Old Dog Books

I have a lot of books. I have a lot of old books. 

With respect to dog training books, the old ones are hard to read any more because they are so wrong in so many ways. Almost every program, regardless of the issue, is about compulsion. Unfortunately, most of modern dog trainers, especially pet dog trainers, have their entire programs revolving around compulsion. 

For example, a trainer that basically tells you to look and act tough around your dog. Or every answer involves making a dog "not do that". Not much is known about behavior, so the solution is to cram down everything in the dog in an attempt to make it inert. 

Or, when various terminology is spoken, the words are either untrue inventions, or wildly out of line with their actual meaning or application. Here's a good example. What does "reactivity" mean? It is used all the time, but the definition is in the eye of the beholder. It can range anywhere from a dog being very happy, to fearful, to attacking, to chasing rabbits. It is a worthless term for dog training purposes. Or what about the term, "energy"? What the heck is that supposed to mean? It is clearer in a physics text, but it has no place in meaningful diagnoses or training solutions. "Your energy is wrong." Which is another definition in the eye of the beholder, and can range to mean just about anything, and used to sell you into doing nonsense.

Want to have a miserable time? Go surfing through dog books, and even science books with their basis in laboratory experiments, and line up a single behavioral word and see if every author has the same definition. Then measure that definition against what they are trying to describe with real world animals, especially wild animals. Much doesn't reflect the real operational properties of the real world, for wild animals or dogs. No wonder so much of he dog world is in disarray.

Is there a way out of this? Yes. 

But that will take a much longer article... sometime in the future.

In the meantime, if it sounds unintelligible, and if it is about being mean to your dog, don't go down that rabbit hole. You won't like what you find.

Plan accordingly.