My primary goal is to protect dogs and the public. That means confronting and dismantling the systems that keep harmful practices respectable, including the businesses and organizations that promote them.

A guardian seeking help deserves support. A professional taking money to use aversives on that guardian’s dog should be responsible for what they teach and sell.

Protecting the public cannot depend on keeping every professional trainer comfortable. It should be about what’s best for people and their dogs.

What I mean by crisis

The American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior recommends reward-based methods for ALL dog training and behavior modification, and condemns the use of pain, fear, intimidation and coercion in behavior change plans. This is the current consensus which is based on decades of scientific evidence. Worldwide, professional organizations have issued guidance in the same direction, which we collect on the Global Consensus on Humane Training page.

And yet, guardians STILL encounter trainers who describe pain, startle, pressure, or intimidation as necessary, harmless, or “more realistic” in spite of all of that evidence. Even worse, the dispute often gets presented as two equivalent styles competing for preference.

That framing loses the central question. If two approaches can teach behavior, but one introduces an avoidable welfare risk, then effectiveness alone cannot settle the choice.

So why does this “debate” still feel so unresolved among dog trainers?

Experience, identity, and incentives

Methods are shaped by experience, mentorship, tradition, the tools and programs a business sells, public branding, and professional identity.

When a method becomes part of someone’s livelihood or sense of competence, criticism can feel personal even when the claim concerns evidence and outcomes.

Calling shock “stim,” prong collars “communication tools,” or leash jerks “feedback” does not change what happens to the dog. Reassuring language and polished branding can make harmful practices seem acceptable while leaving guardians unsure what those methods actually involve. I look more closely at those labels on the Balanced Training page.

If we ask guardians to trust us, we owe them an honest explanation of what we do to their dogs. Calling a shock “stim” does not tell someone what their dog will experience. A reassuring tone does not make that explanation respectful. Guardians deserve the truth, even when saying it plainly makes a professional uncomfortable.

How the conversation drifts

Once the welfare question becomes difficult to answer, we can lose the plot.

Instead of staying focused on fear, pain, intimidation, fallout, and unnecessary risk, the discussion may be redirected toward the critic’s tone, the alleged divisiveness of the criticism, the reputation of the people being criticized, or the idea that drawing a clear ethical line is itself the real problem.

These shifts can make us confuse a welfare issue for a personality conflict. They can make people raising legitimate, evidence-based concerns appear unreasonable for doing so too clearly, too firmly, or too persistently. That matters because it changes how the public interprets the issue.

A conversation that should be about evidence, risk, and ethics can start to revolve around manners, branding, professional comfort, and social cohesion. Once that happens, harmful methods are not only defended by direct argument. They can also be protected indirectly through deflection, dilution, and reframing.

Whether those dynamics are intentional, defensive, habitual, or strategic, their effects are real. In a field where confusion has consequences, those effects matter. When rhetoric clouds welfare questions, dogs pay the price first.

“Harm reduction” cannot become a reason to rule out ending the practices causing that harm. When small improvements are welcomed while a firm rejection of pain, fear, and coercion is called extreme, the profession is setting a limit on how much change it will accept. The methods remain protected, and the people demanding an end to them are pushed aside.

Harmful practices and the systems that sustain them must be dismantled. Being told to give up that goal in the name of “common ground” is insidious.

The DARVO page offers one lens for recognizing redirection, with an important warning against using the label as a substitute for evidence or as a claim about motive. Not every disagreement is bad faith, and not every concern about tone is irrelevant.

What counts as “working”?

A trainer can accurately report that a behavior stopped, a client felt relief, or a method seemed efficient in that case. Experience can generate useful questions and practical knowledge.

Research can compare groups, measure stress-related behavior or physiology, examine longer-term outcomes, and make hidden trade-offs more visible. It also tells us where evidence is weak.

The conflict starts when a successful-looking moment is treated as proof that no cost exists. A dog becoming quiet does not, by itself, tell us whether the dog learned a durable skill, felt safer, froze, avoided the trainer, or simply stopped trying.

Many methods can change behavior. To judge a method, we need to ask what changed for the dog:

• Did the dog learn a skill that can be used in real life?
• What happened to fear, stress, frustration, and recovery?
• Were there unintended effects, including avoidance or suppressed warning signals?
• Was the result durable outside the training setup?
• Could a lower-risk method reasonably achieve the same goal?

A 2020 field study of companion dogs reported more stress-related behavior in aversive-based groups and additional welfare differences, particularly in the group using a higher proportion of aversive methods. Read the open-access PLOS ONE study directly. It is one study, not the whole field, but it measures more than obedience.

The evidence is not a perfect census of every trainer, tool, dog, and context. Some studies are observational, training categories can be broad, and causal claims require care. A 2017 literature review described limitations while still concluding that the available literature indicated stress and possible welfare compromise from aversive-based methods. We can acknowledge uncertainty without treating risk as unknowable.

My conversation with Dr. Lisa Radosta

Bree and I always love to talk with veterinary behaviorist Dr. Lisa Radosta about welfare, professional responsibility, and changing the dog-training industry. In this discussion, at 44:10, I explain why I distinguish between members of the public and professionals who take money to use aversives on their dogs. We discuss how to challenge that harm without losing the point of the conversation.

Dog training is not about perfection or performance. It is about unlearning domination and practicing care that does not need to rely on control.

Check out the Training Is Political page to see: how we use our power matters. Dogs deserve room to make choices, communicate their needs, and be heard.

Before hiring a trainer

People should not have to become behavior scientists before they can ask a trainer a clear question and receive a clear answer.

You do not need to resolve every argument in the profession before hiring help. Ask which tools the trainer uses, how they monitor distress, and what safer alternatives they considered.

Use the trainer checklist, examine the welfare evidence and the Source Library, or explore The Bigger Picture.

Sources and further reading

• AVSAB humane dog training and trainer-selection statements: Current professional guidance and public handouts
• Vieira de Castro et al. (2020), Does training method matter?: Open-access companion-dog welfare study
• Fernandes et al. (2017), literature review of aversive-based methods: Useful both for its findings and its discussion of evidence limits
• Johnson and Wynne (2023), trainer language and certification: Analysis of 100 trainer websites from 10 US cities