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There a couple main things that stood out to me.
First: attitude. The dog is miserable and helpless during this video. There are clear side effects from poor ecollar use. Laughing at and vilifying the dog for a poor training plan hits home for me because I used to “laugh off” or justify side effects caused by my prior training.
Second: she is stimming the dog for an emotional response rather than disobedience. The dead dog rule comes to mind. FSDT, LIMA, and seeking to find a plan that would cause the least amount of side effects would teach the dog a behavior to do instead. Creating impulse control through true obedience training lays to groundwork for true perception change from the dog. If she is not able to teach the dog due to time constraints or ability she could also do counter conditioning or desensitization. Subduing a natural behavior in a strong tempered dog, who is going to be placed in a home, is (in my experience) unethical and a common practice.
Does it “work”? Sometimes….but at what cost? This is a results based industry…so it doesn’t always matter how the results were achieved, or how the animal felt while they were going through the process. When plans like these fail, it leaves dogs and people hanging out to dry.
Sometimes with shelter dogs or high risk cases flooding is needed and there isn’t time for counter conditioning but flooding should result in the dog being intrinsically rewarded not subdued. Somewhere there is a great video of @Mike working with a Rottweiler doing some flooding… I couldn’t find it, maybe he will post it. At the bottom is a link of a post from Mike posted about punishment for emotions VS. teaching predictable obedience or counter conditioning or desensitization.
One rule I have for myself and clients is: we never punish aggression (or any emotional response). We teach a dog how to obey in spite of their emotions, setting up the training plan for success as streamlined as possible. If a dog is holding a command and growling at the same time they are praised! It takes great effort to do a contrary behavior. The dog does not think it’s being praised for growling. They know they are holding the command even though they are feeling strong inclinations to do otherwise. Soon, the dog realizes that they don’t have to feel that way and their emotions change. That is the beauty (in my opinion) of freeing a dog from the fear they once felt. This is a simple answer to a video that has lots of things that could be discussed….and I’m sure I could have worded it better, but I hope it makes some sense. These two points stood out to me because they were the main motivations for changing the way I did things. Thanks for asking my to share my thoughts. 💜🐾
