By Hannah Frishberg
Even treats aren’t as much fun
for traumatized pups.
A heartbreaking new study finds
that screaming at dogs scares them for the long-term — and patience is a far
superior method for training them, Science Alert reports.
“Specifically, dogs attending schools using
aversive-based methods displayed more stress-related behaviors and body
postures during training, higher elevations in cortisol levels after training,
and were more ‘pessimistic’ in a cognitive bias task,” researchers found.
Researchers — led by biologist Ana Catarina
Vieira de Castro of the Universidade do Porto in Portugal — recruited 42 dogs
from schools that used reward-based training, and 50 dogs from aversion training
schools.
During the study period, pups
taught with yelling and leash-jerking were found to be more stressed, with
higher levels of cortisol found in their saliva.
“Our results show that companion
dogs trained using aversive-based methods experienced poorer welfare as
compared to companion dogs trained using reward-based methods, at both the
short- and the long-term level,” the researchers write in the paper published
by biology news service bioRxiv.
“Specifically, dogs attending schools using
aversive-based methods displayed more stress-related behaviors and body
postures during training, higher elevations in cortisol levels after training,
and were more ‘pessimistic’ in a cognitive bias task,” researchers found.
Pups that experienced calm,
gentle teachers, however, performed better at tasks researchers assigned to
them, such as locating a bowl with sausage in it — in a roomful of
empty-but-sausage-smeared bowls.
More harshly trained canines were
slower to locate the treat bowl, which authors interpreted to show that their
experiences had made them more depressed, less hopeful hounds.
The biologists also analyzed dogs
during training to look for “stress behaviors” such as lip-licking,
paw-raising, yawning and yelping.
“Critically, our study points to the fact that
the welfare of companion dogs trained with aversive-based methods appears to be
at risk,” the researchers conclude.