Disaster Strikes

I've had a fear for quite a while now - one of those "OMG, what if!?" thoughts you scare yourself with when you're having a bad day - and yesterday it happened... Out on a walk with Monster, I jumped over a ditch. Or rather, tried to jump over a ditch. I misjudged the landing, and broke my ankle. Let me tell you something: I screamed... And once I'd calmed down a bit and tried to relax, I tried to get up - it could have been just a bad sprain after all, nevermind the unpleasant crunching sound - and screamed some more as I fell down again. That leg was not going to participate.

That was a very strange game, Mom... And you were very loud.

Fortunately I'd brought my phone - something I usually forget - and called my sister once I'd stopped crying. I needed her to take Monster, that was my first priority. With Monster along with me, no way can I call an ambulance, I can't get help from strangers out walking, I have to get him secure. So my sister said she was coming (after some disbelieving "You did what!?"), and I proceeded to crawl away. I wanted to get up to the road so she could pick us up. Let me tell you, that hurt. And Monster was very confused by this strange new game we were apparently playing, wanting to get in my face, check out what I was doing, fetching sticks to play with - and getting the leash tangled around my leg. So there was some screaming directed at Monster as well. I knew I was being very unfair - he had no idea what was going on - and that the screaming and shouting would do nothing to calm him down, but I wasn't entirely able to act rationally by then.

Yeah, you were super weird...

I crawled for about 20 minutes before I realized I wouldn't be able to reach the road. It hurt far too much, not to mention I was crawling through thorns and had cut up my hands and knees pretty badly by then... Fortunately I was fairly close to a tractor lane, so I crawled out into a small field and directed my sister to try to drive down there, and sat down to wait. Monster thought that was a great idea, he had a good view of a couple of bike paths and could watch people pass by at a distance. Some people let their freerunning dog a little too close to us, but overall it went pretty well. I had a bag of turkey meat with me that I sprinkled around from time to time to keep Monster busy.

That was a nice break, we should do that more often!

When my sister turned up I had to crawl over and load Monster into her car - when she tried he first backed away, and when she insisted he laid down and pretended to be dead... Then I had to load myself into the car, and I'll spare you a description of the sounds I made for that little adventure. We decided the best thing was to leave Monster in my sister's car while I was at the hospital (I think my sister - who's broken both her ankles in the past - suspected I wouldn't be released right away) and headed off into town. I wound up spending seven and a half hours in the orthopedic ER, but I didn't need surgery! The doctor said I had a "very funny fracture". I'm not laughing, let me tell you...

I don't get the joke...?

So, part one of my nightmare scenario turned out OK: I had my phone with me, so I could call for help, and I was released from the hospital. Unfortunately, there's not much variation possible for part two: I'm in a cast. I can't walk. I can't drive. I live alone. How am I going to take care of Monster for the next two months!? My sister says she'll drive over and walk him for me, at least a short walk once a day. That's very generous of her. Unfortunately she's a firm believer in dominance theory and corrections, and we got into a fight on the way home from the hospital (talk about fighting from a disadvantage considering how much she'd done for me that day) about how Monster is clearly very dominant, since he lifted his leg veeeeeery high when she took him out of the car to pee...

Say what now?

But the bottom line is I don't know what to do. I can't walk him, not even a very short distance. I took him out last night for his evening pee and walked about five meters out, five back - then I threw up and fell over, in a cold sweat and blackening vision. It hurts. This morning I put him on a long line and sat down in the door and just let him walk himself over to a nice corner. I can't do that for two months, he'll go stir crazy. I wish I had spent some of those "OMG, what if!?"-moments actually coming up with a brilliant plan for this situation. But I didn't. And I can't find one now. If anyone has an idea, I'd be happy to hear it...

Today's Cloud

Less than one minute after my brother entered the house, he squared off against an overexcited Monster and growled at him to -Cut it out!

Whaaaaat? Are you joking? Are you threatening me? I think I'd better react to both possibilities simultaneously.

So I asked Roar to please be mindful of not frightening the dog (who was by then bouncing up and down trying to get in Roar's face), while trying to distract and calm Monster down. Unfortunately, my brother appears to have heard this as "Please grab the dog by the neck and tell him off more sternly, and then try to grab him around the muzzle when he comes close again"...

Not sure how I could have mumbled so badly that that's what it sounded like?

Well, you work with what you've got instead of wishing you had something else. After leashing Monster and getting my brother to sit down for a while (not by telling him to do so, as that would most likely result in him starting a wrestling match with Monster, but by bribing him with coffee), things calmed down again. I don't know how long it'll last, but it's not a disaster it's just an opportunity. For what, I'm not sure, but I'm determined not to get bogged down in "if only" and "I wish".

Suck it up and deal with it!

Look, I know you're dumb... But you've got to know you're not fooling anyone - not even yourself, easy as that should be.

Today's Cloud

While out on our walk today, we happened to meet Boots again. You remember him, the man who lets his two dogs play with Monster (and thinks I'm vastly exaggerating Monster's issues).

Hello, remember me?

Apparently there's a family down the street with two dogs with some aggression issues, and Boots has volunteered to straighten them out. Personally I don't really see the point in having someone else work your dog for you, I don't think that will fix much, plus the methods used aren't the kind I'd recommend. But they are trying something after all, and I certainly can't demonstrate an amazing result from my convictions (yet), so to each their own.

However, Boots was walking one of these dogs today along with his own two. She's an older bitch, a little smaller than Monster, and apparently known as the scourge of the village 2nd to Monster (I've never noticed her, but I kind of have my mind on Monster when we're out, especially if there are other dogs around). Boots first walked up to us and introduced the dogs to each other, and then joined us on the path we were walking. My concerns at Monster's clearly stressed behavior went, I believe, completely unheard. Both Monster and the new dog were very explosive in their movements, they were playing - mostly - but in a way I consider unhealthy. Boots quickly let all his dogs off leash, and when we reached an open area expected me to do the same. This I completely refused. As we were talking we'd stopped walking, and I noticed some tension between the new dog and one of Boots' dogs. I pointed this out, but he believed they were playing. Things escalated into a staring match across a water filled ditch, with very tense body language, no blinking and lips pulled back. Monster became very agitated by the behavior of this new dog. She wasn't challenging him, but he clearly didn't care about the finer points. I pointed out that things were about to go south with my dog, regardless of whether he thought things were fine in his group. He told all the dogs to knock it off (further agitating Monster, but that's of course not something I expect people to make allowances for), and sent them out into a field. There the new dog began chasing Boots' dog, in a way which did not appear friendly, but he remained convinced they were fine. While I was trying to point out the situation as I saw it, the two dogs finally clashed and went down in a cloud of teeth and snarling. Monster went from "I don't like this." to "Alright, time to die!"...

Boots soon managed to separate the dogs, but Monster was beyond calming down at that point. Boots kept putting himself between Monster and the new dog, and I had to keep asking him to move as this only served to agitate Monster further and risked Boots getting bitten. The new dog was still off leash, and came up to Monster repeatedly, so I had to struggle with holding him so he couldn't get to her. I tried to explain to Boots that he really needed to keep her away from us, because Monster had taken quite a bit of offense at her attacking a friend of his, and there really was a danger he would hurt her. We finally parted ways there, and I dragged Monster off into a tractor track.

Oh, looks so nice and peaceful...

In situations like this I get quite frustrated that I can't raise my voice or be more assertive. But once Monster has started spiraling, if I sound or act anything other than calm and sweet he's going to lose it completely.

I'm sure Boots is a very nice man, and I'm sure he genuinely feels I'm handling Monster completely wrong. But that's probably part of the problem, because I feel his methods are wrong, and I think we keep talking past each other...

Anyway, once we'd put some distance between us and the gang, I just stopped in place and waited for Monster to calm down. It took about ten minutes, but he did eventually sit down, sigh, and look at me. Time well spent I think. After that he was almost as usual on the walk, except for when we were almost home and he spotted Boots and the dogs again a few streets over. Alert! Alert! Oh well, no crying over spilled milk.
(But I should learn to stop spilling it, though...)

Check This Out!

I just found a goldmine!

Behavior.org | Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies

This seems like a great resource. I've only browsed around a little so far, but I think I'll be able to find lots of interesting things here. Hopefully it'll at least help me understand enough to make it easier to continue learning more.

It'll be nice to have some more solid sources than silly little books about being nice to the poor little puppy (not my words), and shove them down the throats of the "one good correction will teach him his place"-people!
(Hello, there's that aggressive primate.)

Today's Cloud

Met someone else training an aggressive dog out walking today. Unfortunately we're not using the same methods, and the situation became very uncomfortable for Monster who finds men using the "dominate your dog"-type of techniques to be very disturbing - even if they're not doing it to Monster.

I didn't realize Monster and I were being seen as willing training partners (presumably because of Monster's own behavior issues, which seems like exactly the kind of training dog you don't want) until we were more or less trapped (since I kept moving away into smaller and smaller side roads). Eventually there was nothing left to do other than accept that the dogs passed each other on a narrow road (with two other dogs running around loose and barking)... It did not go well.

I didn't like that, Mom.

Monster barked and growled, and pulled hard on the leash, and the other dog naturally responded in kind (I don't know which one of them "started" it, but I think that's rather irrelevant). The road was ice covered in water with walls lining it, so I had very poor footing and nowhere to go. I should have demanded that the other group turn around and leave us alone, but I know from experience that if I raise my voice or in any other way show that I'm annoyed Monster will lose it completely. I think it was the safer choice after all to accept the meeting and move on, but I'm still not happy about it.

Monster was stressed, pulling on the leash and keeping a close eye on the surroundings for the rest of the walk. It's not a disaster, but it does set us back, and it feels so unnecessary...

Beware, bewaaaare!

One thing which happens when you find yourself with an aggressive dog, is that others gain power over you. You so desperately want it to just stop, you're willing to listen to what anyone has to say as long as they say it with authority. And if they're trainers, you pay them to tell you what to do and what to think.

I could have used that money...

In my case, I was fairly convinced the answer to our problems could be found in positive reinforcement. I didn't know too much about using it to solve a problem behavior, just about using it to learn new things. But it just so happened that we were already enrolled in a dog training class, advertising positive reinforcement and clicker training (which was why I chose it in the first place), scheduled to start some weeks later. Perfect! I contacted the trainer and told her about our new problem, Monster's behavior towards other dogs. I wanted to make sure both that we were still welcome, and that we could get some help. No problem, come on over, seen it before, know just what to do. Well then, soon our problems would be over!

Oh no!

At this class, I was told first of all I needed to immediately neuter my dog. Now, neutering has no guaranteed effect on behavior. And even if you do see a change, it's not necessarily going to be for the better. I was not willing to experiment and hope for the best, which I made clear. (Every subsequent meeting for the class I was again told I needed to neuter my dog, to my annoyance.)

Secondly, I was told something very familiar: I needed to become the boss of my dog. In all things he was to be behind/below me. If we were walking, he must walk behind or beside me. If I was eating, he mustn't eat until I'd finished. You're starting to recognise this too, right? Yeah, this is old school alpha theory...

But what did I know? As I said I didn't know much about the base theories of positive reinforcement training. And we were going to get help!

Next thing actually did seem new to me, so it had to be clickery stuff: when Monster lunged at other dogs, I should let him. With positive reinforcement you never give attention to incorrect behaviors, so when my dog was showing aggression I should just stand there holding the leash and ignore him.

Oh, you're gonna ignore me, you say?

The explanation actually isn't wrong, but the application is horrible. Acting out aggression is self rewarding, meaning you can't ignore it away. Every time your dog lunges at another dog, he becomes more likely to do it again. You can interrupt bad behavior without punishment, which is what you should do.

And do you have any idea what it feels like to have an 80 pound (he was younger then) Cane Corso repeatedly throw himself at another dog while you're holding the leash? He wasn't just barking and growling, he was throwing himself off the ground, being stopped by the leash in mid-air. He and I both were injured, repeatedly.

And how does this weekly experience help him relate better to other dogs?

Not to mention what it did to the other dogs in the class! For hours they had to perform tricks and behave, while a few feet away a complete maniac five times their size was screaming he was going to get them... I'm sure they won't remember that.

It seems insane now that I'm writing this. In fact, you're probably thinking I'm a complete moron for continuing to go there. I did actually find it questionable at the time, but they could point to things showing them that the method was working. I wanted to believe them (again, with an aggressive dog you become desperate to find help), and they were the experts after all...

I think I'm staying home today, Mom...

So off I went, week after week, putting my dog through hell. Helping him, you know. And from time to time he'd stop attacking, lie down, even roll over on his back. I was told this meant he was beginning to get better. When he acted like that he was starting to behave normally.

Of course it was normal behavior! He was fighting for his life, surrounded by enemies, in absolute mortal terror. You'd collapse too. Sooner or later, you too would try to surrender. But it. Just. Wouldn't. Stop.

I hope you're not surprised when I tell you he kept getting worse...

After a couple of months the class was over. (The above was not the only strange techniques we were taught, but I can't handle dragging the rest up right now. Letting Monster aggress freely was by far the worst, and what I regret the most.) This finally woke me up from the dream that they were going to help - the class was over and Monster was not better.

Is it safe to come out now?

Well, now I'd tried that newfangled clicker nonsense! Clearly, it was ridiculous. But no more! Oh no, time to get some real help!

Positive reinforcement hadn't worked - in fact it had been downright idiotic. So, I contacted the strictest (please note, this does not mean the most violent) old school dog trainer I'd ever heard of, packed Monster into the car, and drove off to get some  real help...

You whaaat!?

Now, I write this post for several reasons. One is that writing it down and making it public is a bit of a relief somehow. Another is that I believe in admitting my mistakes, it's too easy to hide from bad decisions. Third, I think it's a fair illustration of how most aggressive behavior isn't built in one day, and it often is a cumulative problem for the dog in question. And finally:

I hope my blog can help someone else struggling with their aggressive dog. And I hope you read this post in particular, because it isn't a jungle out there, it's an insane asylum. You need to find a good trainer. Make sure you have some understanding of the underlying theories. Be clear on how you expect to be helped. Do your research. Before writing this post I looked around at some sites advertising dog training with "positive methods", "clicker methods", "positive reinforcement", and so on, many specifically mentioning training aggressive dogs (or "reactive"). They're lying to you. Or at least they're very wrong. Don't be a sucker like me, so desperate to have someone offer a cure you'll buy the snake oil...

And if you can't find a good trainer, a bad trainer is not the next best thing. You can learn on your own, the information is out there.

I know I keep telling you she's an idiot, but this part's actually not wrong.

You can train in the old school way using techniques from the positive reinforcement methods, like clickers. At a glance, I'd say this is what most trainers are offering. It's not what you want, it's not what you need, it's not going to help you! And if you're unlucky, it may really harm you...

Why Go Hard?

I brought my puppy home in the usual way - filled with grandiose plans for our future! I grew up with a fairly old school view of how to handle dogs. Dog is wolf, wolf is pack animal, pack is hierarchy = put dog on bottom of family pack hierarchy. Simple, right?

Weeeeell, if you think about it some things start to look a bit weak though. Especially about the clear hierarchical structure of a natural wolf pack, and how that translates to walking first, eating first, and so on. Wolves aren't stupid, and the whole point of living in a pack structure is to benefit from each other. So, is it somehow the case that there are some kinds of super wolves out there, that are the best at everything and are born leaders? Or is it the case that even if the alpha is a worse tracker than the omega (or beta, or gamma, or...), the alpha must walk first - or lose status and risk a coup? It seems to me, that the reasonable thing to do is let the one who's best at tracking walk in front. But if he's also small and can't bring down anything bigger than a rabbit, you might want to switch who's walking first once you catch up to the buffalo he so masterfully tracked. Perhaps they should have a quick fight about it though, just to make sure everyone knows who's leading the pack...

Woohoo, I'm first!

Alright, so it's not quite that simple, and perhaps not quite that stupid. But serious arguments have been made that the early research done on society and behavior in wolf packs, the observations which formed the base of old school thinking and which can be said to have penetrated our culture completely by now (go read a book about werewolves and the handsome alpha males who lead them!), was badly flawed. The studied wolves were in captivity, not in their natural habitat, and it follows that any displayed behavior may not have been natural in turn. Later studies of wild wolves in their natural habitat have shown different results.

Not to mention, dogs aren't wolves. They're. Not. Wolves. Do you actually believe that if you take in a wolf cub and raise it like a puppy, it will behave like a dog? It won't. Because dogs and wolves are not the same.

So why do people buy into it? I did, and I'm not sure I've completely abandoned every aspect of it yet. I think the main reason to believe in and use old school dominance ideas is the immediate result. You correct a dog displaying a bad behavior, and odds are he'll stop it right away. That's great!

Head in the sand is for dummies!

So why not use it and stick to it? Because you think of it as telling your dog "stop doing that", when what you're telling him is "if you do x something bad happens". You can't really be sure exactly what x is going to be for him. That's why trainers using correction emphasize timing so much - if your timing is off you're creating a bad association to the wrong thing, sometimes with very bad results.

Another reason, which Monster has shown me so very clearly, is that exposing your dog to discomfort makes him more used to discomfort. Next time you need to correct your dog you may find it requires a much stronger correction than before. Now, some trainers recommend you to go all out from the start. If you want to correct your dog, do it guns blazing - that way he won't gradually get used to it. But he will. You won't necessarily see it until he's reached the threshold, but once you're there what are you going to do? Many grit their teeth and allow themselves to make the correction even stronger (because it used to work, dammit!), pushing the next threshold crossing into the future. Dogs don't live that long, right?

Another risk you're taking is that corrections are likely to make your dog uncertain and passive. These can be seen as great things for the human (when the effects are moderate)! It means the dog is much less likely to make mischief, he'll stick to you and when not given a command he'll tend to go lie down. Makes life simple. But he's sticking to you because he has no confidence, and he's staying put because he's worried if he tries something he hasn't been told to, things will go badly for him... Nice for a comfy human, hell for an active dog.

*And as I'm writing this my Monster chose to help me illustrate this point with an example. He went and made a phone call, just for fun. This isn't a trick anyone's taught him, he came up with it himself. He'll walk over to the phone, push the handset off its cradle, and mash the buttons a few times with his paw. Then he'll listen, hoping someone picks up. He started doing it when he was young, and while I don't think it's a very good idea (he might scare or irritate the people he's calling, for example) I've never corrected him for it. I've moved the phone to make it harder for him to reach it, and I've made sure to be observant and stop him if he starts doing it anyway, but I've never told him off. When I moved into the more correction heavy methods of dealing with him, though, this behavior stopped completely. I had formed no negative association to the phone for him, but the general use of corrections made him passive and unwilling to volunteer behavior and experiment with his surroundings. Today was the first time he returned to it again, after I stopped the corrections a couple of months ago. It's very encouraging to see that he's bouncing back.

Sure, having your dog use the phone is impractical to say the least, but aren't you also a bit amazed at his ingenuity? Would you really like to miss out on your dog doing something equally amazing, just so you can cling to using corrections?

Correcting your dog for bad behavior also means he just won't like and trust you as much. I'm not saying your dog doesn't love you, I'm sure he does (sleep with one eye open). I'm just saying you're not just the greatest thing since cat leashes (seriously, you might want to lock your bedroom door), you're also a source of discomfort. No matter how "right" you do the correcting (it's not a punishment, its a consequence; your timing is impeccable; you never threaten, you just correct; you never lose your temper, etc), your dog is not an idiot - he knows you're the one causing the discomfort. He may not hate you for it (quick, look behind you!), but the whole point of correcting bad behavior is to create an association between the behavior and the discomfort. That association, although weaker, will form to the person doing the correcting as well. But I'm sure your dog's brain works differently. (run away!)

For me, however, the strongest argument against using corrections is the thought behind it. You want the dog to form a negative association, "doing that is unpleasant". But it's not likely his thoughts are going to be that clear, and some (or even all) of that association will form to the trigger to his behavior! Meaning, if you correct your dog for barking at strangers, he may stop doing it. But he'll like strangers a lot less, and once something pushes him over into behaving badly at strangers again (bad day, got yelled at for pushing a vase over, feeling a bit sick, unusually suspicious looking stranger, anything really) he may not just bark any more. After all, strangers make bad things happen to him...

In our case, I corrected Monster for his behavior towards dogs. I had a good trainer demonstrate the when and the how (I'd used mild corrections before that, like telling him off and grabbing him by his neck, but he had never so much as blinked at those), and it worked! I timed the correction perfectly, I made it unpleasant enough that he immediately responded to it, and our walks became blissfully peaceful... For a while. Soon I noticed Monster starting to get tense when another dog approached. Every sighting of dogs made him react earlier and stronger, until he snapped and started his earlier aggressive behavior again. Only much, much worse. Going outside became impossible, we had to go for walks in the middle of the night, or drive off to the remotest areas I could find. Getting Monster into the car meant first going out to scout the area so no dog would turn up while I was loading him.

Monster had stopped showing agggression towards other dogs when I corrected him. But the reason for his behavior, the thought in his head going something like "Other dogs are a threat, keep at distance!" was not only still there, it was reinforced! Clearly dogs were bad, bad things kept happening when they were around. So the pressure to act on his feelings built, and eventually he snapped.

Do you want your dog to hate and/or fear the triggers to his bad behavior?

Dogs are individuals, they respond differently to things, and they also show their responses differently. For lots of people the dominate and correct will work - or seem to be working depending on your viewpoint - perhaps for the dog's entire life. That doesn't mean it's right, it just means your brain likes patterns and causality, and humans form associations as well as dogs.

Why are you being so mean?

I'm not saying it doesn't work, I'm saying it doesn't work the way most people think it does.

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...