What force-free training means.
This note is a draft. It is filed under Academy and Rescue.
Force-free is a promise about how a dog is treated while it learns. The Pawgrins Academy will use the word, so you should know what we will mean by it.
What it means
You teach a dog what you want by making that thing worth doing. The pay can be food, play, a walk or your attention. You set up the room so that the right choice is the easy one. When something goes wrong, you look for what made it hard and you change that.
What it rules out
Pain and fear. That rules out choke chains, prong collars, shock collars, jerking the lead, pinning a dog down and shouting until it flinches.
What it keeps
Rules. A dog trained this way still waits at the door, still leaves the chicken on the counter and still comes when called. The dog learned those things by being paid for them.
What the evidence says
The American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior set out its view in a 2021 position statement on humane dog training. It says that evidence supports reward-based methods for all canine training, and that aversive methods should not be used in training or in treating behaviour problems.
Source: American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior, Position Statement on Humane Dog Training, 2021.
On a wet Tuesday
Your dog pulls towards a pigeon. You stop walking. The lead goes quiet and you wait. Your dog looks back, and the walk starts again with a piece of chicken for the trouble. Nothing about that is dramatic, and you will do it again tomorrow.
Why Pawgrins uses the word
A dog learns best when it is not afraid of its teacher, and many rescue dogs have already had enough fear for one life. Vijay Rochani will lead the Academy, which is opening soon. When it opens, the questions below are for us as well.
Five questions for any trainer
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