Why Aversive Methods Are Still Everywhere
Walk into any tier-two city pet market in India and you will find prong collars hanging next to leashes, shock collars listed on every major e-commerce platform, and trainers advertising results in days. The dominance framework, the idea that dogs are pack animals constantly angling for status, and that the owner must establish alpha rank through physical correction, has been popular since the 1970s and has not gone away despite being rejected by the organisations that originally promoted it. The American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior, the British Veterinary Association, and the Indian Veterinary Association have all issued position statements advising against punishment-based training. The dominance model itself was built on studies of captive, unrelated wolves, a social structure that does not map onto domestic dogs, which are not wolves and do not form linear dominance hierarchies with their human families.
