Recently I’ve been watching the YouTube channel Fenrir Canine Training. I love this trainer’s approach, which is almost entirely based on positive reinforcement and building trust and engagement with the dog. The trainer’s argument against punishing your dog is that the only thing it does is teach the dog to be scared of you.
That makes a lot of sense to me, and I regret that we didn’t fully take this approach when training our own dog (a rescue with a nervous temperament). We deferred to professional dog trainers and assumed they knew better, but some of the techniques they used and recommended we use (like a shock collar) didn’t feel right, and we quickly abandoned them.
The more I think about punishment, the more I believe it doesn’t have any place in any relationship in which you are trying to build trust and engagement. Punishing someone makes sense in the context of a combat sports grudge match (or chess match, for the matter). Punishment is appropriate to dole out to your enemies and adversaries, but not your dog or your kids.