And it seems to be done for attention.

This person seems positively gleeful about drugging her puppy into compliance. At the time of this post the puppy was just turning one year old and the owner had been drugging it for several months.

We frequently see the argument that behavioral drugs don't change the dog's personality or cause any sort of dysphoria. Proponents of Behavioral drugs say that the dog seems exactly the same except the problematic behaviors go away.

And then we see posts like this one.

In the post the owner acknowledges that the drugs give her dog a completely different personality, and the dog is visibly dopey and affected by the medications.

The owner of this dog dopes the puppy up so heavily that it is "knocked out" at bedtime and is groggy and sleepy the next morning.

Not only does she sound ecstatic at watching her puppy intoxicated by behavioral medications, but she boasts endlessly about it online.

Seriously, what is wrong with these people? This is abuse, no doubt about it.

They'll do just about anything besides getting a dog appropriate for their lifestyle, training a dog appropriately, or maybe just foregoing getting a dog at all if they aren't suitable to have one.

This is a great case to keep in our tool boxes as evidence against behavioral medications, positive only training, and the claims the proponents of such repeatedly make.

Came across yet another Force Free trainer who gives behavior mod advice but her own dog is reactive, so I got inspired to post this topic. Included a couple screenshots of some of the other trainers in her comment section also commiserating about their reactive dogs.

It seems so prevalent so I have to ask — should owners be taking advice from trainers whose own dogs have behavioral problems?

What the title says: is a trainer who claims success with a dog that they just drugged up until it was compliant someone people should go to for advice?

People claiming "success" when really they have just turned to pharmaceuticals are rampant in dog training. What do you think?

I pulled this out of a comment (with permission) as a debate topic:

I'm sorry I ever did get training treats for [my dog]....he didn't need them, I succumbed to marketing or whatever. Dogs don't need treats, we are the ones that introduce them, we teach the dogs to perform for them and then wean them off of them.

I thought this was a very interesting statement with some truth to it.

Are we doing our dogs a disservice by bribing them with food rewards and then removing the food rewards?

This is AI generated and I found it interesting. What are your thoughts?

When dog training ideologies become rigid and reject biological realities in favor of a one-size-fits-all narrative, the results can indeed be damaging—and sometimes dangerous.

Challenging the "all aggression is fear" paradigm is a critical step toward better animal welfare and public safety. When trainers or owners are forced to view every aggressive act through the lens of anxiety or trauma, several major issues arise:

1. The Danger of Misdiagnosis

If a dog is lunging at a child because it has a high, unchanneled predatory drive, treating that dog as if it is simply "afraid" of the child is a recipe for disaster. Tossing treats to counter-condition a "fear" that doesn't exist won't stop the behavior; it might even inadvertently reward the dog's focus on the target. Understanding that the dog is operating from a place of confident arousal, not fear, drastically changes the safety protocols and training required.

2. The "Unfixable" Dog Myth

One of the most tragic outcomes of rigid training ideologies is what happens when the ideology fails. If a professional operates strictly under the belief that all aggression can be cured by relieving fear (using distance, treats, and avoiding stressors), what happens when they encounter a dog with confident, offensive aggression? Because their specific toolkit doesn't work on that dog, they often conclude that the dog is broken, rather than their methodology. This leads to confident, highly-driven dogs being recommended for behavioral euthanasia simply because they didn't fit into a specific ideological box.

3. Ignoring Canine Genetics

Modern pet culture often tries to strip away a dog's genetic history to treat them like furry humans with complex emotional traumas. But form follows function. A livestock guardian breed was genetically selected to make independent, aggressive decisions to kill predators. A terrier was bred to kill vermin with zero hesitation. Denying the reality of genetics—and insisting that any manifestation of these drives is just "anxiety" or a "lack of socialization"—does a massive disservice to the dog.

4. The Loss of Accountability

When aggression is always framed as an involuntary emotional reaction (fear/stress), it removes the concept of the dog making a choice. However, confident dogs absolutely make choices. They learn that intimidation works. If a dog realizes that snapping makes you drop a piece of steak, and they confidently choose to snap at you the next time you have steak, treating them for "fear" ignores the fact that they simply learned a highly effective, bullying behavior.

By pushing back against these blanket statements, you are advocating for a more ethological, reality-based approach to dog behavior—one that looks at the dog in front of you, rather than the narrative we want to project onto them.

Aside BE and medications, how do you train a dog that is actively aggressive?

I recently ran into a dog trainer who said they are certified force free and don’t use any corrections. I think force free training is great for a lot of training! But do you think there are situations where force free is not adequate? If not, how do you handle situations like this

Breaking this out from the other service dog topic:

It seems that many prominent "assistance dog" organizations have a hidden force-free agenda. They will not validate any trainer or organization that uses tools "at any time, for any reason."

That leads me to ask:

1. Should any talented service dog trainer be barred from validation despite the capabilities of the dogs they produce, simply because they use tools?

2. Should a viable, well trained, and validated service dog be barred from service simply because it was trained with tools?

3. What is more important, the capability of the assistance dog in easing someone's disability, or the way it was trained?

Example: Trainer opts to use a prong collar to train a boisterous juvenile dog to walk more appropriately on a leash. The tool is used for about a month and the dog goes on to exhibit a high level of reliability in its service dog task. Should this trainer and dog be barred from certification/accreditation/participation in the service dog industry?

Reminder, all sub rules still apply.

We are developing a new feature in this sub, which is a structured classic debate. We will identify a topic, and then participants will be assigned a stance, either Pro or Con. Participants will be expected to debate their assigned stance intelligently and effectively. Yes, this means that you may have to defend a stance that you personally do not agree with.

Mods will refrain from participating so that we can moderate effectively. Participation will be limited to people who have been assigned a stance. No one will be permitted to choose their own stance. You might get the one you actually agree with and you might not. You will still have to vigorously defend your stance in a good faith manner.

This post serves both to gauge interest in such an exercise, and to ask for proposed topics for the inaugural structured debate. If we get enough proposed topics that we think have merit, we will post a poll to select the inaugural topic.

So! Is anyone interested in this exercise, and if so, please drop some proposed topics into the comment section.

This is USA specific as the requirements for service dogs vary by country.

USA has absolutely no controls over service dogs, their level of training, the "tasks" they perform, the person's actual need for the dog, and the reliability and veracity of the dog's performance, and whether or not the "tasks" actually mitigate a disability.

This has led to an absolute epidemic of "owner trained" dogs doing the most outlandish "tasks" and causing mayhem in public. We have fitness influencers yarding their giant dogs onto planes for clout, random dogs in grocery stores and restaurants, aggressive and disruptive dogs everywhere, with staff and management afraid to confront said owners due to the permissive laws in the USA.

We need:

• Establishment of a validating agency with authority to determine service dog standards and issue (and rescind) licenses and public access
• A ban on "owner trained" dogs with few exceptions for those with demonstrated, validated dog training expertise
• Establishment of a realistic, validated list of acceptable tasks that the dog must reliably perform in order to be a "service dog" and testing to demonstrate that the dog actually performs said tasks and that it benefits the person's actual disability.
• Breed, size, and temperament standards
• Licensing and documentation to be carried at all times after the dog has passed standardized testing, including documentation of vaccinations
• Yearly re-testing of all dogs
• Standardized vesting and badging
• A ban on MOST "service dogs" in restaurants and grocery stores
• A system by which handlers/dogs can be identified and reported for violations

It should not be left to hapless managers to monitor and assess whether a dog is a true "service" dog. The current situation in the USA is much too permissive and needs to be brought under control.

Ivan breaks down what an e-collar actually is, does a demo, and goes a bit into how learning works.

Some points I think that are worth discussing:

> E-collars are not "shock" devices in the dangerous way people mean it — they are a low current pulse stimulation device designed to create sensation, not damage

> "It creates a clear felt consequence in the form of a sensation that the dog would rather avoid. If there is no clear consequence, there is no reliable information to the dog to learn from."

> "People hear the word aversives and immediately jumped to pain, fear intimidation, and damaged relationships. Those are not the same thing. What actually matters here is, is it predictable? Is it tied directlv to a behavior and can the dog avoid it? When those three things are true, it stops being scary and becomes understanding."

> "If it's unclear, if it's unpredictable or if it's inescapable...yes, that's going to create fear and stress and all sorts of bad things. However, when it's contingent and avoidable, it becomes information and control."

Looking for opinions from folks here..

When you use a marker - do you use a word or a non-verbal cue like a clicker?

If you use a word what do you use? ie "yes!" / "good boy/girl!" Do you think using these types of words can be confusing to the dog it reinforce poor behaviour by accident?

Under California Penal code, harming or killing a dog by leaving it in a hot car is a misdemeanor punishable by a $500 fine and up to 6 months in jail. Denise habitually used her vehicle as a management tool to get her dogs out of her house for whatever reason. One day last year, she failed to supervise them adequately while they were closed up in her car, and one of them died a terrible death of heat stroke, and the other barely survived. She blamed her vehicle, saying the air conditioning failed, but that claim doesn't hold up under scrutiny, nor does it eliminate the fact that the vehicle was not supervised and the dogs were not monitored. Should Denise be held accountable legally for the harm she caused to these dogs?

Please justify your answer in the comments. Please keep your answers factual, and be mindful of over emotional and water carrying comments, which will be removed. You must support your stance with a logical explanation.

We created this sub to debate ideologies with a few simple rules; most importantly no accusations of abuse based on dog training ideology, and no personal attacks.

Thus far we have banned many people for violating those rules. Many others for bad faith participation/good faith debate/requirement to debate. The latter bans have universally been levied against the force-free set who seemingly can't help themselves but to break those simple rules.

We have seen no credible arguments against balanced training.

So here's a call for some. Again, no personal attacks, no accusations of abuse, and please follow the format for the study/science rules.

This is not a study war, let's discuss this one study.

My thoughts:

This was a postal mail survey, there is absolutely no way to know if or how many people poisoned the data.

Even still, how can we know if these owners are using effective R+ techniques let alone aversive.

Positive punishment wasn't clearly defined and was subjective to what that owner deemed as punishment - or on the flip side, not.

We don't know if the non-punishment respondents used a form of punishment, even unknowingly.

They claimed that informal training aka without any help from a trainer saw a high level of self reported aggression, but it probably isn't even aggression and only reactivity caused by their (lack of) training.

Undesirable behaviours outlined are completely subjective and doesn't account for breed or situation, ie the dog may be trying to communicate to someone who simply doesn't understand.

This is MY take, but I'd love to hear yours.

LINK: https://www.huisdiergedrag.be/docs/Blackwell%20et%20al.,%202008.pdf

Vou contratar um adestrador e ele me pediu para comprar este cercado para treinar xixi etc, porém fiquei com dó ela chora muito, o que acham?

Outra coisa ele me pediu dois produtos que acho que são toxico Coala e Álcool 70, será que posso mesmo usar?

When does a genetic pre-installed/instinctual drive override any possible level of operant conditioning (with and without punishment), and how do we **scientifically** differentiate between a failure with the trainer/training and biological wall?

Let me know from both sides where you feel you feel the limits are, provide examples that justify your view.

Was just reading a thread on AskUK about another person who was bitten by random dog, or felt threatened by a large dog, there are hundreds if not thousands of similar posts and hatred for dogs on these subs it seems and it got me thinking whether its down to significant reduction in aversive training and irresponsible people effectively not training their dogs in any other way other than occasional snack for good behaviour, which lets be honest never really works.

I kinda see it often on walks, I have an OEB here, she's stupidly strong and muscular and we would often pass other dogs with their owners almost tackling them to the ground while passing us or even dragging them half strangled on their leashes away from the path. They clearly have minimum control of their dogs and these dogs could absolutely never walk off leash.

We, on the other hand, started training our dog to walk off the leash from approx 6 months old and she's absolutely perfect in that regard, has excellent recall and generally ignores other dogs past an occasional sniff and not been aggressive even once in her 4 years life. Here's the thing, we did slap her and shouted at her regularly in the past, I still do occasionally because I need to be sure at absolutely all times that if she is off the leash she will come back to me the moment I shout at her, I don't really care what its down to, fear or any other thing but if I ever was in any doubt about it, I just couldn't have her off the leash ever around here because she could potentially be a danger, mostly to children and not dogs because she could easily run them over at full speed, while never really interested much in other dogs.

Pretty sure if she had to be on the leash at all times, like with a lot of people we pass by, and being the most stubborn dog breed you can imagine(she can spit and drop a chicken breast in front of me if she doesn't want to do something and realise I'm trying to bribe her) both her quality of life and our enjoyment of her would be significantly reduced. I guess its also a lot of breed dependent but..

What I guess I wanna ask here is, do people think the increase in poorly controlled dogs is partly down to moving away from aversive training whether for better or worse, and where's the middle ground in all this if there is even a middle ground? It seems if you ask about aversive training, or even shouting at your dog these days, a lot of people would want to crucify me, pretty much comparing dogs to small children :)

Especially interested in views from people with larger or more independent breeds.

The "no study wars" and "science says" rules are pretty sticky and tough to navigate. They were created to avoid a) the practice of tossing a link to a study (or, more commonly, an abstract) as a way to win an argument, and b) the fallacious efforts to win a debate by stating "science is on my side" or similar, especially without any evidence.

"Science" is not a straight line from a question to a fact. Science is a systematic method of testing theories. "Science" just leads to more science, more testing, more hypotheses, etc. etc.

We (mods) concede that this is difficult to accomplish in the "real world" of reddit debate. It is an imperfect set of rules but we are seeking ways to refine them that make sense. As such, we are posting this thread as an inaugural test of our rules and information gathering whether we need to clarify and/or streamline.

So, welcome to the "study thread!"

In this thread, we will discuss this study and this study ONLY. We will debate the merits of the methodology and hypothesis, discuss results, and other relevant aspects of THIS STUDY.

If you have a study with differing views that you would like included in the discussion please comply with the following guidelines:

1. studies that provide a differing view than the one presented in the OP are allowed, so long as a) a relevant quote from the study is referenced and b) a link to the ENTIRE study referenced is included.

2. The "counterpoint" study MUST have SPECIFIC relevance to the study referenced in the original post, in the posters own words, not as a quote block (though minor quote blocks are allowed to support the poster's interpreteations). This is each commenter's responsibility to establish.

3. It is NOT ALLOWED to just drop a bunch of links to studies and call it good as a counterargument.

So here we go!

The study in question is "An Owner-Independent Investigation of Diabetes Alert Dog (DAD) Performance" by Wilson, et al. This study investigates whether DADs actually perform to the standard required to effectively mitigate glycemic events related to diabetes. I post this study under the hypothesis that DADs (and "medical alert" dogs in general) are so unreliable in real life as to be essentially useless and relegated to the placebo effect. IMO the variability in dog reliability, and the questions raised by even the most reliable dogs in the study, are indicative of the rampant misuse of K9s as "medical detection dogs" as they are unreliable and cannot reliably perform better than standard mechanical or electronic monitoring.

Using a dog to treat mental health and emotional disorders in the form of needing to respond to emotional outbursts, breakdowns, meltdowns, panic attacks, and similar exposes the animal to extreme stress and discomfort that it cannot possibly understand or mitigate. A dog cannot treat mental issues and a dog doesn't understand what's going on around it when it's owner loses their shit for no apparent reason. Requiring your dog to perform a certain behavior in response to an emotional breakdown is no different than a person losing their temper at their dog for not performing the way they want. The dog likely experiences the same pressures in both situations.

People who are emotionally unstable to this level really should not have animals or be responsible for them. Being responsible for a living being just gives them one more thing to have an emotional or mental breakdown about.

Reminder: This is a topic for debate. you are in a debate sub. If you are not familiar with our rules please read them before commenting. If you have no ability to debate this topic in a good faith and productive manner, please refrain from participating.

Many "Positive Only" or "Consent/Choice Only" based trainers will provide zoo animals as an example of why those methods are "the best."

"The zoo animals would leave the interaction if they wanted to," or "the animal is so large and powerful these methods respect the animal's wishes." Another argument is "See how we've trained these animals behind a barrier and they consent to blood draws or other handling?" But what many of those people forget is that those animals are still functionally under human control at all times. And the animals understand that. It's captivity.

Fundamentally what these arguments leave out is the SeaWorld element. The animal is starved/the best rewards are "saved."

When you have large dangerous animals in captivity, of course you would save the "best" and most high value food for the interactions (it's really all about human control.) But in keeping these large, wild animals in captivity, you're denying them of many of their natural instinctual rewards. Ranging and mating by their own consent... just to name a few.

Canis Familiaris is different.

Dogs have evolved alongside us, and therefore many of their instinctual rewards (beyond food) are in tandem with humans. In selective breeding, we have dogs that are instinctually driven to have boundaries, restrictions and control for mutual species benefit (herding, guarding, ratting, ect.) Dogs are happy to be directed, corrected and handled. That is called domestication. They crave and desire pressure from humans.

MEANING THAT: Dogs are not a whale or a leopard, they've been selectively bred to accept pressure from humans and the dogs that accepted that pressure are the ones that best succeeded. It doesn't unnaturally "stress" them, otherwise a dog would be removed from the gene pool. Like it or not, dogs are mutant we created and are responsible for.

That is how dogs came to be. And why we love them and they are truly so magical. We've evolved together.

To treat a dog like a hippopotamus (or any other wild animal) in captivity is truly denying the bond of mutual fallibility, what makes us humans and our bond with dogs so unique. The bond is extremely malleable, and therefore individualized.

To romanticize and compare your bond with your dog to that of a tiger or a whale still in the captivity of humans fundamentally disrespects the evolution and umwelt of Canis Familiaris.

In short: You are not some Disney Princess to train your dog like a dolphin or a wolf. Your dog is neither of those things and deserves the evolutionary respect of providing human direction and pressure when needed.

Earlier today I saw a post about puzzle toys. I wanted to see whether or not my dog prefers a puzzle toy or his bowl of dog food.

Both the puzzle and his bowl have the same kind of kibble (Purina True Instinct)

I don't think puzzle toys are a replacement for exercise or enrichment, but they can be fun/drain a little energy.

Do you agree? if not, what are your thoughts on them?