05/07/2026
This is a great read! Thanks Lighten Up Dog Training!!
If I can, YOU can (not getting nibbled by a Malinois, obvs)
It really pi**es me off when I post about training methods to use or avoid. I'll invariably get someone who says, 'that's fine... but you can't do that with a Belgian Malinois. You NEED to use a shock collar with a Malinois.'
I like to think they don't realise I've lived with the old mali-raptors for over a decade now.
Not only Belgian Malinois, but wayward ones, rescued ones, who chalked up years in the shelter. Flika had six homes before she met me, including two stays in the shelter.
It's *sweet* that people think it's easier to train a chaotic muttley maligator than it is to train a dog purpose-bred for sports. I occasionally stop in with my friends who do sports with their pocket shepherds... their dogs are top athletes whose needs are met, whose socialisation was perfect, whose parents were emotionally stable... hand picked for success. Training them is like working with an artist who makes your job easy.
The dogs I've lived with from the shelter... Yeah, they didn't have helpful humans choosing which dogs were strong and stable and emotionally balanced as parents, or thoughtful, careful, ethical breeders, or proper socialisation and training, or guardians who cared about them, or whose needs were ever met. Training them is like trying to herd cats. Whimsical and capricious cats, at that.
They had the sh*ttiest hand of cards that genetics and early learning could bring them.
So it's kind of sweet when people tell me that my Belgian malinois must be exceptionally EASY because I've never used a shock collar or prong collar on them but I still managed to live with them.
Normally, when I say that, the people telling me that Belgian Malinois are the exceptional dogs who need shock collars THEN tell me that my dogs are W.I.L.D dogs... Weak instinct, low drive.
Yeah... I once spent six hours watching Lidy try to get to a rat that had long since disappeared in the woodpile. She didn't even stop for water.
THEN they tell me that, okay, my dogs might be from a rescue and might actually be whatever they class as having strong instincts and high drive, but I don't do sports with them, so that's why I've never had to use a harmful collar on them.
Lidy can pick the Ace of Spades out of a deck of cards. She can find a scent sample of 24h trailed odour over a 3km trail. She can do heelwork routines. I don't put her in front of an audience or assess her - that's all. We don't care for being measured in this household. As Lidy's mentor Dr Hannibal Lector once said, a census taker tried to measure him once and he ate their liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. Lidy feels the same about assessors. A rosette isn't everything. A trophy only matters to a human.
She can also walk past a cat these days without frothing at the mouth and trying to kill it. That's more important to me. That's my victory parade.
If sports *require* us to use a shock collar because otherwise we couldn't perform, we need to have a tough word with ourselves about what purpose the sport serves. There are a gazillion other ways to keep a smart dog happy.
THEN they tell me that, okay, my dogs might be from a rescue, and might have strong instincts and high drive and they might be doing smart things, but I don't live on a farm.
Well, excuse me for having to pass three fields of sheep to get out on any walk from my home. Google Maps tells me I am currently 177m from a sheep on one side and 144m on the other.
Even the secure field Lidy uses is right next to a field of very visible and occasionally feisty sheep. And none of your meek European sheep who are used to being herded every day. No. Your hefted Herefordshire momma sheep who will absolutely headbutt anyone who looks at their offspring giving off all the 'bring it on!' vibes through the fence.
It's at this point, people usually give up trying to prove a point that SOME dogs (ie 'high drive' Belgian Maligators) must NEED correction and shock collars or prong collars to function.
It stops being about the dog needing it and starts being about people needing it.
Then they start muttering that it's alright for me because I'm an able-bodied expert dog trainer with time on my hands. The inference is that they feel I'm privileged.
RLY? I'm a single, middle-aged working woman and I learned about dog training because I needed advice from someone. I couldn't find a someone, so I stepped up and learned myself.
All I hear are excuses justifying harm.
As more and more countries (including the country in which my Malinois Lidy, Tobby & Flika were born) step up to legislate against harmful training techniques, we've got to move beyond excuses that keep us in some kind of educational dark age.
When we take away harmful training methods, it forces us to reassess.
We start to realise that we can't take on a working-line dog or a rescue dog and just shock them or 'correct' them until they conform.
We've got to take on dogs who match our skill set and lifestyle, rather than buying dogs who are way beyond our capacity to care for, our capacity to create a good life for.
We also have to skill up. We need to manage a lot more than we might need to do otherwise.
We've got to create worlds in which dogs can flourish, not worlds where dogs will need corrections from the outset.
We've also got to look at the politics and practices of our culture and campaign for improved animal rights and improved animal welfare.
There's an apocryphal line often attributed to Ginger Rogers that I like to use at this time to remind people that just because it seems like it was an easy decision to favour welfare and animal protection, it wasn't. When she was asked how it was to dance with Fred Astaire, some will have it that she told the interviewer, 'Darling, I did everything he did, just backwards and in high heels.'
I feel that. I'm often told that I should esteem this or that shock collar trainer, that I should listen to what they have to say because they're world champion this or that.
They get all the glory and follows and prestige.
World champion arseholes, I think.
Here I am, doing everything they do, just backwards and in high heels.
You know... with rescue dogs who deserve better than being exposed to harsh training methods because someone ran up against the edge of their own skillset and didn't know how to skill up in ways that weren't harmful to the exact dogs who need better from us.
None of this is to brag.
It's just to say that sometimes, it looks easy to people who don't know how it really is.
It looks like people like me aren't doing it backwards and in high heels (in an industry that, just like that of Ginger Rogers, still headlines and venerates straight white blokes and asks for their opinion on absolutely everything of importance)
I've even had accusations that it must be great to be so virtuous, so holy, that I can rely on muzzles and leads and treats and play rather than shock collars or prong collars.
Way to go.
I love it when harmful people turn themselves into the victim of the situation.
I saw that in France as shock collar trainers were facing the demise of their careers. One man blamed weak women and crappy big dogs for putting him in the position where he had no other choice. He didn't even want to do it, he said. We weak women with our high drive dogs forced him into it. He had no other choice.
So honestly, if I can (with my nibbly Malinois currently sleeping, doors open, 144m from a sheep and probably about 10m from a cat with nothing more than a metre-high fence between us all) then anybody can.
I'm about the most inadequate, ordinary middle-aged lady on the planet. I'm a very good example of just how little talent is actually required NOT to use harmful methods.
Is it easy?
About as easy as dancing backwards and in high heels with a man who gets all the credit without even asking for it.
But like Ms Ginger Rogers, we just do it, don't we?
There we are, one day, just doing the thing, quietly and without aplomb.
So here's to all of us, doing the best by our dogs even if they're a little (or a lot) bigger than our skillset was at the outset.
Like a gajillion very ordinary people on the planet, here we are, getting on with life without shocking or harming a dog. Anyone would think that we had some ideas to share about how we're doing all that.
Oh well. As you were.
