wet, among many others (Yin, 2015).

If you begin to look for these signs and begin to see them in your dog, consider what is making him uncomfortable. Frequently, dogs that are trained with choke, prong, or shock collars will display these signals, and many people—including the handler—miss it. My challenge to anyone willing to take it is this: let’s change for the better. Let’s continue to progress away from pain-based training styles and carry on with positive training methods. Let’s be the people our dogs deserve, and train for the happiest dog possible.

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Cabral, Robert. “Drives of Dogs.” Robert Cabral, 26 Jan. 2017, robertcabral.com/drives-of-dogs/.