In today’s world of dog training, pet owners are presented with many options—but not all methods are equal when it comes to strengthening your bond with your dog, building their confidence, and giving them the freedom to make choices.
In this blog, I want to focus on two core philosophies that guide how we work with dogs and their people: force-free and fear-free training.
The force-free approach is grounded in the science of animal behavior. It relies on positive reinforcement to reward desired behaviors and uses prevention or redirection to address undesired ones. But I want to explain it in a way that clears up some common misunderstandings.
When I talk about force-free training, I mean that we don’t force a dog to comply. That doesn’t mean we let dogs walk all over us—as some balanced trainers like to claim. Instead, we look at the whole dog and ask: Why couldn’t they follow through? And more importantly, how can we help them succeed next time?
For example, if I ask a dog to sit and they don’t, I won’t push their rear down or jerk the leash to make them sit. If I ask for a down and they don’t respond, I won’t step on the leash to force it. These are tactics often used by balanced trainers to compel compliance, but that’s not how we operate.
There are many reasons a dog might not respond to a cue: they could be in pain, distracted or worried about something in the environment, or they might not fully understand what’s being asked in that moment. We don’t assume they’re being stubborn or disobedient. It’s essential to build a trusting relationship if we want our dogs to willingly respond to us.
Take the “sit” example again—if a dog doesn’t sit when I ask, my first question is, “Do I really need them to sit right now?” Most of the time, the answer is no. Then I ask, “Why didn’t they respond?” Once I understand the reason, I can work on addressing it so it’s less of a barrier in the future.
Fear-free training aligns closely with force-free methods. In fact, if you’re practicing force-free training, you’re likely also fear-free—because fear is often what forces a dog to comply.
Balanced trainers claim to use a mix of positive reinforcement and punishment. However, in practice, many rely more heavily on punishment, often setting dogs up to fail. This approach can lead to a dog becoming fearful of making mistakes and complies not out of understanding, but to avoid punishment.
That punishment might come in the form of a leash correction, stimulation from an e-collar, or a shock from a shock collar. While the dog might appear to be rewarded for doing the “right” behavior, their focus isn’t on learning, it’s on avoiding the consequence of getting it wrong.
Force-free (FF) training offers many benefits, but one of the most important is the strong bond it helps create between you and your dog. It also reduces the likelihood of your dog developing fear—especially fear related to interacting with you.
In addition, research shows that dogs trained with force-free methods tend to learn more quickly and retain what they’ve learned better than dogs trained using punishment-based techniques.
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