@ashiedu It can certainly a nuanced answer in my opinion. In the case of your family member I think situations like these can certainly make you see that person in a new light where they are careless, uninformed, and/or cruel. If there's a history of biting and non-effective management on their part, it's natural for these actions to inform how you view you and decide to interact with them.
That said, I do think it's worth having a bit of grace for people who use these methods (at least for some, however, people who believe in compulsion training I admit I would be wary of myself). A lot of people who use these methods are working from a human-centered approach, a "how can I get my dog to listen to me?" line of thinking and they resort to collars because they consider punishment a more impactful conditioning technique. And for a lot of them, I suppose the method works to an extent where they feel like they can get by.
I'll admit, I resorted to that method for a brief few weeks thinking it would be a better route to help train my dog. He was entering his teenager phase and was just a big diva of a GSD/Husky, I was desperate to try anything. I could say the collar "worked" on our walks, they were manageable and I felt like I had an easier way of communicating with him. I was also attuned to his body language and he had his ears tucked whenever we left to go outside and I just knew that our engagement had been severed where he was clearly not comfortable and in distress from wearing it. So I stopped and we went back to square one and worked(realistically, still are working) our way up from there.
I could have easily just told myself that this was all part of the conditioning process and he's "learning actions have consequences." I'm really happy that I didn't take that route.
Anecdotely, I've come across a fair amount of people who use them and they seem to have great relationships with their dog and they will often play well with other dogs off leash. I don't really feel the need to speculate on "but how truly happy is the dog, really?" Because that doesn't serve anybody.
I wish more people would learn how to train using force free methods, but I don't want to spend my time comparing my training/ethics/morality to others. But there are a lot of people who just need to come to grips with reality that caring for an animal is not in their nature and they should NOT be dog owners!
Didn't mean to write a novel, but that's my two cents on the topic for today
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