Does pain teach?

Sure it does. But what, and do you want that taught?

[Clarification: when I use the word "pain" I'm not making the claim that the old school way of raising and training your dog means hurting it. I'm using the word as an oversimplification to make a point. The idea behind old school correction is to cause discomfort, physical and/or psychological, when the dog is doing something undesireable. It's not to hurt the dog for funsies, because old schoolers are sadistic serial killers in training, all right? These corrections can be anything from a stern voiced and sharp no to actual physical pain, usually graded to the offense so mischief barking may get a no, while chasing the cat may get an "alpha roll". And all people are individuals, so no two old schoolers correct in the same way.

There is also some debate about whether dogs are as sensitive to pain as humans, meaning the line between causing the dog discomfort and causing him pain is also not clear.

So why do I use the word pain? Because of what pain is. Pain is a discomfort signal, it's the body telling us "wrong". What is pain to one person barely registers with another, but most of us feel it at some point. Whether a correction is registered as pain or not, it fills the function of pain. When a child puts its hand on a hot plate it hurts, meaning the body is saying "wrong, don't do that", and when we tug the leash or "bite" the neck of the dog stealing from the table we're telling him "wrong, don't do that".

Old school dog training contains the potential for causing the dog (mild) pain, but certainly many who train their dogs in this way never actually use pain.

Just to be extra clear - old school dog training does not mean hitting the dog! I don't believe that it does, I'm not claiming that it does. Some do knowingly cause some pain to get the dog to cease a particularly bad behavior, but the point isn't to harm the dog. People who do this (for training purposes, not as a way to vent frustration) love their dogs too, it is an attempt to help the dog (if done right). I don't condemn people who use physical correction - up to a point. I just think they're barking up the wrong tree.]

Now, first of all, I'm not any kind of expert. I'm not claiming I have experienced all facets of the different schools of thought on dog training. All I can offer is my own view, based on my own experiences, prejudices and misunderstandings. Let's face it, I'm probably wrong, right? I don't have a problem with that, simply because I don't believe any of us have a clear, objective view of  anything. We filter the world through ourselves, all anyone can tell you is what it looks like to them.

Or maybe you do know it all?

What the truth looks like to me is this: I used to believe in the dominance/leadership "old school" stuff. Not to the extremes, I never believed you should abuse your dog to "teach him a lesson" or whatever rabid notions some (thankfully a minority) of the followers of this philosophy claim. I did believe, however, that it's important to be the leader, to dominate your dog, that the natural way to keep order with a dog in a human household was to always reinforce that he was at the bottom of the pack. I also believed that causing discomfort (i.e. correcting, for example through a short, sharp tug on the leash) the dog for incorrect behavior was the responsible and smart thing to do.

Go ahead, make my day!

You need to have an obedient dog, you need to be able to control him. Punishing bad behavior makes sense!

However, my views have changed. While I do still believe that punishment can work, I no longer think it's a good idea to use it. Not because I'm such a nice person, who just doesn't want to be mean to the widdle cuddly-wuddly doggies. No, to be honest: if I could have a guarantee that if I use one extremely hard correction (we're talking real pain here, electric shock, whatever) once, Monster would be cured, I'd probably do it and I wouldn't feel bad about it. Being an aggressive dog hurts Monster too, not just his surroundings - fixing the problem would be worth nearly anything!

But I have tried correcting him, I have had trainers correct him, and I believe I'm fairly clear sighted when I tell you it wasn't just useless, it made things worse. Sure, for a few weeks after getting help from a correction-heavy old school trainer, Monster was better. In fact, we could pass other dogs on the street without him putting a paw out of place. But it cost us. Not only did he become much more reluctant in all training, even his favorite activities like tracking, but also the correction "cost" kept going up. He was easier to handle in most situations, but if he did start to react to something stopping him demanded greater and greater corrections. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you keep going down that route you'll eventually wind up having to use too much force for your own comfort - no matter where you draw the line. You may think I'm too soft to do it correctly, that you would be willing to "do it right". Sure, it's pretty much guaranteed that there will be people who are "tougher" than I am, but my point isn't that you need to be callous and hard to be so cruel as to correct a dog - it's that you're entering a bad cycle where correction makes the dog harder, a harder dog requires a greater correction, which makes the dog harder, which... Well, you get where I'm going. For many dogs it still works, because they're less extreme. They don't have many strong behaviors that need to be corrected, and more importantly they take rather small steps up the hardening ladder. Monster is an individual who climbs up that ladder as if there's a chew toy at the top, which means correcting him is a bad idea.

Alright, let's see what you're made of...

But the point I'm really trying to make - in spite of telling you I'm aware I know nothing and am probably wrong - is that I actually think correcting any dog is a bad idea. No matter if it seems to be working for you, it just means your climb up the ladder of escalating corrections is slower than ours. So you may never reach the point where it's no longer possible (much less ethical) to use corrections. But does that really mean that it's working, or are you only pushing your problems forward and hoping you'll never catch up with them?

Maybe those clicker hippies got to me after all...