Canine Behavior

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The most important reason why force-free training is important is that it helps to build confidence in your dog(s) and trust in your relationship with them. You will never be able to truly control your dog's behavior, so getting your dog to obey you will necessarily consist of you convincing them that they want to obey you. The first step to doing this is establishing trust with your dog.

Trust

Building a trusting relationship means proving to your dog that you would never do anything to harm them—physically, emotionally, or otherwise. Aversive training methods sometimes cause physical pain to dogs, but that really is not the issue—just as every force trainer will tell you, dogs typically have a high pain tolerance and some will not even be fazed by moderate levels of physical pain. The problem with force training is that it instills fear and anxiety in your dog. If you use punishment or negative reinforcement, you teach them—via aversive stimuli and/or deprivation of their needs—that they cannot be certain about the nature of your relationship with them. As a result, you will never have their trust, and they will never reliably listen to you unless they know something is in it for them. If you do establish a strong, trusting bond with your dog, they will know that listening to you will benefit them in the long run, and even if there is no immediate reward they will do what you ask of them.

Confidence

Another major reason to use force-free training is to build confidence in your dog. A confident dog will be comfortable with a variety of tasks in a variety of situations, and helping your dog build confidence by rewarding them for handling new situations will also help them learn to trust you. Teaching your dog to be confident involves providing encouragement and reinforcement in new situations, especially when your dog is unsure how they feel about the situation. Force training typically involves punishing the dog for exhibiting stress-related behaviors like barking and lunging in situations they are not comfortable with (meeting new dogs, people, etc.) and by using aversive stimuli in these situations you make it even more scary and stressful for the dog, resulting in lower confidence. Continuously doing this might reduce the frequency of those undesired behaviors, but it will not reduce the anxiety that is causing them, and it will ultimately result in creating an extreme fear of those situations. The biggest danger is that a naive dog owner utilizing a force trainer will be convinced that their dog has been trained and is ready to meet new canine friends, bring their dog to the dog park, and have a traumatic experience when their dog becomes overwhelmed with fear and attacks the other dogs (or people) at the park.