The Best Gundog Training Methods Are Those That Are Scientifically Proven to Work

Nowadays, most people visit the pharmacy when they need to buy medicine. Gone are the days where we visit African Witchdoctors or use Traditional Chinese Medicine to treat illnesses.

This is because modern medicines are more effective than traditional ones. They have to be trialled and proven to work before being released to the general public.

Happily, there is now an increasing use of dog training techniques which are also scientifically proven to work.

In this post, we show why traditional gundog training which uses punishment doesn’t work.

7 Side-Effects of Gundog Training Using Punishment

The use of punishment in training may initially stop an undesirable behaviour, but it is extremely likely to have side-effects. These side-effects will include:

1.) Increasing the dogs fear or anxiety about the situation in which it is used

e.g. a dog is fearful of other dogs in the park, get’s hit for growling. The dog becomes scared of going to the park.

2.) Decrease the dog’s ability to learn

e.g. a dog becomes excited when meeting people and jumps up at them. Handler activates electric shock-collar, the dog feels pain. The dog cannot think about anything other than the pain it is suffering from the electric current running through its neck.

3.) Associate other, coincidental events with a fear-provoking event

e.g. a dog’s dinner bowl is removed from him in order to ‘teach it who’s the boss’ because it growls whenever a child comes near. The dog starts to associate the presence of children as being the cause of its dinner being removed.

4.) Inhibit behaviour, but leave the underlying emotional response unchanged increasing the chance of future problems

e.g. a dog pulls on the lead and so a choke chain/slip lead/Halti is used in an attempt to ‘teach’ the dog not to pull. The underlying motivation of the dog to keep moving forwards is unchanged and the dog then grows stronger neck muscles and learns to pull harder to obtain forwards movement in future. As soon as the device is removed, the dog still pulls.

5.) Induce a new avoidance, or aggressive response

e.g. an unsteady dog runs-in on a retrieve before being sent, handler shouts loudly at the dog. The dog then avoids bringing the retrieve back to the handler for fear of further punishment.

6.) Cause confusion as to which behaviour is required

e.g. a dog does not come back when the recall whistle is blown. When it does eventually return to owner, it gets shouted at and whacked around the head. The dog has completely forgotten that the owner blew the whistle 5 minutes ago.

7.) Cause physical injury

e.g. a prong collar is used to ‘teach’ dog not to pull, the spikes embed themselves into the dog’s skin when it inevitably does pull.

These are all examples of why gundog training using punishment doesn’t work.