Balanced dog trainers just suppress unwanted behaviours!

“You are just suppressing the behaviour – it is bad dog training!"

This is a very common criticism Force-Free trainers like to use to attack balanced dog training. They are known to go to other balanced trainers’ social media pages and post this exact comment all the time.

Let’s think about this for a second – is suppression synonymous to bad dog training?

We don’t expect our children to never think about doing something they shouldn’t. We know that is impossible and unrealistic. We teach them how to make proper choices. The unwanted desires can still come up from time to time. But we teach them that they are accountable for their decisions and that there are consequences to their actions.

That is a kind of suppression.

It is very common in our human world. That is why we have laws, police officers, and consequences for breaking the rules.

Yet, we expect dogs – who are generally believed to have the IQ of a 4 years old when fully grown – to completely stop making wrong choices without any suppression?

What Force-Free trainers actually mean is this: the dog wants to do something we don’t want, so they use treats to teach a different behaviour. Eventually, the dog stops performing the behaviour we don’t want.

And they say there is no suppression because the dog willingly performs the alternative behaviour.

But what if you don’t give the dog treats? What if you don’t give the dog a command? What if the dog is genuinely tempted to do what you don’t want?

For example, if your dog sees a dead fish on a beach while you are 20 feet away, will the dog try to eat that fish?

If the dog still tries, then that unwanted behaviour has not been completely eliminated, has it?

When the dog is three feet away, the dog trainer says, “Come,” uses some high-value treats, and the dog goes to the trainer. So they say the dog has learned not to go eat the fish. But it doesn’t work when the dog is 20 feet away from the owner and the dead fish is only one foot away.

So what has happened to the behaviour they were so confident had been eliminated without suppression?

It is suppressed.

The dog has learned to choose the most enticing option.

Given the opportunity, without a high enough competing option, the dog may still go after the fish.

If the unwanted behaviour had been completely eliminated and the dog wouldn’t even think about doing it, then why does it matter how far away the owner is? Why would it work at three feet but not 20 feet?

Force-free trainers don’t like to face this reality, so they also preach strict management.

Don’t let the dog be 20 feet away. Don’t let the dog see the dead fish. Don’t put the dog in situations where they might make the wrong choice.

But why do they need to do all that if the dog was, as they like us to believe, completely changed and no longer had any desire to commit the wrong deed? Why not simply trust the dog to walk up to the dead fish and not eat it?

It’s because the desire is still there. It’s just being suppressed.

In balanced dog training rehabilitation, we will use an aversive to tell the dog that eating the dead fish will come with consequences.

We also teach the dog what to do, such as come when called.

We teach the dog why and how to make better choices in that situation so the dog learns that although the fish may look very tempting, it is a very bad idea to think about sniffing it — never mind trying to eat it — even when the owner is 20 feet away.

The dog becomes mindful in the face of distractions. This dog now knows their decisions matter. As a result, we can let the dog go to the beach, be 20 feet away, see the dead fish, and still not eat it.

In the two scenarios above, both dogs were “suppressed.” The biggest difference between them is this:

The first dog needs to be constantly managed because not eating the fish has only been taught as an option.

The second dog, on the other hand, can have a lot more freedom.

This dog understands some things are simply off-limits and non-negotiable and they know they are accountable for their decisions – so we can trust them to make better choices in real life, even in the presence of real distractions.

Which dog would you rather have?