Dog training, and everything around it
The Bigger Picture
Dog training is about everyday behavior. But it’s also about what we do with power.
Current flagship investigation
Cops + Dogs
Unmasking the intersection between policing and dogs.
Our current project asks how dogs became instruments of police power, who is harmed, what the system asks of the dogs themselves, and what meaningful change could look like.
Content note: Cops + Dogs includes discussion of violence involving people and animals.
Why this belongs on a dog training site
Most people find us because their dog is pulling, barking, jumping, reacting, or simply having a hard time. Finding that practical help matters. But changing our dogs’ behavior makes us answer a critical question: What do we do when another being does not do what we want?
Some approaches reach for control and punishment. Others start with safety, context, communication, and trust. That ethical choice gives us a unique way to think about the systems around us.
These pages follow those connections. They do not claim that every struggle is the same. They ask us to notice when the same logic shows up again: domination masquerading as care, punishment that’s treated as safety, and suffering that gets dismissed in the name of order…
01
Training, Evidence, and Accountability
Start here if your main question is about training methods, welfare, or why the public argument around them can get so confusing.
Why Dog Training Is Political
Why does every method carry a view of power, welfare, trust, and what counts as success?
“Balanced” Training
What that the label often hides, and how to read trainer marketing.
The Dog Training Crisis
Why do welfare questions so often gets reframed as a fight about personalities, tone, or professional loyalty?
International Professional Guidance on Humane Dog Training
A record of international professional guidance, research, standards, and law.
DARVO, Tone Policing, and Accountability
A practical guide to spotting denial, personal attacks, role reversal, and false balance whenever harm is challenged.
02
History and Systems
Dogs do not live outside politics or institutions. These pages look at where training meets public health, law, policing, colonial history, and carceral systems.
500 Years of Dog Training
A selective history of how care, control, science, war, work, and popular culture shaped what we now call dog training.
Behaviorism
How learning theory helps, where a behavior-only framework falls short, and why ethical training has to see the whole dog.
One Health
How the health of dogs, people, households, communities, and the environment affect one another – and why that matters.
Weaponized Dogs
A documented look at police, prison, and military attack dogs, including their colonial and racial history and the harm done to people and dogs. [Contains distressing material.]
Legislation
Why dog training rules matter, how exemptions can undermine humane standards, and what accountable policy could look like.
03
Power, Punishment, and Liberation
These pages trace a shared question: When do control and violence get called necessary, and what would it mean to build something else?
Punishment Is Not the Same as Safety (coming soon)
A careful bridge between dog training, policing, and the harder work of creating safety without mistaking suffering for accountability.
Connected Struggles
A longer exploration of how domination travels across species and systems, and what abolitionist ideas can teach us about care and accountability.
Collective Liberation
A shorter statement on Palestine, colonial control, carceral logic, and why rejecting domination in one place can change what we see elsewhere.
Keep Going
Want the research behind the training side of this? Visit Evidence for scientific studies and professional guidance. Need help with your dog today? Go straight to practical training resources.