If you consult Merriam-Webster, the word “aversive” means “tending to avoid or causing avoidance of a noxious or punishing stimulus.” Does that sound like a training method you’d want to use on your beloved dog? Probably not.

Unfortunately, aversive dog training was the norm for years. Positive reinforcement training, on the other hand, identifies the things that a dog likes and dispense them as rewards for positive behavior. This training method turns dogs into eager participants, willing to experiment with different behaviors because they aren’t afraid of being punished. Training becomes an interactive partnership, rather than something that’s being done to one individual by another.

However, we still see dog guardians using shock collars — sometimes called e-collars — and prong collars for training because people see them as a “quick fix” when trying to eliminate bothersome behaviors. Sadly, they’re sometimes used because a guardian thinks the dog is being willfully disobedient, rather than examining the underlying issue that’s creating the problem behavior (for example, lack of training or not meeting the dog’s exercise or emotional needs).

Shock collars administer a jolt of painful electricity to the dog’s neck. In 2003, Matthijs Schilder and Joanne van der Borg, researchers from the Netherlands, assessed the short and long-term behavioral effects of dog training with shock collars. They discovered that dogs trained using shock collars displayed immediate physical signs of anxiety and distress. Not only that, they showed even more signs of anxiety during subsequent training sessions. Additionally, the anxiety and distress effects continued even when on what should have been a relaxing walk in the park. The researchers concluded that the shocks elicited both pain and fear, and while some dogs associated the shocks with training cues, many associated the shock and pain with their handler.

Prong collars have metal fang-shaped prongs, which tighten and cause pain when the dog pulls against the leash. The dog learns to equate pulling on the leash with pain and stops pulling to avoid the pain — or so the theory goes. However, the cost of such compliance is high. Not only do these collars damage trust between a dog and their guardian, there are also serious medical concerns. They’ve been implicated in neck instability, degenerative arthritis in dogs and recurrent laryngeal nerve paralysis, which can affect voice and swallowing ability. Additionally, the force on the veins in the neck increases pressure within the dog’s eyes, which can affect their long-term vision and cause other eye injuries.

Beginning in 2012, Gregory Berns, a professor of neuroeconomics at Emory University, used the functional MRI to study cognitive function in awake, unrestrained dogs. This groundbreaking study, made possible by the use of positive reinforcement training, has revolutionized the way scientists think about dogs and their capacity to feel pain, anger and happiness. Our dogs have emotions just like us, and feel many of the same things that we do.

If we accept that dogs are capable of reasoning and feel primal emotions like we do, it’s hard to justify the use of adversarial, coercive training tools and techniques. Do we, as the human half of the dog-human partnership, want to be the perpetrator of “noxious or punishing stimulus?” Or can we take this knowledge and become better communicators with our animal friends?

We share our lives with animals to experience a bond that transcends species, so it’s time we stop relying on training methods that damage that very bond.

Dawn Kovell is the director of behavior and training at Marin Humane which contributes Tails of Marin articles. Visit marinhumane.org, find us on social media @marinhumane or email lbloch@marinhumane.org.