(April 21, 2016 at 10:52 am)robvalue Wrote:(April 21, 2016 at 10:36 am)Whateverist the White Wrote: Spanking is an equally horrible idea where dog training is involved. The bond/relationship is core to any training you want to do. Beating a dog undermines the bond. Of course those who interpret sniveling and groveling as love and respect will go on beating their dogs and kids.
Completely. Cowering with fear and unable to do anything but blindly obey is a very specific kind of "training", and not one that is at all concerned with the wellbeing of the recipient.
Years ago, my sister adopted a dog from a rescue centre, an adorable little Rough Collie cross she named Ellie, now long gone. That she had been mistreated we knew from the start, but not the details. One time when I was play fighting her, I drew back my arms to deploy a tickling, as I'd done many times, only this time I happened to take what's called, clumsily, a sharp intake of breath. It was quite involuntary, part of the playing, except Ellie reacted by cowering away and whimpering.
She also had a tremendous fear of the hoover, hiding in the corner every time she even saw it. It didn't take much guesswork to figure that she'd been beaten with something similar, with each lash accompanied by a sharp inward hiss by her assailant.
If the intention was to create an animal that shies away from humans for fear of what they'd do to her, then you could say the training worked.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
