“Violence begets violence” can be traced all the way to the New Testament and often repeated in speeches by world leaders. It finds its way down to the effect of television and video games. But what does this have to do with dog training?

A lot. Below is an excerpt from Stanley Coren’s column in Psychology Today

While on the issue of dog training, one of the most practically significant findings found in this research has to do with the effect that the type of training has on a dog’s risk of aggression. There have been a number of studies that have reported that training procedures based on punishment can have negative consequences (click here for an example). In this study the researchers defined such punitive training techniques as including things like physical punishment (hitting the dog), verbal punishment (shouting), electrical or citronella collars, choke chains and jerking on the leash, prong collars, water pistols, electric fences and so forth. Such punitive techniques apparently increase the risk of aggression in dogs. They are associated with a 2.9 times increased risk of aggression to family members, and a 2.2 times increased risk of aggression to unfamiliar people outside of the household.

You can read Dr. Coren’s complete column here