Why Punishment Training Sucks
Punishment. It's not a nice word to see on my website but there's been an alarming rise in the number of trainers in NZ using methods that I think suck (to put it mildly). Why do I think that? Apart from the fact that positive reinforcement methods have been proven to be a more effective way to train animals of all kinds, why on earth would hurting or terrifying a dog improve their behaviour and our relationship with them? ILLIS Animal Behaviour Consulting have a great visual that sums up 20 problems with punishment (see below). Some of them are a bit jargon-y so here are the ones I think are the most important for dog owners to understand:
It damages your relationship with your dog
It needs to be severe to work and easily turns to abuse
It seems to ‘work’ because they pause or stop, when in actual fact they are often shut down (due to fear, pain or confusion)
It doesn’t address the underlying cause of what was driving the behaviour in the first place (which means it usually comes out in other ways later on)
It just tells them what not to do, not what to you want them to do (hugely confusing)
It often leads to fear, aggressions and neurosis / PTSD which lead to more problem behaviours and potential medical issues
They learn to avoid punishment situations e.g. toileting when you’re not around
It depresses their motivation to train altogether – would you keep studying if your teacher repeatedly hit you for no apparent reason, and wouldn’t tell you how to make it stop?
If just one dog owner out there reads these and feels empowered to say NO to the trainers out there using corrections, prong collars, e-collars, dominance training methods or any other cruel, unnecessary and archaic tactics, then hopefully things would suck a lot less out there for the dogs of NZ – and the world!
While I have your attention on this topic, an NZ company is bringing Jeff Gellman from Solid K9 Training to our shores - or trying to. He proudly uses all the punishment techniques outlined above and is under investigation in the US for animal cruelty. There are various videos on Facebook if you want to see his ‘methods’ (warning these are extremely hard to watch if you love dogs). I’d encourage people to share the word about this as other countries have been banning him from bringing these seminars into their countries. See the global petition here and please spread the word - https://www.change.org/p/peter-neronha-end-jeff-gellman-s-abuse-of-dogs
If you’d like to read more about canine behaviour and how they think, this is a great article from Professor John Bradshaw (UK) who’s just released a great book called ‘In Defence of the Dog’ https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/jul/17/dog-training-john-bradshaw-animal-behaviour
See full article from ILLIS Animal Behaviour Consulting here https://illis.se/en/punishment-problems/
