Misogyny Dressed Up in a Prong Collar

I’ve heard this story in consultations more times than I want to count, and it always follows the same script. A client contacts me because their dog is reactive or showing aggression—behavior that feels dangerous and out of control. They hired a trainer—more often than not a man—who told them the situation was too serious for positive reinforcement and their dog needed a prong collar and e-collar to stay safe —sorry, “electronic collar,” or maybe he called it a “stim collar” or “remote training collar.” (Let’s be clear: it’s a shock collar.)  The trainer takes the leash and delivers a sharp, abrupt correction the instant the dog shows the first sign of the behavior. Within a session or two, the behavior disappears. Relief floods in. Finally, someone who can “handle” their difficult dog.

Except nothing was actually handled. The behavior was suppressed through punishment severe enough that the dog learned it wasn’t safe to exhibit certain behaviors. They learned they weren’t allowed to express certain emotions. So the dog stopped showing the expressions, but still felt the emotions. In fact, the emotions likely got a lot more complicated. The fear, the frustration, the triggers—all still there, just driven underground by a desire to avoid physical pain. The trainer hands the leash back to the client and sends her home with instructions to “be firm” and “follow through with corrections.”

At first, it actually seems to work. For the first couple of weeks, maybe even three, the dog does okay. Then the behavior comes back. The dog tries to hold it together, white-knuckling through triggers as long as they can, but eventually it erupts—bigger reactions, faster escalations, less predictable warning signs than before the training ever started. The dangerous situation just became objectively more dangerous, but now it’s disguised as a solution that the client is somehow failing to implement correctly.

When she reports back to the trainer that it’s not working, here’s what happens next, with striking consistency: “The problem is you. The reason the training isn’t working is because you’re too soft. You’re not being mean enough. You baby your dog. You’re too emotional. You need to be tougher, more firm. If you just corrected harder, this would work. The dog knows you’re weak.” The training failed. The method failed. But somehow, she’s the one blamed for refusing to hurt her dog enough to make it stick.

This isn’t just bad training advice. This is misogyny dressed up in a prong collar. And we need to talk about it.

Let me show you what’s really happening here.

The Connection Between Violence Toward Dogs and Violence Toward Women

Here’s what I want you to notice.

The same person who is comfortable inflicting pain on a frightened dog is comfortable inflicting emotional harm on a frightened dog owner.

The same person who believes you solve a dog’s problem through dominance and force believes you solve a woman’s concerns through dominance and force.

This isn’t an individual failing—it’s a pattern rooted in a worldview that treats fear, resistance, and emotion as problems to be corrected.

When a trainer tells you that your dog needs to be corrected harder, that you need to be meaner, that the problem is your softness or your emotions—they’re not just giving you bad training advice. They’re applying the same framework of dominance and control to you that they applied to your dog. You’re both problems to be managed through force. Your dog’s fear doesn’t matter. Your discomfort doesn’t matter. What matters is compliance.

And when you don’t comply—when the method fails and you report that back—the blame lands squarely on you. Not on the ineffective method. Not on the trainer who sold you an illusion of safety. On you, for being too weak, too soft, too emotional to make it work. For not being mean enough to your own dog.

The insults are gendered. “Too soft.” “Too emotional.” “Not tough enough.” “You baby your dog.” These aren’t random criticisms—they’re specifically weaponized feminine traits. He’s not saying “you’re not paying attention” or “you’re doing the technique wrong.” He’s saying the problem is that you’re behaving like a woman—emotional, soft, nurturing—instead of like a man: tough, firm, dominant. A man isn’t told he’s too emotional with his dog; he’s told to apply the tool more consistently. This is textbook misogyny: punishing someone for exhibiting traits associated with femininity.

And it works because the entire dominance-based training framework maps onto patriarchal power structures. Hierarchy through force. Control through dominance. “Strength” defined as willingness to inflict pain. Emotions as weakness. Compliance as the goal. When these trainers tell women they need to be “tougher” and “meaner,” they’re not just critiquing training technique—they’re enforcing a worldview where masculine equals effective and feminine equals failure.

These trainers also exploit how women are socialized. We’re taught to defer to men as experts, especially in technical fields. We’re taught to doubt our own instincts. We’re taught to take responsibility when things go wrong, even when they’re not our fault. We’re taught to be nice, even when someone is hurting us. So when a woman comes to a trainer vulnerable and seeking help, she’s primed to: believe he’s the authority, doubt her own observations when the method fails, accept blame when he redirects it onto her, and stay polite even when he’s being verbally abusive. That’s not just abuse. That’s specifically gendered abuse that relies on and reinforces how women are trained to doubt themselves and defer to men.

This is what misogyny looks like in dog training. It’s not always obvious. It doesn’t announce itself. But when you see a trainer who is comfortable using physical force on dogs and comfortable using verbal force on women, you’re seeing the same belief system at work: that force and dominance are how you solve problems, and if you’re not willing to use them, you’re the problem.

Why Correction-Based Training Creates the Illusion of Safety

Here’s what actually happened in those first sessions with the trainer: The dog learned something, just not anything helpful. They didn’t learn how to feel safe around triggers. They didn’t learn an alternative behavior. They didn’t build confidence or coping skills. What they learned was that expressing their fear or frustration results in immediate pain or discomfort—so they stopped expressing it. They likely formed new negative associations—with the environment, with the trainer, with their own handler—or strengthened the negative associations to their original triggers that were already there. Counter-conditioning did happen, just in the wrong direction—instead of building positive associations that would help the dog relax around their triggers, the training strengthened negative associations and taught the dog that expressing certain emotions wasn’t safe.

You’ve essentially created a pressure cooker, but not just metaphorically—this is what’s happening in the dog’s nervous system. The constant suppression keeps the dog in a state of chronic stress and hyperarousal. Their nervous system stays activated, primed to react. Think about the difference between being startled when you’re relaxed versus when you’re already anxious—your reaction is bigger, faster, more intense when you’re already wound up. That’s what’s happening to these dogs. They’re living in a constant state of elevated stress, which means their startle response is heightened, their reaction time is faster, and they’re always closer to the threshold of losing control. The behavior doesn’t just come back—it explodes back, because the dog’s nervous system has been jacked up the entire time, just waiting for the dam to break.

That suppression works brilliantly in the short term, which is exactly why it’s so seductive. The barking stops. The lunging stops. The behavior that felt so scary and out of control just… disappears. It looks like a miracle. It feels like safety.

But it’s an illusion. The dog is still afraid. They’re still frustrated. They’re still triggered by the same things that triggered them before. Now they’re just also learning that showing those feelings is dangerous. So they hold it in. They shut down. They white-knuckle their way through situations that terrify them, trying desperately not to react, because reacting means pain.

Eventually, that dam breaks. The suppressed behavior doesn’t just come back—it often comes back worse. Bigger explosions. Faster escalations. Less warning. The dog who used to growl before lunging now just lunges. The dog who used to bark and posture now goes straight to a bite. You’ve lost your early warning system because the dog learned that expressing their discomfort gets punished—and those expressions are the early warning signs. The stiffening, the hard stare, the growl, the freeze—all the communication that tells you “I’m struggling here” got corrected out of existence.

This is why the trainer’s method was always going to fail once he handed the leash back. It wasn’t designed to solve the problem. It was designed to suppress the symptom in a way that made him look effective. When you told him the behavior came back worse, he didn’t re-evaluate his approach. He blamed you for not being willing to hurt your dog enough to maintain the suppression.

There’s a Better Way Forward

If you’re reading this and recognizing your own story—maybe you hired that trainer, maybe you’re still working with them, maybe you left but you’re dealing with the aftermath—I want you to know that this situation can get better. Your dog can learn to feel safe again. You can rebuild trust. The damage isn’t permanent.

But it requires a completely different approach than what you were sold. Instead of suppression, you need actual behavior change. Instead of corrections, you need counter-conditioning (the helpful kind). Instead of forcing your dog through situations until they shut down, you need to work below their threshold and build positive associations. It takes longer. It requires more patience. It doesn’t look as dramatic as a dog who’s been corrected into silence.

But it works. And it lasts. And it doesn’t require you to become someone you’re not—meaner, tougher, harder. It requires you to become more observant, more patient, more skilled at reading your dog’s communication. Those are strengths, not weaknesses.

You weren’t too soft. You weren’t too emotional. You weren’t the problem. The method was the problem. The trainer was the problem. And now you get to choose a different path—one that doesn’t require you to hurt your dog or doubt yourself.

The relief you felt when the behavior first disappeared? That can be real instead of an illusion. But it comes from actually changing how your dog feels, not just punishing them for showing how they feel. It comes from building skills instead of suppressing symptoms. It comes from working with a professional who sees you and your dog as a team to support, not a problem to dominate.

You deserve that kind of help. Your dog deserves that kind of training. And both of you deserve better than what you got.

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If this article hit home, you’re probably dealing with a dog whose problems go deeper than “not enough exercise” or “needs a firmer hand.” I’ve spent 25+ years working with reactive, aggressive, and anxious dogs, and I know what it’s like when the standard advice doesn’t work—or makes things worse. Join my email list for weekly no-BS insights on behavior modification, or schedule a consultation if you’re ready to dig into your dog’s specific challenges and create a real plan forward.

You weren’t too soft. Your instincts were right. And your dog deserves training that actually helps them feel safe—not just punishes them for being scared.

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