Abstract

This essay delves into the genealogy of dog training, focusing particularly on companion or pet dog training, and its connection to domination and control in Western societies. It explores how various theories explaining dog domestication closely correlate with current dominant trends in training, specifically coercion and dominance-based methods versus positive reinforcement approaches. The essay contends that these diverse theories have all played a role in perpetuating a political structure of oppression and control over canine bodies and minds. Additionally, it examines the evolving landscape of contemporary dog training in response to significant shifts in the conceptualization of the world. Through a Foucauldian analysis, the paper reveals the intricate intersections of human-dog interactions, shedding light on the changing modalities of power in society. Ultimately, the essay argues that dog training deserves heightened attention in the realm of human-animal studies, as it not only reflects assumptions about human-animal relationships and the nature of dogs but also intertwines with dynamics of hierarchy and human supremacy projected onto canine bodies.

Introduction

As a recently graduated dog trainer, having the chance to attend a seminar given by ethologist Raymond Coppinger – the well-known specialist in the origins, evolution and behaviour of dogs –  seemed too good to be true. I flew from the East Coast to San Francisco to see him, sat in the front row and as soon as he began to speak, I feared that my marathon effort had been highly counterproductive. Coppinger – well aware that his audience consisted mostly of dog trainers – started by establishing the great difference that fuels rivalry between ethologists, animal behaviourists and dog trainers. Whilst the former are interested in answering what and why animals do what they do (e.g., why do dogs bark?), animal behaviourists and trainers are interested in what animals can do (e.g., how to make a dog stop barking?). Suddenly, dog training was tinged with an unsettling negative connotation, a form of dominance and control, which has been with me for the ten years that I have been both a dog trainer and pet guardian, and with which I have not yet been able to come to terms.

Animal training is a broad spectrum that ranges from the most extreme form of dominance to a humane practice that seeks to offer other-than-human animals (hereafter “animals”), more autonomy and control over their environments, which may seem contradictory given the fact that the lives of post-domestic animals are essentially characterised by a lack of dominion over their own bodies, desires, and free expression of their normal behavioural repertoire. 

In her book Genealogy of Obedience – a Foucauldian analysis of power¹ in dog training – Justyna Włodarczyk (2018) suggests there has been a great deal of scholarly interest in revealing the oppressive aspects of the training of wild animals in the entertainment industry, yet dog training – a far more common practice – has remained in the sphere of animal behaviour and cognition studies, and has not received the same kind of attention in the humanities and social sciences (with the exception of philosophers and dogs trainers themselves [Haraway, 2016 and Hearne, 1995]).

To the outsider, dog training may seem a trivial subject, but it deserves a greater presence in human-animal studies for a myriad of equally important reasons. On the one hand, thinking about dog training is not just about what teaching techniques are used, which ones work better or worse and why – as has been the scientific trend to date. It is also a fertile ground for thinking about why people adhere to one method more than another (Włodarczyk, 2018), and how these techniques are justified; their justifications for why and how dogs should be trained not only reveal underlying assumptions about human-animal relationships and the nature of dogs (Charles, 2019), but also intersect with the dynamics of hierarchy and dominance that we humans have over our own species, and how these are projected onto canine bodies (McHugh, 2004). Put another way, looking closely at the entanglements of human interactions with their dogs and the complexities of the training relationship (be it the trainer-dog pair or the trainer-guardian-pet triad) allows us to analyse the changing modalities of power in society (Włodarczyk, 2018). On the other hand, as Haraway (2016) argues, dogs are not a pretext for other subjects, nor are they here only to think with; they are here to live with Dogs are important in their own right and therefore deserve to be at the centre of the human activities in which they are inescapably involved.

This essay aims to explore the genealogy of dog training – with a particular interest in the training of companion or pet dogs – and its relationship to domination and control in so-called Western societies. It also examines how the various theories that attempt to explain the domestication of the dog are closely related to the currently dominant lines of training – in particular, the schools based on coercion and dominance theory and those based on positive reinforcement – and how they have all, in one way or another, contributed to the maintenance of a political structure of oppression and control over canine bodies and minds. Finally, this essay explores how contemporary dog training has changed (or is changing) in response to major shifts in the conceptualisation of the world (Włodarczyk, 2018)².

What is dog training?

According to the Oxford Dictionary of English (n.d.), training is defined as “the process of learning the skills that you need to do a job.” In the same vein, other dictionaries add a few more activities for which skill acquisition might be needed, such as art, sport, or profession (Merriam-Webster, n.d.; Cambridge Dictionary, n.d.; Royal Spanish Academy, n.d.). By contrast, the term education – more commonly used with humans – is defined as the process of learning to improve knowledge and develop skills, but not dependent to anything specific (Oxford Dictionary of English, n.d.; Merriam-Webster, n.d.; Cambridge Dictionary, n.d.). The word “training,” then, calls attention to a servile practice per se. As Włodarczyk (2018) notes, it is not surprising that in Foucault’s Discipline and Punishment, the word training is used “when discussing the production of human docile bodies in the disciplinary regime” (p. 10). Following the author’s idea, “training is born out of improvements in the efficiency (and intensity) of the functioning of power” over others, in this case, the power and control over canine bodies and minds (p. 10). Dogs, then, as proposed by Milligan (2017) are not taught skills just to thrive as dogs, they are trained to fulfil a purpose and serve a human need, and that has remained more or less static over time, irrespective of the training methods applied. 

As a counterfactual point, even though the mainstream expression for the practice of teaching dogs is training, Włodarczyk (2018, p. 6) cautions that the term is a “signifier that is attached to changing signifieds,” and the latter construct narratives that are not immutable. The stories these meanings tell are changeable, as are the modalities of power from which they emerge. In other words, for me, the term “training” cannot be conceived solely as the embodiment of sovereign power over canine bodies, since it is its very mutable nature that paves the way for improvement and resignification of an undoubtedly loaded term. Whilst Włodarczyk’s argument is valid, it should be noted that today many trainers, aware of the problematic nature of the term, are increasingly replacing its use with words such as dog education, life skills, or simply behaviour modification (See Ramirez, 1999 and Sdao).

As a recent discussion between IAABC-Accredited Dog Trainers showed, the response to this discursive analysis raises further questions: What do dog trainers owe themselves more? To the improvement of promotion and teaching, or to the political act of demarcating ethical positions and scopes that stop the resignification of terms and their hostage-taking by trainers who make dog training a practice of oppressive power, but disguise it with discourses of “false kindness” in order to sell themselves in an increasingly competitive market, taking advantage of the poor general knowledge of companion animal caregivers?³

Why dog training?

Asking such a question may seem naïve. After all, dogs have been around or have been amidst humans for 32,000 years or more (Ha & Campion, 2019), making it difficult not to fall back on the assumption that some kind of training had to exist for such an  interspecies relationship to take place. The mystery, however, of who trained whom remains the subject of a highly competitive debate – each theory about the origins of the domestic dog has considerable evidence in its favour – and a conflicting one – each hypothesis accounts for ontologies and ideologies of power that underlie the attitudes humans have toward dogs. Thus, domestication and dog training are intimately entangled. 

How dogs originated from a shared ancestor with wolves is unclear, and although currently there is consensus that “all domesticated dogs descended from a common ancestor of the grey wolf” (Ha & Campion, 2019: 8), there are two predominant theories pertaining to how wolves became dogs (Serpell, 2021): the “control model” and the “self-domestication model.” Each of these merits a closer look because of their impact on dog training.

As Hurn (2012) notes, “animal domestication has been regarded by many scholars as an example of human control over animals who constitute objects, possessions and commodities” (p 58). Sometimes known as the “control model” (Hurn, 2012), or the “pet keeping” or “cross-species” adoption hypothesis, “this narrative draws heavily on anthropological observations of pet keeping amongst recent hunter-gatherers, and postulates that Palaeolithic peoples were similarly inclined to capture, adopt and rear infant mammals, such as wolf pups, and that this habitual human nurturing behaviour ultimately provided the basis for the evolution of a cooperative social system involving both species” (Serpell, 2021, p. 1). This model of domestication offered humans a new sense of power for their societies; they were no longer at the mercy of the harshness of nature, and with that change came a sense of entitlement over the animals and a position of dominance based on control (Hurn, 2012, p.58).

Geographer Yi-Fu Tuan (1984) states that in a world where humans have conquered nature, “the dream that ferocious animals, on the approach of man, would kneel in docility and thus be a fit companion may be amongst the most vainglorious of human aspirations” (p. 85). If in the beginning the wolf proto-dog had to be restrained, tamed, and trained to stay in human settlements and go hunting with humans, without losing focus on anything more attractive in the environment, and then to hunt, grab, and kill-bite (Coppinger & Coppinger, 2001), while resisting the temptation to dissect the kill, the modern domestic dog has had to learn a few more things to leave behind its ancestral wolf likeness, for example their gluttony, sexual promiscuity, olfactory preoccupations, toilet habits, and occasional naked hostility to strangers and visitors – a whole repertoire of behaviours that are normal to them (Serpell, 2008). The modern pet dog, “if it is to be accepted in a well-run household, must learn to be immobile – to be as unobtrusive as a piece of furniture”; a well-trained dog will sit immediately when commanded, will eat only when commanded, and will obey the command “down” and remain in that position until released by his master (Tuan, 1984, p. 107). To do otherwise not only makes the dog disloyal and insubordinate, it is a regression to his wolf nature, and his master must make it clear to him who is in charge by forcing him into submission (Serpell, 2008). After all, it is millions of years of a history of control and obedience that are at stake.

An interesting aspect of the “control” model is that it fits impeccably into the 19th century views of dog training, and later finds a perfect correspondence in the discredited “dominance theory” (see Schenkel, 1967; and Mech, 2008), which was not only the basis of 20th century dog training, but also operates in some contemporary currents to present.

Conversely, as a result of the reflexive turn in the social sciences and new observations of the reality of human-animal interactions in contemporary domestic contexts, many scholars have proposed different alternatives to the term domestication that refers to a human-made model, alternatives where animals are seen as active agents in the process of allying with humans, giving rise to a history of mutual attraction between complementary species (Hurn, 2012). Along this same line, the other narrative regarding the domestication of the wolf, and that is predominant in recent literature, is what Hurn (2012) calls the “self-domestication” model, also known as the “commensal scavenger” or “garbage dump” hypothesis (see Lorenz, 2018; Coppinger & Coppinger, 2001; Ha & Campion, 2019; Serpell, 2021), which posits that:

“Wolves domesticated themselves by invading ancient human settlements in search of animal remains and other edible waste discarded by hunter-gatherers. Over time, tolerance by humans gave a selective advantage to the bolder, less fearful wolves, which then diverged from the ancestral population as they adapted to the new scavenging niche. At some point in the process, humans also began to recognize the benefits of living with resident, semi-domestic wolves, either as guards or as hunting partners thereby cementing the relationship.”
— Serpell, 2021, p. 1

If the “pet keeping” hypothesis alludes to a sense of human power and dominance over the dog, the “self-domestication” model assumes the human-canine relationship as one of symbiosis as opposed to domination (see Serpell, 2021; Budiansky, 2001; Hurn, 2012). 

This idea that the relationship between humans and domesticated animals, such as dogs, was born out of a mutual attraction between two species that benefit from interaction outweighing the costs, has been referred to by many scholars as a “domesticated animal contract” (Hurn, 2012). As Armstrong suggests, describing this relationship as contractual “differs fundamentally from a black-and-white worldview of either a relationship of trust or one of domination,” as stated by authors like Tim Ingold (2010, p. 177). Instead, “the notions of trust and reciprocity are at the core of the social contract,” where both humans and animals are active agents engaged in mutual decision-making, a co-creation of behaviour, called “mutual becoming” (Birke et al., 2004, cited by Armstrong, 2010, p. 179), in which all the beings involved shape their behaviour from the bilateral social interactions they sustain, giving rise to a fundamental reciprocity (Armstrong, 2010). Domestication, then, does not constitute an example of human control (domination) over animals who are seen as essentialist objects, neither fixed nor malleable; it is a process of intra-action and reciprocity between living beings with agentive powers (Armstrong, 2010).

With this in mind, could dog training also be conceived as a contractual relationship? As the world-renowned animal trainer Ken Ramirez (1999) argues, simply put, training is teaching; humans teach animals how to live in their new environments; animals look to us for many of their needs, and humans must learn how to provide them. Training, therefore, involves shared experiences – a “mutual becoming” – and goals between the trainer and the animal. However, for this “mutual becoming” in the training experience to take place, Ramirez  stresses that the trainer must know why they are  training, and the most important reasons for training are always those that provide a direct benefit to the trained animal, such as physical exercise, mental stimulation, and cooperative behaviour.

It should be noted that Ramirez is part of a contemporary training movement that places the needs of the animal at the heart of its work. This is a trend that is gaining more and more followers within the so-called Western societies and replaces the concept of dominance with an experience of reciprocity between species. However, human control, whilst still governing all aspects of canine life, remains a residue that is difficult to ignore.

As a counter-argument to the idea of the human-animal relationship in contractual terms, Claire Palmer (1997) points out that the “key aspects of the social contract and the domesticated animal contract are fundamentally different: the animal contract could not be said to be created by equal individuals; it is not clearly advantageous to all animals and it is dependent either on the controversial idea of tacit consent or on an extremely abstract kind of hypothetical contract,” so that it is impossible to know whether animals would choose to enter into this contract if they had the option to do so (p. 421). In this respect, the concept of consent has also been discussed and tried to be put into practice in contemporary positive reinforcement-based dog training, but consent can only be given within a normative framework previously established by humans. Dogs cannot choose whether they want to be trained in the first place; only once they are inside the training experience they can choose whether to participate or not, a choice that, moreover, is always limited by meticulous environmental management that, ideally, leads them to choose what is preferable to humans.

Another reason the assumption of the human-dog relationship as one of symbiosis and as a social contract between species is arguable is that the term symbiosis itself is not a finished concept and therefore raises certain questions: Is the symbiotic relationship between humans and dogs really mutualism? For ecologists, symbiotic relationships can be defined in four basic forms: commensalism, mutualism, parasitism, and amensalism (Coppinger and Coppinger, 2001)⁴. Although mutualism – the idea of mutual benefit for both the parties involved – has been assumed as the kind of relationship that exist between dogs and people, the Coppingers (2001) discuss that the relationship is often not in the dogs’ best interests, and at other times, the presence of dogs is also of no benefit to humans. There are millions of dogs around the world scavenging the dumps of the villages in which they live or roam. Here the relationship is more one of commensalism, where dogs benefit from proximity to humans, whilst people get little or no benefit from the dogs at all.

As Milligan (2017) notes, whichever narrative we buy into – whether it is the “control” or the “self-domestication” model – “our relationship to contemporary dogs may well emerge out of a large number of historical injustices and out of an initial assertion of dominance over creatures whose capacity to resist was no match for our devious human wiles” (p. 4). Although we may tell ourselves that we train dogs in their best interests, the reality is that we train them to fit into special niches within our world in ways that are convenient, amusing, or functional for us (Milligan, 2017). One may say, then, that we owe a historical debt to dogs. Can dog training serve as a vehicle to repay it?

A brief genealogy of dog training

The birth of dominance

Digging into the history of dog training is a difficult undertaking. Although there are no ancient training manuals, we know that by the Roman period, “humans already knew that early training was very important in the rearing of a useful animal” (Clutton-Brock, 2008, p.18). Indeed, between 127 and 116 B.P., the Roman farmer Marcus Varro “recorded tips on training and raising puppies to be used for herding” (Burch & Bailey, 1999, p.11). The evidence further suggests that in 55 B.P., “Roman armies marched into the British countryside accompanied by their drover’s dogs” (Burch & Bailey, 1999. p.11).

Burch and Bailey point out that “even though instinct played a large role in the ability of these early working dogs, there is no doubt that they had some training,” and that hunters, shepherds, and farmers who needed the assistance of these animals to carry out their activities became the first dog trainers simply because they had to (p. 11).  

Between the 1700s and 1800s the first dog exhibitions appeared in Britain. These were informal competitions of sporting breeds and were held at county fairs and taverns, which increased their popularity amongst the townsfolk, spreading also in the United States of America (Burch & Bailey, 1999; Gray, 2018). Training was conceived as the act of breaking a dog, and its practice was rare, so it was not until the second half of the 19th century that pet dog training truly gained momentum (Włodarczyk, 2018). This coincides with the period when scientists like Ivan Pavlov, Edward Lee Thorndike, and John B. Watson were discovering the principles that laid the foundations from which modern theories of behaviour and learning emerged in the 20th century, such as B. F. Skinner’s radical behaviourism.

In the 1850s, organised dog training arose both in Britain and the United States. The first dog events were sporting competitions involving only hunting breeds, but the popular interest generated by the practice of dog training soon spread to the scope of pet dogs (Burch & Bailey, 1999; Gray 2018). As Ritvo (1987) suggests, in this century – as it is now – some pets really were conceived as part of the human families. However, at the other end of the affective scale, the relationships between some working animals – such as dogs and horses – and their owners strongly resembled the relationships between some human servants and their employers (Ritvo, cited by Greene, 2002). 

This dichotomy was a symptom of Victorian concern with social dominance and revealed anxieties related not only to species divide, but also racial, class, and gender differences. Animals, and dog training as a corollary, became a field where social status, discipline, and empire could be contested and resolved (Ritvo, 1987, as cited in Greene, 2002; Włodarczyk, 2018). 

On the one hand, people were attempting to install dog training as a respectable craft associated with the ascendant white bourgeoisie, and to obtain such position the practice of teaching pet dogs “tricks” that mimicked human behaviours was imbued with the rhetoric of a civilising endeavour (Włodarczyk, 2018). In this sense, the power relations that formed the social fabric of this era transcended into dog training. Drawing on Foucauldian concepts, Włodarczyk (2018) notes that this century was something of a transitional period in the training of animals from modes of sovereign power to disciplinary power, giving rise to social power. The Victorian ideology of kindness and gentleness was not so much concerned with methods; in fact, physical punishment was commonly applied, but it was to be used sparingly and not in the heat of the moment, since there was a perceived link between cruelty to animals and corruption of one’s character (Charles, 2019). This move away from physical punishment as a way of exercising power was not so much about a more civilised modern society as it was about a new expression of power of the white man over the uncivilised and over animal bodies. The modality of social power was characterised by “operating on the soul of the individual,” so that the public had to be convinced that the beneficial character of the process of training a pet dog was to be found in the fact that training elevated the animal subject, endowing him with certain quasi-human capacities, such as intelligence and loyalty, improving his status within the hierarchy of creation (Włodarczyk, 2018). It should be noted that dog intelligence in the 19th century was commonly described with the concept of sagacity; the sagacious dog was the one that demonstrated obedient subordination to his master, thus, according to Ritvo (1987), sagacity served to reinforce the dominance of humans over animals (Ritvo, as cited in Włodarczyk, 2018).

At the same time, dogs and their training were used as an expression of social division. While in Britain the pets of the poor functioned as scapegoats and were accused of behaving as badly as the people who had set them free (Ritvo 1987, cited by Włodarczyk, 2018, p. 11), in the United States the training of hunting dogs was codified as an upper-class white male activity, which went hand in hand with the restrictions on dog ownership by slaves in the South and the association of African Americans with certain types of dogs that served to stigmatise both humans and dogs (Włodarczyk, 2018).

In the early years of the 20th century, dog training was built on a disciplinary modality of power that, to some extent, is still very much present in some currents of contemporary training to this day. Dog training was strongly linked to working dogs – particularly the military, police, and guide dogs for the blind – and to the profession of the male trainer. As Włodarczyk (2018) suggests, this was a period in which training became a tool for the redefinition of masculinity and an allegory of man’s conquest of nature: the dog, understood as a domestic wolf, needed to be physically subjugated in a scene that represented the trainer’s courage and bravery in the dangerous undertaking of dominating and taming the wild beast (Charles, 2020). 

That said, an interesting aspect of this period is that whilst in Europe most of the trainers were military or police men – amongst whom Konrad Most was the most prominent figure – dog training and its conceptual approach of human domination and dog submission became popular in the United States thanks to two female disciples: Helene Whitehouse Walker and Blanche Saunders, who were instrumental in the birth of pet dog obedience competitions (Burch & Bailey, 1999; Gray, 2018; Włodarczyk, 2018).

In the second half of the century, the training methods previously developed for working dogs filtered into the world of pet dog training, where governmentality became increasingly important as the dog population in urban areas grew (Charles, 2020). This is allied to the greater prevalence of the “dominance theory” developed in the 1930s by Rudolph Schenkel’s classic wolf behaviour study, which imposed the concept of the “alpha wolf” (Mech, 2008; Despret 2018). Given that in the 1950s and 1960s, many people in the dog training field continued to view a dog as a domesticated wolf, trainers fell into the idea that in order to train a dog it was necessary to assume the position of the alpha, including the use of “pack rules” to reinforce a dominant position over dogs (Eaton, 2008). Now, whilst disciplinary power and methods of domination, repression and physical punishment remained highly popular in training schools and in the homes of the general public – especially with the latter dissemination of dominance theory in the 1960s by wolf specialist David Mech and Bill Koehler’s coercive training methods – a new category of training based on the sciences of dog behaviour and animal learning also emerged (Burch & Bailey, 1999; Eaton, 2008; Gray, 2018; Despret 2018).

As early as the 1980s, the scientific understanding of animal learning became a central element of dog training, and trainers began to embrace the principles of Skinner’s radical behaviourism widely (Włodarczyk, 2018; Charles, 2020). Veterinary behaviourist Ian Dunbar arrived on the British dog training scene by teaching seminars in which he explained operant terminology and how specific behavioural concepts related to dog behaviour problems (Burch & Bailey, 1999). Dunbar developed a positive training method using food rewards to lure dogs into different behaviours, which was popularised through his television show Dogs with Dunbar (Burch & Bailey, 1999; Gray, 2018). At the same time, in the United States, the scientist and marine mammal trainer Karen Pryor published her book Don’t Shoot the Dog, in which she translated the principles of operant conditioning – with particular emphasis on the use of positive reinforcement – and introduced the method of clicker training to the general public, radically changing the world of dog training (Pryor, 1999; Burch & Bailey, 1999; Ramirez, 1999; Gray, 2018). Ironically, Skinner’s behaviourism – which had been criticised as mechanistic because it conceived of the subject as a passive recipient, and as operationalist because it was an ideology in the service of power that conceived of psychology as a natural, empirical science that sought to generate knowledge free of subjectivist bias (Donaldson, 2005) – ultimately provided a technology that made it possible to conceptualise training without pain and punishment, and to redefine the practice not as a way of dominating a dog, but as a process of building a human-dog relationship, which was much more in line with the ethical concerns of post-war society and the so-called “animal turn”⁵ (Włodarczyk, 2018; Charles, 2020).

The revival of dominance and the birth of dependence and affective control

From the last decades of the 20th century to the present day, trends in dog training have become more ambiguous, as well as the conceptualisations and social expectations of dogs that these embody. On the one hand, a growing scientific interest arose from trainers in understanding the specificities of canine behaviour, the way dogs communicate (see Rugaas, 2006), and the use of the least intrusive, minimally aversive strategies to teach them (see Pryor, 1999,; Donaldson, 2005, and Ramirez, 1999) – a new ethic that considers first and foremost the welfare of the dog, its individual motivations, and emotions. On the other hand, although we know much more than previous generations of trainers about the behaviours, needs, sensitivities, emotional and cognitive capacities, and even moral lives of dogs (see Bekoff, 2009), old trends put up resistance. So, as positive reinforcement academies for professional dog trainers and training schools for pet owners and their dogs proliferated in Europe and the United States, so too did television programmes featuring trainers such as Cesar Millan, who seemed to have uncanny abilities to solve common canine behavioural problems. Paradoxically, these two dominant currents in the world of contemporary dog training could not be more irreconcilable, yet it is worth asking whether the two are really two sides of the same coin.

What is problematic about these inconsistencies is not just the resurgence of the updated “dominance” theory – which was discredited by David Mech, one of its proponents, in 2000 – nor the use of punishment and force as a way to subdue the dog, but the speed and scale in which the average dog owner adhered to these narratives. In her book, The Culture Clash, trainer Jean Donaldson (2005) attributes the low acceptance of realistic interpretations of dog behaviour to anthropomorphism: 

“We want (dogs) to be smart, morally ‘good.’ Many cynics see dogs as superior to people in their loyalty and trustworthiness. By contrast, the behaviorist model, however superior, hasn’t caught on in the mainstream because it seems to reduce dogs to input-output machines. Our fear is that if we accept this viewpoint, we strip dogs of their status as honorary humans”
(p.10).

Whilst a valid point, one might refute that the success of the ideas Millan touts is that they fit all too well with our sense of human dominion. As Fudge (2008) suggests, the subordination of dogs provides us psychological security in an insecure world; this animal reassures us that, whatever happens outside the home, inside our homes we humans are the absolute masters of our own domains.

Nevertheless, is this sense of dominance really outside the mainstream of positive reinforcement training? Milligan (2007) argues that, whilst this model has genuinely displaced forms of physical punishment, it is a softening of the exercises of power in that dogs are now bribed with the delivery of treats contingent on the trainer’s requests or the owner’s wishes; even if it looks better, positive reinforcement-based training has encouraged a level of self-depiction about the exercise of power. As mentioned above, changes in the modality of power within dog training should be read as an increase in efficiency of the functioning of power, rather than a humanitarian feature of society. In this sense, Włodarczyk (2018) discusses that training based on positive reinforcement implies a shift away from disciplinary and dominant control, not a total move away from control but toward a new type of control, which she terms affective control. In other words, it is a technology of “feeling power,” a fantasy of mutual human-canine interspecies love and devotion, that is not only an expression of the guardian’s love, but an effort to influence the dog’s affections (Włodarczyk, 2018). Within this control model, dogs, which are already affectionate by nature, can even be trained to provide affection in response to a verbal cue (Hart, 2008). Consequently, there is something about the phenomenon of humans’ affection for their pets and the need for their retribution that remains thoroughly permeated with a vaguely humiliating dominance, which is not always separable from affection (Tuan, 1984; Milligan, 2017).

The future of dog training

As we have seen previously, dog training has undergone major transformations, although they cannot be read in a linear or progressive way. Wlodarczyk (2018) argues that in the final decades of the 20th century, dog training has started to “experience what is known in the academy as the ´animal turn´: an ethically-motivated concern with animal alterity” (p. 23). In the process, dog training has moved away from a focus on teaching civic values for the benefit of humans but has put the dogs’ desires and satisfaction at its heart. Consequently, this training involves not so much a transformation of the dog as a transformation of their human (Wlodarczyk, 2018, Charles, 2020). Recently, it has been a proliferation of activities – such as puppy socialisation classes, life skills training, fear-free cooperative handling, and canine nose work– in which the human serves more as a mediator, and who is sometimes forced, at last, to set aside their expectations and follow their dog’s wishes (Sdao, 2012; Wlodarczyk, 2018). As Haraway (2016) points out, training is no longer a unidirectional process, but a bidirectional and intersubjective practice, in which both human and animal change, forming a new entity as a result of the training experience.

Conclusion

This essay has sought to explore the problematic aspects of the practice of dog training and its interconnection with human dominance and control over canine bodies and minds, even in those currents that have permanently abandoned the use of intimidation and coercion as a teaching method. As we have seen previously, training, and the modalities of power it embodies, has undergone multiple changes that cannot always be read in a linear or progressive manner. Indeed, no matter how many setbacks or evolutions dog training has undergone, it always seems to run into the same pitfall. While the aims and goals of human education have evolved according to the needs and aspirations of the political and economic structures of the sponsoring society, mutating from authoritarian educational systems to those that, Paulo Freire suggests, override social oppression and move toward a pedagogy of autonomy through the development of critical thinking in pupils, dog training always comes up against the issue of animal dependency as a stumbling block. As Milligan (2017) asserts, no matter how much we socialise or train dogs, no matter how positive or ethical the means we use to teach them, the point of training will never be to form socially equal creatures, nor to prepare them for a post-dependent state, as is the goal of human education. On the contrary, many highly trained dogs sometimes seem to have more difficulty making decisions if they are not previously validated by their trainers/guardians through a verbal cue or an edible reward. Training gives us the illusion that we are creating more autonomous dogs with greater control over the environment in which they operate, but that environment will always be subject to human rules and arrangements. Consequently, human dominance and control in dog training seems to be an inescapable problem.

Although changes are currently taking place in some dog training circles that seem to be going in the right direction, such as an “animal turn” in which the dog’s animality is no longer seen as something to be repressed, but a desirable quality (Włodarczyk, 2018), and in which concern for the dog’s desires and preferences, as an individual and as a species, is often placed above human needs, the training practice is still indebted to dogs, and dog trainers need to get this information across to pet guardians. It is worth asking whether this debt is due to the fact that the more “progressive” trainers have not been able to transmit this discourse effectively, or to a reluctance on the part of dog guardians who find in the human-dominant and dog-submissive vision a more appropriate tune with a prevailing ideology of the human psyche, which the training doctrine based on dominance and coercion has skilfully used to its advantage.

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Footnotes:

1. A Foucauldian analysis of power is an approach to understanding how power operates within society, based on the ideas of the French philosopher Michel Foucault. One of Foucault’s key ideas is disciplinary power, where power is exercised through surveillance and normalization, influencing behaviour and shaping individuals’ actions.
2. It should be noted that this paper will not discuss whether the human practice of keeping dogs as pets is morally acceptable or not, nor will it examine the various currents that defend the institution of pet keeping or those who advocate its abolition. Whilst it must be acknowledged that a serious discussion of dog training requires a thorough reflection on this ethical dilemma, that would be the subject of another essay.
3. Recognition for the contribution of Marisol Dacasa-De la Lanza, accredited-dog trainer by the International Association of Animal Behaviour Consultants (IAABC-ECA/IAABC-ADT).
4. For Coppinger and Coppinger (2001) the commensalistic symbiotic relationship refers to one that is good for one species but does nothing for the other. The mutualistic relationship is the symbiosis that benefits both species equally and is often assumed to be the relationship that currently exists between dogs and humans. Parasitic symbiosis defines the relationship between two coexisting species in which one organism obtains a benefit at the expense of the other. Finally, the amensalistic relationship is the coexistence in which one species harms another, often unknowingly and without benefiting itself (p. 26-28).
5. The “animal turn” in social sciences refers to a shift in academic inquiry that emphasizes the significance of animals and their roles in human societies, cultures, and environments. It emerged in response to a growing recognition of the importance of interspecies relationships and the ethical, cultural, and ecological dimensions involved in human-animal interactions.