Most people come to dog training looking for help with behavior.
Pulling on leash.
Reactivity.
Jumping.
Not listening.
And that makes sense.
But …
Underneath every “training issue” is one question:
How do you respond when another being doesn’t do what you want?
That question isn’t just about dogs.
It’s about power.
It’s about control.
It’s about what we believe is acceptable when something – or someone – is inconvenient.
Training is never neutral
Every training method makes a claim about what matters.
Some approaches prioritize:
• immediate compliance
• visible results
• control over behavior
Others prioritize:
• emotional wellbeing
• long-term outcomes
• trust and cooperation
Both approaches can produce behavior change.
But they are not the same.
Abolitionist thinkers have taught us for decades that oppression is never isolated.
It reproduces itself in every arena where domination becomes normalized.
The point is not to collapse these struggles into one, but to expose the same carceral logic at work in each:
If behavior reflects the environment, stress, health, and lived experience… then the way we respond to behavior is part of a broader system of care.
These are not separate problems.
The science of “behaviorism” shaped modern dog training in major ways.
But, it has also narrowed what trainers are taught to see… Behaviorist logic can flatten emotion, obscure coercion, and limit our imagination of what humane training could be.
The page below examines where that framework helps, where it falls short, and why ethical, effective training has to go beyond behavior alone.
When harmful systems are challenged, the response is often not honest debate. Instead, you’ll see deflection, tone policing, false balance, and victim-posturing. This page breaks down the rhetorical patterns that protect harmful training culture:
What if the problem is not just that some methods are too harsh, but that many of our core assumptions about animals come from domination in the first place?
What changes when care is shaped by our relationships, mutual consent, and coexistence – instead of control?
New to all this?
You do not need to have the language for every political or scientific debate to begin training more thoughtfully.
This page is a practical starting point for building trust, solving common problems, and understanding your dog more clearly: