I’m in complete agreement with Sailboat. Modern training may not involve a club, but there are PLENTY of abusive training tools and methods in use today. Shock collars, prong collars, “alpha rolls”, kicks to the ribs, “dominance downs”, and on and on. Harsh physical corrections are still the norm, at least around here.
It’s sad, but I’m hopeful that the tide is turning towards more science-based, positive methods.
I think you deserve an Internet cookie for this post. 
The original question presents only two alternatives, “beating a dog into obedience” or avoiding “force” altogether. There is a world of possibilities between those scenarios.
At my local dog park, it’s easy to pick out the dog owners who think any type of physical correction is abusive. They are the ones whose dogs jump on people and ignore everything their owners say. The dogs are often anxious and fearful of things like weather changes or the sight of an unfamiliar object. The dogs can never be outside of a fenced area without a leash or be trusted not to boisterously knock down toddlers. Sometimes the dog will sit in return for a treat, but never if anything else interesting is going on. The owners have to take them to a professional to do simple things like cut their nails, because the dog won’t let them do it.
I don’t believe that all dogs should be obedient robots, but a large dog should not leap around knocking people over or ignore you while you repeat commands to it. The simple solution is not to give any command that you are not prepared to physically make happen until the dog reliably follows the command. Dogs communicate physically and there is no reason including a physical component to training should automatically be considered abusive. I would be afraid to train a dog in public these days because even putting it back where you told it to stay is misjudged as abuse.
They’re not the norm where I live (although you can still find those things at any Petco or Petsmart). I encourage you to do what you can to try to make that not the norm where you are.
At the risk of offending some readers, it’s my opinion that people who use force and tools like those are fairly ignorant. The root of such ignorance is the scientifically-encouraged attitude that animals don’t feel pain like we do or have thoughts and emotions. (Cartesian theory of behavior) Alpha rolls came from the now-proven-to-be-wrong theory that an alpha wolf rolls a misbehaving subordinate wolf to dominate and discipline him. More recent researchers have proven that the study where this idea was put forward was flawed because it studied only wolves in captivity. Captive animals don’t have normal social structures like their wild relatives. They have now documented that wolves in the wild don’t dominate each other to control pack order. The “alpha” wolf leads and protects the members of his pack, not dominate them.
If you do a little more reading into animal behavior and anthropology as I have, it becomes apparent that dominance theory really springs from the primate world like chimpanzees. And humans. As mentioned, we LOVE to be dominant. It’s in our government structures and our organized religions and in our corporate structures. And I think that’s why the alpha theory of dog training really took hold in our culture.
Let me give an example. I volunteer for an organization that rescues hunting dogs in Spain. The local rescue organizations sprang up because not only were the rural hunters disposing of their dogs at an alarming rate, they were doing so using pretty brutal methods. Bullets cost money, and since a lot of this happens in poor rural areas, they used methods that cost next to nothing: throwing dogs down wells, beating them to death, etc. One method that really shocked a lot of people and resulted in the formation of many more rescue organizations was something the hunters claimed was an old Spanish tradition: hanging.
More than that, the way they hung the dogs was different depending on the situation. Dogs that were good hunters were hung high in the tree so that they died fairly quickly. (It seems perverse to modern/urban sensibilities, but from the rural hunter’s perspective at the end of hunting season the dog was no longer needed and they couldn’t waste money feeding it between seasons, and there would be a new batch of puppies next season.) Dogs that were perceived as poor hunters were hung low, so that the toes of the back feet just touched the ground. The galgueros called this “playing the piano” (in Spanish, of course). The dog slowly strangled to death.
I only mention this horror because it brings to my mind a bunch of “good ole boys” standing around the tree, drinking beer and laughing at their evening’s entertainment. Pure sadism, yes. But the concept of hanging the dog low to “punish” it for not performing comes back to the original topic. Using our brains, does torturing the animal to death really teach it any lesson? Of course not. Do the hunters truly think it does? I don’t know. If they do, then they’re as ignorant as I think they are. If they don’t think it teaches the dog a lesson and they just do it for fun, then that’s disturbing for a different reason.
It was within the last ten years that I took a course on dog-training that had it’s instructor “popping” the dogs head and using prong collars.
I have two dogs that I have never smacked or kicked and they are lovely 
Nobody is killings dogs by hanging them from trees to train them. This bizarre cultural ritual is disturbing, but it is not being done to teach the dead animal a lesson or for “fun.” It’s just an idiotic traditional practice that has no rational justification beyond “that’s how our people do these things.” Probably some nonsense about showing “respect” for the superior animals by killing them better, like how bullfighting isn’t about dispatching a bull so you can eat some steaks. As such, it has nothing to do with dog training.
If animals don’t feel pain, aversive conditioning would obviously not be effective, so I don’t know why you think this “scientifically-encouraged attitude” (sure doesn’t sound like any scientists from recent decades) would be to blame for training tools like prong or shock collars.
Except for Michael Vick, NFL quarterback and role model to America’s youth.
I agree with your points, specifically about how irrational it all is. Why hang the poor performers low so they die slowly while hanging the good ones high for a quick death if not as some twisted idea of punishment? To be clear, I’m struggling to find logic in an illogical act. It’s probably not possible.
We humans are irrational, though. I don’t hang around people who leash-pop their dogs or use things like shock collars, but I know lots of people do. It’s my hope that we can slowly educate those people that those methods are not only cruel but also unproductive. The worst punishment I’ve ever needed for my dogs was the Voice of God (i.e. drill sargeant’s yell at them), and that’s reserved for only the worst behavior, namely trying to pounce the cat. (My 80-pound male who thinks he’s a cat and could easily crush our little 10-pound kittie.) Granted that is breed specific: greyhounds are a “sensitive” breed and it takes very little to guide and train them. Other breeds known for stubbornness, like bulldogs, or flightiness like Goldens need more effort to get their attention. However, once you have their attention and teach them to work for rewards, they can be as easy as my hounds.
Edited to add another thought: they don’t hang them as a training method. A popular way to train the Spanish hunting dogs is totie them to the back of a car, motorcycle or ATV and make them run along behind. According to some local laws, this is legal as long as they don’t exceed 30mph. There doesn’t seem to be any enforcement of this speed limit in this situation, and even if they do keep it at 29mph you can imagine what happens when a dog gets tired and can’t keep up.
My dogs are also coddled. And they don’t like strangers at all. They assume “their” humans are nice, but think other humans (or dogs) are invading their territory–or so it seems. I think it may also have to do with being small dogs.
BigT, that’s a good point. Some breeds are territorial by design and in that case may “defend” their people against strangers. It doesn’t necessarily indicate they’ve ever been abused.
Another one that confuses many people are shy dogs. I see this in my breed: a small percentage of greyhounds are shy (the majority are social butterflies). Lots and lots of people assume that shy dogs are that way because they’ve been abused. It’s not necessarily the case (although the behavior* looks the same). Some studies in the racing greyhounds have shown that shyness may run through certain bloodlines. Not every pup in a litter is shy, but perhaps one of several dogs, and it also sometimes jumps generations. So they only have a correlation right now, not firm documented proof.
Never underestimate the human capacity for cruelty to animals. Yes, people beat dogs in the olden days, and they still do now. Training methods have come leaps and bounds since the days of heavy correction based training a la Koehler and there are a lot of trainers using positive reward based methods now, but that doesn’t stop the old school trainers from doing what they’ve always done, or stop the ignorant from being deliberately cruel or stop people from losing their temper and taking it out on the dog.
As far as prongs and e-collars, they are just tools. Used by someone who knows how to train correctly with them, they can be no more unpleasant for the dog than a leash and flat collar. Proofing off leash recalls with an e-collar may mean the difference between never being off leash and the freedom to run when circumstances allow.
All you have to do is talk to anyone in their 80s or so who grew up on a farm. I’ve heard plenty of these people talk about casual violence against working dogs and other working farm animals. It was a pretty common attitude that you would beat a dog into submission and shoot any dog that wasn’t “trainable.” Heck, my in laws live in the country in Arkansas and they still see all kinds of dog cruelty.
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The simple solution is not to give any command that you are not prepared to physically make happen until the dog reliably follows the command. Dogs communicate physically and there is no reason including a physical component to training should automatically be considered abusive. I would be afraid to train a dog in public these days because even putting it back where you told it to stay is misjudged as abuse.
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I’m not prepared to get into a physical confrontation with any dog, I have no doubt that even a Pomeranian would win that fight. I don’t, however, give commands that I can’t follow through on in some way. That usually means the removal of something the dog likes, or through preventative measures like having my dog on leash if I’m unsure he or she can respond reliably.
Dogs DO communicate physically, but we do a piss poor impression of another dog and we aren’t fooling them. We can teach them what our body language means to far greater effect than trying to use dog-dog imitations.
That said, I don’t think that pushing a dog’s butt to the ground or something similar is abusive. I don’t think it’s the fastest way to train them, but it’s not abuse.
Maybe not killing them, but “stringing up” is a method of training still in use. Fans of Cesar Millanwill see that plus other physically abusive methods used to “magically” cure dogs of anything from object avoidance to flat out aggression. And then they try it on their own dogs and are surprised when they dog retaliates (violence begets violence, how shocking!) or they create more problems than they solved. Maybe Poochie doesn’t growl at dogs on walks any more, but he urinates in fear when dad grabs the leash. Or Rex has stopped running off since you installed the invisible fence but now he has a violent reaction to people passing by the yard because he has learned that approaching them means a painful shock.
Training in ways that are meant to cause pain or fear in a dog is not only lazy, it’s dangerous. Suppressing behavior doesn’t address the reason behind the behavior and if you don’t to that you don’t have a solidly trained dog. Issues will ooze out in other areas.
I’m not referring to a showdown. If the dog doesn’t sit after a single iteration of the command you pose it into the position you’ve requested, then praise/reward. Taking away “something it likes” makes no sense here. Is it wearing pants with pockets full of jerky? Most dogs don’t tote a bunch of goodies with them.
Who said to act like a dog? We humans created dogs. They are preprogrammed to look to us for direction (to varying degrees, depending on the breed). That direction has typically taken a physical form for obvious reasons: we don’t share a language, for instance.
Cesar Millan has saved and improved the lives of more dogs than either of us. People trying to copy him may have different results, but the shelters are full of out-of-control adolescent dogs whose owners didn’t want to be “mean” with any sort of correction and ended up with dogs they couldn’t handle. Beating or “stringing up” a dog is abuse, yes, but some problematic dog behaviors actually cannot be fixed with praise and treats.
Wow, you think the shelters are full of untrained dogs because of people NOT being mean to them?
I think the shelters are full of untrained dogs because some jerks like making puppies.
People get young dogs and fail to train them. Training a dog is not mean.
Dogs aren’t jerks.
Removing the opportunity for a reward, preventing the dog from proceeding out the door I’ve asked him to sit at, stopping the walk, removing him from play. If I’ve asked a dog to sit and he doesn’t, there are multiple ways to “punish” without laying my hands on him. This morning I asked the puppy I am staying with to sit for his breakfast. He did not, so his breakfast went away for 2 minutes and then I tried again. He sat. Pushing them into position doesn’t teach them anything except that you will put your hands on them to enforce cues. Again, I don’t think it’s abusive, but I don’t think it’s good training.
I agree that we don’t share a verbal language. We don’t share a physical language, either. Dogs can learn what our hand signals mean if we teach them, and they pick up on our body language through studying us. Maybe I misunderstood your earlier comment about including a physical component in training.
Cesar Millan has done more to set the field of dog training back than anyone I can think of. His television show is dishonest and dangerous and his methods are outdated and disproven. He’s a fraud.
Shelters are full of dogs of all ages because people treat animals like objects and don’t think through the commitment of having one. Adolescents who regressed in their housetraining, puppies who grew too big, dogs abandoned because a human baby came along, dogs given as presents to people who couldn’t care for them, senior dogs whose medical issues became too expensive, and on and on. And dogs who were trained with physical corrections and became MORE unruly instead of less. Or fearful, or aggressive. I agree that dogs can end up in shelters because no one took the time to train them, that’s part of the commitment of having a dog.
If you can’t train a dog without hurting it, that is a lack of skill on your end, not a flaw in the dog. We’re smarter than them, right? So why do we have to resort to brawn over brain to teach them?
I have never met a dog with a problematic behavior that could not be improved through reward based behavioral modification. And that includes rather aggressive dogs (I think Millan calls them “red zone dogs”?), resource guarders, fear biters, and your garden variety wild puppies.
This approach sounds very nice, but unfortunately, putting it into practice can be very confusing to the dog. You asked the pup to sit. If he had obeyed and sat, he wouldn’t be simultaneously eating the breakfast: he would have had to stop or not start anyway until the sitting part was done. He didn’t sit, probably because he was distracted by the presence of the breakfast, plus, being a puppy, he may not truly have the meaning of the command firmly cemented in his head yet. It then disappeared for two minutes. He doesn’t have a clock or a conception of time that would allow him to reliably predict what would happen next. Add in the fact that wanting a dog to sit on command means every time, not just when you have a breakfast in hand, and you get a dog that follows commands when it feels like it or spies a treat and ignores them the rest of the time.
If they learn our body language by studying us (and obviously we do the same with them), how is that not a shared physical language?
A dog doesn’t need to watch me for years to figure out what it meant when I caught it snacking out of the cat box and hauled it out by its scruff. If I proceeded to beat it or hang it from a tree, that would be abuse, obviously, but the mere act of grabbing the dog in a displeased manner and relocating it is not. Since the cat box is full of yummy treats, how would you go about using your inferior treats to discourage the behavior? Rewards have their place, but discouraging unwanted behavior via rewards is nonsensical. Every dog I meet whose owners try to train this way --or even trained by hired professionals-- does whatever it pleases, whenever it pleases. Which is fine with me if that’s what you want. My own current dog is a happy little prince of whom I request exactly nothing, but he is a toy and sixteen years old. I don’t need him to agree to anything, because I can pick him up with one hand.
A normal actual dog though will not be welcome many places unless it learns some manners. If you eliminate physical guidance of any sort, most dogs aren’t going to manage this and a lot of them will end up having to be rehabbed and rehomed, IF they are lucky.
I have only seen the show a few times, but never witnessed anything that seemed inappropriate. I guess someone could try to copy him and screw up royally because they failed to read the situation correctly.
There is no one best way to train every dog. The things I have read that “disprove” physical correction in favor of exclusively positive reinforcement are typically illogical and fail to take into consideration that the correction is delivered when the dog has misbehaved, while the reward is delivered when it does something right. They should not be compared as if they are separate options to address the same situation.
Yes, but the size of the commitment varies. When you come home daily to a dog that happily greets you, you both go out for a nice pleasant walk together, maybe play a little fetch, then come home, have some dinner and relax, keeping this up year after year is not a chore. When you come home to a trashed couch, puddles of pee, and a dog that knocks down your toddler, the commitment is too much for a lot of people who would have been perfectly pleased with the first scenario.
These dogs would typically be kept IF their behavior has not gotten out of control. “too big” means a dog too big to make behave as you wish when it won’t listen to you. Dog and baby incompatibility means the dog might harm the baby because it hasn’t been taught to behave (or an allergy).
Yes, some people don’t want dogs, but if they surrender the dog right away before it has become an out-of-control beast, it has a much better chance at a good home. Taking your senior dog to a shelter is obviously only something a monster would do. If it has severe medical problems, euthanasia is more humane than abandoning it in a scary place.
That happens when people don’t know what they are doing and/or abuse the dog. Not every physical correction is abuse.
Or because they tried training techniques that didn’t work.
A dog I know (she will NEVER be going to the shelter, no matter what she does, don’t worry) was purchased as an 8-week-old pup. Her owner has gone to great lengths to use only “non-mean” training techniques. Owner has spent thousands of dollars on stupid non-collar gizmos for walking her, like the hateful Halti (which the dog despises and responds poorly to), professional training, and extended stays at the “dog spa.” The dog is over a year old now. She does not walk on a leash without pulling excessively and stopping frequently to attempt to remove her stupid Halti by rubbing her face on the ground or trees. She gets very excited when visitors are present and leaps upon them with glee while owner bitches uselessly at her. She chases the cat, eats its food and snacks out of its litter box. She cannot be trusted not to charge into traffic were she to go out without a leash. The dog is a delight and perfectly easy to manage as far as I’m concerned, and the owner is the problem because she has bought into the idea that certain training techniques that actually would work in minutes are “mean.” As a result, no one in that house is happy.
How do you know? I’m sure you don’t try to train every dog you see, plus a bit of improvement is not necessarily enough. A Rottweiler needs to bite children under no circumstance, not “less than it used to.”
I’d like to make a few comments also:
Regarding reward based versus punishment based training: The positive methods include a combination of rewarding good behavior, NOT rewarding poor behavior (also called negative reinforcement, like NikkiTikkiTavi’s mention of taking the puppy’s breakfast away for two minutes), and redirection. That is the winning combination and each bit needs to be used depending on the exact situation. What I’ve noticed is that most people are just not sensitive enough to the animal to respond correctly or quickly enough. For example, I once encountered someone walking her dog while I was walking mine. She wanted her dog to sit next to her while we passed by. She said “sit”, the dog had a very slight hesitation before sitting and the lady leash-popped him. Because of the timing of the lady’s slow reaction, her leash-pop happened just as the dog’s butt touched the sidewalk, which in the dog’s perspective is punishing him for obeying. (He winced slightly.) That kind of thing, coupled with inconsistent enforcement of manners, and the person being emotionally weak or irrational tend to make dogs neurotic.
Regarding dogs understanding body language: yes, they do but you don’t have to mimick dog body language. Actually, when I do that, like get down on all fours and try to make a play bow, my dogs look at me like I’ve grown two heads. They understand human body language intuitively. They know when we are acting crazy.
I also agree that Cesar’s show has hurt many dogs, again because most people are not sensitive enough to what the animal is telling them. They just try Milan’s things without intuitively understanding if it’s working for their dog or not. “Cesar says alpha rolls are good, so if my dog doesn’t sit the instant I tell him to, that’s what I should do.” NO! Milan has pretty good intuition with the animal and picks up on it’s body language. I don’t like his methods, but they work for HIM. I don’t think he does a good job teaching people how to be intuitive and sensitive to what the animals body language is telling them. He also tends to use the old “break the spirit” method with the “red zone cases”. Meaning that when a dog is behaving dangerously, Milan dominates it and forces it to submit until the animal simply becomes too exhausted to fight any more. That’s bad and he should not be teaching it to people.
Dogs don’t have souls, this is why it’s fine using them as beasts of burden. This was the common response I got from all the born agains I met while living in Alaska, including many of the Iditarod competitors. I hate religion.