Aversive is not abusive

“No” is a complete sentence in the human world; ironically, it is a dirty word to lots of people in the dog world.

The force free people say we should only reward the dog when the right behaviour is offered, and simply ignore the inappropriate ones. They believe that there is no need for “No”. The dog will stop the inappropriate behaviours with positive reinforcement only.

We are not talking about a dog who does not give the paw when we ask to shake-a-paw; we are talking about a dog who attacks guests who enter the house, a dog who charges across the road to attack another stranger dog totally unprovoked.

We are talking about dogs who cannot be taken anywhere in public and owners who cannot invite anyone over to have a normal social life.

We are talking about a dog who is causing tremendous stress, guilt, and depression to the entire family - yet they are telling these families that they need to keep ignoring the biting, barking, growling, and lunging – never say “no”, use positive reinforcement, be patient, and hope that all these will somehow eventually stop.

It is like saying if you ignore a drunk driver when he is driving drunk, and reward him whenever he is not, he will eventually stop drinking and driving.

Force free people also believe that correcting an inappropriate behaviour with aversive (e.g. correct the dog for attacking someone) will cause serious emotional damage to the dog – so we should never do that no matter what.

It is like saying giving a drunk driver a DUI citation will cause irreversible psychological damage to the driver so we should never give him a ticket. Never correct him. No punishment whatsoever.

Instead of having dogs who have to be constantly isolated and mediated, why aren’t we teaching them to respect rules and boundaries as we do raising well-mannered human children?

Seeing all these out of control dogs with dangerous behaviours that are causing them to be put down in the thousands all over the word daily, why aren’t we learning how to properly stop these behaviours instead?

We should not be brainwashed to become too afraid to correct our dogs due to all the misinformation perpetrated by the force free camp.

Learn how to correct properly. Learn to correct fairly, humanely, and effectively.

Correction is not abuse. It is part of responsible parenting.