Smacking does no good...

The situation
Recently we came across a dog that had a small mouthing problem. It's owners had been to see a manager at an animal welfare centre and had been told to hit her under the chin each time she tried to mouth them.

There was one big flaw with this advice and that was that the owners were bitten soon after, I certainly know that if someone kept hitting me under the chin, I would pretty soon get fed up with it and would probably have a go back at them.

The saddest thing about this situation was that the dog's real problem was one of nervousness and this type of response would only serve to make her problem worse.

If the advice had been continued, the dog would eventually have to be rehomed or the owners would have her destroyed.

Our reasons
Excluding the obvious that it just isn't nice for the dog, there are 3 main problems with recommending that an owner respond with violence to a dog.

• The owner is in danger of inviting an aggressive and vicious response

• It is very likely that the dog will become resilient to the pain and simply ignore it

• It will almost certainly cause the majority of behaviour problems to get worse

As humans we have total control of a dogs life and we have the skills and knowledge to solve behaviour problems without the need to resort to slavery and violence, isn't it about time that we started to use that skill and knowledge, especially in animal welfare organisations?

Punishment simply doesn't work, practically every day we meet people who have been advised to use some form of punishment, the last sentence from them is always 'but it didn't work'.

If you have any questions or comments on any part of our work, please contact us:
Animals in Mind, 31 Magdalen Way, Worle, North Somerset, BS22 7PG
01934 516714 - email us