It’s a hard pill for some folks to swallow, but it’s 100% true.
If you punish the very behaviours that allow you to infer the dog is feeling anxious in the first place, then using the absence of that behaviour in that context as a basis to claim that the dog is no longer anxious is…well, proof that the person making these claims understands little if anything about dog training, dog behaviour, and the emotional lives of dogs.
Sadly, this bullshit is still all too commonly peddled in the dog world.
❌ Where this is the case it is almost always by some hack dog trainer that lacks empathy and understanding, and relies almost entirely on punishing behaviour they consider undesirable as the primary means of bringing dogs under control.
✅ If you’re following somebody making these claims on social media, then do yourself a favour and upgrade your information sources.
Building pro-social coping strategies the dog can action in a given situation helps to reduce his anxiety into the long term, due to a perception in the dog of increased control and predictability.
There is no trainer in existence that can train anxiety away, or punish a dog to the point where it no longer feels anxious.