Give This To Your Partner Who Thinks Punishment Is Necessary

Let’s Talk About The Part No One Warns You About

One of the hardest parts of dog training often has very little to do with the dog.

It’s the conversations between two people who both care — and don’t see the situation in front of them in the same way.

Even when a couple has already decided to work with a positive-reinforcement training company, alignment isn’t guaranteed. One partner may feel relieved, hopeful, ready to trust the process. The other may feel cautious, skeptical, or quietly worried that things are about to become too permissive.

Sometimes the disagreement is explicit. More often, it’s subtle — a look, a comment, a pause.

That’s normal.

Because these conversations are rarely just about training techniques.

They touch something deeper: control, responsibility, safety, frustration, and what each person believes actually works when things feel out of control.

For that reason, many couples never fully have the conversation at all. They arrive at training hoping the trainer will resolve it for them — that the results will speak for themselves, that the tension will fade once progress is visible.

Sometimes it does. Often, it doesn’t.

Instead, the same questions and muttered thoughts linger:

• How else am I going to communicate to him that what he’s doing is not acceptable to me?

• This just feels like we’re rewarding bad behavior

• How do we make sure he respects what we don’t want?

• This is how dogs start running the show

That’s why this exists.

Not to convince. Not to shame.

But to name the disagreement clearly.

If You’re Reading This…

…there’s a good chance you didn’t ask for it.

Your partner may have sent it. Your trainer may have suggested it.

Either way, let’s get one thing straight: this isn’t about calling you a bad dog parent.

And it isn’t about pretending punishment doesn’t work.

It does.

Just not in the way most people think — and not in the way most people actually want.

What People Think They’re Choosing — And What They Actually Want

Most people don’t reach for punishment because they enjoy being harsh.

They reach for it because they believe they’re choosing:

• Order

• Effectiveness

• Responsibility

• Control

• Results

That’s the conscious story.

What they’re actually choosing — often without realizing it — is something more immediate:

• Relief from uncertainty

• Relief from chaos

• Relief from feeling overwhelmed

• Relief from the fear that order is being subverted

Here’s the confusion most people never articulate: they think punishment is about shaping others, when in practice it’s often about regulating themselves.

The raised voice. The consequence. The pressure. These don’t just change the situation — they change how you feel inside it.

That’s what makes it so persuasive.

Control is restored. Complexity is made simple. The world feels manageable again.

And because that relief can arrive quickly, the mind draws a simple conclusion:

This is what works.

Why “What Works” Isn’t What You Want

But what “works” in that moment doesn’t mean the problem was solved. It means something far narrower — and far more immediate.

The dog jumps on a guest. You snap “Off!” sharply and step into him. He drops to the floor.

It worked.

The noise stopped. The jumping stopped. The tension dropped. The room felt contained again. You felt less embarrassed. Less overwhelmed. Less out of control.

But nothing about that moment guaranteed he understands what to do instead the next time someone walks through the door.

“Works,” in that sense, simply means the discomfort moved away from you.

That’s powerful when you’re stressed, exhausted, or in a rush. But it’s also very different from the outcome most people are actually hoping for.

People think they want compliance. Obedience. Things falling into line.

What they actually want is:

• Stability without constant enforcement

• Cooperation without conflict

• Order that doesn’t carry an emotional cost

They don’t want to be angry all the time. They don’t want to threaten or escalate. They don’t want to feel like nothing works unless they clamp down.

They want a dog who greets guests calmly because that’s the pattern he knows because he’s practiced it — not because someone is hovering, ready to snap the moment he forgets.

They want a system that functions without escalation — a way of maintaining order that doesn’t require vigilance, tension, or pressure just to keep things from unraveling.

That’s why so many people ask, “When can I stop training my dog?”

It sounds like a training question. It isn’t.

What they’re really asking is when they can stop managing themselves — when they can stop correcting, hovering, reminding, escalating. When things will work without constant effort or bracing for the next problem.

The hard part is this: people desperately want that outcome, but they don’t have the slightest clue how to get there.

How Punishment Alters How You Interact With The World

Over time, punishment doesn’t just shape your responses to behavior. It alters your expectations of it.

It trains you to believe that discomfort means something is wrong. That resistance requires correction. That when things don’t align with your expectations, pressure is the appropriate response.

For many people, that lens was installed early.

If you grew up in environments where mistakes were met with punishment, disappointment, or withdrawal, you learned something subtle but powerful: the world is supposed to cooperate — and when it doesn’t, something needs to be enforced.

That expectation can feel so normal you don’t even notice it’s there.

But it colors everything. Not as a belief you consciously apply, but as a posture you carry.

In my experience, people who move through the world this way often give off a distinct kind of energy. Not cruel. Not malicious. But braced. Defensive. Vigilant. As if something is always about to go wrong, and they’re responsible for stopping it. It doesn’t feel calm or open. It feels tight—like pressure being held just under the surface.

So when something disrupts your nervous system, the reflex isn’t necessarily only toward relief. It’s also toward prevention—the sense that whatever caused the disturbance must be corrected, taught a lesson, made less likely to happen again. Especially to you.

And in that moment, the response can feel not just necessary, but right. Applying pressure doesn’t merely promise order; it offers purpose. It casts you as the responsible one, the steady hand, the person willing to do what others won’t—for the sake of safety, for the sake of everyone.

Not out of cruelty (of course not), but out of a belief that this is how safety is restored—and how authority is earned.

But that expectation wasn’t a conscious choice. It was trained.

And once it was in place, it became easy to move through the world assuming that anything—or anyone—that fails to meet it is the problem.

Did Punishment Ever Really Work?

If you pause and look honestly at your own experience, it’s worth asking: when has punishment actually worked for you — not in the moment, but over time?

Either it worked so thoroughly that the behavior disappeared along with trust, curiosity, or ease — a dog (or a child) that complies but flinches, shuts down, or avoids you — or it didn’t work at all, and the same behavior kept returning, corrected again and again, louder or harsher each time.

Because those are the only two outcomes punishment reliably produces: suppression or repetition.

And to be clear, this isn’t some moralistic grandstanding.

Desperate moments exist. Time crunches exist. Exhaustion exists. Sometimes you need something to stop now — because you’re late, overwhelmed, embarrassed, or out of bandwidth.

Most people who reach for punishment aren’t trying to be harsh. They’re trying to get through the moment.

I get it.

The problem isn’t that it doesn’t work in a pinch.

It’s what it quietly teaches you to reach for next time — and the time after that.

Your Dog Isn’t Playing A Power Game

Let’s just get this out now: contrary to popular belief, your dog isn’t waiting for the perfect moment to undermine and dominate you.

Say it with me: your dog isn’t waiting for the perfect moment to undermine and dominate you.

They aren’t plotting. They aren’t testing you. They aren’t looking for the perfect opening.

When punishment stops a behavior, it doesn’t prove a power struggle was won.

It proves there wasn’t a power struggle happening in the first place.

Most so-called “testing” behaviors are confusion, unmet needs, or learned patterns — not bids for control.

Jumping is usually excitement or uncertainty. Pulling on the leash is often frustration or overstimulation. “Ignoring” is often a cue that hasn’t been fully learned in that environment.

That isn’t defiance.

It’s information.

How To Get From Here To There

Let’s get this straight: the alternative isn’t doing nothing. And it isn’t endless patience or permissiveness.

It’s replacing moment-by-moment enforcement with a system that carries the load.

Positive reinforcement, done well, isn’t about avoiding consequences — it’s about moving them earlier in the process. Before the blow-up. Before the standoff. Before escalation ever feels necessary. 

It works by making the right behavior easier, more predictable, and more rewarding than the wrong one, across the environments where life actually happens.

You’re not trading force for softness — you’re trading reactivity for design. You’re building clarity instead of bracing for conflict.

And over time, something fundamental shifts: the system starts to work even when you’re tired. Even when you’re distracted. Even when you’re not perfectly “on it.”

Here’s The Other Part No One Warns You About

When the rules, structures, and ideas you grew up with are challenged, it doesn’t feel like merely updating a belief.

It can feel like dismantling an entire body of knowledge that helped you make sense of the world.

Sometimes, when people believe in punishment, what they’re really holding onto is control. You can almost hear the internal logic: This is how you create stability. Tighten up. Enforce it. Don’t let things drift.

Letting go of punishment isn’t hard because it doesn’t work. It’s hard because it asks you to loosen your grip.

To give the dog a choice. To step back and wait. To see how things play out.

If you grew up believing that structure only exists when someone is actively enforcing it, there’s nothing that can feel more dangerous, because most people simply assume chaos is waiting on the other side.

But in my experience, here’s what often happens instead.

When pressure isn’t the driver, dogs begin making the choices you were trying to force — all on their very own.

They pause. They recalibrate. They offer new behaviors.

Not because they’re afraid of what happens if they don’t — but because the relationship itself now keeps the moment steady.

Over time, those patterns become the safest bet because they’re anchored to safety and predictability — not to avoiding something unpleasant.

That’s the structure most people are actually searching for. Not compliance in the moment — but stability that lasts. Not control that has to be applied — but equilibrium you can reliably return to, time and time again.

And once that’s in place, the question “When can I stop training my dog?” quietly disappears.

Because nothing needs to be held together anymore.

If You’re Still Skeptical (That’s Fine)

You’re under no obligation to agree with me on anything in this post.

But I do have a small request: During the first session, suspend your need to be right.

Watch what happens when your dog learns instead of complies. Notice how the energy in the room changes. Pay attention to how you feel afterward.

If I’m wrong, you’ll know quickly.

And if I’m right—you won’t need convincing.