Sounds familiar? Because that is my story.
I had just moved from my home country to the beautiful Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. After about a year of settling in, I decided it was time to get a dog of my own for the first time. I grew up with dogs, but they were never mine — they were family pets. This time, it was going to be entirely my responsibility. I was nervous and I didn’t want to eff it up, so after six or seven months of having my beautiful pup, I hired a dog trainer.
He seemed legitimate enough (at first) for me not to question his methods, and it didn’t even occur to me to ask for credentials, background, or anything similar. I was completely new to the game.
The first lesson involved my dog getting choked
The first lesson involved my dog getting choked over a bone on the floor (it was a decoy), because we were trying to get rid of her “dangerous” habit of scavenging on the streets of Rio de Janeiro, where people would deliberately throw poisoned food. She ended up shaking, and something inside of me broke.
I saw this person a few more times — not many — until I finally called it quits. Something was off. I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that my dog had to be punished in order to learn. But the damage was done.
Soon after, I met my mentor, a behavioural vet, who told me: “Do you want the red pill or the blue pill? Keep in mind, there is no turning back.” And she was right. Once you realise there are other ways — ways that do not include coercion, punishment, or aversive methods — to get your dog to cooperate and work with you, you simply can’t aim for anything less than that.
Do you want a puppy or a puppet?
She introduced me into the world of positive reinforcement — which does not mean constantly treating your dog until they become a fat ball of treats and bones — and animal behaviour analysis. This, in short, is about analysing your dog’s behaviour to better understand what lies behind it: what the main drivers of that behaviour are, and how we can reshape it by modifying the variables (not the dog) in a way that is neither stressful, harmful, nor aversive for them.
Today, my dog and I have the best relationship ever. She seems to have completely forgotten that awful experience, and we have worked things out so that she has learned that if she chooses to avoid picking food up from the floor, great things happen to her. But I risked losing the best relationship of my life to “balanced training,” with its promises of obedience that hide a far more uncomfortable truth: the cost of an obedient dog is harm. It is coercion, punishment, and the deliberate infliction of pain to get them to do what we want. We might as well get a puppet, not a puppy.
It was always a two-way “relationship”
We think it is important for dogs to follow us because we were taught that dogs are wolves that approached humans to become their best friends — when in reality, we now know it was a two-way “relationship.” Wolves got scraps from humans (easy food), and humans got protection — and sometimes warmth (though I’m not entirely convinced about the latter) — in return. Nowhere does this story say that wolves were bred to be obedient, nor are the dogs we breed today or the ones that cross our path.
Some dogs may choose to follow us more than others, but this is not about obedience. It is about personality traits (such as preferences) and life experiences (such as trauma). The question I always ask myself — and I hope you do too after reading this attempt at a blog post — is: Am I giving my dog the opportunity to choose? If the answer is yes, good. If the answer is no, then why not?
