Vigyata.AI
Is this your channel?

Dog training after “the method wars”

4.6K views· 110 likes· 2:05· Dec 27, 2025

The needle has clearly moved. Dog training after “the method wars” Subscribe & learn more at zakgeorge.com

About This Video

In this video, I’m talking about where professional dog training has actually landed after what people call “the method wars.” At the highest levels—veterinary behaviorists, credentialed organizations, and welfare science—the field has largely moved past coercion. Not because coercion can’t suppress behavior, but because it doesn’t meet modern standards for welfare, reliability, and risk. That part isn’t the real debate anymore. What we’re dealing with now is the lag between where the science lives and what people still see online or at local training facilities: dogs being shocked, yanked, physically manipulated, and pushed through behaviors under pressure without the ability to freely learn. Today, I’m evaluating training differently than we did 20 years ago. I’m looking at emotional durability, stress recovery, generalization, and long-term outcomes—not just whether a behavior “stopped.” Dogs bring their nervous systems, their history, and context into every situation, and approaches that ignore that simply don’t age well. So the conversation has shifted away from ideology and toward application: how do we build responses that hold up under stress, and how do we reduce fallout instead of managing it later? The work now isn’t convincing institutions—we’ve done that. It’s translating what they already agree on into everyday training people can actually see, use, and stick with.

Frequently Asked Questions

🎬 More from Zak George’s Dog Training Revolution