If you spend any time in online dog training circles, you will eventually run into folks who love to sound like experts while defending high-control systems like IGP or rigid, old-school obedience. They talk a big game about genetics, drive, and control, but when you look closer, their entire philosophy is built on a shaky foundation.
Take a recent video breakdown from self-proclaimed dog trainer Mark Farnsworth (handling @dogslearn), for example. It serves as a textbook example of how traditional trainers twist basic concepts to justify a lack of real behavioral science.
Here is a plain-English breakdown of what is wrong with this style of thinking—and how it ties straight back into old-school methods like those popularized by Konrad Most.
1. The Great “Behaviorist” Strawman
Farnsworth insists that a “behaviorist” is simply a professional who hands out pharmaceutical drugs like trazodone. He claims that outside of medical interventions, anyone using the term is misusing it.
- The Reality: This is completely false. Applied behavior analysts and animal behaviorists focus heavily on environmental engineering, learning theory, and functional behavior assessments.
- Why they do this: Calling behaviorists “pill-pushers” is an easy way to dismiss actual behavioral science. It lets traditional trainers pretend that their own control-based methods are the only real alternative.
2. The Illusion of Commanding an Emotion
One of the most revealing lines in Farnsworth’s breakdown is his claim that a trainer can tell a dog: “regardless of how you feel, please start thinking these thoughts, assuming these positions and feeling a different way.”
- The Reality: You cannot command an emotional state into existence by sheer human willpower or mechanical cuing.
- The Problem: This is the exact heartbeat of traditional training models inherited from figures like Konrad Most—treating the dog like a machine where you override internal states through human-directed mechanical pressure. Emotions and stress are reactions to the environment. If the environment is overwhelming, telling a dog to “feel differently” on command is entirely performative.
3. The IGP Connection: Aesthetics Over Agency
When defenders of sports like IGP or traditional obedience jump online to protect their methods, they use this exact same playbook.
- Manufacturing Control: They rely on high-arousal drive channeling and rigid compliance mechanics that treat the dog’s behavior as something that must be heavily managed and dictated by the handler at every second.
- Skipping Real Science: By focusing purely on compliance and engineered drive, they bypass actual environmental context and agency. They want the aesthetic of a hyper-controlled working dog without having to engage with modern behavioral science.
The Bottom Line
When people hide behind rigid definitions, gatekeep scientific terms incorrectly, and champion methods rooted in forcing compliance, they aren’t practicing modern behavioral science. They’re just putting a fresh coat of paint on old-school compulsion. Real behavior change doesn’t come from telling a dog how to feel “regardless” of its environment—it comes from understanding and changing the environment itself.
This man is a liar. He is a fraud. Just like Robert Cabral – might as well be selling T-shirts saying “science has no place in dog training”.
join the facebook group – Radical Behaviourism For Dog Aggression And Reactivity
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