Just what the title says, if rehoming a dog came with significant penalties or was punishable by law, how would this change the dog ownership landscape?
After reading a few posts about "reactive dogs" being walked and some of the 'issues' these owners face daily when trying to walk their untrained dog .... should they even be bringing that dog into public areas?
The extent some go to to warn the public (who have a right to be where they are) that their dog is unfit can be extreme, some just with harnesses or leashes that have warnings written on them. And others shouting at strangers to 'keep back' or to 'give the dog space' and such. But when these warnings aren't heeded those dog owners are outraged.
Why should the public have to study each dog that they might meet, try to read any warnings, make allowances for that dog, or even notice there is a dog in their vicinity? This is not a dog problem, it's an owner problem, and it should not be a public problem.
If the dog is not trained well enough to behave well, and to be safe among the public, it should not be in a public area.
By behave well I would say that it walks nicely beside you and will sit and wait patiently if you stop. That it doesn't need a muzzle, though can wear one if the owner chooses to use one. That's all, it's not a lot and I'd be flexible if there were any other considerations or requirements. But if each and every dog did this it would be the norm. Imagine it.
Extrapolating from another discussion. We frequently see force free people claiming that it's okay to use tools that a dog doesn't like, because it is acceptable and necessary to counter condition a dog to tolerate a head halter or harness or crate, etc. In the same sentence they will vilify conditioning a dog to an e-collar. So this is a simple topic. Why? Why is the former okay but the latter is not okay?
Good faith participation only, I have no tolerance for nonsense at this point. This is a genuine question and a genuine topic. I would like to hear some answers.
> "Force free means to train without fear and pain. So by definition if you are not force free you are training with fear and pain. If you aren’t using fear and pain to train you are force free."
that's a direct quote
Is this just more rubbish? Or could it finally be the truth? I'd had the impression there was more to it than that, that it was deep, required knowledge and understanding, science and stuff. Perhaps I was wrong, again.
There is a fundamental incongruence in the e-collar debate. Whenever e-collars are brought up, the opposition immediately jumps to "pain." While I will openly admit that there are protocols utilizing the tool for positive punishment ($+P$) or negative reinforcement ($-R$), most modern, high-fidelity e-collar protocols rely on classical conditioning rather than any single quadrant of operant conditioning at the start.
In this sense, a modern e-collar acts as a remote tactile marker, a long-range clicker that allows you to deliver three distinct types of stimuli and responses (auditory, electrical, and mechanical) at distances where a regular clicker or reward delivery is completely useless due to environmental noise.
Yes, you can later layer this classical conditioning with operant conditioning. The most common balanced method involves using low-level negative reinforcement to increase the fluency and reliability of the dog's response under distraction. It is also true that many traditional protocols, with which I disagree, rely on high-level electrical stimulation as a primary punisher.
However, let’s be pragmatically cold: I am fully prepared, though I thankfully haven't had the need yet, to use a high-level electrical stimulus as a safety emergency brake to stop my dog from engaging in a potentially fatal behavior. I would infinitely rather have my dog feel momentary physical discomfort and live, than watch them die because I chose to prioritize ideological purism over their survival.
What do you think about this? are you willing to discuss the e-collar as a remote clicker even if you include the already acknowledged misuses?
Edit: I went in and checked after trading a comment. What I describe is the most modern and efective way to use an e collar but it is not the most common one.
This makes absolutely zero physiological sense. Every single stimulus, whether mechanical, electrical, acoustic, or chemical, operates on a spectrum (a gradient of intensity) and is never instantly positive or negative.
Electrical stimuli do not magically break the biological law of valence.
To argue that any use of an e-collar is inherently abusive because it utilizes electrical current is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the nervous system processes information. The brain does not receive "pressure" or "shocks", it only translates sensory inputs into electrical action potentials.
Every category of stimulus scales from completely neutral to highly aversive:
Mechanical: Scales from a gentle pet to a hard blow.
Auditory: Scales from a faint whisper to a thundering firework.
Electrical: Scales from a barely perceptible tingle or buzz to a painful shock or jolt.
Modern high-quality e-collars operating at low levels physically lack the energy required to depolarize nociceptors (pain receptors).
Saying that using a modern e-collar at a low level is "abusive" or "shocking a dog" is the exact same logical fallacy as saying that petting a dog is the same as beating it just because both actions utilize mechanical energy and hands.
If we want to have an honest, science-based debate about dog training tools, we have to stop confusing the instrument with the intensity. The tool is simply a vector of energy, the valence depends entirely on the dose. Any argument that ignores this gradient isn't operating on canine welfare, it’s operating on pure semantics and emotional bias.
I say this because each and every one of them that comes across our sub has a post history reflecting mental health issues. The post histories of the balanced trainers do not.
What can we extrapolate from this?
I never let this type of person participate in the sub because in my opinion they bring down the discourse and they aren't acting in good faith, but I was asked by the other mods to let them try. Predictably, they broke all of our rules and got banned within a couple hours. And then they started sending abusive direct messages. Like this one!
Here's a note, folks. Sending direct messages to mods after mod actions is not okay. This person has been reported for harassment and posted in our Wall of Shame for documentation purposes.
I thought this might be the right place to discuss this. I’ve been seeing almost every other day a post about people struggling to integrate their cats with their new dog (or vice versa), and I can’t help but think that this is fueled by this fantasy people have of their dog and cat being best friends…you know like all the cutesy social media videos of dogs and cats snuggling. So often I find myself repeating the same advice: take a few steps back and slow down introducing these two creatures, you need to actually train your dog to behave around your cat, you need stop letting the dog “play” with the cat, and sometimes just flat out this dog should not be anywhere near cats.
What do you guys think? Can dogs and cats ethically coexist? Is there a trend recently of pet owners forcing cats and dogs to coexist who should otherwise not?
I am of the opinion that yes, they can coexist, but it will always take training and management to guarantee the safety of the cat. I also believe many if not most dogs should not cohabitate with cats. I also believe any “play” should be discouraged or disallowed as it’s always the cat that will bear the brunt of “play” gone wrong. Full disclosure I have both myself. My dog by default leaves them alone, she respects when they walk away from her, she does not chase or pester them. The few times she tried when she was younger she was swiftly and severely corrected and it’s never been a problem since. She can sleep on the couch while they run around and exist beside her. I fully trust her now however I STILL have management in place so my cats can get away from her, and I don’t leave them together for hours and hours on end either. I feel like this is normal pet husbandry, am I wrong haha?
This was a tie amongst balanced trainers in the first version so let's run a tiebreaker. Your dog has to go for a month-long board and train with one of these two trainers. Which do you pick.