How the gentle parenting movement changed the way we train dogs

Now, she says, most trainers won’t even use verbal reprimands, but will instead redirect unwanted behaviour using positive reinforcement.

Melissa Starling, a dog trainer and behaviourist based in Sydney, says the focus today is on the animal’s welfare and emotional state. A strong body of scientific research, she adds, supports positive reinforcement style training as more effective than punitive methods.

This evolution parallels developments in human psychology, and how we think about parent-child relationships. Phrases like attachment styles and gentle parenting are now used to talk about pets and kids alike.

In 2022, a US study set out to explore the influence of pet parenting style on the social and problem-solving behaviour of their dogs. It found that dogs with “authoritative” owners (meaning they had high expectations and high responsiveness) had the greatest levels of secure attachment, were highly social and were the only group to solve the assigned puzzle task. This was compared to “authoritarian” owners (high expectations and low responsiveness) and “permissive” owners (low expectations and low responsiveness).

One of the study’s co-authors concluded that their findings suggest “the pet dog-human caretaker bond may be functionally and emotionally similar to the bond between a human parent and their child”.

A big part of Millikan’s training is about giving dogs more agency.

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This seems counterintuitive if you’re dealing with an unruly dog, but as Millikan explains: “Dogs have very little control over their lives. You imagine life without a choice when everything is dictated to you, you might end up feeling a little bit rebellious.”

She gives the example of going on walks with her own dogs. “When we leave the house, I’ll ask, ‘which way do you want to go guys?’ It’s safe to go left, right, or straight ahead. It’s just simple choices like that.”

When dealing with aggressive dogs, Starling tries to understand their emotional state.

“If they’re aggressive because they want more distance, or they’re frightened or defensive, then how can we make them feel less frightened and defensive in the first place?”

“It’s a lot of teaching them to retreat to their owner and rely more on the secure bond they have with them.”

Millikan says she now sees dog training as a partnership. “It’s not something we do to our dogs, it’s something we do with our dogs.”

“It becomes something even deeper than loyalty. It’s an understanding between two different species who respect each other.”

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