Have you ever wondered what force-free training is, or whether it will work for your dog? Read on to find out!
I was recently invited to sit on a Q&A panel at an event run by a local dog rescue centre where I have been volunteering for the last few years. The audience asked some really great questions that got all of the members on the panel thinking - from how to tell when your dog is overweight to house training a nervous rescue dog. The one that really stuck in my mind, though, was this one: does force-free training always work? Although I gave a pretty comprehensive answer at the time, I’ve been feeling the urge to elaborate on it ever since as it’s something I’m really passionate about. Spoiler alert: the answer might not be quite what you expect!
What is force-free training?
As the name suggests, force-free trainers refrain from using any kind of force in their training, be that physical (e.g. lead ‘corrections’, use of equipment that causes the dog pain like prong collars, shoving the dog) or non-physical (e.g. shouting at the dog, non-contact intimidation like staring at or crowding the dog). Force-free trainers may also refer to themselves as ‘fear-free‘ trainers, ‘positive reinforcement trainers’ or ‘ethical’ trainers, but their underlying ethos is the same: they aim to change the dog’s behaviour in a way that has the least possible physical or psychological repercussions for the animal. Force-free training is not a single method or even a set of methods; it is more of a philosophy. That means that different force-free trainers may approach the same problem in different ways, using different techniques, tools and protocols. Some force-free trainers may achieve better results than others - but they’re all still force-free trainers.
Does it always work?
There’s one thing I think it’s really important to stress here: we can never 100% guarantee that any kind of training will ‘work’. That probably sounds odd coming from a professional dog trainer, but it’s true! The first reason this is the case is that dogs are living, breathing creatures with their own motivations, quirks and emotional ‘baggage’, all of which will influence whether or not we achieve our training goals. They are not robots that can simply be reprogrammed to behave in a certain way; we always have to take into account their individual differences and their history. This is particularly true of rescue dogs, many of whom will have experienced trauma in their lives that they may never fully recover from, and we often have to adjust our expectations accordingly.
This leads me on to point number two: how do we define ‘work’? If I have a dog that finds busy environments stressful - a common trait in working breeds like Border Collies who are highly sensitive to the things going on around them - I may be able to train them to lie on a mat in a café, but they may not ever feel truly comfortable in that environment. So in a superficial sense the training has ‘worked’, in that I can take them to a café and they can perform a down stay, but the dog is not necessarily truly relaxed. So has it ‘worked’, really? In such cases it’s always important to consider whether achieving a particular training goal is truly in the dog’s interest or merely for our own benefit. As much as I would love to take Crash to the pub with me, he’d rather have a quiet snooze at home - and that’s okay!
Thirdly, whether or not any training programme is successful is highly dependent on the owner’s ability to implement the training plan consistently and correctly. This in turn is reliant on the trainer being able to properly explain not only how to do the training, but also why it needs to be done in that way. Good trainers should also support owners throughout the process and be prepared to tweak the training as necessary if it isn’t producing the expected results. If the first approach we try doesn’t work out as planned, this doesn’t mean that force-free training has failed altogether for that particular dog - it just means we need to rethink our strategy and pull some alternatives out of our jumbo force-free toolbox!
Can you achieve the same results with training that isn’t force-free?
In some cases, yes, you could achieve a similar-looking result using non-force-free methods. But once again, we have to consider what we define as ‘success’ in training - and what we are willing to do to achieve it. Personally, I would rather my dog behaves in a certain way because it makes them feel good and because they feel safe in my presence, not because they’re afraid of what might happen if they don’t behave in that way. Ultimately, that is how most non-force-free methods work: the dog learns that if they do certain things (like pulling on the lead) then something unpleasant happens to them (like a prong collar digging into their throat), so they stop doing those things in order to avoid pain and discomfort. I wouldn’t want to live my life in constant fear of bad things happening to me, would you?
It’s also important to mention that in some cases, the use of such methods can actually make a dog’s behaviour worse. If a dog who barks at strangers on walks because they are frightened is given a lead ‘correction’ whenever they react in this way, all this does is give them an additional reason to feel afraid when they see a person - physical pain. Over time this is likely to make them even more fearful of people, resulting in an even more explosive reaction. Imagine if you were afraid of spiders, and your partner or family members pinched you really hard every time you saw one. Would that make you less afraid? I doubt it. Ultimately, these methods do not account for the emotions underlying the dog’s behaviour - whether that be fear, frustration or anxiety - and unless we address how the dog feels about a certain trigger we are unlikely to be able to change their response to it.
If you’d like to explore how force-free training can help you and your dog, get in touch with me today! Whether it’s pulling on the lead, not coming when called or jumping all over your guests - there’s always a kind, ethical solution.