Language – what does it mean?

Dog trainers but particularly dog training instructors have a lot of lingo attached to their work. I’m only talking about English here, as I know very little of any other language (my French ‘o’ level was traumatic, and I learned a little Welsh while working in mid-Wales).

But if we’re all speaking English it should be easy? Right?

Maybe not.

Dog training seems to be ever more split into different ‘camps’. ‘Positive Only’. ‘Force Free’. ‘Cookie Pushers’. ‘Balanced’. ‘Aversive’. Each of these descriptions can be used with pride or prejudice.

At my age (given away by the fact I did ‘o’ levels) the social media outlets I use are primarily Facebook. Arguments rage daily on there between the different camps, with advocates on either side vehemently arguing their ‘case’. Often inaccurately. Just as the saying goes about the ‘English’ and ‘Americans’ – one people separated by a common language.

So what has prompted these musings? I recently read a paper, ‘Sound symbolism facilitates interspecies communication between humans and domestic dogs (Canis familiaris)’ by Anna Korzeniowska, Holly Root-Gutteridge, et al. (2025).

It's a fascinating look at the way in which the intonation and prosody of words make a difference to how a dog perceives them. I asked the authors why they chose to use the word ‘command’ throughout the piece, when the word ‘cue’ has less harsh connotations. The answer I was given was, “We have this problem whenever we try to publish results from acoustics & dogs as in bioacoustics, cue means ‘aspect of the vocalisation which is not under control of the speaker’ and often indicates the speaker's identity, age or gender, whereas command is the words spoken.”

For many dog trainers, the word ‘command’ has fallen out of use since there is an inference of compulsion about the word in a very hierarchical way, whereas ‘cue’ is more suggestive of a partnership and seen to be less confrontational.

I have recently been updating the Good Companion Awards’ literature as we have been adding two further levels. When I first wrote these particular documents, I chose the word ‘Guardians’ for those people who will be carrying out the awards with their dogs.

At the ABTC Practitioner Assessment Working Group when updating the new role standards there was a lot of discussion over the correct wording to use, ‘Owner’, ‘Guardian’, ‘Caregiver’, ‘Handler’, were all discussed with pros and cons for each of them – the very clumsy ‘owners/handlers/guardians’ was eventually chosen.

But why the debate?

‘Owner’ is the legal definition of the relationship between a person and their pet – so why shy away from using it? Many will point to the fact that animals as sentient beings should not be ‘owned’, they should be given agency and be allowed to have autonomy. The difficult juxtaposition between legal responsibilities and animal welfare considerations is a hard one to resolve using the words available to us.

The APDT values are ‘Kind’, ‘Fair’, ‘Effective’, and this is incorporated into our vision, ‘for every dog and person to have access to kind, fair and effective dog training’.

So, what does this mean? Are we ‘positive only’, ‘force free’, ‘fear free’? Let’s look at what these mean:

Positive – dictionary (Oxford Languages) definitions include:

  Adjective

1. consisting in or characterised by the presence rather than the absence of distinguishing features.

2. constructive, optimistic, or confident.

Noun

1. a desirable or constructive quality or attribute.

2. a positive photographic image, especially one printed from a negative.

   
   

So, in which context are we using ‘positive only’?

In 1938, BF Skinner first describe operant conditioning using the terms ‘reinforcement’ – i.e. increasing a behaviour and ‘punishment’ i.e. decreasing a behaviour. These can be achieved with either the addition (+) or removal (-) of a consequence, which he then labelled as ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ – and a whole different definition was created.

Are those who are ‘positive only’ really increasing and decreasing behaviours solely by adding reinforcement or punishment? I suspect not – they are mostly talking about ‘positive reinforcement’ and have just dropped the second word. But can you teach by positive reinforcement only? Is the hesitation in giving a reward actually negative punishment? Are there no behaviours we wish to decrease?

What about ‘force free’? That sounds good! We don’t want to use force when training – it sounds draconian. Critics will point out that putting a lead on a dog to prevent them from running off is technically, ‘force’.

Is only giving a dog a reward when they have complied with our cue an act of ‘force’? Is the animal’s desire for a primary reinforcer (which by definition is a something that satisfies a biological need) likely to override any other wants or wishes the dog has to do something other than what they are being asked? Do we set up conflict in a dog by only rewarding the behaviour we ask for, and not rewarding the dog showing agency?

OK – so I may use force in that context – perhaps I should say ‘fear free’! There cannot be anything wrong with that, can there?

Fear is an emotion. It’s felt internally. We may see behavioural signs of fear, but we may not. How do we know that a dog is not feeling fear when we’re asking them to do something in the moment that goes against how they’re feeling inside?

I often get FOMO – fear of missing out – when I see courses advertised that people are enjoying and raving about online. Then I give in, buy the course and curse myself for falling for the clever marketing when I realise there’s nothing new for me to learn. Is that fear really damaging (other than to my wallet)?

I know! I must therefore be a ‘balanced’ trainer. I understand the differences between positive and negative reinforcement, and positive and negative punishment. I realise that I can never live up to the ‘positive only’ or ‘force free’ labels.

Uh oh! That label has been taken by those who purposefully use more and more extreme levels of

to get the behaviour they are after, at all costs, no ‘disobedience’ allowed. Positive punishment freely used, and unashamedly. I’m going to run from that at all costs.

Those are the people who would call me a ‘cookie chucker’ or some such nonsense, deliberately misunderstanding the way I work and using it as a derision. Though it’s a ‘title’ I don’t see as the insult that they do.

It feels to me that those founder members of APDT who chose ‘Kind, Fair and Effective’ as our values really were onto something.