Behavior Suppression Is Not Behavior Modification. What do I mean by that? Here’s an analogy I often share with clients:
If you break your arm and start crying, I might be able to slap you around enough to get you to stop crying. Just stopping those outward signs is behavior suppression. You’re quiet now, but you still have a broken arm and that’s the real problem.
Unless we address the underlying cause (your broken arm), you’ll continue to suffer. Once we treat the injury itself, you finally start to feel better. That’s behavior modification.
Why is this relevant?
Because if we only focus on stopping the outward symptoms in our dogs, we’ll never achieve long-term behavior change. Even worse, if we hurt, scare, or intimidate a dog for communicating, they may simply stop telling us when they’re upset. And this is what creates dangerous situations.
Dogs who “bite out of nowhere” often learned that growling, barking, or other warnings got them punished. So they stop giving those warnings. If they’re uncomfortable, you don’t know, until it’s too late.
If you’d like help understanding dog communication, you can download my free handout here.
Another fallout of addressing only the symptoms is that you can make the underlying fear or anxiety even worse. The dog is still afraid of whatever triggered the growling or barking but now, that scary thing also predicts pain, intimidation, leash jerks, or worse – electric shock or prong collar corrections.
In the U.S., professional licensure isn’t required to call yourself a dog trainer, which means all of these inhumane methods remain legal. As someone who specializes in fear and aggression cases, I often see clients after they’ve already worked with multiple trainers who used outdated, punitive approaches that made things worse.
As a result, if your dog’s behavior deteriorates under these methods, you have very little recourse. Current research is clear: punishment-based training increases fear and aggression. And “balanced” trainers who combine punishment with treats often confuse dogs even further.
Credentials matter. Transparency matters.
You can read more about this in my post on dog training credentials here.
If your dog is displaying behaviors you’re concerned about, please reach out. Let’s make a thoughtful, science-based plan together. Don’t just focus on “correcting” the outward signs—you could end up making the problem worse.
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Happy training!
