So far, this blog’s most popular post was about dogs “telling” us how they felt about sniffing and heeling. In that blog, dogs revealed their mood by how quickly they ran toward a food bowl in a judgment task. So when I saw the same approach being used to ask dogs how they feel about different training methods, I thought, I cannot pass this up! I owe it to you.

Before we get into how dogs feel about different training methods, let’s briefly cover what these different methods are. When someone trains a dog, they are trying to encourage the dog to reliably show more of some behavior (like sitting) or less of some behavior (like barking at the neighbors). In either case, changing the dog’s behavior can be accomplished with positive training methods, like giving the dog a treat when she sits or does not bark, or with aversive methods, like pushing her butt down into a sitting position or yelling at her when she barks.

In real life, people often use a mix of positive and aversive methods. Regardless, there are heated debates about which methods are best. Advocates of the positive approach have claimed that not only do dogs learn better, but positive methods are better for the human-animal bond and for the dog’s welfare.

However, most claims have been based on owner surveys instead of the dogs themselves, on special groups of dogs (like police dogs), and have only asked how dogs are affected during a training session. The current study is the first to look at how positive and aversive methods affect dogs both during training and afterward, providing a glimpse into the larger impact that training style has on a dog’s quality of life.

The authors studied nearly a hundred dogs from training schools in Portugal that used either primarily positive, primarily aversive, or a mixture of positive and aversive training methods. They watched the dogs during the training sessions to look for behavioral signs of comfort or fear. They measured hormones in the dogs’ saliva to understand how their physical stress responses differed between training styles. And, outside of training sessions, they “asked” the dogs how their moods differed by providing them with the judgment bias test of their optimism.

The authors considered the dogs’ behavior, hormones, and mood — acquiring a comprehensive sense of welfare that is often strived for in science but rarely achieved. And the results were clear: Dogs exposed to more positive training had better welfare by all measures. They behaved in less fearful ways during the training, their stress-related hormone levels were less elevated during training, and their mood long after training was better.

We rarely get such a comprehensive and straightforward view into how the choices we make about how to interact with our dogs impact their welfare in our care. As the authors themselves state, they don’t provide information on how effective each training approach is, but the effect on the dogs’ welfare is clear. Positive training methods are linked to happier dogs.

Curious to hear your reactions, thoughts and ideas — feel free to leave a comment below!

Learn more about the researchers

Ana Catarina Vieira de Castro, University of Porto, Portugal

Danielle Fuchs, University of Porto, Portugal & University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

Gabriela Munhoz Morello, University of Porto, Portugal & University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

Stefania Pastur, University of Porto, Portugal & University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy

Liliana de Sousa, University of Porto, Portugal

I Anna S. Olsson, University of Porto, Portugal

Article

Vieira de Castro AC, Fuchs D, Morello GM, Pastur S, de Sousa L, Olsson IAS. (2020) Does training method matter? Evidence for the negative impact of aversive-based methods on companion dog welfare. PLoS ONE, 15(12): e0225023. Link to article.