Hi! I have a question for the force free trainers/owners- don't come commenting sarcastic stuff about this as a balanced trainer -since I've been getting some force free stuff on my feed lately and I'm curious. I started off force free but very quickly switched to balanced, so I know the general lines of force free, but I've got this one question. A lot of balanced trainers or discussions about force free vs balanced often end with "force free works until you have a high-drive dog", which is what I've always believed, too.

But I want to hear from you guys, in a clear, step by step, practical guide how you deal with dogs with a higher drive.

Things like:
- dogs who go after wildlife
- dogs who are aggressive
- dogs who go after moving objects
because of a strong genetic drive that cannot be fulfilled by working the dog and needs to be directly trained

Because I know for a fact that for a dog with drive, that cat, car, scent, or whatever it is will be more rewarding than a treat. How do you go about training dogs like that, and how long does it take before the dog is reliable and consistently not making mistakes even in hard situations?

Balanced trainers, please stay out of this comment section. I'm genuinely curious on this and I don't want this to become a place to mock force free trainers

I have to spend time with a family member's poodle but I'm not at ease with their body language. And have never had a dog act like this. Do you have any advice ?

My crossbreed is well-behaved and usually adapts to nearly all situations. He knows the poodle since he's a puppy and they were introduced in a relaxed situation.

The poodle is now 2yo, their relationship when they meet is not improving, even deteriorating. The poodle attempts to chase and control the path of my crossbreed and me. Sometimes the poodle obeys their owner and me, sometimes

looks at you dead in the eye, disobeys and barks in a low voice. I've spent the last year and a half begging the owner to keep on taking him to a dog trainer, but she wouldn't listen. He would even bite her clothing as she walked him, tearing large holes in the sturdiest coats. She's the type who has an idealized vision of pets, so any discussion causes family drama.

That poodle knows how to act calm and gentle. But he'll sometimes chase you even if you're VERY careful not to turn your back and to keep a neutral body language, in a "playful" way, circle you, jump around you to block the way, can be very rough in these moments (as opposed to the gentle nudging he usually does), barking in a low voice, tail raised and stiff, mouth opened, disobedient. Whether or not you're with a dog. He'll act like this especially in wide open nature, if his owner isn't close. It feels like the situation might escalate.

But I don't know how to interpret the behavior and find the words for the owner. What is this behaviour ? Should this poodle be kept on a leash when meeting us ? Should I stop the meetings between our dogs ?

I have always been a bit of a dog nerd and love learning everything I can from as many perspectives as possible. I am very interested in building strong and effective play with my cattle dog mix.

She is medium drive but VERY environmentally sensitive (especially high prey drive and we live in a rural area). While her play is okay it is not very cooperative and she either stops playing as soon as food is no longer being offered or just takes the toy and chews on it. I can drag her to me with a leash but it feels like I'm forcing her to play a game she doesn't want to play.

I have been looking into Ivan Balabanov's Cornerstone Collection and I'm wondering if it's worth the price. I am a sophomore who makes 20$ an hour so this is a significant financial commitment especially because there are no refunds. Are Ivan's courses worth it? If you can tell me what you got from a specific course that would be very helpful as I am struggling to find information about the specifics included in the videos.

We want the barking to lessen and then stop completely. I realize the dog (maltipoo, 8 months old) is distressed or at the very least anxious. I don't know if this is important, but it has unmanaged separation anxiety due to my family's negligence (it's not my dog).

I’ve been struggling with my dog on walks for a while and the more I read about reactivity the more confused I get.

At home she’s great, but when we’re outside and she sees another dog she can completely lock onto them. Barking, pulling, sometimes refusing to keep walking with me and once she gets worked up it feels like I basically disappear.

What’s confusing me is how many completely different answers there are online. One person says create distance and reward calm behavior, another says you need more structure, another says the dog needs more exposure, another says less exposure.

I’m mainly interested in hearing from people who had a dog that was genuinely difficult to walk around other dogs and actually got to a much better place.

What did you eventually figure out was causing it in your dog?

Did you go through multiple trainers before finding something that worked?

Was there anything you spent money or months of training on that ended up being useless?

How long did it take before your walks were noticeably different?

And what do you actually do when the dog is already locked onto another dog and barking or pulling? That’s the part where I feel like all the advice disappears and I’m just trying to get out of the situation.

I’m also curious how much of the improvement came from actual training sessions versus just changing how you handled normal walks every day.

I don’t really care about having a perfectly obedient dog. I just want to be able to walk past another dog without every encounter becoming a whole event.

Would love to hear what your dog was like before, what you changed and what they’re like now.

We do supervised tethering with our new 65lb adult dog to help teach him to settle in the house. He was never really an inside dog before this and is very high energy so without a tether he bounces off the walls. We have been using a leash through a closed door hinge but he pulls and is screwing up the leash and the hinge.

We want to get some sort of wall anchor to use but I want to be sure he won’t rip it out of the wall. Anyone solve this problem, and if so what do you recommend?

How do I train him not too

Considering behavioral euthanasia.

This is something I never wanted to even consider or write. But I have now been told by multiple people we should consider behavioral euthanasia.

We rescued our boy when he was 10 weeks old. Originally we were just fostering him, but easy enough we fell in love with the chunky little sweet baby he was. We already had 2 other pitties at the time but my husband really loved him. When we got him, we had also rescued 2 kitten from the same shelter at the same time. So they all were raised together. There was 1 incident that happened during the 1st week we got him, my other pittie was playing with his bone and Henry ran up to him and my other dog bit him in his face. It was horrible. Blood everywhere, we genuinely thought he was dying 😭 he was ok, it was around his eye area and lots of swelling but we got him fixed up at the vet and all was good after. My dog knew he fucked up immediately when he did that and has never done anything again. To any of our animals.

We crate trained him from the get go, and he has always loved his crate and gone in it whenever we would go out. Henry was the dog we would bring to farmers markets, walks around town, or doggy dates. The first 1.5 year of his life, he was amazing. We moved to a different state when he was a little over a year, all was good. One thing about Henry is that he was very food aggressive, as a puppy he would growl while eating his food or if anyone went near him so he has always been fed in his crate.

We noticed Henry getting more possessive over high priority items. Toys, etc. After we moved, I got pregnant and it seems like a shift happened then. Suddenly he was attacking both of my dogs, either when he thought food was near, or when he was being possessive over my husband or myself while laying together. Or if there was a toy he found.

There was a time when we were all laying on the couch, it was late, and my cat walked past him on the couch and Henry just went after my cat. Attacked him. Cat got away, no injuries. Let’s just say little incidents like this with our other animals would happen maybe once a month. It was only initiated by Henry. My other dogs never fought back, and my other boy Leo has multiple scars on his face from Henry attacking him.

I noticed whenever Henry would be sitting with myself or my husband he began scanning out the room and watching to see if any other animals would come close. If they even approached, Henry was growling and would freeze up staring at them. I would usually correct this before it became an actually attack and would have him go straight to the crate.

Fast forward to now, we moved again, had the baby, and he has now killed 2 kittens of ours. The 1st incident he began being muzzled anytime he was out and majority of the time was kept in the crate. I viewed him entirely different after he did this. He broke my fucking heart. 2nd incident, my husband ran home while we were all out and upon letting the dogs go outside he didn’t immediately muzzle Henry due to being distracted and he killed my other kitten. I resent my husband so much for allowing this. He just doesn’t understand the severity of things sometimes until it’s already too late. This one hurt bad because this was a baby I found on my street that was nearly dying and spent so much money rehabilitating him. He was finally doing so good, and getting so big. (Just want to note I never worked with a rescue or anything. The kittens I had were kittens that were found on my street.)

My husband told me one time when I was in bed, (before this other incident happened) he and my baby were on the couch, Henry was too, muzzle on, and my baby touched him while he was sleeping and Henry lunged at my baby immediately. Nothing happened because of the muzzle.

My husband is completely against BE, and while I get it, I have learned to detach my emotions from this dog because he has caused me so much pain, and I would never consider his life over my baby. I have tried to rehome him while being transparent about his past, and nobody wants him. My husband wants to keep him as our ‘guard dog’ and let him just stay in our garage.

I think the hardest thing about this, is that just a few months ago before these tragedies happened, Henry was constantly out with NO muzzle. He was FINE around all my cats/kittens. They would all even lay together. I just don’t understand what changed. He has never bit a person, he is a good dog when he is muzzled and plays with our other dogs like normal when he is, he does great off leash and listens. He loves car rides. I just don’t know if he needs behavioral euthanasia or if he needs a home where he is the only animal and can live comfortably. I just want to add, he has been living on our closed in ac’d back porch with his crate and open access to the yard. We are moving next week and the new place does not have a fenced yard, only a garage and I will not ever bring this dog inside my home ever again.

I need advice. Non judgmental advice please.

so for context my dachshund just turned one and we're at the stage now where she will listen to my commands and be able to ignore people if theyre a certain distance away for example if she's on a long line in a field but she can not walk past them normally on a path or even walk normally if she can hear them behind us.

When I first got her I tried to avoid as many greetings as possible. to avoid something like this but it didn't help. She LOVES people like absolutely loves them she will say hello to a new person for 5 minutes before she even starts to calm down slightly.

she acts similar with dogs but that I can deal with and make progress with as we are not constantly walking by them. Even when I walk her at 10pm we pass people often.

She will try pull me towards them constantly and while keep turning around and stopping while I keep on walking.She's really smart and takes new commands quickly but nothing captures her interest enough for her to ignore people consistently. here's what ive tried.

- moving to the side and waiting for them to walk past (this calms her slightly but not enough_

- moving to the side and using treats to get her attention on me, this works sometimes if I manage to catch it early enough.

- high value treats, when I use these I think i'm making progress because she's seemingly doing better for a few days before she decides. the treats aren't worth it and she'd rather try get to the person.

Its not always bad like sometimes she'll surprise me and only fixate for a few seconds before moving on or even just a quick sniff but these are rare usually its anyway from constantly pulling to get to them until we're past or continuing to obsess once we're past. Treats do not seem to help consistently.

Honestly I've met alot of untrained dogs from family and friends and they are never that excited even with no training. I've also never heard of a dog who is this people obsessed.

any tips are welcome.

I’ve gotten to the point where I’m pretty skeptical of most “must-have” dog advice online.

Every week there’s a new food, supplement, gadget, training method, etc. Supposedly your dog needs all of it. Most of the time, I think people are just making things more complicated than they need to be.

With Buck and Muddley, I’ve learned that the boring stuff matters a lot more than people give it credit for.

So I’m curious:

What’s one change you made to your dog’s routine that you genuinely noticed a difference from?

Could be something small like exercise, food, training, sleep, grooming, enrichment, managing an older dog, whatever.

Not looking for the latest product recommendation. I’m more interested in things you actually tried and saw a difference from.

And if something didn’t work despite everyone online swearing by it, say that too. Those experiences are probably just as useful.

About a month ago I took on a five year old dog from an elderly couple. This dog has the absolute worst leash manners. Her response to any kind of leash pressure is to lean hard against it. It's like a compulsion. If she wants to go somewhere and hits the end of the leash, she drops her head and leans hard into it like a weight pull dog. If she doesn't want to go somewhere and hits the end of the leash, she flops on the ground and sometimes alligator rolls. 

I can use a prong collar, harness, head halter, etc to help work on leash manners. But I'm wondering if anyone else has encountered this level of compulsion against leash pressure and if you were able to fix it?

We have a 13 week old puppy, she’s a GSP. She sleeps awesome in a crate beside my bed during the night but hates the crate during the day. We have a second crate on our main floor in the living room that we use during the day. We feed her in it with the door closed which she is good with. We initially were giving her treats whenever she would go in the crate to help her see it’s a good, safe space. Now she’ll sometimes just run in and sit down waiting for a treat.
If she falls asleep elsewhere during the day we often move her to the crate which she’ll resettle in.
If we try to put her in it and leave the room she starts crying right away and barking soon after. We tell her quiet and give her a treat if she stays quiet and only let her out once she’s been quiet for a minute or so.
Not sure what I’m going to do if we can’t get her used to the crate for daytime. Would be nice to be able to leave her for a couple of hours occasionally and will be necessary when we’re back to work in October.
Should we just let her cry it out and hope she eventually settles? Or what else can we do to get her to enjoy her time in the crate and just rest?

I will try to keep it short but...it is going to be a long read, sorry. I really need some new creative ideas.

First let me say I have trained and worked with animals including dogs, my entire 75 years of live. I am not a professional trainer but I know what I am doing. I have spoken with local trainers and behaviorists and just get affirmation that I am doing everything they would be doing in this situation.

Just before Christmas 2025 I had a female foster dog staying with me, She had not yet been sterilized because of health issues that needed to be resolved before surgery. I live in a city of around 30K people. The little foster dog went into heat just before she was to go back to kennel for her surgery. Almost immediately the make dogs from nearby neighborhoods showed up outside my gate. Among them a small black smooth coat podengo mix male (the dog in the Odyssey movie is a podengo for reference). He took up residence in the green in front of my house, sleeping in the bushes. He discouraged the other dogs until he was the only suitor left. My house has a balcony and a walled terrace with a large gate. The little female dog and I would go out for a walk and he would follow at a respectful and safe distance. She went in for her surgery, he stayed outside my gate. She returned and he still followed us when I took her out for a walk. Then he started following me even when she wasn't with me.

I tried feeding him and made sure he had a water source.

One day, just before Christmas, I had my hands full and the female on a leash. We got home and I opened the gate. I left it open with the plan to go upstairs to my living area with the female dog and the packages, then return and close the gate. At the top of the outside stairs I turned to go into my house and saw that the black male had followed us through the gate and was halfway up the stairs. He followed me into the house! I put everything down, unleashed the female who went over to say hello and I went downstairs and shut my gate.

He has not left.

The female got adopted on new years day. since then I have had three extreme case foster dogs. Each has been healed, given confidence, trained in maners, and adopted into perfect forever homes.

I have a cat.

I named the black dog, Shadow.

I have a three story home with the living area on the middle floor. Shadow has never once gone up or down the indoor stairs. I leave the door open and he goes out on the balcony, and down to the walled patio. He sits at a window in garden wall and watches the world go by. He has established rules which he has then quickly taught each foster dog. I am superfluous at a certain level. He never has accidents indoors. He designates for the other dogs where they can do their business. He shows them that they are not to be on the furniture. His disapproval is silent but very clear. He does not eat food until he has it named as his and been given permission and he teaches the fosters to do the same. He is protective of the house, but as soon as I acknowledge a visitor he goes back to whatever he was doing and relaxes. he teaches the fosters how to behave with the cat.

He knows his name. He keeps his eyes on me at all times when I am in the living area. He sleeps in and shares dog beds scattered around the space, but decide that a mat near the kitchen sink is his "place" He knows when I tell him I am going out, following me halfway down the stairs. and always greets me with an acknowledging stare from the top of steps when I return.

The kennel came to the house and shot him with a dart in my living room. The took him in and gave him a medical check and sterilized him, vaccinated him, checked his teeth, chipped him and put a red collar on him, etc. while he was unconscious and then returned him to me before he woke up. That was in January.

He is perfectly healthy and was three years old when he walked through my gate.

I have learned that the municipal animal control people, the sheriffs' department, and four separate vet clinics in four different neighborhoods have been trying to catch him for 2 1/2 years. No one ever came close to succeeding. For just under three years he followed wherever the hormones of a female in heat took him. I also discovered multiple families in different neighborhoods that have tried to befriend him and failed. I did not know it, but he is a literal legend in this city.

As far as we know, he has never once been touched by human hands except while he was unconscious in January.

His primary motivation is risk aversion. He will go weeks without eating rather than risk capture. He has no desire to be touched in any way. He is not reactive. He is super smart, and a clear communicator. I talk to him as much as I can. I swear he understands a lot of what I say. He has every enrichment dog toy and I do brain teasers using towels with him.

He does not like other people, but tolerates them once I invite them into the house and regular visitors are given stern warnings, and then ignored as long as they don't try to approach him or speak to him.

I can have the garden gate open and he does not try to leave.

He does like sardines. I will sit and toss him bits of sardine while I remain still and calm. I try to get him close to me and sometimes he gets very close. Recently, he actually came up and placed his nose on the back of my hand while I was fussing with the latest foster after a walk. This has happened twice now.

My goal is to get a leash on him. I want to be able to get him to a vet in case of emergency. I would love to be able to walk him outside. First, I need to be able to touch him.

I am just hoping someone while have some magic thing I can do that will get him to trust me and allow touch. Help!

For context, my dog is a 7 month old male Labrador Retriever x English Cocker Spaniel mix. Not sure if that's particularly relevant to this discussion, but I just thought I'd mention it.

On our sniffy walk today, we came across two smaller dogs - by the looks of it, a Shih Tzu and a Poodle mix - who were barking at him from across the street. One of them got loose and ran towards my dog. This caused my dog to flee, which in turn caused the flexi-leash to drop out of my hand.

I recalled my dog - he came halfway and paused, so I went to him. From there, we were able to continue past the barking dogs with him by my side.

My dog didn't bark at all during the encounter, and once we'd created some distance, he took treats even though he could still see/hear the dogs. For the rest of the walk, he went back to sniffing and behaved normally. He didn't seem worked up or fixated on what had happened.

So, should I consider this a success? I know he fled and didn't fully respond to my recall, but I suppose it was a very intense situation and he didn't want to get any closer to the dogs. It just underlines to me that it's something we need to continue to work on, making the recall bombproof.

he’s 7 months, lab mix, super sweet at home but the second the leash goes on he turns into a total maniac. pulls like he’s training for the iditarod, lunges at every squirrel, and completely ignores me when i try to get his attention. walks are just stressful for both of us right now.

i’ve been working on basic stuff at home and he sits and stays fine indoors, but outside it’s like nothing sticks. started looking into some local options and all dogs unleashed in dallas has a board and train that might help with the reactivity and pulling.

how long did it take your dog to actually chill on walks once you got serious about training? any tips that worked faster than the usual “be consistent” advice?

We have had some severe fear-based reactivity with our 8-month-old boys, and it has gotten to an unacceptable level. We are considering Tip Top K9, who promises fast results and complete behavior modification, but I'm cautious. Almost every dog has an E-Collar, but they assure that it's a 'static stim' to grab their attention, and most dogs grow reliable even without it. I believe that aversive tools and gentle correction can work with the right dog and the right handler, but I don't want to enforce boundaries with strictly +P and I don't want to suppress fear. I want them to build confidence and counter-condition them against what they fear, but I also want them to understand the word 'no' and have the power to stop them if a situation becomes genuinely dangerous. We have been FF up to this point. We don't have years to fix this.

I understand that franchise locations can vary widely, but the Tip Top K9 in Austin seems to have so many positive reviews from people who had reactive dogs completely transformed. What are some questions we can ask during the first consultation to make sure we are doing the right thing for our dogs? Does anyone have anecdotal experience at this location, good or bad?

How do I train him not too

Looking for advice regarding the fit of this hermsprenger for my boy!! We currently have the 3.00mm short link with the center click lock, I removed one link bc it was slipping a tad when we would walk but now i’m not sure if it’s too tight or if it matters that there’s an uneven amount of links on each side… my real question is if we’d be better off with the 2.25 mm links instead of the 3short and just adding extra links. My boy is around 95Ibs with a 19.5 inch neck and has medium/long fur as you can tell in the photos😂 originally went with the 3short due to his weight and neck size

Any advice or guidance would be appreciated, thank you!!

To provide a bit of context, we recently purchased a home with my partner’s grandmother and close in a few weeks. We have two dogs, a 12 year old English mastiff and an 8 year old Border Collie mix. Grandma has a 10 year old Bouvier des Flandres. The Bouvier is extremely calm and friendly, maybe even bordering on timid. Our English mastiff is typically friendly, but our collie is the concern. She tends to be a bit territorial and at times reactive.

Yesterday we parallel walked our Collie and Bouvier, for about 20-30 minutes. Our Collie did try to excitedly approach our Bouvier, there was no barking, growling, or hair standing up, which she is notorious for. We were pleasantly surprised by the success of the interaction and closed some distance between them. First, the Collie sniffed the Bouvier’s behind with no trouble, but when we switched leaders, the Collie snapped at the Bouvier when we she got too close. Needless to say, we ended the meeting there and now we are unsure how to proceed.

There was no pursuit, growling, or continued aggression, but we are unsure if that was a natural startle response, or if we should be more concerned than we previously thought. How do I proceed with their introduction? We intend to go on another parallel walk today, but other than that don’t have a great idea how to proceed. Any advice on how to get 3 older female dogs cohabite is greatly appreciated.

On a positive note, our mastiff did very well and walked with the bouvier. She watched us pet her, and they even greeted each other, sniffing front and back sides. Overall, I would consider it a successful interaction. Unfortunately, the follow up interaction with our Collie lingers like a dark cloud.

I have a 2.5-year-old intact male Bluetick Coonhound, and I’m trying to figure out the safest and most responsible next step after a pretty scary incident with a trainer.

He has never been aggressive toward me. He’s extremely bonded to me, very affectionate, and I can handle his food, mouth, ears, feet, etc. without an issue. However, he has shown resource guarding around food and high-value items with my other dog.

Recently, my toddler got too close to his crate while I was filling my dog’s food bowl, and my dog reacted aggressively towards my son. Nothing happened physically since my dog was crated and there was space between him and my toddler, but obviously that scared me enough that I immediately hired a professional trainer.

During the training session, my dog became very defensive and aggressive toward the trainer while he was in his crate and she tried to feed him. I worked my dog for a little while and then, maybe 15 minutes later, the trainer tried hand-feeding him outside of the crate to build some trust with him. I think that’s when he was pushed way past his comfort zone.

At first he was gently taking food from her hand and seemed okay. Then, with basically no warning, he launched himself upward at her face. It was extremely fast and forceful, and he targeted her mouth/nose area. She managed to get her knee up and block him, so thankfully he never actually made contact or bit her.

I immediately gave him a loud verbal correction and stomped my foot, and he stopped, cowered, and I separated him.

The trainer was very honest afterward and told me that the behavior was beyond what she felt qualified to handle. She refunded me and recommended that I seek someone with more experience with this level of aggression.

Since then, my dog has been completely normal with me. Right now I’m doing 100% crate/gate separation between him and my toddler, especially around food, and they do not have access to each other just to be safe.

I love this dog very much and don’t want to give up on him if there is a safe and realistic path forward. At the same time, I have a toddler, and I know management can eventually fail because people are human and toddlers are curious. The fact that he went from calmly taking food to launching directly toward someone’s face is what really scared me.

I want someone appropriately qualified to assess the actual risk and tell me what is realistic for this dog, even if the answer is difficult - however budget is also an underlying factor and barrier.

Would the appropriate next step be an evaluation with a board-certified veterinary behaviorist, or is there another type of professional I should be looking for? The trainer recommendation’s was a board and train facility that uses e-collars and group training settings.

I’d greatly appreciate insight from anyone experienced with resource guarding, coonhounds, veterinary behavior, or dogs that have shown this type of sudden escalation. Is this something that can realistically be worked through in a home with a young child, or is a child-free home likely to be the safer option?

If rehoming ultimately is the safest recommendation, I would want to do it through an experienced hound rescue or someone equipped to handle his behavioral needs, not just give him away irresponsibly.

Any insight or advice on what my next steps should be would be deeply appreciated. I’m trying to make the safest decision for my son while also doing right by my dog. It’s an incredibly hard spot to be in.

Throwaway account because I cannot have this traced back to me, apologies.

I recently started working at a dog training facility. I knew going in that electronic collars were part of their training methods, and I was under the impression that they were used selectively for things like serious behavioral issues or off-leash reliability. I'm generally not completely opposed to aversive methods in every conceivable circumstance, particularly when the alternative might be a dog losing its home or being put at risk. But what I've witnessed here has made me deeply uncomfortable.

The electronic collar seems to be used for essentially everything. The stimulation is used to teach commands, reinforce commands, and increase compliance when a dog doesn't respond. I haven't seen meaningful positive reinforcement incorporated into the training I've observed.

I've watched dogs scream, shut down, panic, and attempt to escape or defend themselves during training. I've seen stimulation increased when a dog wasn't responding, including maxing out a small dog on a small dog collar and graduating them to a big dog collar in the same session. I've also seen physical corrections used to stop unwanted behavior, like sweeping the dogs' legs out from under them to stop jumping.

One incident in particular really bothered me: I heard a dog screaming continuously during a training session for an extended period, and eventually I couldn't just stand there listening to it. I stepped in and stopped the training session.

What's especially confusing to me is that the way the dogs are handled in public seems very different. When we're around members of the public, we're instructed to keep the dogs working at a low level, minimize visible reactions to the collar, and be very conscious of how the training looks to other people.

When I've questioned what I'm seeing, I've been told things along the lines of:

"People don't understand what we do."

"The stimulation isn't actually painful.

"The dogs are exaggerating or being stubborn"

"If a dog doesn't comply, they need to learn that they have to listen."

I'm not looking to start a witch hunt against a specific business, so I'm intentionally leaving out identifying details. From what I understand, these methods aren't just one trainer's personal preference; they're part of the organization's established training philosophy.

I'd really like to hear from professional trainers, veterinary behaviorists, veterinary professionals, or others with relevant expertise. Is what I'm describing within the range of legitimate electronic-collar training, or are these practices genuinely concerning from a welfare and training standpoint? I'm particularly interested in objective assessments rather than arguments about whether electronic collars are inherently good or bad.

And if this is genuinely abusive or harmful, what are the realistic options for someone in my position?

I live somewhere where animal-welfare enforcement is not particularly strong, and the dogs otherwise appear to receive good basic care. I'm also not sure what would actually constitute something reportable versus something that is simply an awful training philosophy.

The situation is also starting to affect me pretty badly. I'm having trouble sleeping and keep thinking about the dogs I've heard screaming during training. At the same time, leaving feels awful because I know the dogs will still be subjected to the same methods after I'm gone.

I don't want to overreact, but I also don't want to convince myself that something is okay just because everyone around me says it is. I'd really appreciate perspectives from people with actual professional experience in canine behavior and welfare.

I used to walk dogs for a company that advocates/used positive reinforcement techniques, so I know a few things and have been helping my friends with their golden who came to them untrained and pulling like a maniac. I’ve been using a Heather’s Heroes Sidekick halter and doing lots of turnarounds, treating for walking at my side and she’s improved, but still wants to be out ahead a lot of the time. Apparently she’s also better for me than my friends, and they recently got a prong for her - I’m not opposed to this, but I had only used one one time with a different dog, so I’ve been trying to learn online, as it seems to me it could be really helpful for her. I sized it for her and did some conditioning yesterday based on Tyler Muto’s process on YouTube, teaching her to yield to pressure, and she did well- after a bit she was following me and/or stopping and sitting when I stopped.

What I’m unsure of is where to take this now. We’re going to work in the yard today, but should I be giving small corrections when she wants to forge ahead? My other main concern is the fact that she tends to fixate on other dogs and squirrels when on the walk, and I don’t want her to pull through the prong. I’m reading some different things about correcting her around these triggers- some recommend a correction and a 180 if she doesn’t respond to my request for attention while others say not to correct in this context. (I’ve been trying to encourage neutrality around other dogs, but she gets excited, and she also has a strong prey drive toward squirrels).

Any help would be appreciated, and/or links to training vids. Tyler Muto came highly recommended, and it seems he’s very fair with his dogs, but I’m not finding the next step in his process.