27/08/2024
I agree with Victoria Stillwell 100 % Pain and intimidation have no place in animal training methods let along dog training.
If you're remotely plugged into the professional dog training world, you've likely noticed a spike in online chatter about training methods. As is the case pretty regularly, someone recently poked the hornet's nest of training philosophies, and as usual, the result was the same predictable maelstrom of opinions, hurt feelings and misconceptions wrapped in supposed truth layers of online posting.
I've been involved in these over the years to the point where it's become exhausting, with the metaphorical pound of flesh required to set the record straight about positive training sometimes outweighing the benefit of the net result. But this latest round of quibbling struck me differently for one reason: I remembered how simple it really is.
It's this simple: either you're willing to use pain, fear and intimidation when working with dogs, or you're not.
I'm not.
There's more to it, of course, and I discuss it in more depth in today's new blog post. But ultimately, the clarity provided by how obvious the answer is to me creates a rare moment of uncompromised simplicity.
