As a result of the “dog whisperer” phenomenon, there has been the coalescence of a few online trainers preaching a calm-submissive philosophy of dog training. They might not all use that terminology, but that is how I would describe it.
The essence of the approach is
- Dogs should never be allowed to do anything until they are calm first.
- Dogs shouldn’t, and you shouldn’t, do anything with them until you have given them permission.
- Even in play, it will never be something that the dog initiates, and the dog should be taught to stop play on a signal.
- Dogs should never walk ahead of the owner
- Every impulse is suppressed. Even a happy greeting is shut down.
No dog that does any kind of real work is trained this way… competition, hunting, search and rescue, police/ military, service dog, herding, etc. Forget about great off leash obedience.
The dogs are intimidated, backed down, berated, bullied, and punished into this state of affairs. Everything the dog naturally does is suppressed. Ears back. Appeasement body language. Fully intimidated. How should I describe the life of those dogs? In a psychological prison?
They will claim all the above is proper pack behavior. It isn’t. What pack are we talking about? No wolf lives a life like this, so please don’t use wolf pack behavior as a model… it doesn’t work that way
I wouldn’t do that to a dog. I don’t like zombies.
Plan accordingly.