Dog training stayed at a pretty, what I would call, and this is a judgment, a dark place

for probably 100 years where dogs were treated like animals, like they didn't have a soul and they didn't have the right to an opinion

and they sure as heck were ever given a choice often trained just by avoiding the pain of punishment.

That was their reinforcement was if you do things the way I tell you, you won't be punished. Now, there was a very, very slow

evolution. But even when I became a professional dog trainer in the late 80s, it was still unheard of

to do some of the things that I decided I wanted to try, and particularly in dog sports.

And I competed in the sport of dog obedience and fly ball and dog agility. And when I would

say, I want to do this little game, people would say, you're going to ruin your dog.

Or they would say, that might work for Susan Garrett because she's such a good dog trainer,

but that won't work for anybody else.

Well, the things that people were saying would only work for Susan Garrett now are just

a recognized common approach to training something like weave poles or a seesaw.

So, there has been an exponential rate of growth in dog training since that time, since

the late 80s, 30 plus years ago.

But we're still relatively new in our growth.

So when somebody says, you can't do that with just reinforcement or I could get there

better with punishment. You know what?

They might be correct that there are things we are still learning, but I promise you,

I promise you. If there is something that can be achieved with more clarity and potentially

more kindness to the dog if you just punished

them, then that would keep us locked in a cycle where we are constantly turning to punishment

to fix that, whatever that is. And we all would be back in the 80s. If it wasn't for me willing to say,

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