Three years ago, Valli Fraser-Celin adopted a blonde husky mix puppy, whom she named Husk. Fraser-Celin soon looked for ways to curb Husk’s “totally wild” behavior, she said, such as stealing food from the kitchen counter and barking incessantly at strangers. On the advice of a YouTube trainer, Fraser-Celin started using an electronic collar, or e-collar, which provided a minor shock when Husk misbehaved, but said she was “dirty” about it.
Fraser-Celin reconsidered her approach after hearing about an animal trainer teaching a grizzly bear to cooperate with positive reinforcement-only medical treatment. If that hulking animal could learn with treats and praise, she thought, why did dog trainers use prod and shock collars? “That was the catalyst for my advocacy,” said Fraser-Celin, who studied African wild dogs for her Ph.D. and now works as an external community liaison for the Winnipeg Humane Society and independently advocates positive reinforcement training on Instagram. “I really think rules should be put in place,” she said, “based on the science and studies that have shown the best kind of training for dogs.”
Fraser-Celin is not alone. Many researchers, trainers, and professional veterinary and training organizations are calling for greater oversight of dog training, which is largely unregulated worldwide, although they sometimes disagree on the best course of action and choose to focus on the research that reinforces their preferred approach. “Right now it’s the wild, wild west,” said Anamarie Johnson, a psychology Ph.D. student at Arizona State University with a background in animal behavior and dog training. She recently published a study that analyzed the websites of 100 highly regarded dog trainers in the US, which found that most gave no indication of whether the trainer had relevant training or certification.
“Anyone can identify as a dog trainer — they can set up a social media page, they can offer services to the public, and there are no expectations for their training, their continuing education, or their standards of practice,” said Bradley Phifer, the executive director of the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers, or CCPDT, an organization that promotes science-based training standards. People with little or no training in animal behavior can advise owners on how to handle aggression, he added. “There’s a big piece of consumer protection here, that if you’re not adequately trained, or you don’t have enough industry or content experience, you shouldn’t be advising people on how to prevent dog bites.”
Some experts and organizations are pushing for more regulation of the industry. Under an umbrella organization known as the Alliance for Professionalism in Dog Training, two major certification bodies — the CCPDT and the Association of Professional Dog Trainers, or APDT — have jointly proposed model legislation that they hope can be passed on a state-by-state basis. The legislation would require trainers to be licensed by a state board, create standards of accountability and require trainers to participate in continuing education. Phifer said he is currently working with lawmakers in New Jersey, where dog trainer rules were first proposed in 2019, and that the collaborative effort is also making headway in California and Illinois.
But the push for regulation has exposed an industry schism over the use of punishments versus rewards. Under the proposed legislation, certification bodies would have to enforce policies that prioritize positive reinforcement, but do not completely exclude punishment – an approach generally supported by efficacy and wellness research and increasingly popular among training professionals. While researchers and trainers largely agree that harsh approaches are harmful, they disagree on whether a blanket ban on aversive instruments is productive, as the approach can work in limited circumstances.
Without clearer rules, the large gaps in dog training pose “a potentially very serious safety risk to the public,” Johnson said, as dog owners rely on trainers to modify the behavior of animals with “sharp, pointy teeth that live in our homes.” ”
Modern dog training is rooted in the work of American psychologist BF Skinner of the mid-20th century, who proposed four categories of behavior modification: positive reinforcement, positive punishment, negative reinforcement, and negative punishment. Here positive and negative do not necessarily mean good or bad. Positive reinforcement adds something a dog likes to reinforce a behavior, such as a treat or toy to sit on a sign, while positive punishment adds something aversive, such as a tug on the leash, to a behavior to decrease. Negative reinforcement removes something the dog dislikes, such as stopping a shock collar when a dog obeys a command, while negative punishment removes something desirable, such as looking away from a dog jumping for attention.
Many animal behavior trainers and experts say that aversive methods, including positive punishment and negative reinforcement, are overused. Two major professional organizations representing trainers – the APDT and the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants – are now restricting the use of tools such as e-collars among their members.
Last October, the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior, which includes both veterinarians and behaviorists with doctoral-level training in animal behavior, issued a statement: “There is no evidence that aversive training is necessary for dog training or behavior modification,” referring to 21 studies on the effectiveness of reward-based methods and risks of aversive methods. Alexandra Protopopova, an animal welfare researcher at the University of British Columbia, wrote in an email to Undark that the recent research cited in the statement reflected the “undeniable” risks of aversive techniques, adding “Ultimately, recent research has also shown that aversive techniques methods do not lead to better trained dogs; making traditional aversive dog training methods obsolete.”
The research has raised concerns about the welfare of dogs. In a small study, dogs trained with rewards were found to be more playful and better at learning new behaviors than dogs whose owners reported using punishments. In another case, dogs that were reportedly trained with aversive aids, as the researchers put it, were “more pessimistic” than dogs that weren’t, based on their hesitation to approach a bowl of food. There is also some evidence that using punishment in training can diminish the bond between a dog owner and their dog.
