How Fear-Based Training Can Scar a Dog for Life

Celebrity dog trainers have spread damaging information that could hurt your dog.

Most people who decide to train their dogs are interested in two things:

• the best method
• getting results.

Does it matter how we get results as long as the dog gets trained? It absolutely matters! The wrong method can cause unnecessary psychological damage to your dog and ruin what could have been a great relationship.  With the wrong method your dog could actually be worse because of his training! Often the damage can’t be repaired.

Some very bad training methods have become popular in the media. Techniques that rely on correction and punishment, “dominance theory” or “pack theory” are based on bad science.

There is something inherently wrong with training with fear, dominance and intimidation — where the trainers are “pack leaders” and families are “dog packs.” To follow that theory, everyone must stand, walk and act like a boot-camp drill sergeant to get the dog to behave.

Some so called dog training “experts” have promoted bad advice in the media.  It began almost 40 years ago. Today we have a lot more reliable science but the old ideas persist.

• In the 1970s Barbara Woodhouse went on TV promoting her special choke collar and had people marching in circles and dragging their dogs along.
• By the 1980s, Matthew Margolis  and his harsh military style corrections said dogs had to submit or face punishment.
• Then in the 1990s, Cesar Millan proclaimed himself  The Dog Whisperer. He became a television personality with no real credentials as a dog trainer. His claim that dogs just want to dominate people has long been contradicted by the science of dog behavior.  His methods are dangerous and do great damage to dogs.

Click on page 2 below to read about what happened to a dog that Millan “trained”.