I think about the use of pain in dog training every day. I pretty much think about it constantly. Every time I put an e-collar, a prong collar, or a bark collar on a dog, I have a philosophical conversation with myself about what I'm doing. I think it's important to do this kind of thinking pretty much in all areas of life, but as human beings with inherent power over creatures in our care, I think it's important to have an ongoing dialogue about what we're doing when we're working and living with dogs.
I'm less concerned with having a set of pre-determined principles than I am with being flexible and willing to change. I'm open to the idea that someday I may learn a new piece of information and decide that I will never use another "aversive tool" again. That day has not come, and with all my experience, research, and philosophical musing, I am still of the opinion that it is what works best for my dog, and for many dogs I work with. People like to allude to the research that's been done regarding the notion that arguments often lead to people holding their own beliefs more firmly as opposed to changing their minds. I think one of the most damaging things that's come of the force free/positive reinforcement vs "balanced" training debate is the pre-ordained categories that one must situate themself before participating in this broad, philosophical discussion. The rigid principles that formulate a methodology are of much less interest to me than the thought process leading to that methodology. The categorization of a tool or technique as "aversive" or "force free" disregards the process by which one determines what is most humane and ethical to utilize in training. Take the e-collar for example, a tool I use every day. I was opposed to the idea when I started out in the dog world, for the same reasons most people opposed to aversive tools are: I didn't want to intentionally hurt my dog. The idea of putting a collar around my dog's neck and delivering a shock was unappealing. I imagined myself as one of the unsuspecting participants in the Milgram experiment, pressing a button and hearing shrieks from the other room. This unwillingness to use tools obviously didn't stick. Seeing happy, bouncy dogs experience off-leash freedom helped ease my concerns, and learning more about the possibility of using the tool in a controlled and calculated way made it seem less mustache-twirly sadistic. I think a lot of people's aversions to aversives is a strong gut reaction. The idea of willingly causing a dog pain is viscerally upsetting. I'm no different today than I was years ago when I didn't like the idea of using a shock collar, but I do have a different conception about pain from a philosophical standpoint.
I think a big issue with the debate surrounding aversive tools is that we don't have a solid working definition of pain, or aversive, and we understandably don't have a good metric for measuring one kind of aversive versus another one. Something that is seldom invoked in these conversations is the idea of suffering, though I think pain is often conflated with suffering. I found a helpful way to distinguish the two in an article from the National Library of Science. The article was about pain and suffering in human cancer patients, but I think that the sentiments stands when we're talking about other living creatures, i.e. dogs. Here it is:
"Pain is a physical sensation or signal indicating an event within the body. Suffering is the interpretation of that event and involves thoughts, beliefs, or judgments, and reflects the human experience of pain. Pain can cause suffering when it is uncontrolled or persists. Uncontrolled pain can lead to further physical impact and to major disruption in quality of life…" <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7009317/#R4>
Obviously there are caveats when we're making the translation from people to dogs. Human judgment, belief, and thought does not easily map onto the canine brain in a one-to-one way that would make it easier to talk about these things, but there's something at the heart of this that we can draw from, namely, that pain and suffering are not one and the same. Anyone who's spent any amount of time with dogs would agree that they've seen a dog experience pain, and that they've seen dogs suffer, and I think, given a little time to think about it, most would agree that, while related, they are not the same. When asked if a dog who just had his paw accidentally stepped on (but recovered in seconds) is suffering, most would likely say no. When asked if a dog who spends 24 hours a day in a small crate is suffering, most would, hopefully, say yes. One of these scenarios does involve pain in the typical, clear-cut, obvious sense. The other does not involve "pain" in the same sense. Though one is arguably more cruel, more inhumane, than the other. This isn't the best example because there's an issue of duration etc, but the point stands. Pain and suffering are noticeably different concepts.
The idea that pain can cause suffering, but does not necessarily cause it, is an important thing to note as well. E-collars cause pain, that's how they work. Anyone who wants to argue that an electric shock delivered to the skin is not pain, waste your breath somewhere else. However, where so-called "balanced" trainers and R+ trainers diverge is in the hypothesized interpretation of this event of pain. I don't believe that, when used properly, the pain caused by an e-collar causes suffering. How I know goes back to process versus final product in methodology. It relates to integrity, observation, and critical thinking when we're working with living creatures. In the four years I've had Lewey, I've spent nearly every day with him with the exception of a handful of overnights away from him, and one three week road trip. I've learned this dog inside and out. I've seen him sleepy, I've seen him at the height of scent-induced arousal, I've seen him recover from surgery, I've seen him nauseous, I've seen him scared, I've seen him inquisitive, and I've seen him so hell-bent on following his nose that he'd crawl through a sea of barbed wire and molten lava given the chance. I know this dog as well as any human being can know a dog. And I love him as much as any human being can love a dog. I use him as an example, and not just a client's dog that I've worked with, because I want to eliminate any shadow of doubt that I don't spend every waking moment painstakingly investigating the deepest realms of my psyche to figure out what is the best for him, in all regards. This is a dog I've happily reoriented my life around. This is the dog that turned my into a dog professional. He's the first thing I think about when making big life decisions, and small decisions. I opt to include him whenever possible, and not because he has separation anxiety (he doesn't) or out of guilt, but because I enjoy myself much more when he's around, and I want to share my life experiences with him. Anyway, he is the principal focus, the foundation, of my approach to ethics when it comes to dogs. I never say that I love dogs in my care as if they're my own, because that's bullshit. I don't love other peoples' dogs like I love my own, that's like saying you children that aren't yours like you love your own. I do, however, treat other peoples' dogs like I treat my own. That is to say, the way I treat all dogs is informed by an ongoing, dialectic process as opposed to rigid methodology. I'm rambling a little big, so let me break down what I mean a little more concretely.
Jay Jack talks about "hope" versus "struggle". This is a pretty foundational concept for me when using tools. When I put an e-collar on a dog, I weigh the hope, and I weigh the struggle. The hope being off-leash freedom, the ability to roam and sniff and run, etc. The struggle, in this case, is dealing with an electric shock as a possible consequence for not coming when called. For any dog, with any tool, the hope must outweigh the struggle to be fair. For some dogs, the shock from an e-collar is not worth the value of off-leash freedom. For Lewey, the hope of fulfilling his genetic drive, of doing what he's been bred to do, vastly outweighs the struggle of the collar.
I also think there's a great irony when those who are opposed to the use of aversives in training try to circumnavigate the problem they create. I see this with the use of things like citronella collars, head halters, and ultrasonic devices to name a few. When you have a knee-jerk reaction to the pain that comes from a localized, tempered electric shock without investigating your reaction critically, you start recommending things that target arguably the most important system in a dog's body and brain, their nose. In some peoples' haste to disparage anything that causes a pain, they utilize things that are aversive in other, less measurable and less controlled ways. I would argue that one causes pain, while the other causes suffering.
Let's talk about drive, in both people and dogs.
Anyone who's done anything that requires time, effort, and accumulated skill is intimately acquainted with their own concept of pain, whether they're a weight-lifter, an academic, a marathon runner, or a musician. The pain of practice, of repetitions, of tedious effort, is their struggle. But if you ask an athlete, musician, or writer to give a sense of suffering, many of them will delineate times when they were unable to pursue their chosen passion. What they're driven to do, their hope, is so immense that the struggles of pursuing what they're driven to do pale in comparison. Some might even say that the struggle folds into the hope after a certain point; the painstaking effort is as vital a part of the process as reaching the goal that it becomes a motivator in and of itself. To an athlete, burning muscles and an elevated heart rate are as dear as crossing a finish line, sometimes even more.
To put this in a dog perspective, let me use the example of sled dogs. Dallas Seavey, a 5-time Iditarod winner, has talked about some of his techniques for training sled dogs. Now, these are dogs who are genetically driven to do exactly what they're doing. These are dogs who want to run and pull for hours and miles on end with everything they've got. These are dogs who would be miserable couch companions. These are dogs who would genuinely suffer if they were stripped of the ability to do what they're bred to do. These are the type of dogs who do suffer living in a small apartment in the city with nothing but a walk around the block and a puzzle toy every day. Dallas talks about his feeding regimen, and how he needs to teach these dogs to eat food when they get it. This is because when they're out doing a thousand-mile race, dogs need to eat when they're given food, because they might not get it until they get to the next shelter, which might be dozens of miles away. It's a necessary struggle that the dogs must undergo if they want to do what they're bred to do. To do this, there's some level of food deprivation that needs to happen in the training process. For the dog to learn that food refusal is a bad idea, there are instances where food refusal is followed by a stretch of time without a meal. Even I had a strong reaction to hearing this. It sounds pretty cruel, to purposely withhold food from a dog as a training tool. There is, of course, much more to it. The dogs aren't truly starved, they're not emaciated, but they do learn that sometimes there's a long stretch of time between meals, because this is the reality of long distance mushing. I chose to examine my strong negative reaction to hearing this, and I found that it wasn't as bad as the gut reaction I had to it. The hope of living a fulfilled life, of doing the one thing the dog is driven to do above all else absolutely outweighs the struggle of being a little hungry for a couple hours less than a handful of times. This is just the dog version of waking up at 5am to train for a marathon before work, of giving up on social events to study or practice or write, of dealing with the pain of burning muscles to life heavier weight than you did last week. People who don't experience this kind of drive won't necessarily relate to dogs with analogous drive, but anyone who feels their life's purpose in their heart and soul and body should understand a genetically driven dog.
We have to be careful when we're deciding things for creatures who can't talk. We have to use our powers of observation and integrity when deciding what life they're going to lead. When using something that causes pain, we need to think long and hard about what we hope to achieve, what we hope the dog will get out of it. If our hope outweighs our struggle, and the pain we use is not causing suffering, I think we're on the right track. And it's high time that low-drive people stop making decisions for high-drive dogs. Pain is a sensation, but suffering can encompass a whole life.