Can you make your dog fearful by correcting them?
The short version: NO! Correction does not cause fear, and can actually be a powerful tool for reducing inappropriate responses, and allow a dog to become more confident by breaking habits that grow out of uncertainty or fearfulness.
The longer version: I hear this one a ton, usually from people who aren’t dog trainers, or inexperienced trainers selling the idea that ‘correction = evil’.
Take the case of Millie (not her real name). Millie is a pretty standard puppy: a little rambunctious, a little bouncy, but a really good kid by all accounts. When she was a puppy, Millie went through a mild fear period, something that’s totally normal and generally passes without incident. She would shy away from other dogs, and sometimes bark at them. The problem came in when this behavior didn’t go away; Millie’s fearfulness of other dogs stuck like glue, and became worse. Within a few months, whenever Millie saw another dog, no matter how far away, no matter what time of day, no matter what the other dog’s energy was, Millie would scream and lose her mind. Millie has no trauma, never gotten into a fight with another dog… She was just out of control and didn’t know how to settle herself down. Millie’s owners tried everything they could think of, hired a couple of trainers… Nothing worked, Millie screamed her head off at every dog she saw. Her owners were exhausted, exasperated, and embarrassed. They stopped taking Millie out of the house, finally begging the vet for sedatives so they could take her in the car to veterinary and grooming appointments because they couldn’t take it anymore, and because their prior attempts at training had all failed, they thought their dog was untrainable and something was wrong with her. The resentment grew, and grew, and grew.
Finally, someone sent them my way. We started training, starting with proper redirections (‘don’t do that, do this instead’ cues) and leash manners, something no prior trainer had bothered with. Once she had the foundations down, we went into the world, and sure enough, we saw another dog, and Millie lost her marbles screaming her head off, surging on the leash, and kept screaming and pulling until long after the other dog was gone. There was nothing her owners could do to get her attention; you could wave the highest value treats in front of her, and it was like they didn’t even exist. Verbal cues fell on completely turned off ears, hand signals were invisible… All Millie could think of was the other dog.
Redirection is the first step. Unfortunately, it’s where a lot of people stop, because of the completely ridiculous stigmas around telling a dog ‘no’ in a meaningful way. When it fails, correction has to come into play.
‘Great, but what’s correction?’
Before we get into that, let’s clear up a few myths, and talk about what correction is not.
Correction is NOT punishment. While it is unpleasant, it’s NOT about retribution, anger, or ‘getting back at them’.
Correction is NOT physical. Excessive force is unnecessary, and can absolutely break trust… Or get you bit.
Correction is NOT dominance. If you still believe in ‘dominance’ or ‘alpha’ theory, we need to have a totally different talk.
Correction is NOT pain. Hurting your dog just makes you a jerk, go to therapy and sort yourself out.
Correction is exactly what it says it is: correcting a mistake. Your dog is allowed to make mistakes, same as you are. But your dog has to be able to learn from those mistakes, same as you do. If you went through all of school being allowed to say that 2+2=13, then how are you supposed to know that it’s wrong? Aren’t you going to be shocked when suddenly, someone tells you that it’s 4? And what a terribly confusing thing for you, to spend your entire life doing something totally wrong.
Back to Millie. Remember when she was a puppy, she started shying from other dogs? That behavior became a full-blown problem, really quickly. Her body was still responding like it did when she was in that fear period, a solid year later, she had no control over it. Millie wasn’t giving her owners a hard time, she was having a hard time. Think of a human having a panic attack: can they just stop having a panic attack? No, of course not. If it was that easy, they’d do it, and then no one would have panic attacks anymore. But when the nervous system is in the red zone, it’s not as simple as ‘stop doing that’, the body needs help breaking that panic response so it can get back to a neutral state. A splash of cold water, or a cold pack on the back of the neck, something to physically snap the body out of that totally freaked out state so it can start accepting input and responding normally again.
This is where corrections come in. When Millie started screaming and pulling, she got a light correction from a vibrating collar. The first time she felt that, her body’s panic response was interrupted by something totally new, and that bought her owner a window to get Millie’s attention to bring in that redirection we’d already taught her, and then reward Millie for refocusing off of the other dog and back to her owner. Instead of standing in the middle of the sidewalk having a colossal meltdown, Millie was focusing on her human, and allowing the other dog to leave without incident.
We practiced this until eventually, Millie didn’t need any help at all to refocus. We’d re-trained her body to see another dog and stay in that calm, green zone, instead of going into a full-on doggie panic attack. Once she was able to sit calmly and focus on her owner as another dog went by, we took it one step further: sit calmly with no input from the owner. When that was solid, Millie could move on to walking calmly by other dogs on her walks, and when she was ready and she met the right dogs, she started to make friends with them! What a change!
Millie went from a dog who would never see the outside of her house again without being sedated, to a calm and relaxed member of her community… Because of properly applied correction. She went from a screaming, shivering, lunging wreck who was terrified of every dog she saw, to a social, friendly dog who ended up making a ton of friends… Because of properly applied correction.
So no, my friends. Correction does not damage your dog’s trust, or make your dog fearful, or make dogs aggressive. It helps set boundaries, reset fried nervous systems, and communicate expectations. That isn’t to say that correction can’t be misused; any training tool or method can be abusive in the wrong hands. Even a bag of dog treats becomes abusive when the dog is fed empty calories right into obesity. But when used properly, with respect to the dog as an individual and under the guidance of an experienced rehabilitator or trainer, correction is a powerful tool that saves lives, builds trust and safety, and opens a whole new line of communication for you and your dog to explore.
DISCLAIMER: One anecdote about one dog does not mean you should go out and buy a training collar and slap it on your dog to see what happens. NEVER attempt behavioral modification without the guidance of an experienced behavior professional (dog groomers aren’t trainers aren’t veterinarians, all are separate modalities and none are interchangeable and none are experts in the other fields, any more than your hair stylist is hot-swappable with your doctor or your therapist). Again, any tool, when used incorrectly, can become dangerous or worsen behavior. Nothing in this article is a how-to, and professionals exist for a reason. Hire one, seriously.