The AVSAB Wants to Talk About Welfare. So Do I.
A well-known reward-based trainer recently said something on a podcast that many trainers have thought but rarely say out loud: that he doesn’t necessarily rule out tools like electronic collars for serious behavior cases. It was a measured, nuanced position. The kind of thing you’d expect from someone who has spent years in the trenches working with dogs that don’t respond to the textbook approach.
The response from another corner of the training world was swift. A prominent reward-based trainer and vocal critic of balanced methods pushed back and reached for what has become the go-to credential in these debates: the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior’s position statement on humane dog training.
I’ve seen this move before. Cite the AVSAB, close the conversation. The implication is clear: this is the science, this is the authority, and if you disagree, you’re on the wrong side of both.
I’d like to push back on that. Not because I’m anti-science. But because I think it’s worth asking a question that doesn’t get asked often enough.
Who is policing the police?
What the AVSAB Is and Isn’t
The American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior is an organization of veterinary professionals. That matters because veterinary training and dog training are not the same thing.
The primary clinical function of a veterinary behaviorist is to prescribe psychotropic medications to dogs with behavior problems. That is what they do. Many of its members have little to no experience with hands-on behavior rehabilitation in family homes – the kind of work that happens on the ground, in real households, with real dogs that are biting, shutting down, or coming apart at the seams.
This isn’t a dig at veterinary medicine. It’s a clarification of scope. When a cardiologist publishes a position statement on surgical technique, we don’t automatically defer to it as the final word on surgery. Expertise in one domain doesn’t confer authority in another.
The AVSAB’s position statement is not the product of thousands of hours of hands-on rehabilitation work. It is a document produced by medical professionals who operate primarily in a clinical, prescription-based model. Holding it up as the definitive authority on training methodology, particularly for complex behavior cases, misrepresents what it actually is.
The Science They’re Citing Isn’t as Clean as They’re Suggesting
The position statement leans heavily on a body of research to support its conclusions. I’ve read this research. Some of it has serious problems. And the gap between what the studies actually found and what the AVSAB claims they found is wider than most people realize.
Take citation eight: Schilder and van der Borg (2004), one of the most frequently cited studies in arguments against electronic collar use. The study is presented as evidence of the harmful effects of electronic stimulation on dogs.
Here is a direct quote from the study’s methodology section, describing how the researchers documented their work:
“To assess direct effects, we filmed training sessions on videotape using a Canon UC-X30 Hi-8 camera with 40x digital zoom, and analyzed these tapes later on, using standard video equipment.”
The camera model is named. The zoom capability is documented. The recording format is specified.
Now tell me: what electronic collar was used? What brand? What model? What intensity level was the stimulation set to? Was the application timed to a behavior? Was there a training protocol in place at all?
The study doesn’t say. None of it. The Canon UC-X30 Hi-8 camera is documented in more detail than the device delivering electric stimulation to the dogs – which is, theoretically, the entire point of the study.
I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about what that tells us about the intentions behind this research.
This isn’t an isolated problem. A pattern of selective rigor runs through many of the studies the AVSAB has chosen to build its position on. The methodology tightens where it serves the narrative. It loosens where it doesn’t. For those of us who have spent years reading this literature carefully, it becomes difficult to ignore.
The AVSAB also tips its own hand on the limitations of its evidence base. Buried in the middle of the position statement is this admission: survey studies cannot differentiate between causation and correlation. They say it themselves. And then they spend several paragraphs building arguments on those exact survey studies.
I’m not asking you to throw out the research. I’m asking you to read it the way a critical thinker would, not the way a position statement wants you to.
The Medication Problem
Let’s talk about the other side of the AVSAB’s approach. Because if this conversation is about welfare, and they insist it is, then we need to talk about what they are actually recommending.
The position statement explicitly states that medication should not be considered a last resort for behavior problems. They advocate for early and liberal prescription use. And in nearly twenty years of working with dogs with behavior problems, I have not once encountered a client who visited a veterinary behaviorist and did not walk out with a prescription.
Not once.
The idea that every dog walking through a behaviorist’s door is a good candidate for psychotropic medication strains credulity. Dogs present with an enormous range of behavioral concerns, many of which are rooted in environment, inconsistent handling, lack of structure, or simply a lack of appropriate training. The reflexive reach for the prescription pad, regardless of presentation, is not individualized clinical care. It’s a pattern.
The medications being prescribed most often include fluoxetine (the canine equivalent of Prozac), clomipramine (Clomicalm), trazodone, alprazolam, and gabapentin. Some of these have legitimate, evidence-based applications in behavior cases. Medication does have a role. I’ve seen it used well, and I’ve seen it genuinely improve a dog’s quality of life when applied thoughtfully as part of a comprehensive behavior modification plan.
But that is not consistently what I’ve seen in my client base. What I’ve seen far more often is little to no meaningful improvement in the dog’s behavior following the prescription. And in a number of cases, these medications are being prescribed for behavior problems for which there is little to no scientific evidence of efficacy. The prescription happens anyway.
Here is what the research does not tell us: what happens to dogs on long-term psychotropic medication. Most of these drugs have only been studied for short-term use. We do not have robust long-term safety data in dogs. What we do have is extensive human data on what happens when people try to discontinue medications like fluoxetine and clomipramine after extended use.
I know what that experience is like firsthand.
I was on clomipramine at one point in my life. The side effects while taking it were awful enough. But when I made the decision to discontinue, the withdrawal was one of the worst experiences I have ever had. Discontinuation syndrome, the clinical term for what happens when you taper off these medications, can include electric shock sensations or “brain zaps”(for me these were more intense than any electronic collar), severe anxiety, nausea, dizziness, and emotional instability that is genuinely debilitating. I could barely function. And I am a human being who understood exactly what was happening to my body and could articulate it to a doctor.
Dogs cannot do that.
A dog going through withdrawal from a long-term psychotropic prescription cannot tell us what it’s experiencing. It cannot ask for help. We are making pharmacological decisions on behalf of animals using short-term safety data and calling it compassionate care.
Now consider the framing the AVSAB uses in their position statement. A momentary aversive stimulus, applied as part of a structured training protocol by an experienced professional, is a welfare concern too serious to ever permit under any circumstances. But prescribing a medication with documented side effects and potentially severe withdrawal for a condition it may not even be proven to treat is standard of care. That is a hard pill to swallow. Pun intended.
These are serious ethical concerns. They deserve examination. And the fact that they largely go unexamined while the training world gets scrutinized at the level of individual tools says something worth paying attention to.
A Few Other Things Worth Noting
Veterinary behaviorists charge fees that are multiples of what a regular veterinarian charges. In most cases, a regular veterinarian could prescribe the same medications. The specialization premium exists in large part because the field has successfully positioned itself as the credentialed authority on behavior. The gatekeeper between troubled dogs and the people trying to help them.
What does that premium often buy in practice? Across my client base, the behavior modification guidance that accompanies the prescription is frequently a printout on the concept of “nothing in life is free,” a basic management framework that has been freely available on the internet for decades. A quick Google search will get you there. The value-add of the expensive consultation, in many of these cases, is the prescription itself.
The position statement also specifically recommends trainers affiliated with the Karen Pryor Academy, Jean Donaldson’s Academy for Dog Trainers, Victoria Stillwell’s Academy, and the Pet Professional Guild. These are real organizations with legitimate credentials. They also share the AVSAB’s ideological position on training methodology entirely. The statement is not offering objective guidance on where to find qualified trainers. It is recommending its own ecosystem.
If you squint and tilt your head you start to see a picture that, at the very least, deserves some scrutiny: A medical organization with a financial model built around prescriptions advocates for early medication use. It cites dubious research with significant methodological problems as definitive science. It recommends a referral network that aligns perfectly with its own ideology. And then its position statement gets deployed in online debates as the final word on what constitutes ethical dog training. Read that again and give it some thought.
Who Is Policing the Police?
None of this means reward-based training doesn’t work. It is has many uses and strengths. It is the foundation of almost everything I do with dogs.
None of this means medication is always wrong. It isn’t. There are dogs whose quality of life is genuinely improved by pharmacological support, used appropriately, with a real behavior modification plan behind it.
What this means is that the next time someone drops the AVSAB position statement into a conversation as though it ends the argument, you are allowed to ask questions. You are allowed to read the citations. You are allowed to notice what the studies actually say versus what the statement claims they say. You are allowed to ask about the financial model. You are allowed to ask who benefits from the prescriptions. You are allowed to ask whether the use of prescriptions as a first response is ethical.
The AVSAB has positioned itself as the ethical authority on dog training and behavior. That is a significant amount of power for an organization whose primary clinical function is prescribing medication and whose own practices raise serious ethical questions. Authorities deserve scrutiny. So does the question of why this one is considered an authority on training in the first place.
That’s not anti-science. That’s how science is supposed to work.
So the next time someone uses this document to shut down a conversation, ask the question.
Who is policing the police?
-Tyler Muto
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