It really sucks (sorry guys, rant.)

Living with someone who doesn't agree with you in dog training. I am a Positive Reinforcement Trainer. My mate used Dominance. And no matter how much evidence I lay in front of him that Positive Reinforcement is the best and most Scientifically proven to work the BEST and help the dog learn instead of making it fear you, he doesn't care.

It seems like he just wants something to fear him, rather than help it. That's what I think.

Every time dog training comes up, we always start arguing about it.

Claire was supposed to be our dog, but since I said that I didn't want him to train her with anything, because everything he did was causing her fear, he feels that Claire is my dog, and not ours.
His argument is that it's like having a child and not having a say so in how it's raised.

All I can think of to counter that argument is "So you would rather beat your child and force it to submission than help it learn? To help it learn it has choices like a human and gets trained the best way possible?"

I haven't said this to him yet, but the next time it gets brought up, it's what I am going to say.

Because that is exactly how I feel. I believe that Dominance Training is Animal Abuse. You are causing Fear in the dog, making it fear life and insecure about everything. Did you know that dogs that were trained under Dominance (fear) training has a waaaayy higher rate of fear biting or real aggression than Positive reinforcement? Eventually the dog will feel like it's being backed into a corner and will attack you.

And with the child reference, a dog has a toddler's mind. No matter the age of the dog. So you have to constantly train and keep up with the training or else the dog isn't going to respond.

Would you beat your child if he went to the bathroom in it's underwear when you are trying to teach it to use the toilet? No

Would you put a shock collar or squirt your child with a squirt bottle whenever he did something he wasn't supposed to? No

Would you punish and yell at the child for doing everything wrong, for not doing what you told it to do? No

You teach. You reward good behaviors, you take away things when they are doing things you don't want it to do and you ignore the bad behaviors. If you don't give the bad behaviors any attention, eventually the child and dog will get that it only gets attention for doing the stuff that you want it to do.


I work at Petco, and everytime I see someone buying a shock collar, pronged collar, choke collar, anything like that, I want to shove it up their ass and tell them to leave and seek professional help. I absolutely despise these products. They do nothing right, they only confuse the dog and in almost every case, make the problems worse. It's not a training aid, it's an item of abuse, an item of fear.

SO because of our arguments of how to raise dogs the RIGHT way, I think we can't get another dog, because if he gets one, I will be taking over and he would be furious, because he would want to raise it being fearful of the world and inhibit it's learning process.

So please, if you are thinking about owning a dog, or if you have one and don't use positive reinforcement, please, I beg you, seek out a trainer that does use these methods. It will make the dog sooo much happier and the relationship between you and the dog will get stronger.. If you ever need any training tips, I am here to give them.


TL;DR
I hate dominance training and I believe it's animal abuse and it's hard living with someone who only sides with Dominance training.