Quote

“Your feelings are valid” does not automatically mean “your reaction is appropriate”.

Two things that take up most of my time are dog training and parenting. Coincidentally, I find that 99% of the time, I can relay things I learn in dog training back to parenting, and vice versa.

I found this quote about parenting to be very relatable to handling canine behavior, and more specifically, aggression and reactivity.

“Your feelings are not valid and your reaction is not appropriate” - I am not in the business of forcing a dog to do anything (fyi: that’s called compulsion training). Many trainers will veil compulsion as obedience. What is really happening is they are suppressing pretty serious issues that will very likely boil back up to the surface at some point.

“Your feelings are valid and your reaction is appropriate” - On the other end of the spectrum of dog training, we have R+ (positive reinforcement only) trainers, who will avoid all possible scenarios in which a dog could express those aggressive and/or reactive tendencies and will put management on top of mangement strategies in place to ‘deal’ with the issues. This is another form of suppression, it just looks nicer.

“Your feelings are valid, but your reaction is not appropriate. I’m going to help you by giving you the training and tools to successfully shift your feelings and change your reaction” - With true behavior modification, the goal is to completely rewire the dog’s association to triggers and truly end the stress. THAT is compassionate training.