I’m going to explore some representatives from the Force-Free camp. I’ll visit the Pet Professional Guild (PPG), and Wagfield Academy. Also the Initiative for force-free dog training, an organization that lists a number of countries.
I’ll look at some of their advice and especially the definitions used to explain their advice. Lest you begin to think I’m being overly negative, for just the Pet Professional Guild I counted at least 16 articles on their site that were throwing criticism at others.
Their articles targeting other groups are just sparsely fabricated descriptions lacking any detail, so they can make up any story they wish. Instead, I’m identifying and linking to the specific items I speak about, so you can easily read their side of it, in its entirety.
So, what is Force-Free?
Pet Professional Guild (PPG)
Definition of Force-Free
PPG understands force-free to mean that methods involving shock, pain, choking, fear, and/or physical compulsion are never used to manage, care for or train pets.
PPG Guiding Principles
…physical force to mean any intentional physical act against a pet that causes psychological or physical pain, harm or damage to the pet.
PPG Definition of Force
They follow this with quite a bit of detail, but nothing new. Many of their warnings are of extreme reactions or results that may never be seen in typical cases, so those are more sound-bites and scare tactics. They also reference a number of actual scientific papers, often either cherry-picking results or taking them in isolation. Curiously, however, they also include:
O’Heare, J. (2012) The least intrusive effective behavior intervention (LIEBI) algorithm and levels of intrusiveness table: 2012 updated version. Association of Animal Behavior Professionals.
Where O’Heare actually attempts to give practical guidelines with his LIEBI algorithm, but PPG does not adhere to this.
Concerning research studies, often the researcher will attempt to avoid or eliminate other possible influencers or disrupters that are distinct from the specific behavior to be studied. The end result then is often something that is not directly meaningful in the real world, as those other factors will often be present. And some of those other factors may have far more influence on the resulting behavior than the item they are targeting, so not taking them into account simply invalidates the application.
Yes, the research itself remains valid, and their methods may be very necessary in order to better understand specific behaviors. But they are not intended to be applied directly without context and qualifications.
So, just don’t cause pain, harm, or damage to your pet and you’re just fine.
Wagfield Academy
Force-free, or Positive Reinforcement (PR), training is focused on providing your dog something that is reinforcing or desirable, like a treat or praise, immediately when the desired behavior occurs. The result is an increased likelihood of the dog doing that behavior again in the future.
Wagfield Academy
They seem to be equating this with Positive Reinforcement training, but Wikipedia on Reinforcement had no such linkage, nor do any texts on behavioral psychology. Further, they reversed the conclusion. If the behavior becomes more likely in the future, then you accomplished positive reinforcement. If not, then you did not accomplish positive reinforcement. It doesn’t cause the result, but may be defined by the result. What that really means is that no such result is ever guaranteed and that your result from that action may be very different. Their last sentence is therefore scientifically incorrect.
The Initiative for Force-Free dog training
Force does not start with electric shock collars, but already with psychological intimidation and techniques such as tugging on the lead, which has been shown to lead to lesions in the throat and neck area of dogs (Hallgren).
Initiative Position paper
In about two pages of text, that’s about the only item that even gives us a clue as to what force-free means to them. But, is telling a dog “no” classed as dangerous psychological intimidation? Do all people walking dogs who tug on the lead cause throat lesions? While neither one is likely, these people give no way to distinguish between what is and is not acceptable. Except for your local expert force-free dog trainer, of course.
PPG – The use of Pet Correction Devices
The Pet Professional Guild has a whole list of issues with some of these.
Infliction of Stress and Pain
Any stimulus not paired with a positive stimulus is, at best, neutral and, at worst, frightening and/or painful to the pet. Pets who learn to exhibit behaviors to escape or avoid fear or pain are by definition being subjected to an aversive stimulus. (Aversive means something unpleasant or frightening that the pet seeks to avoid or escape, as opposed to a pleasant stimulus that a pet seeks out voluntarily.)
PPG Guiding Principles
I think it’s a very good bet that, if you walk down the street, most stimuli the dog experiences will not be paired with a positive stimulus. So is their first advice to avoid most of the world, as they find it so dark and scary? And here they give one definition of an aversive stimulus. Except that I’ve seen many dogs playing games to escape being caught. But they seem to be having a great deal of fun in doing so and want to continue. I could come up with more cases, but I feel that’s a common enough exception to invalidate their argument.
They never seem to understand that a dog may seek to avoid something that is not aversive, or that the dog’s aversion to it may be so slight that it has no real significance to the dog’s behavior or emotional state.
Escalation
If a change in behavior is not seen immediately, users of aversive tools may opt to increase the frequency, duration or intensity of the application. Unfortunately, this can only result in the pet attempting to escape or avoid the stimulus with even greater intensity. This creates a counterproductive paradigm whereby the pet simply learns to fear the stimulus, the context, and/or the person delivering it. In addition, some pets tend to be “stoic†and may fail to show any kind of fear response, irrespective of increased levels of anxiety or frustration. There is also the risk that pets may become habituated to the sense of fear or anxiety, once again causing the trainer or owner to increase the level and/or frequency of the aversive stimulus. It has been scientifically proven that fear and stress caused in such situations can have a significant effect on a pet’s well-being due to increasing cortisol levels and heart rate, not to mention the psychological impact..
O’Heare, 2005
You can tell from the much more precise wording that this was written by O’Heare, and not the PPG, who are ignoring a single keyword there, which is “may“. In some of his works, O’Heare actually qualifies the likelihood, but PPG never does and only uses the extremes.
Yes, you may be rained upon while walking to that chair. Not as likely if you happen to be inside at the time, but I’ll just ignore that possibility and give the rain warning anyway.
Global Suppression, or Shut-Down
A pet repeatedly subjected to aversive stimulation may go into a state of “shut down,” or a global suppression of behavior. This is frequently mistaken for a “trained” pet, as the pets remains subdued and offers few or no behaviors. In extreme cases, pets may refuse to perform any behavior at all, known as “learned helplessness.” In such cases, pets may try to isolate themselves to avoid incurring the aversive stimulation. This is evidently counterproductive to training new, more acceptable behaviors. (O’Heare, 2011).
Again, PPG is cherry-picking, and out of context. While O’Heare tried to supply that context, PPG ignored it. For many years I worked with all types of badly abused dogs. About the worst of all were the high-apathy dogs who ignored the world. But the number of those dogs was very small. Even those with long confinement or open wounds started coming around in a few weeks.
The case of very subdued and trained pets can be from aversives but has also been accomplished with positive reinforcement. I recall one fellow calling his highly trained dog (who had Schutzhund awards) out of his car. We then walked over to a door and into a restaurant. Along the way, he gave perhaps a dozen commands to the dog, repeating some when the dog didn’t respond quickly enough. The dog ended up under the table, doing his best to ignore everything around him.
At another restaurant, this time with my dog, just two gestures were enough to tell him to come in, then one gesture to the table. He eagerly watched everything around him, and if nearby or passing people showed an interest, he’d ask to go see them. He was alert and enjoying life!
Suppressed Aggression
The use of aversive stimuli is counter-indicated in pets with aggression. This is because the behavior may only be suppressed rather than extinguished, and may thus resurface at any time without warning, generally in a more severe display. Using aversive stimuli to reduce behaviors such as barking, lunging and growling may suppress signals that warn of a more serious, and potentially imminent behavior, such as biting. Without ritualized aggression behaviors, people and other pets will receive no warning before the pet subjected to punishment feels forced to resort to biting. Rather, PPG holds that desensitization and counterconditioning are the only ethical and effective paradigms in which to treat aggression in pets. Protocols such as these help positively impact the pet’s emotional state from one of fear and/or anxiety to one that is more happy and relaxed, and thus able to learn new behaviors.
First, they seem to equate general pet aggression with ritualized aggression behaviors (agonistic behaviors), and assuming the person is also suppressing those behaviors. That makes this an appeal to extremes, without which their argument falls apart. Instead, they treat with desensitization, which is not directly used for aggression but to reduce fear. And yet again, they claim a change in emotional state will drive behavior, which is the opposite of the foundations of behavioral psychology.
Redirected Aggression
Pets subjected to repeated aversive stimulation may be respondently conditioned to associate the fear and/or pain with certain contextual cues in their environment. As an example, using an aversive sound such as an air horn to interrupt barking risks pairing the owner or trainer with the unpleasant stimulus and, in particular, the hand or arm that is reaching out while using the tool. Repeated instances may generalize to the pet attempting to flee. If the pet feels, however, that flight is not possible or a safe or reliable course of action, he may instead start acting aggressively toward any arm or hand movement, or approach behavior whatsoever.
Again, we have the may. But Dogs Playing for Life is a group who have visited many shelters, teaching them how to safely and effectively run dog playgroups with shelter dogs. They’ve used air horns for years now, but after many thousands of dogs, nobody has seen this issue. Yes, this could become an issue but would require a considerable degree of both intensity and repetition before that ever happened.
And, it can also happen while attempting positive reward training. A few times I’ve asked positive trainers to show me why they had difficulty approaching or interacting with a particular dog. And I then see something meeting their definition of redirected aggression. But if I throw away the treats and just approach the dog in a more polite manner, it fades away.
Generalization
For new, more appropriate behaviors to become reliable in random environments, they must be accessed, reinforced and then practiced so a pet is able to transfer them to any context or situation (known as “generalization”). When using so-called pet correction devices or aversive stimuli to train or manage a pet, the pet must be repeatedly subjected to the aversive stimulus for the behavior to appear resolved, when it is in fact only suppressed. In such cases, the pet still has not learned a more appropriate alternative behavior. In addition, as the pet is most likely still experiencing a negative emotional state, such as fear or anxiety, he is susceptible to even more problematic behavior fallout.
They are stating (not just implying) that generalization and transfer of behavior can only occur with their definition of positive training, and does not happen with operand punishment. Here, they are setting up entirely fictitious rules for behavior that simply do not exist, and directly conflict with the real definitions. And they end again with that emotional state qualification, which is something other than applied animal behavioral psychology.
Who says the behavior is only suppressed? Who says the pet has not learned a more appropriate alternative behavior? The use of aversives and even direct operand punishment in training would not necessarily cause that, and there is no reason an alternative behavior could not have been taught. Nature already has female dogs efficiently teaching their young pups, but PPG thinks they are doing it wrong?
Code of Conduct
From the Force-Free Dog Training Organization, on their Code of conduct, the following are not allowed.
- lead jerks/lead impulses
- prodding either with a finger or with a foot/hissing
- forcing the dog on to his back/turning him over
- hitting and kicking
- imitating bites with the hands
- psychological intimidation (e.g. threatening the dog by bending over him, staring him in the eyes, shouting or growling at him)
- check-chain collars/choke collars
- prong collars
- shock collars
- working with fright tools, such as rattle-cans and throwing-chains, or by spraying water
- Spray collars (whether they use air, water, chemicals, or an acoustic stimulus)
- groin straps
- everything which frightens the dog or causes pain or discomfort.
Well, hitting and kicking sound pretty simple, except that I’ve seen people doing that while rough-housing with their dogs. There, it seems that many of these rules go by the person’s perceived intent, instead of the dog’s reaction.
On forcing the dog on his back, I just pick up the medicine and point at him, and he lays down and rolls over. Is that really so bad? I also forced a foster on his back, to check his neutering incision. He did not like that!
Now, you just gotta love their psychological intimidation part. My senior dog loves staring into people’s eyes. No growling? He loves to play wild tug while jumping around the room and we’re both growling. And yet this is the guy who loves kids and was trained to manage very young children. Go figure…
They say to never prod with a finger, but there’s a common instinctive calming response in higher mammals where I apply pressure with two fingers, and I’ve demonstrated many times how over 60% of wildly behaving dogs will almost immediately calm down. But, the Force-Free people would not be expected to know this, as I learned it from reading real textbooks.
As they also included everything which frightens the dog or causes discomfort, both my training dog and every momma dog in the world must be in the wrong. This group has no notion of intensity, duration, or purpose here, for the world itself starts out being a pretty scary place. A dog needs to learn how to manage their fear to allow learning how to deal with worldly issues.
Leash Corrections
As this is one of the most common items to run into, I looked for what they have to say on this. With the Pet Professional Guild, the closest they seem to have is about The Use of Choke and Prong Collars. In their conclusions there, they go on to endorse,
Further, the PPG and its members actively recommend against the use of choke and prong collars while actively promoting the use of flat buckle collars, head halters, harnesses and other types of control equipment that are safer for the animal.
And, their reason for this,
Choke chains and prong collars are designed to administer negative reinforcement and positive punishment. Training techniques based in these two learning theory quadrants are prone to side effects. As an example, a dog wearing a choke or prong collar that fearfully barks and lunges at another dog would then be choked or pain inflicted by the prong collar. The pain and choking then adds to the negative association the dog wearing the collar has with other dogs. This is the polar opposite of what an ideal training protocol is designed to accomplish.
However, head halters and front-loading harnesses are physical restraints that many dogs will consider aversive, which is the polar opposite of what an ideal training protocol is designed to accomplish. Wait a minute, here! Didn’t PPG just say that earlier?
The Leash Correction
Many years ago, while at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Utah, somebody complained that I was using leash corrections, which were not acceptable there. They brought me into a room with several people and told me this was not acceptable. I didn’t ask them who had said it, but only to define for me exactly what a leash correction was. Going through each person in the room, none of them could do so. However, the manager did insist that he would know one if he saw it. I then pointed out that he was not the person who allegedly saw it so that unless he could clearly describe exactly what the other person had seen, we had nothing more to discuss. But he still wouldn’t give up unless I first agreed to stop using them.
At the other extreme, we hear about all the possible throat injuries from pulling on a leash. I think I’ve only seen that happen to one dog over many years. I’m sure some vets have seen more, but none of them can tell you how many leash-corrected dogs they did not see for that issue. Once again, intensity matters.
They Know it When they See It
That really deserves its own section, as that’s the universal definition that seems to apply to all Force-Free and many of the Positive-Only dog trainers. In the next section, I’ll refer to an actual, physical text-book and a research paper on this topic. I’ve never met trainers from either of those groups who have ever read them or were even willing to read them.
I’ve watched some of those trainers with leash training, and their main focus appears to be stuffing food into the dog’s mouth. Instead, I use no food and teach people to avoid a tight leash. Do not pull the dog unless it’s a safety restraint. You should instead lightly jiggle the leash to signal, always followed by slack. To use both the leash and verbal commands to communicate with your dog, and to carefully observe his own wants and needs. After all, this is his walk.
With this approach, I’ve walked four or more dogs, while leash training two of them. These days, I usually walk three dogs, only needing one hand most of the time.
What Are They Missing?
In just about every description from every group, there is no notion of intensity, or of the dog’s response. It all seems to be centered around the force-free trainer knowing how the dog should be feeling, but with hard rules indicating that they never really look. And, just a few of the dog trainers out there have also caught onto the force-free absurdity.
I have several issues with the idea of labeling the training that Paws Abilities offers as “force free.” My biggest problem with the label is that it says nothing about what we actually do. Focusing on negatives like this is one of the biggest advertising gimmicks of all time.
Which brings me to the second reason I don’t consider myself or my other instructors force free. The dog decides what “force” means, and we can’t always know that until we try a given training intervention. Is it considered forceful to stand on a dog’s leash so that he has enough leash to comfortably sit, stand, or lie down, but not enough to jump up on a stranger? Is it forceful to use body blocks to keep my dog from lunging at a passing bike? Is it forceful to fit a dog with a Gentle Leader or front-attach harness so that when he pulls on his leash he ends up facing his handler? I can’t tell you, and neither can anyone else.
Paws Abilities
If we instead move to peer-reviewed textbooks that are used in universities, we may find the Handbook of Applied Dog Behavior and Training, by Steven Lindsay. That discusses his cynopraxic philosophy for relating to and training dogs, and his LIMA (Least Intrusive Minimally Aversive) approach.
Then we could move to scientific papers, such as The least instrusive effective behavior intervention (LIEBI) … by James O’Heare. That tries to give criteria for defining aversives and stress in the dog, resulting in a best-practices model.
For banning squirt bottles and shake cans, take a look at the vast number of dogs that have been helped by Dogs Playing for Life.
All three of these references will give you effective and actionable definitions and descriptions of behavior and interactions with dogs. All three of them are well supported by other literature, while the Force-Free people stand only on sound bites.