Quotation

Dog Sense

How the New Science of Dog Behavior Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet
"Personally, I'm delighted that the most recent scientific evidence backs up an approach to managing dogs that I'm comfortable with. as a scientist as well as a dog lover, I am dedicated to assessing the best evidence available and then deciding on the most logical approach to adopt. If wild wolf packs had turned out to as fraught with tension as their counter parts in zoos, I'd have to agree that the dominance approach had merit. I'd still be reluctant to adopt punishment rather than reward as my philosophy for training my dog, because for me the whole point of having a dog is the company it brings, and dominance and companionship don't jibe for me. As a dog owner, I was relieved. By the discrediting of the wolf-pack idea, since I could then explain to myself and more importantly, to others why routinely punishing a dog is not only unnecessary but also counterproductive."